WPI Research is the research magazine of Worcester Polytechnic Institute. It contains news and features about graduate research in the arts and sciences, business, and engineering, along with notes about new grants, books, and faculty achievements.
Issue link: http://wpiresearch.epubxp.com/i/229254
> NEW BOOKS BY WPI FACULTY > HOMOMORPHIC ENCRYPTION FOR SECURE CLOUD COMPUTING With a $500,000 award from the NSF, Berk Sunar, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, and William Martin, professor of mathematical sciences, will investigate a particularly powerful cryptographic technique known as fully homomorphic encryption (FHE). To date, this methodology has eluded practical real-world implementation, but recent work — in which FHE schemes are based on what is known as "the learning with errors (LWE) problem"— holds promise for signifcant efficiency gains. Sunar and Martin will address issues involving engineering, computer science, and mathematics in an effort to bring LWE-based homomorphic encryption closer to practice, particularly as a means of ensuring the privacy of transactions performed with cloud-based servers. BODY AREA NETWORKS: SAFETY, SECURITY AND SUSTAINABILITY Sandeep Gupta, Tridib Mukherjee, and Krishna Venkatasubramanian Cambridge University Press, 2013 Body area networks (BANs) may revolutionize healthcare if they can be made safe, sustainable, and secure from interference and malicious attacks. Co-authored by Venkatasubramanian, assistant professor of computer science, this book shows how BANs can be redesigned from a cyber-physical systems perspective to overcome these concerns. CONFIGURATIONS FROM A GRAPHICAL VIEWPOINT Tomaz Pisanski and Brigitte Servatius Birkhäuser Basel, 2013 Among the oldest combinatorial structures, confgurations are explored from a graphical viewpoint for the frst time in this book co-authored by Servatius, professor of mathematical sciences. Designed for graduate courses and advanced undergraduate seminars, the book is also a useful reference work. > TOOLS TO HELP WIRELESS NETWORKS OPERATE EFFICIENTLY As consumers acquire more and more wireless devices, it is important to fnd ways to enable wireless networks to bring order to the many demands placed upon them so they can make the most effcient use of their limited spectrum. One key to accomplishing this may be for networks to continuously share with wireless devices information about the current and predicted state of the network so the devices, themselves, can adjust their network usage as appropriate. With a $500,000 NSF award, Donald Brown, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Andrew Klein, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, will develop an analytical framework and effcient techniques to enable such sharing and the synchronization of networked devices — tools that should be applicable to a wide range of wireless communication systems. DIGITAL COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS ENGINEERING WITH SOFTWARE-DEFINED RADIO Alexander M. Wyglinski and Di Pu Artech House, 2013 Written by Wyglinski, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering (ECE), and Pu, who received his PhD in ECE from WPI in 2013, this is the frst textbook that teaches digital communication systems engineering using softwaredefned radio, a revolutionary wireless technology. RALPH WALDO EMERSON IN CONTEXT Wesley Mott, Editor Cambridge University Press, 2013 Edited by Mott, professor of literature, organizer of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Society, and longtime editor of the Emerson Society Papers, this collection of newly commissioned essays maps the vital contextual backgrounds to Emerson's life and work. It includes essays by Mott and Kristin Boudreau, head of WPI's Department of Humanities and Arts. Worcester Polytechnic Institute > 43