Information Technology and Web Science at RPI

Prof. Simson Garfinkel Naval Postgraduate School Arlington, Virginia   Digital Forensics Innovation: Searching A Terabyte of Data in 10 minutes Abstract:  Most digital forensics tools follow a simple model of “visibility, filter and report” – the tool extracts all of the information on a subject’s disk drive, this information is filtered according to search terms, and finally a detailed report is created by a trained examiner. The problem with this model is that it cannot keep up with the growing amount of storage on desktops and in the cloud, the increasing diversity of data formats, or the growing perniciousness of malware. This talk presents a new approach that allows rapid triage of digital storage devices using random sampling, bulk data analysis, and the presence of distinct, recognizable sectors that are commonly found in user-generated documents, multimedia, and encrypted files. It shows how a 30MB piece of video hidden on a 1TB hard drive can be found in l...

Campus Career Information Session Friday 10/4 at 2PM CII 3130 Would you like to have a high impact internship, coop or post grad opportunity? Square is a fast growing payments company looking for talented students for roles in software engineering, hardware engineering, analytics and design. Please join us  on Friday at 2PM  in CII 3130 to learn about Square and our career opportunities.

Join us next Wednesday October 9th from 6-8pm in the Russell Sage Dining Hall for the annual ITWS Alumni panel. Eight alumni will be joining us, including two video conferencing in from the west coast! Companies represented include Cisco, Boeing, Becton Dickinson, Deloitte, GE, WebMD, Tunigo and Gramercy Cardiac Diagnostics Services/RepReferrals.

Sean Austin, B.S. ITWS '11, has been working with music start-up Tunigo since August 2012 as US Marketing Director. In June, Spotify acquired the start-up with the goal of rolling the music discovery curators into their own operation. Spotify will be going up against Apple, Google, Pandora and soon-to-be-announced Beats Music for the go-to global music streaming service in the coming months. "As a Information Technology & Web Science student, I became fascinated with the acceleration of technology into all industries of society. As a passionate music lover and classically trained in piano, I wanted to merge the two loves since I was a sophomore. I worked on a start-up for several years while attending school which focused on mobile applications and had some success... outside the music domain though. A year ago, I had the opportunity to spin-off my own start-up that focused solely on music in the interactive mobile app space. The investment money had me quickly off down ...

Bill Wales, IT Alumnus class of 2004, and former president of GNH, recently published an article entitled “In Pursuit of Greatness: CEONarcissism, Entrepreneurial Orientation, and Firm Performance Variance” in the Journal of Management Studies, as quoted on Today.com . Bill, now a professor of management at James Madison University , has been studying corporate entrepreneurship for several years and recently linked narcissistic CEOs to an increase in firm entrepreneurial behavior. With greater narcissism, individuals tend to have increasingly inflated, commonly unrealistic, views of their own self-importance. Yet, these self-perceptions are generally fragile, and maintaining them demands continuous external self-affirmation from others. In organizational leadership roles, narcissists are therefore concerned with actions that draw attention to themselves, inspire awe and adoration among followers, and have the possibility of leaving behind an admirable legacy of achievement. The r...

ITWS Alumni Lindsay Poirier (Class of 2013)  traveled to Africa to test software that used indigenous culture to teach mathematical concepts. She's pursuing her Ph.D. at Rensselaer and continuing her research on Africa, focusing on the critical issues involved with moving Africa into the Information Age.

The Master's in IT program recently updated the curriculum and has some exciting changes to share.  Two new concentrations have been added, Data Science and Analytics and Information Dominance.  Also the class Data Science has been added as the new Data Analytics core  requirement , advanced  options  for this core area will be Database Mining, X-Informatics, and a brad new class currently being developed called Data Analytics.     Additional   information  about the new concentrations. Data Science and Analytics -  Data and Information analytics extends analysis (descriptive and predictive models to obtain knowledge from data) by using insight from analyses to recommend action or to guide and communicate decision-making. Thus, analytics is not so much concerned with individual analyses or analysis steps, but with an entire methodology. Key topics include: advanced statistical computing theory, multivariate analysis, and application o...