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Spring 2004 |
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Cover Story
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Tracking computer crime Tom Daniels, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, and two colleagues have received a $1.2-million, 30-month contract from Advanced Research and Development Activity (ARDA) to develop software that will serve to “fingerprint” and track down computer criminals. The contract, the largest awarded to a research effort in this area at Iowa State, supports Daniels’ work, as well as that of department team members Julie Dickerson and Yong Guan. The “whodunit” software that Daniels and his team are developing will identify just the right amount of clues and red flags to track down perpetrators. Existing programs have fallen short, he says, because either too many or too few clues are identified. “If the program is too simple, sophisticated attackers can get around it. And if a program is too broad, there are too many false alarms and wrong guesses.” The team’s work will be valuable to a wide range of e-traders. “Let’s say you try to log on to e-Trade, to trade stock. But a denial of service is being launched and you can’t log on. The market changes and you lose thousands of dollars. Who’s responsible? “We will develop techniques that postmark traffic at every point,” Daniels says. “Computer traffic needs the equivalent of a Federal Express tracking number, not a post card with a wrong address.” Making gas from grass While the automobile industry races to put fuel-cell vehicles on the market, Iowa State University researchers are working to produce hydrogen-rich gas from a native Iowa prairie grass to power the new vehicles. The research team, directed by Robert C. Brown, Bergles Professor in Thermal Science in mechanical engineering and professor of chemical engineering, has developed a process for converting switchgrass into hydrogen. Biomass is injected into a high-temperature, oxygen-starved reactor, known as an indirectly heated gasifier. There it is converted into a flammable gas. “Energy in the biomass drives chemical reactions that release hydrogen from steam that has been added to the gasifier,” explains Brown. While conventional gasification produces a fuel gas with only 8 percent hydrogen, the Iowa State researchers have increased the yield to 60 percent with a goal of reaching 90 to 95 percent hydrogen in this final year of a three-year grant. Vehicles powered by fuel cells require this high level of hydrogen concentration. Brown’s work is funded through a $1.23-million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and with support from the Iowa Energy Center. Praise for lights-out research The research of an Iowa State University faculty member has been included in MIT’s recent list of “10 Emerging Technologies That Will Change The World.” Vijay Vittal, Harpole Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, was cited for his work in the simulation of large-scale power systems. As aging and stressed electrical power systems break down and precipitate massive blackouts or brownouts, Vittal and colleagues are researching and designing methods of warding off these power disturbances and making the systems more reliable. Vittal focuses his research on several electrical and power system issues, including power system dynamics, the dynamic security assessment of power systems, power system operation and control, and the application of robust control techniques to power systems. He is an internationally recognized leader in his field, and he has authored two textbooks on power system analysis. |
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