The Alpha Iota Mu honor society inducted its newest members for 2024 this past weekend. The induction ceremony was held in the Wheatley Center on Sunday, April 21, 2024. Dr. G. Alan Davis, advisor for the honor society, presided over the ceremony. Alpha Iota Mu is the honor society specifically for Information Systems majors and minors who meet a high level GPA requirement, in the top 10% of their class.
Three Professors Emeriti participated in the ceremony, Dr. David Wood, Dr. Robert Skovira, and Dr. Paul Kovacs, to help welcome the newest members of the chapter. The guest speaker for the event was Dr. Parul Yadav, Rooney Scholar, who was also inducted as an honorary member.
Twenty students were honored at the event, including:
Sai Kiran Yadav Battula Cyrus Bruce William Challingsworth Warren Corbett Shawn Donnelly Ivan Stephen D’Souza Catherine Allgeier Eck Colin Glynn Curtis M. Haschak Emily Grace Kerry Lavanya Kusampudi Brian Muchwing’i Makhulo Reese Martin Rylie Milanovich Jesse Powers Olivia Schultheis Jasmine Arabasomua Thompson Liji Varghese Xinh Vu
Congratulations to all of the new members of Alpha Iota Mu! They will be wearing their white and blue honor cords at graduation with pride.
Join the Top Secret Colonials (TSC) for a lab and demonstration of the Flipper Zero, a handheld pentester-like tool that can read, write, and emulate NFC and RFID tags, analyze and produce signals, use and read infrared data, and much more that can be installed onto the device through forums like GitHub.
Join us in Wheatley 110 this Wednesday, 4/24, at 4:30 as we demonstrate what the Flipper Zero can do.
Dr. Karen Paullet is the recipient of the 2024 Legacy Award for the Center for Veterans and Military Families (CVMF). All candidates for this award must be student-nominated, and Dr. Paullet was nominated for the CVMF Legacy Award by Lauren Holswade, senior CIS major. The award is given to recognize lasting impact on RMU’s military-connected students.
In Lauren’s speech at the award ceremony, she noted that she nominated Dr. Paullet “due to her unwavering support and understanding of our military-connected students at RMU. Dr. Paullet’s dedication to accommodating the unique challenges faced by military personnel balancing both their service commitments and academic responsibilities is truly commendable.”
She went on to say, “I vividly recall instances where Dr. Paullet’s support went above and beyond expectations. Her efforts to ensure military students are not overlooked, such as announcing their temporary absence from class and recognizing their service publicly, highlight her dedication to our community.”
Congratulations, Dr. Paullet! This award showcases your outstanding commitment to student success and support of our military-connected students.
Dr. Karen Paullet was recently asked to be a guest on the Hub Cast podcast for The Cyber Social Hub with Kevin DeLong! Check out the episode where Kevin talks with Dr. Paullet about the latest trends in education for the digital forensics field:
On April 5, 2024, 10 teams of RMU students competed in the first ever AWS DeepRacer Competition at RMU!
Student teams spent more than a month learning how to code algorithms in Python to drive AWS DeepRacers (mini autonomous vehicles) using machine learning. The teams trained their models and got to test them out on the AWS DeepRacer League race track in the UPMC Events Center for the competition. All of the winners are pictured below receiving their awards with Dean Frank Hartle and Amazon’s DeepRacer League Pit Crew Leader, Nicole Murray.
The First Place team (pictured below) in the undergraduate bracket was the “Top Secret Racers” team, Kelson Bowman, Anthony Guerrero, and Evan Brooks, whose car finished with a lap time of 00:09.133 seconds. Each of the team members won a $1,000 scholarship!
The Runner-Up team (pictured below) in the undergraduate bracket was the “Track Knights” team, Isaac Arnold and Lipika Ratakonda. Their car finished with a lap time of 00:09.166 seconds. Each team member won a $250 scholarship award.
The First Place team (pictured below) in the graduate bracket was the “Tigers” team, Linfeng Hao, Koushik ReddyDonthireddy, and Koyi Raghavamma (not pictured), whose car finished with a lap time of 00:07.757 seconds. This was an extremely competitive lap time and the team was encouraged to submit their model to the national AWS DeepRacer League! Each of the team members won a $1,000 scholarship.
The Runner-Up team (pictured below) in the graduate bracket was the “Vihan” team, Jason Gao, Deepthi Sri Kommagani, and Ravi Sri Sankar Nukavarapu. Their car finished with a lap time of 00:09.391 seconds. Each team member won a $250 scholarship award.
Congratulations to the winning teams! Overall, the competition was a great way for students to get involved with AI and machine learning, and get some hands-on experience with reinforcement learning models.
A huge thank you to our faculty mentors for all of your support in helping our teams through the coding and training phases of the competition: Dr. Natalya Bromall, Dr. Steve Mancini, Dr. Noory Etezady, Dr. Peter Draus, Dr. Parul Yadav (Rooney Scholar), and Phill Miller (CIO)!
Thank you also to our student helpers, our Announcer, Dakota Rideout and our Track Boss, Harry Lyons! Another thanks to our student PR team who were instrumental in securing sponsors for our raffle prizes: Elise Spath, Ella Donovan, Megan McGinnis, Kennedi Randolph, and Jesse Fitch.
We’d also like to send out a special thank you to our IT Team for such amazing support: Phill Miller, Paul Dewey, Dylan McKenna, and Ian Connolly.
Our sponsors for the raffle prizes were very much appreciated! These included:
M&S Consulting
Eat’n Park
Dunkin’ Donuts
Kendra Scott
The Sewickley Spa
Condado
Piada
Sam’s Club
RMU Colonial Cupboard
And a special thank you to our Amazon AWS Account Team and Pit Crew: Nicole Murray, Justin Marks, Eric Pierson, Brent Everman, Jacob Dishler, Jeremy McGriff, and Ope Usman.
We are so proud of all of our students, and hope that everyone had a great experience at the competition!
Ryan Sydlic from ISC2 will be holding a presentation at 4:30 pm in the Wheatley Atrium. His presentation will be an informative session on ISC2 and the benefits of being a member. SET credit will be awarded and pizza will be served. This event is sponsored by the Top Secret Colonials (TSC).
Ryan Sydlik joined Telos in 2019, and serves as a security engineer. He has 10 years’ experience in information technology including cloud computing and cybersecurity in the government, healthcare and financial sectors.
Ryan is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), AWS Certified Solutions Architect and is ITIL certified. He has a graduate degree from the University of Maryland and an undergraduate degree from the University of Notre Dame.
Identifying changes in healthcare and predicting the need for artificial intelligence
Discussing the implementation of strategies to overcome obstacles in healthcare
Integrating proposed methods used in real-world healthcare problems
Audience: Any Healthcare Degree Students (administration, nursing, health science, psychology, premed), Any Healthcare Professionals and ANYONE interested in healthcare!!
Please join us for the next information session about the NSF SFS Scholarship Grant on Tuesday, April 2 from 4-5pm in Wheatley 114. You’ll have a chance to learn more about how to apply for this excellent program.
Please join us in the Wheatley Atrium on Monday, March 25 from 4:30-5:30pm. Steve Rocco, Director of IT Security at Matthews International will give a talk on Managing Cyber Risk in a Corporate Environment. Internship opportunities will also be discussed.
CIS @ RMU 