Overview

My research investigates issues in distributed computing and computer science education. Specific topics in distributed computing include health informatics, security & privacy, wireless & sensor networks, and their intersectionalities. Specific topics in CS education research include broadening participation in computing and improving student success and professional development.

Health Informatics

Technology is transforming health care as we know it. My work in this area explores ways to exploit technology, specifically wearable devices for real-time continuous health monitoring, taking an interdisciplinary approach to improving health outcomes and reducing disparities. Current projects are focusing on health conditions of maternal mortality, diabetes, food insecurity, and opioid use disorder. Other projects have explored methods of developing rapid, efficient, large-scale distributed data collection and outbreak containment, specifically in resource-constrained environments.

Sample outcomes:

  • --Best Paper Award-- U. Varshney, A. G. Bourgeois, N. Singh, and S.R. Dube, “SCCORe: Smart Continuity of Care for Opioid Recovery,” Proceedings of the 21st Annual Wireless Telecommunications Symposium, 2022.

  • Upkar Varshney, Neetu Singh, Anu G. Bourgeois, and Shanta R. Dube. "Review, Assess, Classify, and Evaluate (RACE): a framework for studying m-health apps and its application for opioid apps." Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association 29, no. 3 (2022): 520-535.

  • Maxwell Kleinsasser, Bronson Tharpe, Neelam Akula, Harshitha Tirumani, Rajshekhar Sunderraman, and Anu G. Bourgeois. "Detecting and Predicting Sleep Activity using Biometric Sensor Data." In 2022 14th International Conference on COMmunication Systems & NETworkS (COMSNETS), pp. 19-24. IEEE, 2022.

  • Blake Camp, Jaya Mandivarapu, Jay Mehta, Nagashayana Ramamurthy, James Wingo, Anu Bourgeois, Xiaojun Cao, and Raj Sunderraman, “A New Cross-Platform Architecture for Epi-Info Software Suite,” BMC Bioinformatics, 19-S(11): 359:1-359:8 (2018).

Security & Privacy

Recent studies show that there is a cyber attack roughly every 39 seconds, with over 70% of all data breaches being due to social engineering. We have been investigating the influence of human behavior on security and privacy concerns in the context of providing Internet service via drones and the identity theft ecosystem over encrypted social media. With concerns of privacy at the forefront of health informatics applications, as well as with location-aware mobile applications, we have also been identifying ways to keep sensitive data private.

Sample Publications:

  • Q. Gu, D. Formby, S. Ji, B. Saltaformaggio, A. Bourgeois and R. A. Beyah, "This Hacker Knows Physics: Device Physics Aware Mimicry Attacks in Cyber-Physical Systems," in IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, (2021).

  • Huang, Yan, Wei Li, Jinbao Wang, Zhipeng Cai, and Anu G. Bourgeois. "Privacy protection among three antithetic-parties for context-aware services." Journal of Network and Computer Applications (2021): 103115.

  • Harish Kunta, Bhavya Induri, Anu G. Bourgeois, David Maimon and Ashwin Ashok, “Towards an Experimental Testbed to Study CyberWorm Behaviors in Large Scale Networks,” Proceedings of the 14th International Workshop on Wireless Network Testbeds, Experimental evaluation & Characterization, (WiNTECH’20), pp. 120-121, 2020.

Wireless & Sensor Networks

By 2023, it is expected that there will be 3x the number of connected devices compared to the global population. These devices are prevalent in industry, homes, and public infrastructure. My research explores various problems for wireless and sensor networks. Such problems include efficient communication, fault tolerance, security, scalability and load balancing. Work in this area organically intersects with my other research topics, leading to several interdisciplinary projects.

Sample Publications:

  • Bourgeois, Devin, Anu G. Bourgeois, and Ashwin Ashok. "RoSS: A Low-Cost Portable Mobile Robot for Soil Health Sensing." In 2022 14th International Conference on COMmunication Systems & NETworkS (COMSNETS), pp. 436-437. IEEE, 2022.

  • Andrew Rosen, Benjamin Levin, and Anu G. Bourgeois, “Autonomous Load Balancing in Distributed Hash Tables Using Churn and the Sybil Attack,” Proc. of 23rd Workshop on Advances in Parallel and Distributed Computational Models, in conjunction with the 35th IEEE/ACM International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium, May 2021.

  • Z. Cai, Y. Duan, and A. G. Bourgeois, “Delay Efficient Opportunistic Routing in Asynchronous Multi-Channel Cognitive Radio Networks,” Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, 29(4):815-835 (2015).

Broadening Participation in CS

The lack of diversity in computing is alarming. At this time, of those employed in computing occupations, less than 25% are women and about 15% are either Black/African American or Hispanic. With the prevalence of technology in most facets in our lives, it is imperative to have a diverse workforce. Our work in this area explores pathways to broaden participation of traditionally underrepresented minorities in computing. This includes training K-12 teachers to teach CS, incorporating industry mentoring early in the college pathway, and using disparate demographic and infrastructure data to assess spatial risk of lack of CS education for a given area.

Sample Projects:

  • “See-Us: Women Inclusion-Directed Diagnostic Data Grant for Georgia State University,” PI: Anu G. Bourgeois, Northeastern University – Center for Inclusive Computing,” (2021 – 2023), $60,000.

  • “Strategic Interventions for Broadening Participation in Computing at Urban Institutions,” PI: Anu G. Bourgeois, Google, (2021 – unrestricted), $125,000.

  • “Racial Equity: Improving Diversity in Computer Science: A Geospatial Approach to Reduce Inequities in Early Access to CS Education,” PI: Anu G. Bourgeois, Co-PIs: Suhasini Ramisetty-Mikler, Chetan Tiwari, Armin Mikler, and Rajshekhar Sunderraman, NSF, (2022-2025), $645,846, pending.

  • "How to Allocate and Access Equity of CS Education Resources," poster to appear 2nd ACM Conference on Equity and Access in Algorithms, Mechanisms, and Optimization (EAAMO'22).


Student Success & Professional Development

CS is one of the most in-demand disciplines, witha 13% job growth of over half a million computer and IT jobs over the next decade. A key challenge facing the field is that the number of students graduating with the expertise needed is not in line with the demand. To address this issue, our research focuses on using educational data mining to predict student performance to determine best practices for academic success. We also explore various teaching strategies and extracurricular support mechanisms to help improve performance and professional development for success in school and beyond.

Sample Publications:

  • Awad A Younis, Rajshekhar Sunderraman, Mike Metzler, and Anu G. Bourgeois, “Developing Parallel Programming and Soft Skills: A Project Based Learning Approach,” Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, 158, (2021): 151-163.

  • Johnson, W., R. Sunderraman, and A. Bourgeois. "Predictors of Performance in Computer Science Algorithms," In Proceedings of the 13th Annual International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation, (ICERI), vol. 9, 2020.

  • Xiaolin Hu, Sai D. Tabdil, Manisha Achhe, Yi Pan, Anu G. Bourgeois, “Online Tutoring Through a Cloud-Based Virtual Tutoring Center,” CLOUD 2020: 270-277.