Dr. Ming Shao is currently an Assistant Professor of Computer and Information Science at UMD. He obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from Northeastern University in 2016. His research focuses on visual recognition, robust and multi-view representation learning, and adversarial learning. His research has been published in premium conferences and journals such as CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, AAAI, IJCAI, KDD, ICDM, IEEE TPAMI, IJCV, etc. Dr. Shao has been actively involved in undergraduate mentoring activities. He is currently supervising one undergraduate research assistant (from underrepresented groups) to develop incremental machine learning algorithms and teaching demos.


Dr. Jiawei Yuan is currently an Assistant Professor of Computer and Information Science at UMD. He obtained his Ph.D. in Integrated Computing from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in 2015. His research focuses on security and privacy in IoT, UAV, cloud computing and machine learning, and applied cryptography. Dr. Yuan has extensive experience in mentoring and engaging undergraduate research. Dr. Yuan involved eight undergraduate students in his research in the past two years. His previously mentored undergraduate students have joined graduate schools and companies to continue their career, such as Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Florida, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin.


Dr. Yuchou Chang is currently an Assistant Professor of Computer and Information Science at UMD. He obtained his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2012. His research focuses on Biomedical Imaging, Intelligent Robotics, and the Brain-Computer Interface. Dr. Chang has mentored multiple undergraduate students since 2015. He advised five undergraduate students on a robotics competition, and the team obtained the Best Technical Report and Semi-Finalist of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Swarmathon Robotics Virtual Competition 2017. As the PI of Army Research Office (ARO) Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program (URAP), he mentored one undergraduate student in 2018.


Dr. Lance Fiondella is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UMass Dartmouth. He earned his Ph.D. (2012) from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Connecticut. His research interests include software and system reliability and security modeling, assessment, and optimization. Dr. Fiondella has successfully engaged undergraduate students in his research, including three as a PhD student and 34 (five women), in his seven years at UMD. Nine undergraduates have contributed to seven publications. Despite the large number of undergraduates, Dr. Fiondella actively mentors and carefully tracks each student, encouraging them to apply for internships, fellowships, and graduate school, remaining in correspondence after graduation to further support their professional advancement. Selected outcomes include participation in six NSF REU Sites, internships at four Federally Funded Research and Development Centers, several Major Defense Contractors, and Harvard Medical School as well as full time employment at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, graduate studies at MIT and CMU, DoD SMART Scholarships, and Army Research Laboratory Fellowships.


Dr. Gokhan Kul is an Assistant Professor of Computer and Information Science at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. His research broadly covers cybersecurity and database systems, and focuses on insider threat and data leakage detection, workload modeling, forensic analysis, and security hardening of databases. Dr. Kul has mentored several undergraduate students across UMass Dartmouth and Delaware State University in the past two years. In the past year, his undergraduate student mentee started his M.S. degree with thesis under Dr. Kul’s supervision. He also supervise the research of a female student in CIS who has been awarded a fellowship from the Cybersecurity Center.


Dr. Ruolin Zhou is currently an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UMD. Her research covers embedded system security, software defined radio based cognitive radio, and cognitive RF (radio frequency). She obtained her Ph.D. and M.S from Wright State University in 2012 and 2007, all in Electrical Engineering. Dr. Zhou has gained extensive experience in engaging and mentoring undergraduate students across UMD and Western New England University in the past eight years. She mentored and supervised four undergraduate students on her Navy SBIR Phase II project, three undergraduate students (one underrepresented) on her project sponsored by Lockheed Martin, and two undergraduate students on her Air Force STTR Phase I project. Four undergraduate students published conference proceedings as co-authors under her mentoring and supervision.