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Reminder - CS Grad Council Meeting Today!
by Madabushi, Sindhuja 13 Nov '25

13 Nov '25

Hi everyone, This is a friendly reminder about our CS Grad Council meeting Today, Thursday, November 13, at 11 AM in Gilbert 3002 (third floor). We will be going over some upcoming events and other logistic stuff. For those unable to join the meeting in-person, you can join via zoom here: https://virginiatech.zoom.us/j/87397593679 We look forward to seeing you all there! — Sindhuja Madabushi, Secretary, Computer Science Graduate Council PhD Student in CS@VT (505) 457-7721 msindhuja(a)vt.edu<mailto:msindhuja@vt.edu> | Website<https://sindhujamadabushi.github.io/>

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Osama Bajaber's Ph.D. defense (Monday, November 17, 11:00 AM EST)
by Bo Ji 10 Nov '25

10 Nov '25

Dear all, You're cordially invited to join Osama Bajaber’s Ph.D. defense. Detailed information can be found below. *Title:* Towards Zero Trust Network Security via Programmable Data Planes *Date:* Monday, November 17, 2025 *Time:* 11:00 AM EST *Room:* Gilbert Place 4001 *Zoom link:* https://virginiatech.zoom.us/my/bojics *Committee members:* Bo Ji (Co-Chair), Peng Gao (Co-Chair), Danfeng (Daphne) Yao, Taejoong (Tijay) Chung, and Yixin Sun (University of Virginia) *Abstract:* Zero Trust (ZT) architecture marks a fundamental shift from traditional perimeter-based security models by requiring continuous verification of every access request with the least privileges granted. However, enforcing ZT principles remains challenging in today’s enterprise networks, as it mostly relies on centralized software controllers, creating single points of failure and significant performance bottlenecks. This dissertation addresses these challenges by realizing a new paradigm, called *In-Network Zero Trust Security*. Leveraging recent advances in programmable data planes (e.g., P4 switches, eBPF), we demonstrate that secure network access can be efficiently enforced directly within the network data plane. When an attack is detected, network hardware can take action on the fly at line rate without relying on external software controllers. This vision is achieved through three novel defense schemes: (1) *P4Control* (accepted at Oakland’24), an in-network information flow control mechanism that tracks end-to-end attacker activities to prevent cross-host attacks; (2) *NetCap* (minor revision at NDSS’26), an in-network, process-level continuous authentication mechanism that prevents attackers from leveraging stolen access tokens to abuse permissions; and (3) *NetZone* (under review at Oakland’26), an in-network, fine-grained microsegmentation mechanism that enforces persistent, user-specific access scopes to prevent stepping-stone attacks. We will conclude the talk with our broader vision to develop a *unified in-network ZT framework* that enables the programmability and orchestration of diverse defense mechanisms across the network infrastructure. Best regards, Bo

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Md Mahir Asef Kabir's PhD dissertation defense exam scheduled at 9am on Monday 11/10/25
by Meng, Na 09 Nov '25

09 Nov '25

Hi all, You’re invited to virtually attend Mahir’s PhD dissertation defense exam. Title: Enhancing Software Maintenance: A Research Investigation on Current Practices, Potential Improvements, and Procedure Automation Date: Monday, Nov. 10th, 2025 Time: 9:00am-10:30am EDT Zoom link: zoom meeting room<https://virginiatech.zoom.us/my/mahir.kabir> Abstract: Software maintenance is one of the most important phases of the Software Development Life Cycle, as it prevents unexpected development issues and ensures long-term reliability. Proper maintenance reduces cost and protects software from security and run-time problems. However, software maintenance is widely recognized as a challenging and resource-demanding phase of the life cycle. Developers frequently encounter difficulties such as managing dependency updates, addressing metadata inconsistencies, and adapting to evolving project requirements. These recurring issues motivate the need for better insights into maintenance practices and the exploration of automated techniques that can improve reliability and efficiency. To address these challenges, this dissertation presents (1) an examination of current maintenance practices by developers, (2) an investigation of the feasibility of using Large Language Models for software maintenance, and (3) the development of a new tool to automatically detect bugs and support automated maintenance. First, we identified security-related best practices for JavaScript developers and examined how well they are followed in open-source projects. Our empirical study of 841 applications revealed frequent violations and showed that developers often ignore best practices due to perceived irrelevance or distrust in tools. These findings highlight limitations in human-driven maintenance and motivate the exploration of automated assistance. Next, we evaluated how Large Language Model (LLM) tools such as ChatGPT perform in maintenance tasks compared to human developers. By analyzing their performance in technical Q&A and software revision, we found that ChatGPT provided better answers for 97 out of 130 Stack Overflow questions and successfully revised software for 22 out of 48 maintenance requests. While promising, our results indicate that LLMs struggle with context-specific precision. Finally, we developed a domain-specific language (DSL) and language engine tool (MECHECK) to detect metadata-related bugs in Java programs. We defined 15 rules from Spring and JUnit documentation and evaluated MECHECK using two datasets of 115 enterprise applications. MECHECK detected bugs with 100% precision, 96% recall, and 98% F-score, and identified 152 real-world bugs, 49 of which were confirmed fixes. These results demonstrate that MECHECK helps ensure the correct use of metadata and advances automated software maintenance. In summary, this research provides insight into software maintenance, its challenges, and how the process can be improved from understanding developer behavior, to leveraging AI assistance, to creating automated detection tools. Cheers, Na

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Survey for 2026 CS Ph.D. Qualifier Exam - Due EOD 11/20/2025
by Muhammad Ali Gulzar 07 Nov '25

07 Nov '25

Good Morning CS graduate students, If you are considering taking the CS Ph.D. qualifier exam this academic year (i.e., in Spring 2026), please complete the following survey by November 20th, 2025 (use vt.edu email to access the form): 2026 CS Ph.D. Qualifier Exam -- Student Interest Survey <https://forms.office.com/r/NHYPS17494> This survey aims to gauge students' interest in taking the CS Ph.D. Qualifier Exam, scheduled to be conducted between January 20th and March 1st of 2026. All students planning to take the qualifier exam must submit this form; however, this form is not binding. Filling out this form does not register you for the exam. Steps to register for the exam will be provided after the area-specific qualifier committees are formed. If you are unsure about taking the exam this year, please fill out this form. Students in the Ph.D. program are expected to take this exam approximately 18 calendar months after they begin the VT CS Ph.D. program. The Ph.D. Qualifier Exam is a mandatory milestone, and students must complete it on time. Tentative Timeline of the Exam: • November 20th: Last day for students to express interest in taking the 2026 Ph.D. Qualifier Exam • January 1st - 6th: Ph.D. Qualifier Exam webpages go online. Students register for the exam • January 20th to March 1st: Students take the exam • March 15th: Committees finalize the results for (1) Qualifier Exam, (2) Excellence in Depth, and (3) Waiver, if applicable • March 20th: Results released to students Additional information on VT CS Ph.D program milestones and requirements is available in the 2025-26 Grad Manual <https://virginiatech-my.sharepoint.com/:w:/g/personal/sara83_vt_edu/EUIau1m…>. Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions. Best wishes, Gulzar — Muhammad Ali Gulzar Assistant Professor Virginia Tech | Department of Computer Science 220 Gilbert Street, Room 4106 Blacksburg, VA 24060 (540) 231-0851 | gulzar(a)cs.vt.edu | https://people.cs.vt.edu/~gulzar

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Seminar Talk: Friday, November 7, 2:30-3:45pm, Classroom Building, room 260
by Zier, Debbie 06 Nov '25

06 Nov '25

Ali R. Butt Professor of Computer Science and ECE Virginia Tech Friday, November 7, 2025 2:30 - 3:45pm Classroom Building, room 260 Seminar: Efficient Federated Learning Storage for non-training workloads Abstract: Federated Learning (FL) is an approach for privacy-preserving Machine Learning (ML), enabling model training across multiple clients without centralized data collection. We observed that a substantial part of FL systems are the non-training workloads such as scheduling, personalization, clustering, debugging, and incentivization. Extant systems rely on a central aggregator to handle non-training workloads and use cloud services for data storage. This results in high latency and increased costs as non-training workloads rely on large volumes of metadata, including weight parameters from client updates, hyperparameters, and aggregated updates across rounds, making the situation even worse. I will present the design of FLStore, a serverless framework for efficient FL non-training workloads and storage, which addresses these challenges. FLStore unifies the data and compute planes on a serverless cache, enabling locality-aware execution via tailored caching policies to reduce latency and costs. Our evaluation shows significant improvements over the state-of-the-art, and our design fits easily with existing systems for easy adaption in practice. Bio: Ali is a professor of computer science and ece at virginia tech. His research is on designing scalable I/O and storage systems for resource-intensive applications such as emerging generative AI and high-performance computing scientific workflows. ________________________ Debbie Zier Administrative Assistant and Office Manager Department of Computer Science (0106) 3160E Torgersen Hall 620 Drillfield Drive Blacksburg, VA 24061 541-231-1369

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PhD Prelim of Atharva Gondhalekar
by Wuchun Feng 06 Nov '25

06 Nov '25

Hi, everyone! I am pleased to invite you to the PhD prelim defense of Atharva Gondhalekar entitled "On the Three P’s of Heterogeneous Computing for Irregular Computation: Performance, Productivity, and Power" When: 11/07/2025 at 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM Where: 4001 Gilbert Place (Zoom: https://virginiatech.zoom.us/j/82309567326 | Meeting ID: 823 0956 7326) What: On the Three P’s of Heterogeneous Computing for Irregular Computation: Performance, Productivity, and Power Graphics processing units (GPUs) have become the dominant platform in high-performance computing due to their ability to deliver high throughput on workloads with balanced computation and predictable memory access patterns. However, irregular workloads with data-dependent memory accesses and load imbalance remain difficult to map efficiently to GPUs. This work presents design and runtime adaptation strategies for efficiently mapping such irregular computations to GPUs. The design adaptations expose fine-grained parallelism in sparse linear algebra computations, while the runtime adaptations use sparsity-aware kernel selection to accelerate irregular workloads such as edge-connected Jaccard similarity in graph datasets. Compared to vendor-optimized GPU libraries, the proposed strategies deliver up to a 10.7x mean speedup for sparse linear algebra workloads and a 3.2x mean speedup for Jaccard similarity computation. Given the diversity of heterogeneous devices and the increasing power demands of modern supercomputers, design considerations on modern GPUs should balance the three P’s: performance, portability, and power to achieve sustainable efficiency across architectures. To that end, this work presents an analysis of performance portability of irregular workloads on different GPUs. Finally, we propose extensions to our work through runtime adaptation via fine-grained kernel selection, along with an evaluation of performance portability and power draw across additional workloads. Committee: Wu Feng (Chair), Kjetil Haugen, Michael Hsiao, Wenjie Xiong, Xun Jian ~~ Wu FENG | Synergy Lab | Depts. of CS, ECE, BEAM | NSF SHREC Center & SEEC Center at Virginia Tech | Professor, Turner Faculty Fellow, and Director | 2050 Torgersen Hall | 620 Drillfield Drive | VT | Blacksburg VA 24061 | 540-231-1192 | wfeng(a)vt.edu

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TODAY: Entrepreneurship and Computing Seminar Series: Kirk W. Cameron, Nov 6th 2pm
by Kantarcioglu, Murat 06 Nov '25

06 Nov '25

Dear All, As part of the CS/Root, the hub for computer science entrepreneurship at Virginia Tech, Entrepreneurship and Computing Seminar Series, we are hosting a talk from Dr. Kirk W. Cameron. We invite you to attend if you are interested in startups and/or in learning how research can be successfully transitioned into practice. Please see the details below, along with the attached seminar announcement. Seminar Title: From ideation to impact, taking research into the worldwide marketplace. Abstract: Did you ever wonder how products come to be? Where do the ideas come from? Is it mostly inspiration or perspiration? Are there good ideas and bad ideas? Do students, faculty, or MBAs make better founders? What separates fail-fast startups from unicorns? What role does luck play? In this talk, I will attempt to demystify the startup process for those who’ve never launched one and answer some of these questions. My work started in the lab and ended in the marketplace—but, as I will explain, the journey is what matters most. Speaker Bio: Dr. Kirk W. Cameron is the Interim Director of the Institute for Advanced Computing at Virginia Tech. Prof. Cameron pioneered green HPC (2001-), co-founded The Green500 List (2006-), and contributed to SPECPower (2006-) which served as the basis for the DOE EnergyStar for Servers program. Thus, his work has had profound influence on the design of computers, supercomputers, and datacenters for two decades. His commercial grano.la<http://grano.la/> power management software was used by more than 500,000 people in 160+ countries. In 2021, he was elevated to IEEE Fellow “for contributions to measurement and management of energy in high-performance computing systems.” Date and Time: Nov 6th, 2025, 2pm Location: Zoom. https://virginiatech.zoom.us/j/81934827197?pwd=tLn7WN6daejQtPWA0M6XOSX2nVbW… Meeting ID: 819 3482 7197 Passcode: 051186 Best Regards, Murat ==================================== Murat Kantarcioglu, Ph.D. Professor, and CCI Faculty Fellow Virginia Tech, Department of Computer Science www.kantarcioglu.net ====================================

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Time Sensitive! CS|Source Events, Announcements, and Opportunities
by Hodge, Julie 04 Nov '25

04 Nov '25

[cid:image001.png@01DC4CCC.2134F3B0] Software Developer Internship FC Mother<http://fcmother.com/> is looking for a Software Developer Intern to help build the core platform powering the World Cup of Healing: a global initiative that turns football (soccer) fandom into real-world health impact for mothers and families. We're seeking a hands-on builder who loves coding, experimentation, and purpose-driven tech. The intern will work directly with our founding team to prototype and ship features across web, mobile, and data systems that blend sports tech, behavioral science, and health innovation. Ideal candidate: * CS/CE student or recent grad with strong fundamentals (Python, TypeScript/React, Node.js, or PostgreSQL) * Curious about AI, gamification, or social impact applications * Self-starter comfortable in a fast-moving startup environment Details: Remote-first * Part-time during semester or full-time in summer * Paid (competitive hourly) * Potential founding-track opportunity To apply, email drpaulo(a)squareroots.com<mailto:drpaulo@squareroots.com> with the subject line "VT Intern - I'm betting on myself", and include your resume, GitHub/portfolio, and one paragraph on something you've built that you're proud of. More on FC Mother: * CNBC<https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/08/fc-mother-soccer-fandom-maternal-health.html> * Forbes<https://www.forbes.com/sites/vitascarosella/2025/05/12/fc-mother-brings-soc…> Entrepreneurship and Computing Seminar Series -Thursday, Nov. 6th at 2 pm CS/Root, (the hub for computer science entrepreneurship at Virginia Tech) is pleased to announce we are hosting a talk from Dr. Kirk W. Cameron. We invite you to attend if you are interested in startups and/or in learning how research can be successfully transitioned into practice. Please see the details below, along with attached seminar announcement. Seminar Title: From ideation to impact, taking research into the worldwide marketplace. Abstract: Did you ever wonder how products come to be? Where do the ideas come from? Is it mostly inspiration or perspiration? Are there good ideas and bad ideas? Do students, faculty, or MBAs make better founders? What separates fail-fast startups from unicorns? What role does luck play? In this talk, I will attempt to demystify the startup process for those who've never launched one and answer some of these questions. My work started in the lab and ended in the marketplace-but, as I will explain, the journey is what matters most. Speaker Bio: Dr. Kirk W. Cameron is the Interim Director of the Institute for Advanced Computing at Virginia Tech. Prof. Cameron pioneered green HPC (2001-), co-founded The Green500 List (2006-), and contributed to SPECPower (2006-) which served as the basis for the DOE EnergyStar for Servers program. Thus, his work has had profound influence on the design of computers, supercomputers, and datacenters for two decades. His commercial grano.la power management software was used by more than 500,000 people in 160+ countries. In 2021, he was elevated to IEEE Fellow "for contributions to measurement and management of energy in high-performance computing systems." Date and Time: Nov 6th, 2025, 2pm Location: Zoom. https://virginiatech.zoom.us/j/81934827197?pwd=tLn7WN6daejQtPWA0M6XOSX2nVbW… Meeting ID: 819 3482 7197 Passcode: 051186 Trafigura Information Session Trafigura is one of the world's largest physical commodities trading groups, connecting vital resources that power and build the world. On Friday November 7th, VT Alums: Max Babka ('23) and Taha Shaikh ('23) will present on full-time opportunities available via the three graduate programs and discuss their experience working on the US Power desk in Houston. Students of all majors and years are invited to join. Please see attached flyer. Presentation: 12:30pm Friday Nov 7th, Pamplin 1045 Happy Hour: 6:00pm Friday Nov 7th, Maroon Door www.trafigura.com<http://www.trafigura.com/> ____________ Julie Hodge, Strategic Relationships Manager Virginia Tech | Department of Computer Science (0106) 1180E Torgersen Hall, 620 Drillfield Drive Blacksburg, VA 24061 540 231 1666 | jdhodge(a)vt.edu<mailto:jdhodge@vt.edu> [cid:image002.jpg@01DC4CCC.2134F3B0]

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Commencement Ceremony Volunteer
by Zier, Debbie 04 Nov '25

04 Nov '25

Good Afternoon All, The college is in need of one more volunteer to help with the Undergraduate Commencement Ceremony on Friday, December 19 at 10:30am in Cassell Coliseum. Volunteers can be faculty, staff or grad students. If you are available and would like to volunteer, please let me know and also give me your cell phone number. Thank you, Debbie ________________________ Debbie Zier Administrative Assistant and Office Manager Department of Computer Science (0106) 3160E Torgersen Hall 620 Drillfield Drive Blacksburg, VA 24061 541-231-1369

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GTA Preference Survey
by Hillman, Heath 04 Nov '25

04 Nov '25

Hello Hokies! It is that time of year to complete the GTA Survey! (A thank you to those that have already completed the survey) Everyone should complete the GTA Survey! Please go to the site: https://hosting.cs.vt.edu/gta/ to find the application survey. Deadline: November 21, 2025 If you don’t complete the survey, you may be placed in a course that doesn’t align with your skills — and that can lead to a less-than-pleasant semester. Help us help you by submitting your preferences on time! Please let me know if you have any questions. // Heath Hillman // Instructor, Director of Academic Operations // Virginia Tech | Computer Science

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