Annual Report for 2013-2014
OVERVIEW
The College of Computing, Engineering and Construction had a strong and productive year. The
number of students in continued to grow at an annual rate of approximately 7%, with
computing programs leading the way with an increase of over 8%. All programs in the
School of Computing and School of Engineering were continually accredited by ABET. Also,
the department of Construction Management was accredited for six years by ACCE.
The College negotiated a formal agreement between Vistakon and UNF that will bring
approximate $600,000 a year for the five years to researchers working on cutting-edge problems
with Vistakon. The goal of the agreement is to build a strong, mutually beneficial and long-term
relationship between Vistakon and UNF to develop talent and opportunity to hire future
employees and to solve interesting problems in advanced manufacturing, IT and other areas of
interest and importance to Vistakon.
The Faculty of the College continued to maintain a high level of productivity and engagement
with our students, consistent with the College’s aspiration to be nationally known for its
outstanding degree programs, scholarship and service and seeks to contribute significantly to
the economic vitality of the Northeast Florida region, the State and the Nation.
NOTABLE AWARDS AND RECOGNITIONS



Dean Mark Tumeo was elected an American Society of Civil Engineering Fellow. The
nationally recognized designation requires bearers to have had responsible charge for a
minimum of 10 years of important industrial, business, construction, educational, editorial,
research or engineering society activity, requiring the knowledge and background gained
from engineering training and experience. Additionally, Fellows must be nominated by
leadership within the ASCE.
Dr. Don Resio (Taylor Engineering Research Institute) was selected as a member of the
National Research Council Committee on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Water Resources,
Engineering, and Planning: Coastal Risk Reduction.
Dr. Don Resio (Taylor Engineering Research Institute) received the American Society of
Civil Engineers (ASCE) 2013 International Coastal Engineering. The International Coastal
Engineering Award recognizes an individual who has made significant contributions to the
advancement of coastal engineering in the form of engineering design, teaching,
professional leadership, research, planning, or a combination thereof.
CCEC Annual Report 2013-2014
AWARDED FACULTY CONTRACTS & GRANTS
The Faculty of CCEC were awarded nearly $1.9 million in research grants and contracts in the
2013-2014 fiscal year. Some of the notable awards include

Dr. Adel El Safty (Civil Engineering) was awarded over $402,000 by the Florida
Department of Transportation to test and evaluate polymeric material used for
transportation infrastructures.

Dr. Thobias Sando (Civil Engineering) was awarded over $213,000 by the Florida
Department of Transportation to establish a center for safe and accessible transportation for
aging population.

Dr. James Fletcher (Mechanical Engineering) was awarded over $340,000 by the Florida
Department of Transportation.

Dr. Sanjay Ahuja, Dr. Ching-Hua Chuan and Dr. Swapnoneel Roy (School of
Computing) were awarded over $200,000 from Vistakon to explore cutting edge
technologies in the areas of mobile computing and security.

Under the Direction of Dr. Don Resio, the Taylor Engineering Research Institute was
awarded over $390,000 from various private and public sources, including the Department
of Homeland Security, the Department of Army, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Dr. Patrick Kreidl (Electrical Engineering) received funding in the amount of
$399,583 for his project entitled “Foundational Control-Theoretic Methods for an
Open Cyber Runtime Environment” from the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency-DARPA (via subcontract through Apogee Research, LLC).
STUDENT COMPETITIONS AND SCHOLARSHIPS
The success of CCEC students in regional, state national competitions is one of the best
indicators that we are achieving our mission to provide our students with the highest quality
education and professional experiences, to achieve excellence in our teaching, scholarship and
service, and to continually enhance our programs through interactions with professional
constituents in the community. A few highlights of this year’s successes include:

The Orbital Ospreys student club was among a select group chosen by NASA from universities
across the country to fly their own research experiments aboard the agency’s G Force One aircraft
this past June as part of NASA’s Reduced Gravity Education Flight Program, which takes studentdesigned projects and places them in a reduced-gravity environment generated by a state-of-the-art
NASA aircraft. The team had the chance to run experiments from their Bioreactor for Zero
Gravity prototype. The faculty advisor for the club is Dr. Daniel Cox (Mechanical Engineering).
2
CCEC Annual Report 2013-2014

The Osprey Racing student club ranked 81st out of 125 teams from national and international
universities that competed in the 2014 round of the SAE’s annual race which takes place every
May in Brooklyn, Michigan, The team ranked 24th in the business presentation category. APR
energy is one of the main sponsors of the team. Dr. John Nuszkowski (Mechanical Engineering)
is the student club faculty advisor.

The UNF’s National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) student club was placed second in
the national NAHB Student Competition at the International Builders Show in Las Vegas. The
students were tasked with designing a three-story, 80,000 sf core and shell medical office building
in Orlando, FL. They were required to estimate the project and provide several additional pieces of
information for submission. The club’s faculty Advisor is Mr. David Hacker (Construction
Management).

The UNF Electrical Engineering students Alejandro Lepervanche, Elizabeth Voelkel, and Eric
Rutherford completed repairs on the Clay County Sheriff's Office (CCSO) Special Weapons And
Tactics (SWAT) robot. The project was completed under the guidance of Dr. Brian Kopp
(Electrical Engineering), and the robot is once again helping the CCSO SWAT team perform their
public safety and law enforcement duties.
JOURNAL PUBLICATIONS
Peer-reviewed journal publications remain one of the highest and most recognized metrics of
scholarly activity in the academy. Over the last academic year, the Faculty of the College have
produced numerous important scholarly works.







Ahuja, S. and Mani, S. (2013). “Empirical Performance Analysis of HPC
Benchmarks Across Variations of Cloud Computing,” International Journal of
Cloud Applications and Computing, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 13–26.
Ahuja, S. and Moore, B. (2013). “A Survey of Cloud Computing and Social Network,”
Journal of Network and Communication Technologies, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 11-16.
Ahuja, S., Furman, T., Roslie, K., Wheeler, J. (2013). “Empirical Performance
Assessment of Public Clouds Using System Level Benchmarks,” International
Journal of Cloud Applications and Computing, Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 81-91.
Bacopoulos, P., Lambert, J. D., Hertz, M., Montoya, L. and Smith, T. L. (2014). “Field and
Model Study to Define Baseline Conditions of Beached Oil Tar Balls along Florida’s First
Coast,” Journal of Marine Science and Engineering, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 160-170.
Brown, C. (2013). ”Using Solver to Estimate Aquifer Parameters for Confined
Aquifers” Environmental and Engineering Geoscience, Vol. 19, No. 3, pp. 253-263.
Chuan, C. and Charapko, A. (2014). "Predicting Key Recognition Difficulty in Music
Using Statistical Learning," Journal of Multimedia Engineering and Management, Vol. 5,
No. 2, pp. 56-72, 2014.
Chuan, C. and Chew, E. (2014). "The KUSC Classical Music Dataset for Audio Key
Finding," Journal of Multimedia and Its Applications, Vol. 6, No. 4, pp. 1-18.
3
CCEC Annual Report 2013-2014













Crowley, R., Robeck, C., and Thieke, R. J. (2014). “Computer Modeling of Bed Material
Shear Stresses in Piston-type Erosion Rate Testing Devices,” Journal of Hydraulic
Engineering, Vol. 140, No. 1, pp. 24-34.
Elfayoumy, S and Warden, S. (2014). “Adaptive Cache Replacement: A Novel Approach,”
International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol. 5, No. 7, pp.
149-154.
Elfayoumy, S. and Thoppil, J. (2014). “A Survey of Unstructured Text Summarization
Techniques,” International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol.
5, No. 4, pp. 105-111.
Gordon, J. and Roggio, R. (2014). “A Comparison of Software Testing Using the ObjectOriented Paradigm and Traditional Testing,” Journal of Information Systems Applied
Research, Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 39-84.
Hanke, M. H., Lambert, J. D., and Smith, K. J. (2014). “Utilization of a
Multicriteria Least Cost Path Model in an Aquatic Environment,” International
Journal of Geographical Information Science, Vol. 28, No. 8, pp. 1642-1657.
Li, Q., Crowley, R., Bloomquist, D., and Roque, R. (2014). “The Adhesive Strength Test
(AST): a Newly Developed Test for Measuring Sealant Adhesive Strength Between Joints
of Concrete Pavement,” Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering.
Malek, M. (2013). “A Green Era for the University of North Florida,” American
International Journal of Contemporary Research, Vol. 3 No. 12, pp. 4-7.
Malek, M. and Mantev, C. (2014). “The Economic, Social and Environmental Benefits
Derived From the Redevelopment of Brownfields,” Journal of Management Science and
Engineering of the Canadian Research & Development Center of Science and Cultures,
Vol. 8 No.1, pp. 1-5.
Reddivari, S., Rad, S., Bhowmik, T., Cain, N. and Niu, N. (2014). “Visual Requirements
Analytics: A Framework and Case Study,” Requirements Engineering Journal, Vol. 19, No.
3, pp. 257-279.
Roggio, R., Gordon, J. and Comer, J. (2014). “Taxonomy of Common Software Testing
Terminology: Framework for Key Software Engineering Testing Concepts,” Journal of
Information Systems Applied Research, Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 4-12.
Soares, R. (2013). “Giving More to the Poor, a Successful Brazilian Housing
Program Analysis,” International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology,
Vol. 2, No. 10, pp. 2346-2354.
Soares, R., Prodanoff, Z., and Nicola, D. (2013). “RFID in the Construction of
Single Family Dwellings,” International Journal of Engineering & Technology,
Vol. 2, No. 12, pp. 693-699.
Tamura, H., Bacopoulos, P., Wang, D., Hagen, S., Kubtko, E. (2014). “State
Estimation of Tidal Hydrodynamics Using Ensemble Kalman Filter” Advances in
Water Resources, Vol. 63, pp. 45-56.
4
CCEC Annual Report 2013-2014
PROMOTIONS AND AWARDS
In recognition of their work to date and the promise of continued excellence, the following
professors awarded tenure and/or promotion this academic year.





Dr. Alexandra Schonning (Mechanical Engineering) was promoted to Professor, School of
Engineering
Dr. Adel El Safty (Civil Engineering) was promoted to Professor, School of Engineering
Dr. Ching-Hua Chuan (School of Computing) was awarded the Outstanding Undergraduate
Teaching Award
Dr. Alan Harris (Electrical Engineering) was awarded the Outstanding Undergraduate
Teaching Award
Dr. Paul Eason (Mechanical Engineering) was awarded the Outstanding Undergraduate
Teaching Award and the Outstanding International Leadership Award
TRANSFORMATIONAL LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES
The college of computing, Engineering and Construction is focused on providing our students
the highest possible level of engagement, not only in their discipline, but in the region, state,
nation and beyond. For this reason, the Faculty of the College offer a great number of
Transformational Learning Opportunities to our students. For example:


Dr. Juan Aceros (Electrical Engineering) was awarded a TLO grant to lead engineering
undergraduate students to design, fabricate and test adaptive toys to aid physical and
cognitive therapists in the development of highly needed assistive technologies for children
in the Jacksonville area. Students engaged in interdisciplinary learning activities as they
connect and interact with DPT students through the process of device development.
Dr. Mag Malek (Construction Management) was awarded a TLO grant to engage students
from the new track in Maritime Construction in the construction project of a replica of the
Galveztown, an 18th century ship involved in the American Revolutionary War which
played an important role in the history of Florida. The spent 5 weeks in Malaga, Spain,
where the construction project took place. Students also attended concentrated courses at
the University of Madrid.
OTHER NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENTS

Dr. Swapnoneel Roy (School of Computing) and Raghu Talluri’s paper titled
“Cryptanalysis and Security Enhancement of Two Advanced Authentication Protocols”
won the best paper award at the Second International Conference on Advanced
Computing, Networking and Informatics (ICACNI-2014).
5
CCEC Annual Report 2013-2014


Dr. Bill Dally (Civil Engineering) was an invited keynote speaker at the 8th International
Multipurpose Reef & Surf Science Symposium held in Rincon, Puerto Rico.
Dr. Sandeep Reddivari (School of Computing) was selected to become a member of IEEE
Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMCS) Society’s Technical Committee on Soft
Computing.
6