Population simulations within extended game of life scenarios
Supervisor(s): Associate Professor Anuradha Mathrani
Supervisor’s webpage: Associate Professor Anuradha Mathrani – Associate Professor in Information Technology – Massey University
A two-dimensional agent-based modelling program demonstrating rules-based gender diverse population simulations within an extended game of life context has been developed (https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2924209 ). You will be assigned the task of refactoring the program code and writing up of relevant unit test cases. Further, you will extend the given design by increasing the size of existing neighborhoods, adding more attributes to agents and designing new rules as we consider other forms of population scenarios. Only students with C# skills need apply.
Artificial Intelligent (AI) based Approaches for Ransomware Detection and Classifications
Supervisor(s): Associate Professor Julian Jang-Jaccard
Supervisor’s webpage: Associate Professor Julian Jang-Jaccard – Associate Professor in Information Technology – Massey University
The Cybersecurity Lab, led by A/Prof Julian Jang-Jaccard, is offering 1-2 summer scholarships to work in providing Artificial Intelligence (AI) based approaches to detect and classify different ransomware attacks.
The summer scholars will be working with the existing team members (Masters, PhD students, research officers, and postdoc fellows) to learn, implement and write about an AI technique that can be used for ransomware detection.
We will be using one of the deep learning techniques including but not limited to: Convolutional Neural Network, Long-Short Term Memory Network, Autoencoder, Generative Adversarial Networks, Siamese Neural Network, Deep Reinforcement Learning.
It is not necessary for the student to have existing knowledge in cybersecurity or AI techniques. We are happy to train you to learn all about this exciting field of research.
Extracting Antarctic Species from Text
Supervisor (s): Dr Kristin Stock
Supervisor’s webpage: Dr Kristin Stock – Senior Lecturer in Information Technology – Massey University
The student will develop methods to extract links between place names and species mentions in text articles that describe the flora and fauna of Antarctica. This involves using text processing libraries to identify place names and species mentions. The latter will involve using new data to train existing models. Then we will develop a method to connect place names to the species whose location they describe. If there is time, we will map these species mentions using automatic georeferencing.
This project will extend and enhance a method previously developed, adapting it to work with data from an additional source, applying new methods and testing against baseline methods. The work will be conducted in collaboration with researchers working on the Antarctic Science Platform and the BioWhere project.
Strong programming skills as essential. Experience with python, machine learning, natural language processing and/or geographic information are an advantage.
The project will last for 5 weeks, with the possibility of extension. Timing is flexible over the summer break, but will exclude the period between Christmas and mid-Jan. Flexibility in timing (e.g. scheduling, part-time) is possible by negotiation.
Blockchain Based Authenticity
Supervisor(s): Dr Tong Liu
Supervisor’s webpage: Dr Tong Liu – Lecturer – Massey University
As one of the revolutionary technologies, Blockchain has proved its potential of being used in numerous fields. A smart contract is a self-executing computer program that utilizes blockchain to store the contract’s terms. This project will investigate using smart contract to store, retrieve and compare reference links and hashes of authentic files stored off-chainon cloud storages such as Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, Azure, AWS, InterPlanetary File System, or Swarm, etc. with the purpose of checking authenticity of these files in the future with the hashes stored on the blockchain.
Basic knowledge of hashing algorithms, data structures, Web development and distributed ledger technology are preferable.
Strong programming skills are preferable, e.g., Solidity, JavaScript, Python, Go, Rust, C++, etc.
Timeline: December 1, 2021 to January 31, 2022