Projects

The development of manufacturing simulation systems plays an integral role in the advancement of manufacturing processes and operations. Manufacturing simulation systems are capable of replicating production-based concepts. Creating these types of environments provides opportunities for researchers and manufacturers to gain a greater understanding of manufacturing processes without disrupting live production. Through the utilization of simulation systems, researchers and organizations are attempting to make manufacturing systems more secure by testing novel ideas before they are applied on working systems. This results in lowering costs and human-risk, while improving efficiency and production processes. Many manufacturing organizations use standardized communication protocols which allows machines to effectively communicate with each other. Currently, the MTConnect standard is one of the most utilized communication protocols in the industry. It allows machines and software applications to exchange data in an effective manner. This project focuses on the development of a MTConnect-based simulator that can replicate MTConnect data produced by actual machines at manufacturing facilities. The proposed simulation system - called MTConnect integrated Simulation System for Cyber Manufacturing (MiSSCyM) - can replay MTConnect data to analyze how machines are connecting, communicating, or moving various parts. Most importantly, security tests can be applied to the simulation framework aimed specifically for manufacturing systems to gain a better understanding and insight into how security challenges impact machines’ performance, communication, and other actions. In this project, we have used the developed simulation framework to demonstrate authentication and secure data transmissions between machines utilizing MTConnect.

• Smart manufacturing is often considered the next-generation manufacturing model that integrates advanced information and communication technologies (ICT) to further improve the overall process, efficiency, and profits in manufacturing systems. While the manufacturing industry is constantly evolving and increasing in sophistication, the need for a secure and reliable means of communication will continue to be a top priority for all manufacturers. As the modern manufacturing industry continues to bridge digital and physical environments using ICT, there has been a major concern with the security challenges that may arise through connections made between physical devices and standardized communication protocols such as MTConnect and OPC-UA. The implementation and functionality of these communication protocols play an integral role in manufacturing processes and operations. Using communication protocols such as MTConnect allow manufacturing organizations to collect, transmit, and utilize large amounts of data. It is important for system operators, organizations, and researchers to secure these data transmissions and other confidential information between machines. This project focuses on the communication protocol of MTConnect since it is a popular standard utilized in the manufacturing sector. It is important to note that the MTConnect Institute recommends manufacturers encrypt their data, but it is ultimately the organization’s responsibility to provide data encryption between machines and other applications. Manufacturers should protect themselves against individuals who are trying to breach or cause harm to manufacturing systems. The objective of this paper is to propose a secure implementation model of how manufacturers can provide both authentication and secure data transmissions between machines. The proposed model will use SSL and a basic authentication approach to secure the transmission of MTConnect data between a Server and Client.

• The Tri-State Women in Computing Conference (TRIWIC) is a regional ACM-W Celebration of Women in Computing. TRIWIC brings together female technical women from Kentucky, great Cincinnati and beyond! This is an opportunity for women in these geographical areas to meet women in their fields and receive mentoring and leadership from senior women. In order to receive information about the conference users would need to easily access the information. Dr. Jan Pearce and I helped develop the website which is designed to bring 170 women from 10 colleges together to encourage women in technology. Through the use of FileZilla, Bootstrap, and JavaScript we were able to implement the design of the front-end layout. We built multiple tabs to make conference information more accessible to participants and updated all the material that would need to be available for the 2020 TRIWiC Conference.

• The Pine Mountain Settlement School has an extensive collection of interesting and culturally important material that is slowly being digitized, but the images and metadata were incorporated into a WordPress blog about the school. This platform is not usable for research because archived items are often stored separately from its metadata in the backend, and they are associated in a blog post, often interspersed with interpretative information. To make connections or search items, the user often travels from post to post. Even the platform's search function often does not work as expected. We developed a web crawler and web scraper using a Python library called BeautifulSoup that extracts from the entire blog site all the filenames of visual and document photographs, any relevant metadata that can be associated with these images, pairs the information together, and finally outputs the combined data into a comma separated value spreadsheet. All original scanned items are currently being uploaded into an archiving platform called CONTENTdm along with the corresponding extracted metadata, making searching and research more effective. The ultimate goal is to provide an effective tool for the community members and other researchers of the Pine Mountain Settlement School to access the digitized archival material. 

• By using mapping and network visualization, it is possible to cross disciplinary boundaries and bring together Art History with Computer Science. This independent study focused on starting the creation of a software application that could help one visualize the traveling patterns of various artists throughout the world during different time periods. The implementation of this software application would allow users to be able to query data of artists and their travels based upon different time periods. This would allow users to see how the artists migrated to cities and art academies throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The study primarily focused on identifying and organizing the data by choosing the appropriate graph database needed for the application. Students were able to scope down an appropriate format, create a template design for how to structure data moving forward, and find the best JavaScript package available to create the user interface (UI). As a result, students were able to select the software necessary to pull together the database and UI as well as create a paper prototype for the end goal of the database system.

• This network design was developed for a fictional company call Dickens Designs. The company has one corporate office in Huntsville, Alabama, five branch offices at various locations throughout the USA, and 2,500 employees. A centralized network design will securely connect each of the branch offices to the corporate office.  The design implementations of the network include secure connections with VPN's, firewalls, and authentication services. It is structured in a way to keep confidential workflows separated.  The network structure must also include provisions to keep confidential workflows securely separated. Since subnetting is one of the most critical parts of logical network design, I decided to create a subnet calculator. Based upon a given network address and CIDR number, the program will output the subnet mask, number of subnets, number of hosts per subnet, as well as the first host, last host, and broadcast address.