On-going Research

Students in my lab are researching and implementing machine learning and collective intelligence algorithms, as well as concepts from human computation and crowdsourcing, that harness the cognitive abilities of large numbers of human users to solve large and complex problems.

I am / have been PI or co-PI on multiple grants related to computer science and STEM education, including those funded through a variety of National Science Foundation (NSF) programs, that provide infrastructure to enable student success in STEM fields.

Endowed Chairship: Barbara Meyers Pelson Chair in Faculty-Student Engagement, funded through the Barbara Meyers Pelson Chair in Faculty-Student Engagement Endowment Fund. Academic Years 2018 – 2021.

For more information about the endowment and chair position, see https://meyerspelsonchair.pages.tcnj.edu/dr-monisha-pulimood/. For more information about the generous donor, see https://meyerspelsonchair.pages.tcnj.edu/barbara-meyers-pelson/.

Externally Funded: Collaborating Across Boundaries to Engage Undergraduates in STEM Learning (CAB). National Science Foundation (NSF). DUE Division of Undergraduate Education. NSF Award #1914869. Academic Years 2019 – 2023.

Principal Investigator (PI): S. Monisha Pulimood (Computer Science)
Co-PIs: Kim Pearson (Journalism) and Diane Bates (Sociology)

This project aims to serve the national interest by studying how interdisciplinary collaborations in the classroom can improve STEM learning for all undergraduates. The increasingly interdisciplinary and complex issues facing our society requires diverse, STEM-literate experts from a range of fields who can work and solve problems in collaboration. Addressing this national need requires innovative, research-based teaching practices that retain students and improve STEM learning. This project will expand, improve, and study an innovative curricular model in which two undergraduate courses from different disciplines are taught in coordination. The instructors, goals, and outcomes of each course will be distinct, but the courses will be connected by a science-focused project that is developed through an active collaboration with a community partner. By the end of the project, 750 students will have experienced this model, allowing for a comprehensive evaluation of its effectiveness. Furthermore, over a dozen faculty members in different disciplines will be trained in using effective strategies for teaching STEM concepts. This project will contribute to educational strategies that can produce the STEM-literate workforce needed to tackle the pressing interdisciplinary problems of our time.

Award information on the NSF website: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1914869&HistoricalAwards=false.
More on NSF: http://nsf.gov/
More on the IUSE program: https://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=505082

Externally Funded: FIRSTS (Foundation for Increasing and Retaining STEM Students) Program: A bridge program to study the sociological development of science identities. National Science Foundation (NSF). DUE Division of Undergraduate Education. NSF Award #1525109. Academic Years 2016 – 2018.

Principal Investigator (PI): Sudhir Nayak, Biology
Co-PIs: Benny Chan (Chemistry), Lynn Gazley (Sociology & Anthropology), S. Monisha Pulimood (Computer Science), Su Van der Sandt (Mathematics & Statistics)

The overall goals of this program are to help students from underserved populations transition to the rigors of the STEM curriculum and gather both qualitative and quantitative data on the reasons financially needy students elect to leave STEM disciplines. Rather than simply filling content gaps, FIRSTS will use the remediation of study skills in a interdisciplinary summer course, extensive mentoring, and the development of a science identity to improve success in STEM disciplines. In addition to student-focused strategies, the program also will incorporate faculty development in the improvement of teaching methods and mentoring through participation, training, interdisciplinary interactions, and discussions.

Award information on the NSF website: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1525109&HistoricalAwards=false
More on NSF: http://nsf.gov/
More on the IUSE program: https://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=505082

Externally Funded:  Scholarships for Success in Computational Science (SSICS). National Science Foundation (NSF). DUE Division of Undergraduate Education. NSF Award #1356235. Academic Years 2014 – 2018.

Principal Investigator (PI): Thomas Hagedorn, Mathematics & Statistics
Co-PI: S. Monisha Pulimood, Computer Science
Evaluator: Diane Bates, Sociology

This grant forms the basis of a sustainable initiative to recruit, retain and graduate more students in computer science and mathematics at TCNJ. The project will fund approximately 27 scholarships per year for computer science and mathematics students who will be organized into learning communities and engage in research focused on a common theme of computational science. The project will also provide significant advising, mentoring, and tutoring services that supplement those already provided by the college.

Award information on the NSF website: http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1356235
More on NSF: http://nsf.gov/
More on the S-STEM program: http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5257

Externally Funded:  TUES: Collaborating Across Boundaries to Engage Undergraduates in Computational Thinking (CABECT). National Science Foundation (NSF). DUE Division of Undergraduate Education. NSF Award #1141170. Academic Years 2012 – 2016.

Principal Investigator (PI): S. Monisha Pulimood, Computer Science
Co-PI: Kim Pearson, Journalism
Evaluator: Diane Bates, Sociology

To develop a model for students and faculty to collaborate across diverse disciplines and with a community organization to develop technology-based solutions to address complex real-world problems. As a proof-of-concept, this project is focusing on collaboration between computer science and journalism faculty and students, and the Habitat for Humanity, Trenton Area (HH) to address the problem of pollution in targeted neighborhoods of Trenton, NJ. SOAP (Students Organizing Against Pollution) is an online system that is intended to manage data on brownfields in the area. One goal is to enable HH make informed decisions before acquiring properties that could be contaminated and require expensive cleanup prior to construction. Another goal is to empower citizens to learn, share, and contribute pollution data, and become active participants in environmental advocacy and public policy deliberations.

Award information on the NSF website: http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=1141170
More on NSF: http://nsf.gov/
More on the TUES program: http://nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5741

Mentored Research: CABECTPortal – Web-based System to share educational resources for interdicsiplinary collaborations

Research Group:
Spring 2017 (funded through REU Supplement for NSF grant #1141170)- Evan Melquist, Sean Anukwuem
Spring 2017 – Michael Altschuler, Vangelo Tasho, Derek Kneisel
Fall 2016 (funded through REU Supplement for NSF grant #1141170)- Evan Melquist, Sean Anukwuem
Fall 2016 – Garrett Beatty, Michael Altschuler, Vangelo Tasho, Derek Kneisel
Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Summer 2015 – Faisal Hoda and Matthew Steuerer funded through REU Supplement for NSF grant #1141170.
Fall 2014 – Derek Duchesne
Fall 2013 and Spring 2014 – Conor Kelton, Joseph Canero
Summer 2013 – Conor Kelton, Joseph Canero (funded through the MUSE program)

Mentored Research: SOAP – Web-based System to manage data on brownfields, and legislation related to pollution and the environment

Research Group:
Fall 2016 (funded through REU Supplement for NSF grant #1141170)- Evan Melquist, Sean Anukwuem
Fall 2016 – Garrett Beatty, Michael Altschuler, Vangelo Tasho, Derek Kneisel
Spring 2015 – Thomas Borgia
Fall 2014 – Tulio Bragga
Spring 2013 – Dan Cahill
Fall 2012 – Francisco Estevez, Shahzore Qureshi
Summer 2012 – Francisco Estevez, Shahzore Qureshi (funded through the MUSE program)
Spring 2012 – Kevin Coughlin, Francisco Estevez, Shahzore Qureshi, Adam Sferlazzo, Kevin Smokowski

In Fall 2011, the Database Systems class designed and developed the back-end databases and user interfaces for four modules of a system to manage data related to brownfields and pollutants in Mercer County, New Jersey. The students named the system SOAP (Students Organizing Against Pollution).  In 2012, we integrated the separate modules and added modules to the web application that is hosted on the Amazon EC2 cloud. This includes support for user participation through social networks like Facebook, Google+, Tumblr, etc.
In 2013 we are further developing the existing modules and adding functionality through collaborations between my software engineering class and Professor Kim Pearson’s journalism topics class.

Mentored Research: Grid Computing.

Some students who have worked on this project at various times: Shane Mullin, Stephen Sigwart, Dan Tilden, Andrew Chiusano, John Brisbin.

A grid computing environment can harness underutilized campus resources to perform large computations by distributing them across the idle computers, each executing smaller, more manageable, subtasks. In addition to increasing the total computing power available for a problem, such a grid computing infrastructure can foster the creation of innovative new algorithms for solving computational problems in a variety of disciplines. TCNJ has several labs equipped with state-of-the-art computers for use by students and faculty. There are periods, for example during the night, weekends or during the summer months, when a significant number of these machines are underutilized.  This research project focuses on building a more robust and secure grid computing model (TGRID) for tackling large computational problems in a variety of domains by leveraging existing computing resources, such as in a lab where the computers are used by a variety of users for a variety of purposes.

Selected Past Research Projects

Externally Funded: Meeting the Challenges of Next-Generation Journalism with CAFÉ  (Collaboration and Facilitation Environment). Research Award for Collaborative Research Experiences for Undergraduates (CREU) from Computing Research Association Committee on the Status of Women in Computer Science and Engineering (CRA-W). Academic Year 2010 – 2011.  www.tcnj.edu/~mobcompl/creu1011.

Student Researchers: Siobhan Sabino, Sarah Smith and Rachel Pomeroy

We continued development of CAFÉ (Collaboration and Facilitation Environment), a content management system designed to provide a safe, web-based environment for writing and sharing online story packages that include text-based articles, multimedia artifacts, and procedural animations built in Scratch. CAFE originated to support IJIMS (see below).

Mentored Research: Analysis of Privacy and Security in HTML5 Web Storage

Student Researcher: Will West, Spring 2011.

The web has evolved from a simple media consumption device to an extremely complex programming platform over the past couple of decades. With the exponential growth of Internet use, web applications are becoming increasingly popular: they are easy to distribute, simple to update, and widely accessible. However, a uniform programming method for developing web applications does not currently exist. Developers must be experts in and juggle a combination of different languages in order to create fully functional web applications. W3C’s introduction of HTML5 attempts to alleviate this problem. The Web Storage specification offers a method for storing client-side data as an alternative to the use of cookies in web applications. In this project, the Web Storage specification was analyzed with regard to privacy, security, and performance of current and future web technologies, with emphasis on the advantages and disadvantages of the localStorage and sessionStorage attributes and their impact on privacy and security.

Externally Funded: Broadening Participation in Computing via Community Journalism for Middle Schoolers. National Science Foundation (NSF) Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC) program. NSF Grant Number CNS 0739173. Academic Years 2007 – 2010. www.tcnj.edu/~ijims.

Lead Principal Investigator (PI): Ursula Wolz
Co-PIs: Kim Pearson and S. Monisha Pulimood
Gender/Equity Specialist and Program Manager: Mary Switzer
External Evaluator: Meredith Stone

The grant supported our demonstration project, IJIMS (Interactive Journalism Institute for Middle Schoolers), which is an innovative model for broadening participation in computing beyond traditional domains of inquiry and expertise. We use Interactive Journalism to infuse computational thinking into the after school experience at a middle school with a diverse population. An intense summer institute followed by an after school program immerses teachers and students in the “newsroom of the future” where they research and write news stories, using procedural animations in Scratch to support their storyline. Outcomes indicate that students and teachers who did not necessarily view themselves as “math types” develop positive attitudes about computational thinking and programming. More information about this project is available at www.tcnj.edu/~ijims.

Externally Funded: Designing the Next-Generation Magazine: Content, Usability and Information Security. Research Award for Collaborative Research Experiences for Undergraduates (CREU) from Computing Research Association Committee on the Status of Women in Computer Science and Engineering (CRA-W). Academic Year 2009 – 2010. www.tcnj.edu/~mobcompl/creu0910/.

Faculty Mentors: S. Monisha Pulimood, Kim Pearson and Ursula Wolz
Student Researchers: Siobhan Sabino and Kelli Plasket

Mentored Research: GumShoe – A Database Driven Web Application for Computer Aided Reporting

Student Researcher: Nathan Tick, Spring 2008.

Computing technologies such as databases, geographic information systems, statistical analysis programs and the Internet have radically changed the way journalists investigate and deliver news to the public. Journalists often use computer based tools to help them better analyze and generate investigative reports, a process known as Computer Aided Reporting (CAR). In Fall 2007 students in the Database Systems class, in collaboration with a journalism professor (and her CAR independent study students) and a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, designed and developed the back-end database for a CAR system to efficiently maintain, query, and track statistical gun crime data. In Spring 2008, the web application, named Gumshoe, was developed into an innovative investigative tool for a study on gun crime in Philadelphia, and a starting point for what ultimately became a hard-hitting series of investigative stories, with far-reaching consequences.

Externally Funded: Designing the Next-Generation Magazine: Content, Usability and Information Security. Research Award for Collaborative Research Experiences for Undergraduates (CREU) from Computing Research Association Committee on the Status of Women in Computer Science and Engineering (CRA-W). Academic Year 2007 – 2008. www.tcnj.edu/~mobcompl/creu07/.

Student Researchers: Karen DelDuca and Alexandra Raymond

Externally Funded: Design, Implementation, and Optimization of Features in a Mobile Computational Language for Internet Programming. Research Award for Collaborative Research Experiences for Undergraduates (CREU) from Computing Research Association Committee on the Status of Women in Computer Science and Engineering (CRA-W). Academic Year 2005 – 2006. www.tcnj.edu/~mobcompl/creu05/.

Student Researchers: Amanda Micai, Elizabeth Carter and Gregory Adkins.