Promotion Dossier

Veton Z. Këpuska

Associate Professor

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Florida Institute of Technology

Contact Information

Olin Engineering Room 353

Phone: 321-674-7183

E-mail: vkepuska@fit.edu

Table of Contents

I. Brief History of the Candidate

II. Teaching and Related Activities

III. Research and Scholarly Activities

IV. Service Activities

V. Appendixes

I. Brief History of the CandidateI joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Florida Institute of Technology in January 2003 as an Associate Professor. My MS and Ph.D. degrees are from Clemson University (1986, 1990); prior to that I received an MS from the University of Zagreb (1983-1984). Following my Ph.D. I worked as a Post-Doctoral Researcher in the “Institute of Geodesy and Photogrammetry” of ETH Zürich. Earlier I served as a Lecturer at University of Prishitina. During the years 1993-2003 I worked as Research Scientist for number of private organizations in the Boston area. During that time, due to the company’s policies, I was not allowed to publish work related articles.

II. Teaching and Related ActivitiesMy teaching methodology and practice was recognized in 2009 by honoring me with the Kerry Bruce Clark Teacher Award. This award is attributed to the achievements presented below.

Since I joint FIT in 2003, I have proposed the set of four courses covering the area of Speech, Speech Processing, Speech Recognition, Natural Language Understanding, and Android Embedded Application Development. I developed both graduate (ECE 5525, 5526, 5527 and 5590) and undergraduate (ECE 3551, ECE 3552 as well as ECE 3553) courses, including teaching materials and lab exercises.

In my teaching I focus on exit knowledge of the students. To this end, I have developed an interactive web-tool that I extensively use to guide me and my students through final-exam stage of the class. With it I am able to setup the date, time and location of the exam that will be conducted by me. Example of exam setup-page is provided in the link in Appendix A.1. Since I am teaching relatively large number of courses (3 courses per semester), that covers the areas that range from Speech Processing, Speech Recognition, Natural Language Processing, Speaker Identification, Digital Signal Processing, Adaptive Filtering, Pattern Recognition, Neural Networks as well as undergraduate level courses that includes various Programming Languages (C/C++, Fortran, Pascal, perl, awk, Prolog, Lisp), as well as various Computer Architectures, (e.g., Microcomputer Systems 1 and 2) Web Design Tools (e.g., Multifarious Systems 1 and 2, that is, HTML, Perl, PHP, SQL, MySQL, etc.), MATLAB and MATLAB programming tool (, etc.

My courses are oriented around I emphasize…. I use materials that…. My assignments aim to… As a result my students have….

In all my courses I require from students to demonstrate mastery of the subject area by developing a practical application combining theory with an appropriate application. The demonstration requires students to verbally defend their work through: (1) Presentation, (2) Detailed Documentation (Microsoft Word, README file, source code, etc.) depicting their work, and (3) Implementation and a demonstration of the project.

Each project is assessed based on detailed instructions for the project requirements that is provided as a reference file from my publically accessible U drive. This document resides in each corresponding class link under “Final Project Requirements document” as exemplified by the following link:

http://my.fit.edu/~vkepuska/ece3551/Final%20Project%20Requirements.doc.

The examination and quality of assessment of the project is conducted by providing each student with at least 30min time slot to present his/her work. Large classes require 2-3 days of presentation times starting from 8:00 am-12:00 pm, and 1:00pm-6:00pm per day to complete the examination. Note that registering for a time slot is done with the www based application (see for example http://my.fit.edu/~vkepuska/web/courses.php#ece3551-projects

Teaching LoadSince I joined FIT I have taught a total of 19 different courses at the undergraduate and graduate level. Most, if not all, of my courses are required by ECE curriculum.

● Undergraduate:1. Hardware Software Design – ECE 25512. Hardware Software Integration – ECE 25523. Signal and Systems – ECE 32224. Digital State Machines – ECE 35415. Microcomputer Systems 1 – ECE 35516. Microcomputer Systems 2 – ECE 35527. Multifarious Systems 1 – ECE 35538. Multifarious Systems 2 – ECE 45539. Computer Architecture – ECE 455110. Computer Communications - ECE 456111. Electric and Electronic Circuits – ECE 4991

● Graduate:12. Speech Processing – ECE 552513. Speech Recognition – ECE 552614. Search and Decoding in Speech Recognition – ECE 552715. Acoustics of American English Speech – ECE 552816. Embedded Android Programming – ECE 557017. Computer Networks 2 – ECE 553518. Digital System Design 1 – ECE 557119. Digital System Design 2 – ECE 55721

Student Enrollment

My student enrollment figures have steadily grown as indicated in the table below:

Student Enrolled since 2006:

Year 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

Spring 23 29 48 51 26 27 25 37 78 65 70Summer 31 31 29 35 28 26 74 43 34Fall 54 61 61 61 51 65 71 81 114 109 82

1 The courses using the blue color are required courses in ECE department.

Total 77 90 140 143 106 127 124 144 266 217 186

Teaching Material

All my teaching material is publicly available through my U drive (http://my.fit.edu/~vkepuska/). In addition to my regular teaching load I have instructed a number of different Special Topics courses (not listed). The list of course is provided above in Teaching Load section.

In addition to those courses that I have introduced at the onset after joining FIT, I started to offer additional graduate level course, ECE 5570 Embedded Android Programming. This course has grown in demand; the last summer 2016 I have offered the course, it attracted 15 graduate students. Presently I am offering the course to 12 students.

Student Advising

I have been advisor to many Ph.D.’s, MS’s as well as undergraduate students; a few notable graduate students were: Tudor Klein, Xerxes Beharry -Microsoft, Ronald Ramadhan – Apple, Sean Powers, Jacob Zurasky NXT-ID Inc., Brandon Schmitt, Chih-Ti Shih, Raymond Sastraputera, etc.

Typically I have had over 30 student advisees per semester. In addition to advising roles for both undergraduate and graduate students, I am the faculty advisor to the IEEE-HKN engineering honor society Zeta Epsilon Chapter here at Florida Tech.

Student Advising (2016):Undergraduate 15MS Degree Students 11PhD Degree Students 11

Total 37

List of advisees is given below:

Ph.D. Students – Primary Dissertation Advisor● Abdulaziz, Azhar S., PhD CPE● Al-Khuwaiter, Tahsin A., PhD CPE● Alfathe, Mahmood F., PhD CPE● Alshamsi, Humaid S., PhD CPE● Bohouta, Gamal M., PhD CPE● Elharati, Hussien A., PhD EE● Mohamed Eljhani, PhD CPE, “Front-end of Wake-Up-Word Speech Recognition System Design on

FPGA”, Spring 2015● Al Ghamdy Amin O., 2010● Tamas Kasza, PhD CPE, “Communications Protocol for DF-based Wireless Indoor Localization

Networks,” Spring 2006

M.S. Students-Major Thesis Advisor● Eljagmani Hamda, MS CPE● Hasanin Ahmad, MS CPE● Maryam Najafi, MS CPE● Anita Devi, MS CPE “Google Speech Recognition using Embedded System,” Spring 2016● Marwa Alzayadi, “Utilizing Sphunx-4 on Speech Recogntion,” Spring 2016● Ashwini Srivastava, “Comparison of Microphone Array Beamforming Algorithms using Designed

Hardware and Microsoft KINEETCT,” Fall 2015● Tianyi Bi, MS CPE “Using CMY Sphinx in Standard Chinese Automatic Speech Recognition System

Design,”, Fall 2015● Zhenmin Ye, MS EE “Design a Step-Up- Tranformer for P300 Wedlgin Power Supply,”, Summer

2015● Safa M. Al-Taie, MS ECE “Improving the Accuracy of FIngerpriting Sysem Using Mutibiometric

Approach,” Spring 2015● Jacob Coughlin, MS EE “Optimizing Wakeup-Up-Word Application for Embedded Deployment,”

Spring 2015● Boopathy Prakasam, MS EE “Microphone Array for Speech Processing and Recognition,” Spring

2015● Wenyang Zhang, MS CPE “Comparing the Effect of Smoothing and N-gram Order: Finding the Best

Way to Combine the Smoothing and Order of N-gram,” Spring 2015● Ibrahim Al-Badri, MS CPE “Speech Corpus Generation from YouTube,” Fall 2014● Wilson Burgos, MS CPE “Gammatone and MFCC Features in Speaker Recognition,” Fall 2014● Jacob Zurasky, MS CPE “Digital Signal Processing Applications of the TMS320C6747”, Fall 2012● Mohammed Almeer, MS CPE● Patarapong Rojanshien, MS CPE “Speech Corpus Generation from DVD’s of Movies and TV series”,

Fall 2010● Xerxes Beharry, MS CPE “Phoning home: Bridging the Gap Between Conservation and

Convenience,” Fall 2010● Arthur Kunkle, MS CPE “Sequence Scoring Experiments Using the TIMIT Corpus and the HTK

Recognition Framework,”, Spring 2010● Raymond Sastraputera, MS CPE, “Prosodic Features for Wakeu-Up-Word Speech Recognition”,

2009● Chih-Ti Shih, MS CPE “Use of Pitch and Enegy of the Speech Signal for Discrimination of

‘Alerting’ from ‘Referential’ context”, 2009● Za Hniang Za, MS CPE “A Study of Approaches for Microphone Array Signal Processing”, 2008● Tien-Hsiang Lo, MS CPE “Analysis of Weighted-Sum of Line Spectrum Pair Method for Spectral

Estimation,”, Spring 2005● Elias Victor, MS CPE “1553 Avionics Bus Hardware Integration Into Expendable Launch Vehicle

(ELV) Simulation Model,” Spring 2005

Ph.D. Students – Advisory Committee Member● Al Rozz Younis Anas Younis, 2017● Shakre Elmane, Dynamics in Recommendations of Updates For Free Open-Source Software, 2016

● Jim Bryan, A Robust Speaker Identification Algorithm Based On Atomic Decomposition and Sparse Redundant Dictionary Learning, 2016

● Scott Meredith, PhD ECE, “Lightning Generated Electric and Magnetic Fields: a Methodology into the Development of Three Models and Their Utilization in Determining the Currents Induced within a Three-wired Tether”, 2011

● Mohamed ???, ECE PhD, 2010● Igor Lugach, PhD MEA, “Effect of Accurate and Simplified Interactions Modeling in a Null-Flux

Electromagnetic Levitation System on Performance of Multi-DOF Sliding Model Controller” 2006● Michel Ouendeno, PhD CPE, “Image Fusin for Improved Perception”, 2007

MS. Students – Advisory Committee Member● Subhadra Subramanian, , EE, 2016.● Taher Parekh, Real Time Implementation of an Inertial Measurement Unit based on Fiber- Bragg

Sensor arrays using Legendre polynomials, Mechanical Engineering, 2016● Hai Hoang Truong Tran, A Comparative Study of Relational Database Server Performance on

Windows vs. Linux, Computer Science and Cyber Security, 2015● Chih-Ti Shih, MS ENM, 2009● Patric Durland, MS SYS, “Project Arcade”, 2009● Osaam Saraireh, MS ES, 2007● Rachan Varigiya, MS CS, “Keyword Spotting Using Normalization of Posterior Probability

Confidence Measures”, 2004

AdvisingI typically advise 25-35 undergraduate students each year, and directly work with at least 2 junior and senior design teams most of whom distinguished by their accomplishments:

● Best Junior Design 2007 - Visual Audio - (Brandon Schmitt).● Greatest Commercial Potential - "Smart Room" Senior Design 2008 (Matt Hopkins, David

Herndon, Patrick Marinelli).I also serve as advisor to Chi Phi student society here at Florida Tech. The Chi Phi

Fraternity was awarded the Dr. Thomas Gehring Award for Chapter Excellence in 2007 .

SASE Lab Tool

Through an NSF funded research project, I and my former student (Jacob Zurasky) have developed SASE_Lab - Speech Analysis and Special Effects Laboratory (details included in Appendix A1). This tool does XX and YY. It allows instructors to…. It also has applications for xxxx

III. Research and Related ActivitiesWake-Up-Word Speech Recognition

I consider my main scientific contribution to be the solution that I have invented in the area of my specialty: Speech Processing and Recognition, so called Wake-Up-Word Speech Recognition (see the following blog: http://lovemyecho.com/2015/11/11/echo-custom-wake-words-why-isnt-this-a-thing-yet/).

I have solved a difficult problem for which there are no other appropriate solutions. The problem can be summarized as discrimination between a target word/phrase having a wake-up or alerting context (e.g., “Alexa, I need to talk to you.”) from that same word/phrase in a referential context (e.g., “Today I talked to Alexa on the phone.”). I have developed a revolutionary speech recognition technology (called Wake-Up-Word or WUW for short) that solves this problem. This solution can change how we can interact with computers. This solution can be applied to general speech recognition problem thus improving their accuracy over 1,500%-30,000% providing solutions that approach human performance.

The solution is protected by my two US patents: ("Scoring and re-scoring dynamic time warping of speech" US # 7,085,717, and "Dynamic time warping using frequency distributed distance measures", US # 6,983,246). Those patents are referenced in by following patents:

7,437,291

Using partial information to improve dialog in automatic speech recognition systems

7,143,034

Dynamic time warping device for detecting a reference pattern having a smallest matching cost value with respect to a test pattern, and speech recognition apparatus using the same

7,085,717

Scoring and re-scoring dynamic time warping of speech

5,455,889

Labeling speech using context-dependent acoustic prototypes

Funding

I strongly advocate and practice teaching approach that bridges the gap between theory and

practice. This approach has allowed me to establish a number of strategic partnerships with industry: ThinkEngine Networks (http://www.thinkengine.com), iCVn (http://www.iCVn.com), QTSI (http://www.qtsi.com), PCB (http://www.pcb.com), Knigh's Armament Company (http://www.knightarmco.com), BMW, Microsoft, etc.

With industry partnerships I have been able to support my research. The current total amount of direct support from industry exceeds ~$250,000.

For example, ThinkEngine Networks (http://www.thinkengine.com) supported my research in speech recognition for first 2.5 years at FIT by providing supplemental payment of $35,000 per month. For more information please consult my CV and/or contact a former senior Vice Presidents of Research: Geoffrey Parkhurst: gparkhurst@symphonixllc.com and Paul Gagne: paul@rpm-communications.com (detailed contact information also listed under references from industry section).

In addition, through my industry collaborators, I have brought in equipment worth well over $100,000. In the collaboration with iCVn of Baltimore my team has designed a new hardware that will augment the “Shinwoo” money counting device with a scanner capable of reading serial numbers from any currency (e.g., US Dollars, UK Pounds, SW Franks, European Union Euros, etc.), configured by software that we have developed. We have also re-designed and re-implemented their core application software that now connects to the Shinwoo device and communicates with it. For further information please contact Theodore Paraskevakos, President and CEO at tgp@icvn.com (detailed contact information also listed under references from industry section).

During the first half of 2006 I have completed a very import pilot study for QTSI of Cocoa Beach utilizing my Wake-Up-Word Speech Recognition Technology to Seismic Signals. The achieved results from this study, according to professionals in that field, are the best compared to up-to-date published reports of that time.

PCB, an internationally recognized corporation, has donated over $5,000.00 worth of specialized industrial quality equipment consisting of high precision microphones and data acquisition equipment for microphone array research. In addition PCB is partnering with myself for NSF’s MRI research proposal to establish a largest microphone array laboratory in the south east. Contact information: Ray Rautenstrauch rraut@pcb.com.

Additional notable collaborations are listed below:

● BMW – Actively working with Dr. Joachim G. Taiber, BMW Group, Head of IT Research Office, Information Technology Research Center (ITRC), Greenville South Carolina.

● Tudor Klein and Microsoft - Working with Microsoft through my former Graduate Student, Tudor Klein, to establish an appropriate relationship to contribute development of their new-generation of speech recognition software. Contact information

tuklein@exchange.microsoft.com.● NIST, Speech Group - I have enrolled an FIT team (Arthur Kunkle and Dileep Koneru)

in NIST sponsored evaluation effort, Rich Transcription Evaluation Project, with a goal to further advance speech recognition area. At a moment I have two graduate students actively involved in this project that if successful will bring significant attention to FIT. The goal of our participation is not only to use existing technologies but also to incorporate my inventions into existing systems (e.g., HTK and Sphinx) demonstrating their superiority over conventional methods.

● PowerPoint Commander is voice activated Power Point presentation software application that developed utilizing my WUW speech recognition system. This application was a cross platform (Windows as well as Apple OS) as a result of research and developed effort that I have done over 2005-2013 years. This application incorporates my Wake-Up-Word (WUW) Speech Recognizer. It enables users to control their power-point presentation program using voice only. The uniqueness of the application is the ability of the technology to distinguish a presentation speech from the speakers command. For example:❖ Presentation of Speech: "Processing of speech signal requires application of short

time analysis. The overall process is depicted in the block diagram presented in the next slide."

❖ Command: "Computer! Go to Next Slide."

Although speech recognition technology has been around for over 25 years, it has to be emphasized that this kind of accuracy performance required by this application has not been developed by any commercial or research institutions yet, and thus my WUW technology has a potential to revolutionize the way we communicate with computers.

I have submitted a $10-Million multi-institutional, collaborative Center of Excellence proposal, as co-PI to the Florida Board of Governors. The proposal ended up being among the top 10 proposals in scientific merit as judged by the prestigious Oak Ridge Associated Universities reviewers (ORAU: Top 10 in Scientific Review Ranking). My contribution as judged by my pears was critical to the scientific merit ranking of the proposal (see Dr. Rodriguez recommendation).

Two (2) NSF projects were awarded (totaling $260,000) and 1 is pending ($1,198,728). I have also submitted 3 proposals: to Rockwell Collins, State of Florida and Lindberg Ann Foundation as PI/Co-PI totaling $2,156,012. In addition I have submitted a number of SBIR proposals, one of which was invited proposal by National Institute of Justice (NIJ) of the US Government. Succinctly put, I have generated or I have been involved in generation of on average greater than 3.3 proposals per year.

A plethora of additional outcomes are the fruit of two major projects (totaling $260,000): (1) EMD-MLR project sponsored by NSF and supported through grant DUE-CCLI-0341601 of $99,996 under the Course, Curriculum and Laboratories Improvement (CCLI) program and the Educational Materials Development (EMD) track, and (2) AMALTHEA project (AMALTHEA

REU Site) also sponsored by NSF under the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program and grant IIS-REU-0647018 for $160,701 over a period of 3 years (2007-2010). I am a Co-PI that played a crucial role in its successful execution as elaborated in detail in Supporting Documentation for Scholarly and Research Related Activities section.

In 2009 I have organized and hosted at FIT “NIST Rich Transcription Evaluation Workshop”. For details of this workshop follow this link: http://itl.nist.gov/iad/mig/tests/rt/2009/index.html

My students have won the Third Place in IEEE Student Hardware Competition, Best Junior Design for Visual Audio, Best Paper Nomination, and a First Place in the First Competition for Assistive Device (2005).

A few more notable research achievements in addition to previously noted are provided below. In 2012 I was awarded I-Corps NSF grant through which I have established Zëri Corporation (www.zeriinc.com) which in turn provided an excellent opportunity for my graduate students to engage in scientific and entrepreneurship skills.

The support for research that I have conducted since I have joined FIT comes from my industry partners (e.g., ICVN, QTSI etc.) and from government sponsored programs (e.g., NSF, DOE, etc.). My research activity draws on my past extensive experience in conducting cutting-edge Research and Development work.

Patents

In year 2016-2017 we are witnessing a proliferation of speech oriented services and devices that deploy the technology that I am one of the inventors: please refer to the list of patents bellow.

• Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) Using Frequency Distributed Distance Measures, US6983246 B2, January 3, 2006.

• Frequency Distribution of Minimum Vector Distance for Dynamic Time Warping, WO 2003100768 A1, April 1, 2006.

• System and Methods for Facilitating Collaboration of a Group, US 20110134204 A1 June 2009

• Exploiting Differences in Correlations for Modeled and Un-Modeled Sequences by Transforming Trained Model Topology in Sequence Recognition, Provisional Patent Application, August 2009

Summary of my Research Achievements

Some of the highlights of my achievements are provided in the table below presented in reversed

chronological order:

2015 IMG-LAB. Image Analysis Laboratory using MATLAB (NSF Funded Project)

2014 Zëri Inc. Founded a Speech Recognition Company, www.zeriinc.com

2013 SASE-LAB - Development of Speech Analysis and Recognition Laboratory using MATLAB. (NSF Funded Project)

2012 NSF I-Cops. Wake-Up-Word Speech Recognition (NSF Funded Project).

2011 FaST - Calculate Potential Energy Savings-from Using Mobile Smart Technologies. (DOE Funded Proejct)

http://scie nce.energy.gov/wdts/fast/project-descriptions/2011-projects/epa-calculate-potential-energy-savings-from-using-mobile-smart-technologies/

2009 Organized and Hosted at FIT NIST Rich Transcription Evaluation Workshop, "NIST Rich Transcription Evaluation" 2009

2008 – 2009 Kerry Bruce Clark Teacher

2008 Greatest Commercial Potential - "Smart Room" Senior Design 2008.

2007 Third Place in IEEE SouthEastCo. Student Hardware Competition: Basketball Robot

2007 Best Junior Design 2007 - Visual Audio

2006 Best Paper Nomination "2006-472: A MATLAB TOOL FOR SPEECH PROCESSING, ANALYSIS AND RECOGNITION: SAR-LAB"

2005 UML-ADI Assistive Device Competition, June 2005, University of Massachusetts Lowell MA, First Place

http://faculty.uml.edu/Mufeed_Mahd/UML_ADI/photo_fit.htm

1984 – 1985 Fulbright Fellow

1987 – 1988 Harris Fellow

1977 – 1979 Univeristy of Prishtina Fellow

TRDA Developed a web portal with my graduate students for TRDA of Melbourne in collaboration with Nterspec.

PPT Commander PPT Commander – A Voice Only Activated Power Point Presentation Application

Apple Ported PPT Commander to Apple Mac OS

Voice-Activated Elevator Simulator

Developed Voice Activated Elevator Simulator:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5CeVtQMvK0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ8eyBTbS_E

Nursing Call Station Developed a Nursing Call Station Voice Only Activated interface for patients. Researching for ways to extend its capability for the patient to control its bed, TV and other devices connected to the system.

BMW Developed a Voice Activated Car Inspection System prototype for BMW:

http://files.me.com/hardcaseron/l3byyd.mov

High-Speech Currency Bill Reader

Designed and Developed a High Speed Currency Bill Reader system using Embedded Hardware. (IVCN Funded Project)

NIST Hosted and Participated in International "NIST Rich Transcription Evaluation" 2009 (Funded in part by ECE Department of FIT and Participants)

First Place: Analog Devices

First Place in the First Annual Analog Devices & University of Massachusetts DSP Contest 2005 (Brian Ramos and Don McMann),

http://faculty.uml.edu/Mufeed_Mahd/UML_ADI/photo_fit.htm),

Third Place Third Place in IEEE SouthEastCon 2007 Student Hardware Competition: Basketball Robot among 38 Universities (Ronald Ramdhan, Xerxes Beharry & Sean Powers). http://www.southeastcon.org/2007/students/. The robot is displayed in Deans Conference Room.

Best Paper Best Paper Nomination " 2006-472: A MATLAB TOOL FOR SPEECH PROCESSING, ANALYSIS AND RECOGNITION: SAR-LAB" ASEE 2006 (undergraduate co-authors Rogers N., Patel M.),

Best Junior Design Best Junior Design 2007 - Visual Audio - (Brandon Schmitt).

Greatest Commercial Potential

Greatest Commercial Potential - "Smart Room" Senior Design 2008. (Matt Hopkins, David Herndon, Patrick Marinelli).

Incorporating Undergraduates in Research

My most important research and educational contribution to Florida Tech, is my dedication to involving undergraduates in research. All my achievements with the students were done with undergraduate students or with graduate students that were raised from FIT undergraduate ranks (e.g., Tudor Klein, Sean Powers, Brandon Schmitt, Xerxes Beharry, Ronald Ramdhan, Raymond Sastraputera, Chris Hellriegel, Pattarapong Rojansthien, etc.). In particular (i) my heavy focus on undergraduate research has produced a wealth of outcomes especially over the past 3 years, (ii) I have established a reputable collaborative partnership with industry, and (iii) I have established a major educational collaboration with Dr. Anagnostopoulos and other faculty at FIT and elsewhere (FGCU, UCF).

For over a decade, I have been focused on expanding opportunities for my undergraduate students to participate in research that traditionally was reserved to graduate students. Typical example is my research project funded by the US Department of Energy (DOE). I took 6 FIT students for two weeks to Washington DC during the summer of 2011. Before we traveled to Washington DC, for final stage of the project, we were conducting research at FIT in the area of Energy. The paper “Energy Savings from using Mobile Smart Technologies”, under the supervision of Paul Karaffa, DOE fellow, was published in 2013.

● Këpuska, V. et al. (2013). Energy Savings from using Mobile Smart Technologies, Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, doi: 10.1063/1.4811096, 2013

IV. Service and Related Activities My service activities at FL Tech include:

● Reviewing for various entities: o “The New University Researchers Start-up Program of Fonds de recherche du

Québec”, by Guy Tremblay, Ph.D, Program Manager, Fonds de recherche du Québec – Nature et technologies, 140 Grande Allée East, Quebec City, QC, CANADAG1R 5M8, Phone: 418 643-3439, Fax: 418 643-1451, Email: guy.tremblay@frq.gouv.qc.ca

o I was invited to serve as reviewer for NSF in 2016. Meeting ID: P161746 Meeting Name: NRT Engineering III Panel, Meeting Start Date: 04/11/2016, Meeting End

Date: 04/13/2016. Panel Leader: Richard A. Tankersley, Ph.D., Program Director, NRT, IGERT, GK12 and GROW, Division of Graduate Education National Science Foundation.

o I am serving for over 5 years as Editor in Chief at the “Scientific & Academic Publishing”; http://www.sapub.org/journal/editorialdetails.aspx?JournalID=1045&PersonID=10112.

o Also I serve as reviewer for a number of journal publications including:▪ Springer Journal’s Editorial Office, International Journal of Speech

Technology▪ Advances in Research▪ Neural Networks

o Expert Reviewer for security clearance for FIT students. Most recently:▪ NC04 - Cardinal, Patrick (207070) - Expert : Këpuska, Veton (KEPVE1601

I also served as:● Faculty Senator for ECE for two years,● Member of the EE Curriculum Committee for 5 years, ● FIT’s hiring committee 4 times.● In 2009 I have organized prestigious NIST Workshop

http://itl.nist.gov/iad/mig/tests/rt/2009/index.html for which I have received a high marks for organizing this workshop.

uCollaborator CoalitionAs a result of Dr. Rodriguez (FGCU) and my efforts, we have created the uCollaborator Coalition of Excellence (uCE, pronounced "you see") gathering researchers from Florida Gulf Coast University, Florida Institute of Technology and University of Central Florida (Institute for Simulation and Training) and industrial partners (further details provided in the following link www.ucollaborator.com). Currently, uCE is engaging in research, development, and commercialization of a new breed of ubiquitous collaboration technologies. And, recently, the coalition has submitted a couple of grant proposals for developing an open-platform to connect the physical and virtual worlds both synchronously (same time) and asynchronously (anytime, anywhere). I took the lead on one of them (NSF-IIS 905145: RI:HCC:Medium:RUI: uC: Ubiquitous Collaboration Platform for Multimodal Team Interaction Support).

Conferences and Related ActivitiesDuring 2008/2009 year I have actively participated in NIST RT Evaluation. This activity culminated with:

● Organization and Hosting of the NIST RT 2009 Workshop.● Participation in the evaluation of the RT technologies that was developed at FIT● Securing of NIST MARK III 64 microphone array for R&D and data collection.● Initiated and Organized a Hosting Cite at FIT and Hosted NSF REU Webinar.The review of the quality of organization of the event is provided under NIST Rich

Transcription Evaluation Workshop 2009 under Appendix A4. Supporting Documentation for Service and Related Activities.

In 2004 & 2005 I and Dr. Marius Silaghi have proposed and introduced a Special Speech Processing and Recognition track in FLAIRS. This task entailed hosting the www site with the information about the new track, collecting the papers, recruiting reviewers, organizing, conducting and managing the peer review process, and notifying the conference chair of the final list of accepted papers. In addition I have also served as a session chair to both of those sessions. In total I have served as char in 3 conferences (FLAIRS 2004 & 2005) as well as ASEE 2006. In ASEE I was invited to serve as a session chair. In addition, my paper also was nominated for best paper award out of total of 9 nominated papers - Këpuska V., Rogers N., Patel M., (2006). A MATLAB Tool for Speech Analysis, Processing and Recognition: SAR-LAB, ASEE, Chicago, 2006. (Best Paper Award Nomination).

ReviewingI have served as a professional reviewer for the: Wiley and Sons book “Speech and Audio Signal Processing: Processing and Perception of Speech and Music”, by Morgan Gold. In addition I have served as reviewer for Elsevier Journals Speech Communication, Neural Networks, Nonlinear Analysis Theory and Methods, IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks (2007), ACM Symposium on Applied Computing – NLSP (2008), FLAIRS (2005 and 2006); First Conference on Information Technology and Engineering Sciences, Kosova (2007). Also, I have served as Reviewer for Academic Advancement of Dr. Dimitrios Charalampidis - ECE department of University of New Orleans. In the past, prior to joining FIT I have often served as reviewer for the International Journal of Speech Technology, IEEE ICASSP, ICSLP.

CommitteesAdditional service activities include representing ECE department in FIT's Graduate Curriculum Committee (2003-2005). Served as member of Department Head Search Committee (2007) as well as currently (2008-2009). Serving in ECE department's ABET and Curriculum Committee. In addition as the only Computer Engineering Faculty with a Computer Engineering Degree I advice directly my Department Head in all matters regarding to Computer Engineering Curriculum.

OutreachMy activities contributed to university's outreach efforts through AMALTHEA and EMD-MLR; NSF funded projects; I have represented FIT in Harris Engineering Week several times (2004-2008), LASER DAY (2005-2007) and personal presentations at BCC, Melbourne L.B. Johnson Middle School, Cocoa Beach High School. Finally I am serving as a judge in science fair for Central Brevard Catholic Homeschool Group (2007, 2008, 2009) (e-mail: homeschoolsciencefair@earthlink.net).

CBD Board of DirectorsSince 2000, I served as a member of Board of Directors for a non-governmental human-rights organization "Center For Balkan Development". For more information please see http://www.friendsofbosnia.org/who_board.html.

Recruiting StudentsOften I interview potential undergraduate students considering FIT as their

undergraduate institution. Example of thankful response of a parent of a perspective student is attached: Parent E-Mail of Potential Student

V. Summary

In sum, based on my research, teaching, and service, I believe that I have achieved outcomes consistent with expectations for tenure and promotion at XXX.

V. AppendixesFinal Exam Web-Based Tool

In this included example, I am using my name to logging for final exam for ECE3551 at two different times, e.g.: at 9:00 am which was marked with red (accepted) and 13:30 pm which is marked with blue (rejected) as indicated below.

This tool allows me to print the table of final examination times of all registered users:

This tool is password protected and I never had any problems utilizing it.