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| Affiliation: Computer Science, Dept. of Mathematical Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences |
Email: afkjm@uaa.alaska.edu Phone: (907) 786-1956 Office: Science 221, 3211 Providence Dr., Anchorage AK 99508 |
Textbooks
I am a co-author with Walt Savitch on the following introductory C++ and Java Textbooks.
Current Courses
Previous Courses
Resources
Background
I have been at UAA since August, 2000. Prior to life at UAA I have worked at the following institutions:
Washington State University, Vancouver
Intel Architecture Lab
Portland State University
Los Alamos National Lab
Chevron Chemical
UC Davis Computer Science Department
Some Projects
Eye Tracking. We have been investigating the use of eye tracking technology for many purposes: secure authentication, collecting user data for information management, and analyzing student performance on gaze-related tasks (e.g. speed reading, air traffic control). As a first step to some of these projects we have created a C# wrapper for EyeTech's TM3 eyetracker. We also have plans to use eyetracking to support research projects in Psychology and Experimental Economics.
Agent-Based Simulations and Complex Systems. Some problems are too complex to solve analytically in a top-down fashion. The best way to understand them is through the bottom-up interaction of agents. This work uses the complex systems paradigm to explore various biological and ecological systems. For example, by simulating the foraging behavior of herbivores or the predator-prey interaction between killer whales and pinnipeds, we hope to better understand how to model and manage these resources. Another project is modeling the dynamics of killer whale populations. We have recently purchased an nVidia Tesla workstation with 480 GPU's that we hope to utilize for parallel simulations.
Authentication Schemes Resistant to Shoulder Surfing. A serious security problem is divulging your password to an attacker. The password may be revealed in a manner as simple as the attacker watching over the shoulder of the user entering their password. This work examines techniques to reduce or eliminate the shoulder surfing threat through novel authentication methods.
Visualizing Attrition in Computer Science. Our CS program suffers from high attrition. Where do students go that start in CS1? We have collected transcript data from all students starting in CS1 and developing visualization algorithms to see where they go and how far they get in the CS program.
Old Projects
Heuristic Search. Empire-based games are games where multiple units may move simultaneously in one turn. This results in a prohibitively large search space for traditional algorithms. This work explores hierachical organization, aggressive pruning strategies, and agent-based modeling to find ways to create an effective and adaptable computer opponent for these types of games.
Data Mining and Visualization of Faculty Expertise. We have constructed an online database for UAA faculty to submit their annual activity report. These reports contain data that describes the teaching, service, and research that is performed by our faculty members. We hope to mine this data so that it is possible to visualize what expertise exists on campus and create agents to allow users to automatically find faculty with expertise in a particular area while suggesting areas for collaboration.
Dormant Projects
Selected Publications
Real-time continuous iris recognition for authentication using an eye trackerWeaver, J., Mock, K., Hoanca, B. (2011). Gaze-Based Password Authentication through Automatic Clustering of Gaze Points. Proceedings of the 2011 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics. SMC 2011, October 9-12, 2011, Anchorage, AK. pdf
Mock, K. (2010). e-Learning Tools for Computer Science Educators and Students. eLearn 2010, 6 (Jun. 2010), ACM. Retrieved 8/21/11 from http://elearnmag.acm.org/archive.cfm?aid=1833510
Mock, K. (2009). PenAttention: Highlight Your Pen Cursor for In-Class Presentations. The Workshop on the Impact of Pen-Based Technology on Education, October 12-13, 2009, Blacksburg, VA. Published in: The Impact of Tablet PCs and Pen-based Technology on Education. Berque, D., Konkle, L., Reed, R. (eds). Purdue University Press, 2009.
Hoanca, B., Mock, K. (2008). "Password entry scheme resistant to shoulder surfing". The 2008 International Conference on Security and Management. SAM 08, July 12-16, 2008, Las Vegas, NV. PDF.
Secure graphical password system for high traffic public areasHoanca, B., Mock, K. (2005). "Screen oriented technique for reducing the incidence of shoulder surfing". The 2005 Internation Conference on Security and Management. SAM 05, June 20-23, 2005, Las Vegas, NV. PDF.
Armstrong, N., Mock, K. (2005). "Helicopter Routing for Maintaining Remote Sites in Alaska using a Genetic Algorithm". The Twentieth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI 2005, July 9-13, 2005, Pittsburgh, PA. PDF.
Mock, K. (2004). "Teaching with Tablet PC's." The Sixth Northwest Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges, October 8-9, 2004, Salem, OR. PDF.
Mock, K. (2003). "The Development of a CS0 Course for Distance Delivery." The Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges, V19, N2. PDF.
Mock, K. (2002). "Hierarchical Heuristic Search Techniques for Empire-Based Games." 2002 International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, June 24-27, 2002, Las Vegas NV. PDF.
Mock, K. (2001). "The Use of Internet Tools to Supplement Communication in the Classroom." The Journal for Computing in Small Colleges, V17, N2. Microsoft Word.
Mock, K. (2001). "An Experimental Framework for
Email Categorization and Management." 24th Annual ACM
International Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval. September 9-13, 2001. New Orleans, LA.
Microsoft Word or
PDF or
PPT Presentation.
The binary and source code is also publicly available.
Mock, K. (1999). "Dynamic Email Organization via Relevance Categories." International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence (ICTAI'99), November 1999, Chicago, IL. Microsoft Word.
Mock, K. (1999). "A Hybrid Induction Classifier for Real-Time Classification and Incremental Learning." Intel Technical Report. PDF
Mock, K. (1998). "A Comparison of Three Document Clustering Algorithms: TreeCluster, Word Intersection GQF, and Word Intersection Hierarchical Agglomerative Clustering." Intel Technical Report. PDF
Mock, K. (1998). "Wildwood: The Evolution of L-System Plants for Virtual Environments." International Conference on Evolutionary Computing (ICEC'98), May 1998, Anchorage Alaska. Microsoft Word. Also try my online java demo of the algorithms presented in the paper.
Mock, K., Vemuri, V. (1997). "Information Filtering via Hill Climbing, WordNet, and Index Patterns." Proc. of Information Management and Processing. gzip, postscript.
Mock, K., Lawton, L., Hoyle, M. (1996). "Online Game Show Hosts: Agents for Socialization, Not Just Entertainment." Workshop on AI and Entertainment, 13th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Portland OR, Aug 4-8, 1996. Microsoft Word.
Mock, K. (1996). Ph.D. Dissertation. "Intelligent Information Filtering via Hybrid Techniques : Hill Climbing, Case-Based Reasoning, Index Patterns, and Genetic Algorithms." University of California, Davis. Microsoft Word, or PDF
Mock, K. (1996). "Hybrid Hill Climbing and Knowledge Based Techniques for Intelligent News Filtering." Proceedings of the 13th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Portland, Oregon, Aug 4-8, 1996. PDF Extended paper from publication.
Last updated 8/26/2010