Mount Saint Mary College’s Byte Knights recently hosted guest speaker Lorraine Trapani, Executive Program Manager for Government and Regulatory Affairs at IBM, who discussed how technology can be used to help turn pups into trained guide dogs ready for service.
Byte Knights, the college’s student Information Technology club, hosted the hour-long virtual talk as part of their offerings this semester. Club president Justin Parker of Mineola, N.Y., an IT-Cybersecurity major, introduced Trapani to a group of more than 30 Mount students and faculty. They included Byte Knights officers Austin Leitmann of Pleasant Valley, N.Y. (vice president); Todd Weaver of Poughkeepsie, N.Y. (secretary); Stephen Holowiak of Wingdale, N.Y. (treasurer); Lee Fothergill, professor of Mathematics and chair of the Division of Math and IT; Sagar Raina, assistant professor of IT and Byte Knights co-advisor; Micah Model, assistant professor of IT; Denise McCarroll, instructor of IT and Byte Knights co-advisor; and Sandra Wisor, adjunct professor of IT.
Trapani presented “How Artificial Intelligence Helps Puppies Become Guiding Eyes for the Blind.” In addition to her work at IBM, Trapani volunteers to raises dogs for Guiding Eyes for the Blind, a non-profit organization in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. that provides more than 170 service dogs for people with vision and other disabilities every year.
She explained that, in an effort to increase their success in training these dogs, Guiding Eyes migrated thousands of health and temperament records to the IBM Cloud, helping them to predict which animals would be good candidates for the program. Researchers then used IBM Watson Personality Insights and Natural Language Processing to find the characteristics and patterns that would help create successful matches between dogs and trainers.
During her talk, Trapani introduced her seventh surrogate, Jackie. The dog was sponsored by IBM and accompanies Trapani to Capitol Hill, where they together advocate for the positive potential of AI to benefit society.
Byte Knights is a student-run organization that seeks to foster a campus-wide understanding of technology and its uses. This semester, Ricardo Ramirez of Middletown, N.Y., along with other Byte Knights members, are exploring how to set up a virtual machine environment for cyber-attacks and defense on Amazon Web Services. “It involves setting up a software platform that allows you to utilize the different machines available all in AWS servers,” explained Ramirez. “These machines will teach you how…to protect and defend against cyberattacks.”
Mount Saint Mary College’s bachelor’s degree program in Cybersecurity debuted in the Fall 2020 semester. It offers an interdisciplinary approach with courses from computer science, information technology, mathematics, computer security, and criminology.
“Understanding the internal workings of computers and their software programs is very important for learning cybersecurity,” explained Raina. “Therefore, the four-year program offered at the Mount begins with foundational courses in cybersecurity, computer programming, data structures, operating systems, and computer architecture, followed by in-depth study of computer security courses including cryptography, application software security, operating system security, cybersecurity risk analysis and management, cybersecurity threats and defense,” and more.
Fothergill added, “Our proximity to West Point and NYC has allowed us to create valuable internship experiences…As a Mathematics professor, it’s nice to help build this program and see the interconnection between the two different disciplines. It’s also nice to see this program grow so quickly and I am looking forward to the future.”