University of Ottawa Laboratory for Research on

Machine Learning for Defense and Security

Lab Director:

Dr. Nathalie Japkowicz

Current Lab Members:

Colin Bellinger, Dr. Guichong Li, Hang Shao , Shiven Sharma, Xiaoguang Wang, Xuan Liu, Adrian Taylor, Vincent Barnabe Lortie

Current Research Associates:

Dr. Rodney Berg (Health Canada), Dr. Alex Bourque (Defense R&D Canada), Dr. Bao Nguyen (Defense R&D Canada), Dr. Kurt Ungar (Health Canada), Dr. Rami Abielmona (Larus Technologies), Dr. Rafael Falcon (Larus Technologies)

Current Projects

· Track Correlation and Association using GMTI/AIS/ARPA: Determining whether individual target detection reports coming from the same sensor at different times refer to the same target (correlation) and whether individual target detection reports coming from different sensors refer to the same target (association).

· Monitoring threats to public safety during major public events or around nuclear facilities: Detecting Gamma-Emitting hazardous materials (detailed description here **** second prize of the U of Ottawa Research Day poster competition for Computer Science (February 2012)**** ).

· Anomaly Detection on Military Vehicle Control Buses

· Detecting underwater mines or improvised explosive devices (IED) with Multiple autonomous unmanned vehicle (AUV) operations: coordinating multiple AUVs in a dynamic and uncertain environment and under limited and unreliable communications (detailed description here ).

Past Projects

· Verifying conformation to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty by Noble gas monitoring: Discriminating between nuclear tests and routine industrial emissions through the monitoring of Radioxenon releases to the atmosphere

· Detecting serious threats to computer networks: discovering relationships between different intrusion detection systems (IDS)’ alerts to identify specific attack attempts

· Computer virus and malware Detection

Recent Publications

• Adrian Taylor, Nathalie Japkowicz. Sylvain Leblanc: "Frequency-based anomaly detection for the automotive CAN bus", IEEE World Congress on Industrial Control Systems Security (WCICSS-2015) ( pdf ).
  
  
• Vincent Barnabé Lortie, Colin Bellinger, Nathalie Japkowiccz: "Active Learning for One-Class Classification", The 14th International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (IEEE ICMLA'15) ( pdf )
  
  
• Colin Bellinger; Nathalie Japkowicz; Christopher Drummond: "Synthetic Oversampling for Advanced Radioactive Threat Detection"; The 14th International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (IEEE ICMLA'15) ( pdf ) ***** Best Paper Award *****
  
  
• Vincent Barnabe-Lortie, Colin Bellinger and Nathalie Japkowicz: "Smoothing Gamma Ray Spectra to Improve Outlier Detection", IEEE CISDA2014 ( pdf )
  
  
• Hang Shao and Nathalie Japkowicz: "Explicit Feature Mapping via Multi-Layer Perceptron and its Application to Mine-Like Objects Detection", 2014 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN'2014) . ( pdf )
  
  
• Xiaoguang Wang, Xuan Liu, Nathalie Japkowicz, Stan Matwin, Bao Nguyen: "Automatic Target Recognition Using Multiple-Aspect Sonar Images", IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computing (CEC'2014) . ( pdf )
  
  
• Hang Shao, Nathalie Japkowicz, Rami Abielmona, and Rafael Falcon: "Vessel Track Correlation and Association using Fuzzy Logic and Echo State Networks", IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computing (CEC'2014) ( pdf )
  
  
• "Anomaly Detection in Gamma Ray Spectra: A Machine Learning Perspective ", Shiven Sharma, Colin Bellinger, Nathalie Japkowicz, Rodney Berg and Kurt Ungar Proceedings of SSCI 2012 CISDA -- 2012 IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence for Security and Defence Applications . (pdf)
• "Clustering-Based One-Class Classification for Compliance Verification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty ", Shiven Sharma, Colin Bellinger and Nathalie Japkowicz Proceedings of the twenty-fifth Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI'2012) **** Best Paper Award **** . (pdf)
• "Motivating the Inclusion of meteorological Indicators in the CTBT Feature-Space", Colin Bellinger and Nathalie Japkowicz, Proceedings of SSCI 2011 CISDA -- 2011 IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence for Security and Defence Applications . (pdf)
• "Machine learning for radioxenon event classification for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty", Trevor J. Stocki, Guichong Li, Nathalie Japkowicz, R. Kurt Ungar, Journal of Environmental Radioactivity , 101:1, pp.68-74, 2010. (pdf)
• “Probability estimation by maximum and minimum probability score in one-class learning for anomaly detection”, Guichong Li, Nathalie Japkowicz, Ian Hoffman, and R.Kurt Ungar. Proc of the NASA Conference on Intelligent Data Understanding (CIDU), 2010. (pdf)
• "Cascading Customized Naive Bayes Couple", Guichong Li, Nathalie Japkowicz, Trevor J. Stocki and Kurt Ungar, Proceedings of the twenty-third Canadian Conference in Artificial Intelligence (AI'2010). (pdf)
• "Unknown Malcode Detection and the Imbalance Problem", Robert Moskovitch, Dima Stopel, Clint Feher, Nir Nissim, Nathalie Japkowicz and Yuval Elovici, Journal in Computer Virology, 5:4, pp. 295-308, 2009. (doc)
• "Instance Selection by Border Sampling in Multi-Class Domains", Guichong Li, Nathalie Japkowicz, Trevor J. Stocki, and R. Kurt Ungar, in the proceedings of the International Conference on Advanced Data Mining and Applications (ADMA2009), August, Beijing. (pdf)

· “Autonomic Computer Network Defence Using Risk State and Reinforcement Learning”, Beaudoin, L., Japkowicz, N. and Matwin, S. , in The Virtual Battlefield: Perspectives on Cyber Warfare, C. Czosseck and K. Geers (Editors), IOS Press, 2009.

• "Border Sampling Through Coupling Markov Chain Monte Carlo", Li, G., Japkowicz, N., Stocki, T. and Ungar, K. in the Proceedings of the Eighth IEEE International Conference on Data Mining, Pisa, 2008. (pdf)
• "Using unsupervised learning for Network Alert Correlation", Smith, R., Japkowicz, N., Dondo, M. and Mason, P., in the Proceedings of the 21st Canadian Conference in Artificial Intelligence (AI'2008). (pdf).
• "AutoCorrel I: a neural network event correlation approach", Dondo, M., Mason, P., Japkowicz, N. and Smith, R., in the proceedings of of SPIE -- DSS'07 . (full report)
• "A Feature Selection and Evaluation Scheme for Computer Virus Detection", Henchiri, O. and Japkowicz, N., in the Proceedings of the 2006 International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM2006).(doc).
• "AutoCorrel II: a neural network event correlation approach", Dondo, M., Japkowicz, N. and Smith, R., in the proceedings of of SPIE -- Volume 6241: Data Mining, Intrusion Detection, Information Assurance, and Data Networks Security 2006, Belur V. Dasarathy, Editor, 62410N (Apr. 18, 2006). (full report)
• "Clustering using an Autoassociator: A case study in Network Event Correlation", Smith, R., Japkowicz, N. and Dondo, M., in the Proceedings of the IASTED Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing and Systems, PDCS'2005 , 2005.(pdf )