AUI Faculty and SEM Students Participate in a Training on Smart Grid at the University of Newcastle

09.11.2019

Dr. Ahmed Khallaayoun and Mr. Rachid Lghoul, along with two graduate students enrolled in the AUI Sustainable Energy Management program, are attending a two-week training on the latest developments of Smart Grids. The program is part of an EU Erasmus + Project called AT-SGIRES – Advanced Teaching and training on Smart Grid & Grid Integration of Renewable Energy Systems – and is held Sep. 2-13, 2019. The training focuses on the current and future challenges grid stakeholders face with the increased integration of intermittent Renewable Energy Resources (RES) and electric vehicles.  The training coincided with the UK Energy Storage Conference, which the AUI team also attended. The conference topic primarily focused on how energy storage can provide solutions to many of the challenges facing the future electric grid. 

For more information about the AT-SGIRES project, please visit the project’s official website: meu.edu.jo/sites/atsgires/

Iraqi Publishes in Security and Communication Networks Journal

09.06.2019

Mr. Omar Iraqi, Computer Science faculty at the School of Science and Engineering recently published an article titled "Application-Level Unsupervised Outlier-Based Intrusion Detection and Prevention" in Security and Communication Networks Journal:

Abstract:

As cyber threats are permanently jeopardizing individuals’ privacy and organizations’ security, there have been several efforts to empower software applications with built-in immunity. In this paper, we present our approach to immune applications through application-level, unsupervised, outlier-based intrusion detection and prevention. Our framework allows tracking application domain objects all along the processing lifecycle. It also leverages the application business context and learns from production data, without creating any training burden on the application owner. Moreover, as our framework uses runtime application instrumentation, it incurs no additional cost on the application provider. We build a fine-grained and rich-feature application behavioral model that gets down to the method level and its invocation context. We define features to be independent from the variable structure of method invocation parameters and returned values, while preserving security-relevant information. We implemented our framework in a Java environment and evaluated it on a widely-used, enterprise-grade, and open-source ERP. We tested several unsupervised outlier detection algorithms and distance functions. Our framework achieved the best results in terms of effectiveness using the Local Outlier Factor algorithm and the Clark distance, while the average instrumentation overhead per intercepted call remains acceptable.

You can read the article here: https://www.hindawi.com/journals/scn/2019/8368473/

AUI Welcomes its New PIP Interns

09.06.2019

As part of its Presidential Internship Program, Al Akhawayn University welcomes 10 interns from the USA, Belarus, Switzerland, and Nigeria to be part of the AUI community during this academic year. Presidential interns are hosted by different departments, including the President's Office, Development and Communication, Office of Institutional research and Effectiveness, VPAA, Hillary Clinton Center and No Violence Alliance, VPSA and Residential Life, Internal Audit, Azrou Center, First-year experience, Student Activities Office and Office of Community Involvement, Health Center and Office of Interfaith Life.

SBA Student Climbs Mt. Fuji

08.28.2019

AUI students are reaching new heights on campus and abroad. SBA student Taha El Messaoudi recently climbed Mount Fuji during his exchange program in Japan. Mt. Fuji was just one part of an exciting tour of Japan for Taha.

Farouk’s Team Wins the Space Rover Competition

07.25.2019

To celebrate the 50^th anniversary of Apollo 11, the US Embassy in Rabat, in partnership with the Moroccan Spacenauts, organized the Space Day on July 21^st, 2019.

ENDEAVOUR Team, composed of AUI student Farouk Lemyesser and students from different engineering schools competed against two other teams, and won the Space Rover Competition. The team had to create a space rover similar to the one sent to Mars by NASA, and it had to navigate a terrain and pick up some rocks and move them to a particular place. 

The Apollo landing on the moon on July 1969 marked the human history and opened the door to future space exploration. The program included a rewarding exchange with former NASA engineer Dr. Ayanna Howard and other space and robotics passionates, researchers, experts and organizations from around Morocco.