Mohammad Azhar
Professor
Computer Information Systems
EMAIL: MAZHAR@bmcc.cuny.edu
Office: F-930L
Office Hours:
Phone: +1 (212) 220-1477
Dr. Azhar is a Professor of Computer Information Systems at CUNY BMCC.
His current research focuses on human-robot collaboration for assistive robotics, Artificial Intelligence, cybersecurity education, and educational robotics. Over the past decade, Dr. Azhar has organized and taught numerous teacher training workshops for Educational Robotics programs, after-school robotics clubs, and robotics competitions for students. He is passionate about involving undergraduate and K-12 students in solving robotics problems and participating in robotics research, and competitions that can help them understand the potential of robotics in the real world. His ultimate goal is to prepare next-generation students to tackle problems in AI, Robotics, and Cyber Security, so they can excel in problem-solving and join teams that design next-generation robots and secure digital environments to make our lives better.
Expertise
Human-Robot Collaboration, Assistive Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Educational Robotics, and Cyber Security Education.
Degrees
- Ph.D. Graduate Center, The City University Of New York, Computer Science,
Courses Taught
- This is a second course in programming which will further develop those skills gained in CSC 111 emphasizing reliability, maintainability, and reusability. Students will be introduced to applications of Pointers, Dynamic memory allocation, Arrays, Abstract data types, Objects, classes, and object-oriented design. Additional programming topics such as Inheritance, Polymorphism, Text Processing, Exception Handling, Recursion and Templates will also be covered. Prerequisite: CSC 111 or departmental approval
- This course provides a comprehensive overview of network security. The topics covered are: general security concepts including authentication methods, common network attacks; and methods for safeguarding against attacks; communication security including remote access, e-mail, the World Wide Web, directory and file transfer, and wireless data; infrastructure security that explores various network devices and media, and the proper use of perimeter topologies such as DMZs, extranets, and intranets to asymmetric and symmetric algorithms, and the types of PKI certificates and their uses; operational/ organizational security is discussed as it relates to physical security, disaster recovery, and business continuity, as well as coverage of computer forensics. Prerequisite: CIS 345
- This course introduces the student to the principles and theories of computation and information processing. The topics include hardware and software organization, data representation, algorithm development and networking principles. Special emphasis will be placed on creation of knowledge from data; the impact of computation on daily life; role of abstraction in solving problems; and implementation of algorithms on a variety of platforms including the Internet.
- This course is a continuation of CSC 110. Students are introduced to elementary data structures, string processing, and searching and sorting techniques. Students are expected to complete several complex programs.
Prerequisite: CSC 110, CSC 111 or departmental approval
Course Syllabus - This course is an introduction to abstract data structures, their use and implementation. Storage allocation techniques, including stacks, queues, and linked lists and recursive programming will be discussed. Students will be expected to complete several programming assignments illustrating the basic concepts.
Prerequisites: CSC 210 and CSC 230
Course Syllabus - This course introduces students to computer hardware. Computer components such as motherboards, memory chips, disk drives, printers, scanners, storage devices, and keyboards will be covered. Students will learn how to install, maintain, upgrade and configure such hardware components. Students will also be introduced to binary, octal, and hexadecimal number systems as used in computer hardware. Students will be introduced to industry ethics, professional certifications, and career paths in the computer industry.
- This course is a second course in telecommunications networks with special emphasis on Local Area Networks (LAN). It covers the fundamentals of LAN technology, such as wiring and topology as well as implementation and management of LANs. Advanced topics include LAN connectivity and future LAN directions.
Prerequisite: CIS 345
Course Syllabus
Research and Projects
Research Projects:
- Assistive Robotics
- ASD Research Group (CRSP Research Demo)
- Service Robot (Demo)
- Educational Robotics
- Cyber Security and Cybersecurity Education
- Computer Science Education
Grant Projects:
- Technology Oriented Learning Communities to deliver a 21st Century Education in an UrbanHSI Community College, 2020 GANAS Mini-grant,PI, (2020)
- CUNY Course Innovation Grant, Collaboration with IBM, PI (2019-2020)
- CyberSecurity in Robotics, PSC-CUNY Award, PI (2019-2020)
- BMCC Gateway Initiative III: Teaching As Research, PI (2018-2019)
- BMCC Make-a-thon Academy, Computer Information Systems Department, BMCC Perkins Sub Grant (2019)
- Women in Technology Grant, Co-PI, 2018-2019.
- Hispanic-Serving Institutions STEM (HSI STEM) and Articulation Program Title III, BMCCDigital Pathways Project, Co-Activity Outreach Director, 2016-2021.
- NSF Fostering Student Success in Cybersecurity and Information Assurance, Co-PI, NSF ATE Award #1601401, 2016- 2020.
- Minority Science Engineering Improvement Program (MSEIP): Institutional Project Retentionand Improvements in STEM Education (RISE), Co-PI, 2015-2018.
- CS4HS Google Grant, College of Staten Island, The City University Of New York, Senior Personnel, Summer 2013
Publications
Selected Publications:
- Mohammad Q. Azhar, Weida Jiang, and Natan Schattner-Elmaleh. 2021. Collaboration EducationSuite for Children with ASD. In Companion of the 2021 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI ’21 Companion). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA
- Sumya Hoque, Stacey Rodriguez, Mohammad Azhar. 2021. COVID-19 Mental Health AI and RobotAssistant. In Proceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education(SIGCSE ’21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA,
- Jillian Powers and Mohammad Azhar. Preparing Teachers to Engage Students in ComputationalThinking through an Introductory Robot Design Activity. Journal of Computers in Mathematics and Science Teaching 39, no. 1: pp. 49-70. 2020.
- Ankur Chattopadhyay, and Mohammad Q. Azhar. Program Cozmo to EnhanceCS0/CS1 Learning of Secure Coding. In Proceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE ’20). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2020.
- Mountrouidou, Xenia, David Vosen, Chadi Kari, Mohammad Q. Azhar, Sajal Bhatia, Greg Gagne, Joseph Maguire, Liviana Tudor, and Timothy T. Yuen. ”Securing the Human: A Review of Literature on Broadening Diversity in Cybersecurity Education.” In Proceedings of the Working GroupReports on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education.
- Mohammad Q. Azhar, Sajal Bhatia, Greg Gagne, Chadi Kari, Joseph Maguire, Xenia Mountrouidou, Liviana Tudor, David Vosen, and Timothy T. Yuen. Securing the Human: Broadening Diversity in Cybersecurity. In Proceedings of the 2019 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE ’19). ACM, New York, NY, USA,
- Mohammad Q. Azhar, Janet, Esquirol, BMCC HSI STEM Success Lab, CUNY CUE Conference,2018.
- Mohammad Q Azhar and Elizabeth I Sklar. A study measuring the impact of shared decision-making in a human-robot team. International Journal of Robotics Research, Vol 36, No 5-7 2017.
- Mohammad Q. Azhar and Elizabeth I. Sklar, ”Analysis of empirical results on argumentation-based dialogue to support shared decision making in a human-robot team,” 2016 25th IEEE InternationalSymposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), New York, NY, 2016
- Elizabeth I. Sklar and Mohammad Q. Azhar. Argumentation-based dialogue games for shared control in human-robot systems. Journal of Human-Robot Interaction, Vol 4, No 3: Special Issue on Shared Control, pages 120-148, 2015
Honors, Awards and Affiliations
- BMCC Distinguished Teaching Award, 2021
- Winner of second place award, “Designing a Virtual Reality (VR) Application for Autistic Children”, BMCC ASD Research Group: Ryan Brandt, Sharna Hossain and Jadgesh Inderjeet, Mentor: Dr. Azhar, 2021 AACC/NSF Community College Innovation Challenge.
- MATLAB Technical Award, Robocup HomeRobotEDU 2018, Luis Marcano, Treeshan Yeadram, Marco Santana, Mentor: Dr. Azhar
- Best Paper Award, Sixth International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction (HAI), 2018 for Sklar, E. I., & Azhar, M. Q. (2018, December). Explanation through Argumentation. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction (pp. 277-285). ACM.
Additional Information
Faculty Organizer: (Selected)
- BMCC 1st Virtual Hackathon (Fall 2021)
- BMCC Virtual Make-A-Thon: Computing for Social Good and Innovation (Summe 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021)
- BMCC 1st Hackathon (2019)
- BMCC Alexa Make-A-Thon (2019)
- National Robotics Competition for K-12 students: Robocup Junior USA, 2018 (Results)
Faculty Advisor:
- BMCC Computer Programming Club (since 2014)
- Community College Programming Contests
- 1st Prize and 3rd prize (2014)
- Community College Programming Contests
- BMCC ACM Student Chapter (since 2016)
- BMCC ACM-W Student Chapter (since 2017)
- Google Student Chapter (since 2020)
- WiCYS (Women in Cyber Security) Student Chapter (since 2021)
