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Robert MarmorsteinAssociate ProfessorDepartment of (Math and) Computer Science Longwood University Rotunda 329 Tel: (434)395-2185 My public key. |
Assignments, syllabi, and class notifications can be accessed by
following the links below. If you are a student in one of my classes, you should check the course web site at least
once a week to be sure that you have not missed an important announcement (a new due date, for instance).
I teach computer science at Longwood University, a small four year public school in Farmville, Virginia (yes, there is a real Farmville). I did my graduate work at the College of William and Mary, where my dissertation work was on Firewall Analysis and Repair (slides). As part of my research, I developed ITVal, a tool for verifying iptables-based firewalls on Linux. I also contribute to several open source projects, including kdepim and koffice.
I have been published in several Usenix conferences, including LISA and Freenix. I am a huge open-source fanatic and run Linux on pretty much everything I touch. My favorite distribution is Arch Linux.
I am the faculty advisor for Longwood's College Republicans, the Cyber Security club, the Gamma Psi Fraternity, and the Upsilon Pi Epsilon computer science honor society. My family and I attend St. John's Lutheran Church (LCMS).
Beth and I were married in 2004. She taught high school math until
our daughter was born, but is now very happy to be a stay-at-home mom. She does lots of sewing,
knitting, and even a little programming. She is also really awesome at setting up phone and Ethernet networks.
We have four terrific children, Abby, Ric, Caspian, and Peter, who we homeschool.
My mom keeps a blog here and my Dad has a set of really neat presentations on different topics here.
If you plan to pass my courses, there are four things that you
absolutely need to do. Computer Science isn't a magical skill that some people
are born with and others aren't. If you work hard at these four things, you
will almost always be able to earn at least a "B" in my class. If you don't,
you will probably not pass the course. They may seem kind of obvious, but most
students who fail my classes do so because they did not keep up in one of these
four areas.
Whether or not you plan to go to grad school, a research project
can be a great way to develop important logical, writing, and technical skills.
It also looks great on a resume! Doing research on a topic you are interested
in helps you develop marketable skills in that area and build a deeper
understanding of that topic. If you are interested in pursuing a research
project in operating systems, security, formal methods, or system
administration, shoot me an e-mail or drop by my office to talk about setting
up a directed study course.
Here are some ideas for undergraduate research projects:
Here are some of my research publications. They can give you a good idea of which topics I have been working on recently:
Publications | |
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Teaching Semaphores Using . . . Semaphores Robert Marmorstein Proceedings of the 30th Eastern Regional Conference of the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges (CCSC Eastern 2014) Nov. 2014, York, Pennsylvania |
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Open source as an effective software engineering semester project Robert Marmorstein Proceedings of the 16th conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE 2011) June 2011, Pp. 268-272, Darmstadt, Germany |
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Assisted firewall policy repair using examples and history Robert Marmorstein and Phil Kearns Proceedings of the 21st Large Installation System Administration Conference (LISA '07) November 2007, Pp. 27-37, Dallas, TX |
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Debugging a firewall policy with policy mapping Robert Marmorstein and Phil Kearns ;login: The Usenix Magazine Volume 32, Number 1, February 2007 Berkeley, CA |
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Firewall analysis with policy-based host classification Robert Marmorstein and Phil Kearns Proceedings of the 20th Large Installation System Administration Conference (LISA '06) December 2006, Pp. 41-51, Washington DC |
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The saturation algorithm for symbolic state-space exploration Gianfranco Ciardo, Radu Siminiceanu, Robert Marmorstein International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer (STTT) Springer Berlin/Heidelberg, Volume 8, Number 1, February 2006 |
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An open source solution for testing nat'd and nested iptables firewalls Robert Marmorstein and Phil Kearns Proceedings of the 19th Large Installation System Administration Conference (LISA '05) December 2005, Pp. 103-112, San Diego, CA |
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A tool for automated iptables firewall analysis Robert Marmorstein and Phil Kearns Proceedings of the Usenix 2005 Annual Technical Conference, Freenix Track (Freenix '05) April 2005, Pp. 71-81, Anaheim, CA |
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Saturation unbound Gianfranco Ciardo, Radu Siminiceanu, and Robert Marmorstein Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems (TACAS 2003) April 2003, Pp. 379-393, Warsaw, Poland |
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Presentations | |
Programming as a Creative Outlet: Five unplugged activities for teaching the Computer Science standards(with Dr. Toni Sorrell) Robert Marmorstein Virginia Council of Teachers of Mathematics(VCTM) Longwood University, Farmville, VA March 9, 2019 |
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Speculative Execution Attacks: Technical Background of the Spectre and Meltdown Vulnerabilities Robert Marmorstein US IT Tech Day Swift, Inc., Manassas, VA June 5, 2018 |
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Common Myths about Computers and Cyber Crime Robert Marmorstein Presentation to TRIAD Fireman's Arena, Farmville, VA February 9, 2018 |
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A brief survey of password cracking techniques Robert Marmorstein Colloquium Talk Hampden-Syndey College November 2, 2017 |
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How do Spammers Get Your E-mail Address? Robert Marmorstein Science Gang Talk Lynchburg College October 27, 2011 |
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E-mail Address Harvesting in 2008 Robert Marmorstein with Damian Bailey Blackwell Talk Longwood University Spring 2010 |
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Nifty Idea: Teaching Networking Concepts Using Active Learning Robert Marmorstein CCSC Eastern District Conference October 2008, Hood College, Frederick, MD |