Author: tgale@ufl.edu

Securely Connect to UF Files and Services from Anywhere

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The UF virtual private network (VPN) provides remote access to the university network by serving as a “tunnel” that connects your device as if you were physically on campus. By using the UF VPN, faculty, students, and staff can securely access multiple UF resources protected by the network’s firewall that otherwise would be inaccessible while off campus, including:  

The UF VPN isn’t required to access UF’s GatorCloud services or administrative sites, such as ONE.UF and myUFL, when off campus. However, the UF VPN gives users a secure online environment to complete their work. When studying abroad, working in a public space, or even submitting your assignments from home, using the UF VPN adds a layer of protection by encrypting your internet traffic and shields you from malicious actors..

No matter where you are in the world, you only need an internet connection to use UF’s VPN — whether that’s with your own wireless network, public Wi-Fi, or your phone’s cellular data. For step-by-step instructions and to confirm that your device’s operating system is compatible, visit: https://it.ufl.edu/ict/documentation/network-infrastructure/vpn/cisco-secure-vpn-installation–config-guide/. The UFIT Help Desk can assist you with VPN configuration 24/7! Call our friendly tech support team at 352-392-HELP or email helpdesk@ufl.edu.  

Learn R Programming This Summer

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UF Information Technology’s (UFIT) free eight-module introductory R Programming course returns this Summer. The online, self-paced course will run from May 13 to July 19. UF faculty, staff, postdocs, graduate students, and teaching assistants are welcome to enroll.

The Summer 2024 course syllabus is available for review for anyone considering taking the course. Registration is open through 5:00 p.m. on May 10. Participants can sign up for any of the eight sessions, but beginners are strongly encouraged to attend the first three sessions that cover the basics. The eight modules of the course are:

  • Introduction to R
  • Data Preparation
  • Exploratory Data Analysis
  • Mean and Median Comparison
  • ANOVA, Correlation, and Bivariate Linear Regression
  • Multiple Linear Regression
  • Proportion Comparison
  • Logistic Regression

All registrants must have completed at least one graduate-level course in statistics prior to the May 13 start date. Anyone with questions about UFIT’s R Programming training can email the instructor, Dr. Jose Silva-Lugo.

Advancing UF Research Inquiry and Reputation

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The NVIDIA AI Technology Center (NVAITC) at UF is proving to be a valuable asset to the University of Florida’s research community. Since its inception and through Feb. 2024, the NVAITC has supported 10 completed and 15 in-progress HiPerGator projects. This is in addition to providing expertise for 25 conference presentation proposals and 26 journal articles accepted for publication.

The NVIDIA AI Technology Center at UF is the first NVAITC center in North America. The center’s purpose is to advance AI education and research while fostering partnerships between higher education and industry. Hosting the NVAITC enables UF researchers to adopt the latest NVIDIA technologies and accelerate research projects. Additionally, the NVIDIA workshops held on campus have been attended by more than 2,400 faculty, students, and staff, equating to a value of more than $1 million in free, advanced AI training.

Faculty interested in scheduling a consult about a research project supported by the NVAITC are welcome to contact Dr. Kaleb Smith, senior data scientist and manager of the NVAITC. Dr. Smith and UFIT’s AI Support Manager Ms. Ying Zhang (yingz@ufl.edu) are both available for consultation during the initial exploration process of your research project.

Prepare to Leave UF’s GatorCloud Environment

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Commencement is around the corner, which means graduating Gators should prepare for life after college. For those graduating or not continuing to take classes at UF following the spring 2024 term, Gators should prepare to lose access to multiple digital services. Review the following list of resources to make the appropriate arrangements:

GatorMail: Your UF email account will be deactivated 365 days after graduation or 365 days since last being registered for a class. If you have signed up for any third-party services (such as Instagram or Spotify) using your GatorMail email credentials, change your login and account recovery information on those accounts before you get locked out. Also, forward any important attachments or information you may have kept in your GatorMail to another email account or storage option.

GatorCloud: Apps and files in your GatorCloud, including Office 365 and Google Suite, are accessible up to 365 days after graduation. Plan ahead by transferring all files to a separate cloud storage and downloading all ongoing projects saved on a GatorCloud application to another location.

UFApps: Access to UFApps is deactivated once you are no longer a student. Allot time to go through UFApps and transfer any useful coursework files and unfinished projects you want to keep to a personal storage option.

If you have any account questions or need assistance before saying goodbye to the university’s digital environment, please contact the UFIT Help Desk by calling 352-392-HELP/4357, or visiting in person at 132 Hub (across from the Starbucks.).

Improving Technologies Make Impersonation Scams More Effective

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Most of us have received phishing emails in our inbox and smishing messages on our phones impersonating people or companies we trust. According to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), consumers lost $1.1 billion to these types of social engineering scams in 2023. That is three times more than in 2020, with strong growth expected now that artificial intelligence (AI) technologies can be used to make phishing communications more convincing. 

We have often been able to spot these impersonations by noticing non-standard language in sentences, grammatical errors, or messages that don’t seem to apply to the situation. But as AI tools improve, scammers can use them to rapidly create very convincing messages that lack the tell-tale signs we’ve become accustomed to spotting. It is even possible to use so called deepfake tools to create convincing audio and video of someone speaking – using only short clips of the real person speaking.  

Here are other clues to help identify impersonation scams:  

  • Verify the source. Check the email address the email was sent from, and if a suspicious email comes in to your GatorMail email, double-check whether the message is flagged in red as [External Email]. On your phone, smishing messages often appear to come from an email address rather than a phone number. 
  • Check with the sender. Impersonation scams often want to give you the impression that the real person being impersonated is not available, which is why they need you to quickly take some action for them. But it doesn’t hurt to give the real person a call or send a message to verify, because if they answer, it was probably a scam! Do not hit ‘reply’ or ‘redial.’ Instead, look up the person in your contacts or find a reliable contact for companies independently (such as calling the phone number on the back of your credit card if you get a text purportedly coming for your bank) 
  • It’s a good idea to agree on a way to authenticate communications with people ahead of time, such as by creating a ‘code word’ that family members can use if they are really in trouble.  

If you find yourself the recipient of an impersonation scam, you should report the fraud to the FTC. This helps federal investigators stop scammers before they can reach more people. 

For more information on impersonation scams, visit https://security.ufl.edu/learn-security/.

Student Perspectives on AI (Live Event)

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UF Information Technology’s (UFIT) Tech Byte series continues this spring with a unique, student panel event. Current undergraduates from diverse majors will talk about their use of AI in coursework, how AI is showing up in their lives, and about AI’s impact on their career path and plans for the future.  UFIT will livestream this moderated panel on Thursday, April 18, at 2:00 p.m.  If you’d like to submit specific questions to be asked of the student panel, email Associate Director of Academic Technology Ryan Yang.

Register now to watch and listen in to this innovative panel: https://ufl.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwqc-irqzkjH9OO23WdTpgkIrMOhW1vdvuc#/registration

For further details on this event or on UFIT’s Tech Byte series, visit: https://citt.ufl.edu/workshops/tech-bytes/

Improving Students’ Eduroam Experience: Marston Spring Tabling Dates

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To support the year-long educational communications initiative You’re a Gator – Not a [UF] Guest, UF Information Technology (UFIT) staff will connect with students directly through a series of campus tabling sessions. The first two tabling events are Friday, Apr. 5, and Monday, Apr. 8, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. inside Marston Science Library’s entryway. The goal of the You’re a Gator – Not a [UF] Guest initiative is to make students aware that enrolling their devices in eduroam provides the optimal campus Wi-Fi experience.

Network usage data determined that Marston Science Library is one of UF’s busiest campus spots, with thousands of students studying across the five floors daily. The data also revealed clusters of ‘ufguest’ network and personal hotspot usage among Marston’s heavy foot traffic. Personal mobile hotspots redirect the Wi-Fi signal in crowded campus areas. The ‘ufguest’ network should be used exclusively by campus visitors, because it doesn’t offer full internet access, is slower than eduroam, and is an unencrypted network.

Eduroam offers up to 10x’s faster connectivity than the ‘ufguest’ network and is the campus standard for secure network access . Also, by enrolling their devices in eduroam, campus members won’t have to re-configure every 24 hours as required on ‘ufguest’. Come see our team, get configured to eduroam, and grab a free sticker! If you miss us, don’t worry. You can always stop by the UFIT Help Desk at 132 Hub (across from Starbucks) or call 352-392-HELP for Wi-Fi configuration support.

Data Parallelism: How to Train Deep Learning Models on Multiple GPUs

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The NVIDIA AI Technology Center at the University of Florida is offering an instructor-led, deep learning institute workshop in April: Data Parallelism: How to Train Deep Learning Models on Multiple GPUs.

Workshop Dates: April 11-12, 2024 (Thursday and Friday), from 1:00-5:00 p.m.

Registration Link: https://forms.gle/KiNxdjqxJ7AZCZFk6

The workshop will be held over two days (four hours each day) in Malachowsky Hall’s NVIDIA Auditorium. Its focus is on techniques for data-parallel deep learning training on multiple GPUs to shorten the training time required for data-intensive applications. Working with deep learning tools, frameworks, and workflows to perform neural network training, attendees will learn how to decrease model training time by distributing data to multiple GPUs, while retaining the accuracy of training on a single GPU. The full course outline may be found on this NVIDIA website page.

The course is FREE and open to the university community, but pre-registration is required. Also required is experience with Python. Technologies used in the workshop are PyTorch, PyTorch Distributed Data Parallel, and NCCL.

If you have any questions about this workshop, please email the instructor, NVIDIA Data Scientist Yungchao Yang (yunchaoyang@ufl.edu).

 

Open: Summer 2024 Canvas Course Requests

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Faculty can now request Summer 2024 Canvas courses via ONE.UF using these instructions. Only instructors of record may use ONE.UF to request courses. Faculty or staff requesting on behalf of instructors will need to do so via myUFL.

If someone normally requests courses for you, please let them know you are handling your own course request. If you do not need a course in Canvas this summer, then follow the instructions above and find the “Exclude Section from Canvas” instructions.

Course auto-creation for all Summer 2024 courses begins Wednesday, May 8, at 12:00 p.m.  Courses not requested or marked as “Exclude Section from Canvas” by that date and time will automatically be created. Instructors who need sections combined into one shell are advised to make their course request before Wednesday, May 8. Any course section added to the Student Information System after auto-creation will still need to be requested.

As a reminder, instructors cannot use Canvas Announcements or Inbox to communicate with students prior to the start date of the course and the course being published. Instructors that want to communicate with students prior to the start of the Summer A/C 2024 semester (Monday, May 13), may use the Class Rolls feature in ONE.UF to do so. Full course rosters will not load into Canvas until after the auto-creation date.

The e-Learning Support team is offering one-on-one consultations to help prepare your course for the upcoming term. Please schedule an appointment at http://go.ufl.edu/CanvasHelp. The consultations will be conducted via Zoom. Please reach out to the e-Learning Support team with any questions:

Intern with UFIT!

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Applications for Summer 2024 internships are now live, with opportunities in wide-ranging IT fields: https://it.ufl.edu/internships/. UF Information Technology’s (UFIT) paid internships offer immersive on-the-job experience supporting a campus of 100,000+ stakeholders with cutting-edge technologies used by Fortune 500 companies. The internships are open to all students regardless of major or year. Prospective applicants can explore the catalog of internship opportunities offered across UFIT’s eight departments:

  • Academic Technology
  • Applications, Development, and Integrations
  • Customer Experience & Resource Planning
  • Data Platform and Analytics
  • Information Security Office
  • Infrastructure & Communications Technology
  • IT Business Center
  • Research Computing

Information systems junior Srinithi Reddy is interning in the Customer Experience & Resource Planning department, where she collaborates with the business relationship managers group to enhance UF’s enterprise IT experience.

“This opportunity has helped me hone my interpersonal communication skills, develop a better understanding of collaborating with a variety of specialized teams, and enhanced my proficiency with MS Visio by transforming complex data into visually engaging and informative charts and diagrams,” Reddy said.

John Wes Miller, a sophomore at American University, is a risk analyst intern for the Information Security Office. Miller said his tasks include classifying data and conducting security assessments of the university’s digital infrastructure.

“This internship can truly set you apart and lay the groundwork for a successful career in information security,” he said. “It has given me hands-on experience in cybersecurity and insights into the real-world challenges faced by organizations in securing their digital assets.”

Internship application deadlines may vary according to department. Have questions about the internship program? Contact UFIT at it-comm@ufl.edu.