One of the things that makes Monmouth so exciting is the opportunity for undergraduate students to engage in meaningful research alongside faculty mentors.
The School of Science’s 2026 Summer Research Program (SRP) provides students with a ten-week, immersive research experience—and our CSSE students and faculty are tackling some fascinating problems at the intersection of quantum computing, cybersecurity, formal verification, and mathematics.
Professor Brian Callahan worked with two students: Sean Sanpietro from Misericordia University and Allison Aurilio from The College of New Jersey on Quantum Computing for Cybersecurity Applications. This project explores how quantum computing and quantum machine learning can be applied to cybersecurity. The research focuses on using techniques such as quantum support vector machines (QSVMs) and quantum kernels to accelerate the identification of indicators of compromise—including malicious network traffic, phishing emails, and anomalous user behavior. The project even involves optimization for a real-world quantum computer through IBM’s Qiskit platform.
Professor Weihao Qu worked with Daniel-Joh Diala (SE.BS ’29) and William Judd from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign on Implementing GArel: Bidirectional Type Checking for Relational Array Analysis. This project addresses on the practical implementation of GArel, a relational type and effect system designed to verify quantitative properties in programs that manipulate mutable arrays. By applying bidirectional type checking and integrating advanced SMT solvers, the project aims to make formal verification more practical and scalable for real-world software. This work is part of Dr. Qu’s broader NSF-supported research in formal verification.
The interdisciplinary nature of the SRP is also evident in a project that examines how opinions evolve within groups, how trust changes over time, and how misinformation can influence group dynamics. Chris Mangan, a dual Mathematics and Computer Science major worked with Professor Torrey Gallagher on the math behind social deduction games: Modeling Social Deduction Games Through Opinion Dynamics. The research brings together graph theory, matrix analysis, numerical analysis, and coding to investigate when groups reach consensus—and when they instead experience polarization.
For more information on each project’s abstract and research, please visit the link to the School of Science SRP page: Summer Research Program
