Richard Rauscher, PhD, CISSP

▸ Fun historical USF information

Events at USF That I Was Involved In

• In early 1994, I launched the very first version of www.usf.edu. I set up the web server (a SunOS 4.1.3 machine called Soleil.acomp.usf.edu) and set up a DNS CNAME to call it www.usf.edu. It ran the NCSA Mosaic HTTP server. The first USF web page had two pictures on a gray background: a contemporary version of Rocky (the USF mascot) and the USF seal. Sadly, no copies survive as the page pre-dated the Internet Wayback Machine. I hired a student employee to populate it, and within a few months it was taken over by USF's public relations and marketing staff. The image below is a recreation of what I built in 1994.

  

• In late 1993, I worked with law enforcement to investigate a hacking incident which led to the arrest of a computer hacker. It was in the news for a few days and was a relatively big deal.
• In 1993, I installed a system to fleet-maintain the Unix servers in the College of Engineering and the Department of Computer Science & Engineering.
• In 1994, I installed the first production PCs running Linux at USF, used to display software running on Sun servers via XWindows for a Chemical Engineering course.
• In 1994, I installed the first firewalling software in the College of Engineering and the first two-factor authentication system. Here's a map I made of the CoE network from 1994; note the T1-based Internet connectivity (1.54 Mbits/sec).
• In 1995, I installed the first end-user Ethernet node at Moffitt Cancer Center (IP address 131.247.179.10). It was a Macintosh. Prior to this, all end-user PCs at Moffitt connected via a poorly constructed Token Ring network or SNA.
• In 1995, Moffitt Cancer Center went on the web as one of the first dozen hospitals to have a web presence. A custom-built firewall secured Moffitt's systems — the first firewall on USF's campus.
• In 1996, two colleagues and I presented the first known documentation of secure collection of clinical trial research data via the web, at a Florida Epidemiologist conference, discussing what we built to support the Diabetes Prevention Trial.
• In 2003, a colleague and I rapidly adopted virtualization technology at Moffitt Cancer Center, significantly reducing computing costs. I followed this up a year later at a new cancer center that was 100% virtualized — years before most hospitals had considered it.
• In 2015, after more than a decade away from Tampa, I returned to USF to find that the fleet management system I installed in 1993 was still running on the current servers — 22 years later.

Academia Through the Years…

There was a time in the not-so-distant past that a syllabus consumed no more than one piece of paper. Here's the syllabus I used for COP 4600 in Spring 1997.

Teaching

Current Announcements

CNT 4104 — Fall 2026: I will not be teaching CNT 4104 this semester as I need to focus on other projects. It will be taught by the very capable Dr. Raiyan Baten. Please contact him with any questions.

Quantum Computing (COT 4601): Will be offered by another professor this summer.

Independent Studies — Fall 2026

I continue to look for students interested in “edge AI” — MCU-based devices that perform in situ AI work.

Skills You Can Gain:

• IoT firmware development (Arduino, PlatformIO, MicroPython, C++)
• Embedded machine learning (TinyML, TensorFlow Lite Micro)
• LoRaWAN networking & The Things Network integration
• Cybersecurity for constrained devices
• Data analysis & visualization (Python, Jupyter, GIS)
• Real-world experimentation & field deployment

Letters of Recommendation & Graduate Research Inquiries

You must ask me before listing me as a recommender on any application — never submit my name or contact information without my prior agreement. As a general policy, I only write recommendations for students who earned an A in my course. Please ask at least two weeks before any deadline, and provide your resume, the program or position you're applying to, and a reminder of which course and semester you took with me.

Prospective graduate students sometimes ask about research assistantships or funded research positions in my group. My primary role at USF is instructional rather than research-focused, so I typically don't have funded positions or research support to offer. I'm happy to point you toward faculty whose labs are actively funded and recruiting, so reach out and I'll help connect you with the right people.

Research

Research Interests

• How can LLMs be used to simulate large systems of human interactions, particularly in healthcare and economics?
• Can LLMs be used to predict health outcomes in individuals? We've recently submitted a patent application regarding this work.
• Can low-cost hardware be used to steer mosquito control activities? This investigation extends the work previously performed by Sriram Chellappan et al.

Resources

• IEEE 802.3/StarLAN packet captures and Linux device driver (pending publication)

Recent Publications & Presentations

• Rauscher, R., ‘Building and Defending Your Systems Before Encryption and Firewalls’, DEF CON 33, Las Vegas, NV, August 2025
• Rauscher, R., Lentes, J., ‘The Moral Imperative for Financial Informed Consent for Health Care Services’, ASHEcon, June 2021
• Schieffer, K., Bruffy, S., Rauscher, R., et al., ‘Reduced total serum bilirubin levels are associated with ulcerative colitis’, PLoS One, October 2017
• Rauscher, R., Acharya, R., ‘A Network Security Architecture to Reduce the Risk of Data Leakage for Health Care Providers’, IEEE Healthcom 2014, Natal, Brazil, October 2014
• Rauscher, R., Acharya, R., ‘Virtual Machine Placement in Predictable Computing Clouds’, 7th Annual Conference on Cloud Computing, Anchorage, Alaska, July 2014
• Amin, W. et al, ‘PaTH: Towards a Learning Health System in the Mid-Atlantic Region’, J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2014 Jul; 21(4): 633–636
• Rauscher, R., Acharya, R., ‘Performance of Private Clouds in Health Care Organizations’, IEEE CloudCom 2013, Bristol, UK, December 2013
• Rauscher, R., ‘Cloud Computing Considerations for Biomedical Applications’, 2012 IEEE HISB, La Jolla, CA, 2012
• Rauscher, R., Acharya, R., ‘A Protocol for Long-Term Preservation of Trust in Electronic Health Records’, First Annual Combined AMA and IEEE Meeting, Washington, DC, 2010
• Sundstrom J, et al. “Phosphorylation Site Mapping of Endogenous Proteins: a Combined MS and Bioinformatics Approach”, J Proteome Research, 2009 Feb; 8(2):798–807
• Rauscher, R. “In IT, Brains Matter”, Advance for Health Information Executives, 2006 Oct; 10(10), p51.
• Rauscher, R. “Building a Highly Reliable Technology Infrastructure”, Advance for Health Information Executives, 2006 Mar; 10(3), p37.
• Rauscher, R. “Server Virtualization”, Healthcare Informatics, 2004 Oct; 21(10): 66, 68.
• Rauscher, R.L.H. “Evaluating the Reliability of Information Systems in Healthcare”, AMIA Annual Symposium, Los Angeles, CA, November 2000.
• Rauscher, R.L.H. “Building Highly Reliable Computer Networks”, Chapter in A Handbook of Local Area Networks, Auerbach Publishing, New York, 1998.
• Rauscher, R.L.H. “Network Security”, Chapter in A Handbook of Local Area Networks, Auerbach Publishing, New York, 1996.
• Papaconstantinou, C., Anderson, L., Rauscher, R., “Electronic Submission of Case Report Forms Using Secure World Wide Web Technology”, Proceedings of the 1996 Florida Epidemiology Conference, July 1996.