2006-2007 Abstracts
CPSC 681 Graduate Seminar
(only required for new graduate students):
Graduate Orientation I: Overview of Department Resources & Contacts,
Honor Code, and Student Organizations
MANDATORY FOR NEW GRAD STUDENTS (but not other CSPC 681 students)
4:10-6:10 p.m., Monday August 28, 2006
Room 124, Bright Building
Abstract
This meeting will concentrate on the essentials the students will need to
settle in. It will include an introduction to departmental administration
(staff who's who, payroll, mailboxes, phones), the computing resources
(computer use/accounts, printer quotas, lab access/tours),
the academic advising staff and resources,
the TAMU honor system,
and relevant student organizations (CSGSA,
AWICS,
TACS
(TAMU ACM and IEEE student chapter),
and UPE).
MANDATORY FOR NEW GRAD STUDENTS (but not other CSPC 681 students)
CPSC 681 Graduate Seminar
(required for all new graduate students and all CPSC 681 students):
Graduate Orientation II:
Current Grad & Faculty Panels, Poster Session, & PIZZA!
MANDATORY FOR NEW GRAD STUDENTS. Counds as CPSC 681 seminar for CPSC 681 students.
4:10-6:10 p.m., Wednesday August 30, 2006
Room 124, Bright Building
Abstract
- 4:10-4:30pm - Student Panel:
Current grad students share tips about how to succeed in graduate school.
- 4:30-5:00pm - Faculty Panel:
Faculty share their ideas about what they are looking for in a graduate
student.
- 5:00-6:10pm - Pizza & Current Student Poster Session - new students
can meet current grads and learn about ongoing research projects.
MANDATORY FOR NEW GRAD STUDENTS. Counts as CPSC 681 seminar for CPSC 681 students.
CPSC 681 Graduate Seminar:
Concepts: A Structured Approach to Generic Programming
Dr. Gabriel Dos Reis,
Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Texas A&M University
4:10 p.m., Wednesday September 13, 2006
Room 124, Bright Building
Abstract
Over the last decade, there has been a surge of interest in Generic
Programming techniques and programming language supports. Recent
developments have mainly centered around mathematically founded
generic programming techniques for software construction, exploration
and understanding of advanced type systems.
This talk will focus on the design of a type system for C++ templates,
called concepts. We consider the problem of how to express concepts
in a precise way that is simple enough to be usable by ordinary
programmers. In doing so, we expose a few weakness of the current
specification of the C++ standard library and suggest a far more
precise and complete specification. We also present a systematic way
of translating our proposed concept definitions, based on use-patterns
rather than function signatures, into constraints sets that serve as
convenient basis for concept checking in a compiler.
Biography
Dr. Gabriel Dos Reis is an Assistant Professor in Texas A&M Engineering's
Department of Computer Science. Dr. Dos Reis received his PhD in
Mathematics in 2001 from Universite Paris-VII and Ecole Normale
Superieure de Cachan, France. He worked as a Postdoctoral Research
Associate in the Parasol Lab within the Department of Computer Science
prior to becoming a faculty member. His research interests include
computer methods in geometry, computer algebra, mathematical software,
programming languages and libraries, and generic programming. He is an
active member of the ISO C++ standards committee where he represents
AFNOR, the French national association for standards. He serves as
Release Manager of GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection. In addition to
his involvement in the GNU toolchain, Dr. Dos Reis is an active
contributor to Axiom, the scientific computation system.
CPSC 681 Faculty Contact:
Nancy Amato
(amato [at] cs.tamu.edu)
CPSC 681 Graduate Seminar:
Interative Control for Realistic Character Animation
Dr. Jinxiang Chai,
Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Texas A&M University
4:10 p.m., Monday September 18, 2006
Room 124, Bright Building
Abstract
Feature films exhibit stunningly realistic digital actors and
video games contain responsive and controllable virtual characters.
However, currently available animation technologies are not useful
tools for naive users because they either require a tremendous
amount of artistry, skill, and time, or rely on commercial motion
capture devices that are invasive and expensive. This talk focuses on
three intuitive interfaces that allow the naive user to easily and
quickly generate realistic character animation. Each solution relies
on the information about natural human motion inherent in a motion
capture database. First, I introduce a performance animation that
uses video input of the user to build a local model of the user's
motion and reproduce it on an animated character. The second
interface allows the user to control realistic facial expression by
acting out a desired motion in front of a single video camera. And
finally, I have developed a constraint-based motion optimization
technique for generating natural-looking facial and full-body
character animation from a small set of user-defined constraints. We
assess the quality of the resulting animation by comparisons with
those created by a commercial optical motion capture system.
Biography
Jinxiang Chai joined Texas A&M University in fall 2006 as an
assistant professor of computer science. He received his Ph.D from
Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science. His research interests span
computer animation, computer graphics, and computer vision. He is particularly
interested in developing methods and systems that allow everyone to create and
manipulate high-dimensional visual data such as character animation, 3D
geometic models, images, and videos as easy as text. He is also interested in
interaction techniques for 3D graphics, data-driven approaches for graphics and
vision, computer vision techniques for graphics and animation applications,
image-based rendering and modeling, image and video processing.
CPSC 681 Faculty Contact:
Nancy Amato
(amato [at] cs.tamu.edu)
CPSC 681 Graduate Seminar:
Intuitive Methods for 3D Shape Deformation
Dr. Scott Schaefer,
Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Texas A&M University
4:10 p.m., Monday October 2, 2006
Room 124, Bright Building
Abstract
Deformation is a key component in many applications including virtual
surgical simulation and the animation of digital characters in the movie
industry. Previous deformation methods have led to non-intuitive ways
of specifying the deformation or have been too expensive to compute in
real-time. This talk will focus on three methods we have developed for
creating intuitive deformations of 3D shapes. The first method is a
new, smooth volumetric subdivision scheme that allows the user to
specify deformations using conforming collections of tetrahedra, which
generalizes the widely used Free-Form Deformation method. The next
technique extends a fundamental interpolant in Computer Graphics called
Barycentric Coordinates and lets the user manipulate low-resolution
polygon meshes to control deformations of high-resolution shapes.
Finally, the talk will conclude with some of our recent work on
creating deformations described by collections of points using a
technique called Moving Least Squares.
Biography
Scott Schaefer is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science department
at Texas A&M University. He graduated from Trinity University in 2000 with
a B.S. degree in Computer Science and Mathematics, received an M.S. degree
from Rice University in 2003 and a Ph.D. from Rice University in 2006.
His research interests include Computer Graphics, Geometric Modeling and
Scientific Visualization.
CPSC 681 Faculty Contact:
Nancy Amato
(amato [at] cs.tamu.edu)
CPSC 681 Graduate Seminar:
Optimizing System Architecture with a Holistic Design Approach
in the Blue Gene Supercomputer
Dr. Valentina Salapura,
IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
4:10 p.m., Wednesday October 11, 2006
Room 124, Bright Building
Abstract
Technology has been a main performance driver of many system generations,
leveraging CMOS scaling to increase clock speed and build increasingly
complex microarchitectures. As technology-driven performance gains becomes
increasingly harder to achieve from device scaling alone, innovative system
architecture must take its place.
We will discuss how technology has matured, and its impact on
microprocessor and system architecture. Increasingly, to optimize
performance for a system, a holistic approach optimizing across the entire
hardware and software stack must be considered to optimize for a range of
metrics: performance, power, power/performance, reliability and ease of
use.
We will describe how this integrated design approach helped shape the Blue
Gene/L supercomputer. Blue Gene was designed from the ground up with a
focus on power/performance efficiency and reliability. The ultimate goal
was to achieve extreme scalability and high application performance under
the power and thermal constraints of existing data centers. To ensure
optimal system operation, Blue Gene/L is an integrated solution combining
innovative system software, tools, architecture, system design, and
packaging at all levels.
Biography
Valentina Salapura is a Research Staff Member with the IBM T.J. Watson
Research Center. Dr. Salapura has been a technical leader for the Blue
Gene program since its inception. She has contributed to the architecture
and implementation of several generations of Blue Gene Systems focusing on
multiprocessor interconnect and synchronization and multithreaded
architecture design and evaluation. Before joining IBM, Dr. Salapura was
Assistant Professor with the Dept of Computer Engineering at Technische
Universitat Wien. She is the co-author of a submission which is currently
a finalist for the 2006 Gordon Bell Award, the author of over 60 papers on
processor architecture and high-performance computing, and holds many
patents in this area. She received the Ph.D. degree from Technische
Universitat Wien, Vienna, Austria, and MS degrees in Electrical Engineering
and Computer Science from University of Zagreb, Croatia.
CPSC 681 Faculty Contact:
Lawrence Rauchwerger
(rwerger [at] cs.tamu.edu)
CPSC 681 Graduate Seminar:
Using Human Perception to Automatically Generate Sketch Recognition Systems
Dr. Tracy Hammond,
Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Texas A&M University
4:10 p.m., Monday October 23, 2006
Room 124, Bright Building
Abstract
Sketching is a natural modality of human-computer interaction for a
variety of tasks (e.g., conceptual design), and sketch recognition
systems are currently being developed for many domains. However, they
require signal-processing expertise and are time consuming to build,
if they are to handle the intricacies of each domain. We want to
enable user interface designers and experts in the domain itself to be
able to build these systems, rather than sketch recognition experts.
I created and implemented a new framework in which developers can
specify a domain description indicating how domain shapes are to be
identified, displayed and edited; the system then automatically
generates a sketch recognition user interface for that domain. LADDER,
a language using a perceptual vocabulary based on Gestalt principles
and my own user studies, was developed to effectively describe how to
recognize, display, and edit domain shapes. A translator and a
customizable recognition system are combined with a domain description
to automatically create a domain specific recognition system. With
this new technology, developers will be able to write a domain
description to create a new sketch interface for a domain, greatly
reducing the time and expertise needed to create a new sketch
interface.
However, it is more natural for a user to specify a shape by drawing
it than editing a text. Human perception can be used to create
computer-generated descriptions from a single description. But, human
and computer generated descriptions may be flawed. Thus, I created a
modification of the traditional model of active learning in which the
system selectively generates its own (near-miss) examples, and uses
the teacher as a source of labels. System generated near-misses offer
a number of advantages. Human generated examples are tedious to create
and may not expose problems in the current concept. It seems most
effective for the near-miss examples to be generated by whichever
learning participant (teacher or student) knows better where the
deficiencies lie; this will allow the concepts to be more quickly and
effectively refined. When working in a closed domain such as this one,
the computer learner knows exactly which conceptual uncertainties
remain, and which hypotheses need to be tested and confirmed. The
system uses these labeled examples to automatically build a LADDER
shape description using my modification of the version spaces
algorithm, which handles interrelated constraints and has the ability
to also learn negative and disjunctive constraints.
Biography
Tracy Hammond is an assistant professor at Texas A&M University with a
focus on human perception, sketch recognition, computer human
interaction, and learning. She earned the B.A. in math, the B.S. in
applied math, the M.S. in computer science, the M.A. in anthropology
from Columbia University and the PhD in computer science from MIT.
Previously, she taught for five years at Columbia University, and she
was a telecom analyst for four years at Goldman Sachs, where she
designed, developed, implemented, and administers global computer
telephony applications.
CPSC 681 Faculty Contact:
Nancy Amato
(amato [at] cs.tamu.edu)
CPSC 681 Graduate Seminar:
A Compiler Framework to Support Speculative Multi-Core Processors for General-Purpose Applications
Dr. Pen-Chung Yew,
Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Minnesota
4:10 p.m., Wednesday November 1, 2006
Room 124, Bright Building
Abstract
As multi-core technology is currently being deployed in computer industry primarily
to limit power consumption and improve throughput, continued performance improvement
of a single application on such systems remains an important and challenging task.
Because of the shortened on-chip communication latency between cores, using
thread-level parallelism (TLP) to improve the number of instructions executed per
clock cycle, i.e. to improve ILP performance, has shown to be effective for many
general-purpose (in particular, integer-intensive) applications. However, because
of the program characteristics of these applications, effective speculative schemes
at both thread- and instruction-level are crucial.
Processors that support speculative multithreading have been proposed for sometime now.
However, efforts have only begun recently to develop compilation techniques for this
type of processors. Some of these techniques would require efficient architectural support.
The jury is still out on how much performance improvement could be achieved for
general-purpose applications on this kind of architectures.
In this talk, we focus on a compiler framework that supports thread-level parallelism with the
help of control and data speculation for general-purpose applications. This compiler framework
has been implemented on Intel Open Research Compiler (ORC) that includes a support of efficient
data dependence and alias profiling, loop selection schemes, as well as speculative compiler
optimizations and effective recovery code generation schemes to exploit thread-level parallelism
in loops and the remaining code regions.
Biography
Pen-Chung Yew is a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University
of Minnesota. He served as the Head of the department and the holder of the William-Norris Land-Grant
Chair Professor between 2000 and 2005. Before joining the University of Minnesota, he was an
Associate Director of the Center for Supercomputing Research and Development (CSRD) at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. From 1991 to 1992, he served as the Program Director
of the Microelectronic Systems Architecture Program in the Division of Microelectronic Information
Processing Systems at the National Science Foundation, Washington, D.C.
Pen-Chung Yew is an IEEE Fellow. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on
Parallel and Distributed Systems. He has served on the program committee of many major conferences.
He also served as a co-chair of the 1990 International Conference on Parallel Processing (ICPP), a
general co-chair of the 1994 International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA), the program chair
of the 1996 International Conference on Supercomputing (ICS), a program co-chair of the 2002 International
Conference on High Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA), a program co-chair of 2004 Asian-Pacific
Computer Systems Architecture Conference (ACSAC), and the general chair of 2006 International Conference
on Parallel and Distributed Systems (ICPADS).
CPSC 681 Faculty Contact:
Lawrence Rauchwerger
(rwerger [at] cs.tamu.edu)
CPSC 681 Graduate Seminar:
Research in Development: Identity Management & Federation Techniques
Dr. Heather Hinton,
IBM
4:10 p.m., Monday November 6, 2006
Room 124, Bright Building
Abstract
This talk will address the (now emerged) area of identity federation and the
impact of collaboration, social networking, and (if time permits) privacy implications
on solutions in this space. I will discuss the evolution of federated identity management
techniques, starting with generic authentication techniques through to federated
single sign-on protocols.
I hope to also discuss the role of academe, industry, standards organization,
the media, and regulations in the evolution of these techniques,
and how this has affected development of protocols and products.
Biography
Dr. Hinton is a Senior Security Architect with Tivoli Systems (part of IBM
Software Group) and is the lead architect for the Tivoli Federated Identity
Management product. Dr. Hinton is a past Chair of the IEEE Technical
Committee on Security and Privacy. She has served on numerous program
committees, including acting as the General Chair of the IEEE Symposium
on Security and Privacy. Prior to joining IBM in (late) 1999, Dr. Hinton
was an assistant professor at Ryerson Polytechnic University in Toronto,
where she also held adjunct positions with the University of Toronto
and the Nortel Institute at the University of Toronto. Dr. Hinton has
a PhD in Computer and Electrical Engineering from the University
of Toronto (1996).
CPSC 681 Faculty Contact:
Nancy Amato
(amato [at] cs.tamu.edu)
CPSC 681 Graduate Seminar:
C++0x: directions and status
Dr. Bjarne Stroustrup,
Professor and College of Engineering Endowed Chair in Computer Science, Texas A&M University
4:10 p.m., Monday November 13, 2006
Room 124, Bright Building
Abstract
A good programming language is far more than a simple collection of features.
My ideal is to provide a set of facilities that smoothly work together to
support design and programming styles of a generality beyond my imagination.
Here, I briefly outline rules of thumb (guidelines, principles) that are being
applied in the design of C++0x. Then, I present the state of the standards
process (we are aiming for C++09) and give examples of a few of the proposals
such as concepts, generalized initialization, auto, template aliases, being
considered in the ISO C++ standards committee. Since there are far more
proposals than could be presented in an hour, I'll take questions.
Biography
Bjarne Stroustrup was
born in Aarhus Denmark 1950. Cand.Scient. (Mathematics and Computer Science), 1975,
University of Aarhus
Denmark. Ph.D. (Computer Science) 1979,
Cambridge University , England.
Bjarne Stroustrup is the designer and original implementer of C++ and the author
of "The C++ Programming Language" ( 1st edition 1985, 2nd edition 1991, 3rd edition 1997,
"special" edition 2000) and The Design and Evolution of C++. His research interests
include distributed systems, design, programming techniques, software development tools, and programming languages.
Dr. Stroustrup is the College of Engineering Chair Professor in Computer Science at
Texas A&M University. He retains a link with AT&T Labs - Research as a member of the
Information and Systems Software Research Lab. He was elected member of The National
Academy of Engineering in 2004. He was given the IEEE Computer Society's 2004 Computer
Entrepreneur Award and was awarded the 2005 William Procter Prize for Scientific
Achievement from Sigma Xi (the scientific research society). He is an AT&T Bell
Laboratories Fellow and an AT&T Fellow. He is actively involved in the ANSI/ISO
standardization of C++. Recipient of the 1993 ACM Grace Murray Hopper award.
ACM fellow. IEEE Fellow. Member of the Texas Academy of Medicine, Engineering,
and Science.
His non-research interests include general history, light literature, photography,
hiking and running, travel, and music. He lives in College Station (Texas, USA)
with his wife; their daughter is a medical doctor and their son is a graduate
student studying systems biology.
CPSC 681 Faculty Contact:
Nancy Amato
(amato [at] cs.tamu.edu)
CPSC 681 Graduate Seminar:
Performance Skeletons: Predicting Performance in an Unpredictable World
Dr. Jaspal Subhlok,
Associate Professor of Computer Science, University of Houston
4:10 p.m., Monday November 20, 2006
Room 124, Bright Building
Abstract
The ability to predict application performance rapidly in an unknown or unpredictable
computation environment is of key importance in designing systems and solving large
scientific problems. Our motivating scenario is performance estimation for node
selection in a distributed and shared computation grid. In this talk we explain why
traditional methods of performance prediction are not up to these challenges and
propose Performance Skeletons as a new and promising approach.
A performance skeleton of an application is a short running program whose performance
in any scenario reflects the performance of the application it represents. That is,
the execution time of the performance skeleton must always be a fixed fraction, say 1%,
of the execution time of the application. Such a skeleton can be executed to quickly
estimate the performance in an unpredictable environment. However, for this to be true,
the performance skeleton must faithfully and accurately summarize the execution behavior
of the application. The central challenge in this research is automatic construction
of performance skeletons of applications. Our approach is based on capturing the
compute, communication and memory behavior of an executing application, summarizing
this behavior, and using it to generate a synthetic skeleton program. In particular,
the global communication pattern of an application must be captured and reproduced
correctly in the final parallel skeleton. In this talk, we describe our framework
for skeleton construction and present results that demonstrate the power of this
approach.
Biography
Jaspal Subhlok is an Associate Professor of Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering
at the University of Houston since 1999. He received a Bachelors Degree in Computer Science
and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur in 1984 and a Ph.D.in
Computer Science from Rice University, Houston in 1990. He was a member of the research faculty
at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh from 1990 to 1999.
Subhlok and his students perform experimental Computer Systems research with an emphasis on
high performance parallel and distributed systems. Current research is focusing on resource
management and performance modeling to make computation grids easy to use. Subhlok is also an
active researcher in Computer Science education. Along with his colleagues, he is developing
and experimenting with a hybrid teaching model that equally emphasizes web-based electronic
delivery and focused classroom interaction, with the goal of providing high quality coursework
to students with stringent time constraints, such as busy professionals and primary caretakers
of small children. Subhlok's research has been funded by the National Science Foundation,
Department of Energy, and Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. He can be contacted at
jaspal@uh.edu and more information is available at www.cs.uh.edu/~jaspal
CPSC 681 Faculty Contact:
Lawrence Rauchwerger
(rwerger [at] cs.tamu.edu)
CPSC 681 Graduate Seminar:
Cognitive Conflict Management in a Dynamical Agent
Dr. Ronnie Ward,
Part-Time Lecturer of Computer Science, Texas A&M University
4:10 p.m., Wednesday November 29, 2006
Room 124, Bright Building
Abstract
This talk examines an interesting embodied, situated, and dynamical
agent, which seems to have attention capabilities. It was developed
using artificial evolutionary processes during which it was required
to resolve cognitive conflict in a dual-target catching task. To
solve problems of response conflict, the agent learned to focus
response on one of the targets while ignoring the other. Conflict
was revealed in the agent at the behavioral level in terms of increased
latencies to the second target. This behavioral interference was correlated
to peak violations of its neural circuit stable-state equation. Peak
violations of this equation were also correlated to periods of
disagreement in source inputs to the agents motor effectors, and to
the Hopfield energy function. Despite observing conflict at various
levels, no evidence of an explicit conflict monitoring mechanism was
observed within the agent. However, we did find evidence of a
distributed conflict management system characterized by competitive
sources within the neural circuit. This agent demonstrates that
resolution of cognitive conflict does not require explicit conflict
monitoring in contrast to the conflict monitoring hypothesis
[Botvinick, M. M., Braver, T. S., Barch, D. M., Carter, C. S., & Cohen, J. D. (2001). Conflict monitoring and cognitive control. Psychological Review, 108(3),
624652].
Agent demonstrations are included as well as simulation analysis based
on lesion testing. We give a brief overview of our research program and
welcome feedback regarding its future direction of linking multiple
agents in an evolutionary manner to create new robust functionality.
Biography
Ronnie Ward received his BS and MS degrees in Mathematics from East Texas
State University, and earned his PhD in Computer Science at Texas A&M
University. Using his expertise in simulation and modeling he has
collaborated the past four years in private funded research with Robert Ward,
a Senior Lecturer in the Centre of Cognitive Neuroscience, School of
Psychology, University of Wales, Bangor, UK. Together they have studied
selective attention, conflict and interference using artificial life
technologies including recurrent neural networks, the genetic algorithm,
and continuous-time, environment simulators. Previously, Ronnie Ward was
a Senior Executive at Compaq Computer Corporation and before that served
as an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Texas
at Arlington. A web link to the research discussed in the talk is:
http://www.psychology.bangor.ac.uk/~rob_ward.
CPSC 681 Faculty Contact:
Nancy Amato
(amato [at] cs.tamu.edu)
CPSC 681 Graduate Seminar:
Intelligently Deciphering Unintelligible Designs: Algorithmic Algebraic
Model Checking in Systems Biology
Dr. Bud Mishra,
Professor of Computer Science, Mathematics, Human Genetics & Cell Biology
Courant Institute, NYU School of Medicine & Mt. Sinai School of Medicine
4:10 p.m., Wednesday January 17, 2007
Room 124, Bright Building
Abstract
Systems biology, as a subject, has captured the imagination of both
biologists and systems scientists, alike. But what is it? This talk provides
one researcher's somewhat idiosyncratic view of the subject, but also aims
to persuade young scientists to examine the possible evolution of this
subject in a rich historical context. In particular, one may envision a
subject built out of a consilience of many interesting concepts from systems
sciences, logic and model theory, and algebra, culminating in novel tools,
techniques and theories that can reveal deep principles in biology-seen
beyond mere observations. A particular focus in this talk is on approaches
embedded in an embryonic program, dubbed "Algorithmic Algebraic Model
Checking," and its power and limitations.
Biography
Prof. Bud Mishra is a professor of computer science and mathematics at NYU's
Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, professor of human genetics at
MSSM, and a professor of cell biology at NYU SoM. He founded the NYU/Courant
Bioinformatics Group, a multi-disciplinary group working on research at the
interface of computer science, applied mathematics and biology. He has
developed several sophisticated technologies, algorithms, and statistical
analysis tools to attack biological problems that range from deciphering the
structure of a genome to understanding chromosomal aberrations and their
relation to cancer genetics. Prof. Mishra has a degree in Physics from Utkal
University, in Electronics and Communication Engineering from IIT,
Kharagpur, and MS and PhD degrees in Computer Science from Carnegie-Mellon
University. He has industrial experience in Computer Science (Tartan
Laboratories, and ATTAP), Finance (Tudor Investment and PRF, LLC), Robotics
and Biotechnology (OpGen, and Bioarrays). His research has ranged from
compilers, algorithms and complexity, logic, and algebra to robotics,
finance, internet, and biology. He also holds adjunct professorship at Tata
Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India. From 2001-04, he was a
professor at the Watson School of Biological Sciences, Cold Spring Harbor
Lab. He is a co-inventor of Optical Mapping, Array Mapping, and Copy-Number
Variation Mapping in biotechnologies. His other technological inventions
include model checker for hardware verification, grasping and fixturing
algorithms, reactive robotics, real-time schedulers, and nanotechnology for
DNA profiling.
CPSC 681 Faculty Contact:
Valerie E. Taylor
(taylor [at] cs.tamu.edu)
CPSC 681 Graduate Seminar:
Representing C++ Directly, Completely and Efficiently
Dr. Bjarne Stroustrup,
Professor and College of Engineering Endowed Chair in Computer Science, Texas A&M University
4:10 p.m., Wednesday January 24, 2007
Room 124, Bright Building
Abstract
We describe a systematic representation of C++ for complete semantic
analysis and semantics-based transformations, called the
IPR. We describe the ideas and design principles that shaped the
IPR. In particular, we describe how general unification is key to
compact representation, fast type-safe traversal, and scalability.
The tradeoffs between the complexity of unification and the complexity
of comparison are discussed and illustrated by a few measurements.
We also discuss the design of node classes and node
class hierarchies to minimize size and access cost. The IPR is general
enough to handle real-world programs involving many translation
units, archaic programming styles, and generic programming
using likely C++0x extensions that affect the type system, such as
concepts. The difficult issue of how to represent irregular (ad hoc)
features in a systematic (non ad hoc) manner is discussed. Finally,
we give examples of IPR-based traversals and transforms of both
translation units and whole programs.
Biography
Bjarne Stroustrup was
born in Aarhus Denmark 1950. Cand.Scient. (Mathematics and Computer Science), 1975,
University of Aarhus
Denmark. Ph.D. (Computer Science) 1979,
Cambridge University , England.
Bjarne Stroustrup is the designer and original implementer of C++ and the author
of "The C++ Programming Language" ( 1st edition 1985, 2nd edition 1991, 3rd edition 1997,
"special" edition 2000) and The Design and Evolution of C++. His research interests
include distributed systems, design, programming techniques, software development tools, and programming languages.
Dr. Stroustrup is the College of Engineering Chair Professor in Computer Science at
Texas A&M University. He retains a link with AT&T Labs - Research as a member of the
Information and Systems Software Research Lab. He was elected member of The National
Academy of Engineering in 2004. He was given the IEEE Computer Society's 2004 Computer
Entrepreneur Award and was awarded the 2005 William Procter Prize for Scientific
Achievement from Sigma Xi (the scientific research society). He is an AT&T Bell
Laboratories Fellow and an AT&T Fellow. He is actively involved in the ANSI/ISO
standardization of C++. Recipient of the 1993 ACM Grace Murray Hopper award.
ACM fellow. IEEE Fellow. Member of the Texas Academy of Medicine, Engineering,
and Science.
His non-research interests include general history, light literature, photography,
hiking and running, travel, and music. He lives in College Station (Texas, USA)
with his wife; their daughter is a medical doctor and their son is a graduate
student studying systems biology.
CPSC 681 Faculty Contact:
Lawrence Rauchwerger
(rwerger [at] cs.tamu.edu)
CPSC 681 Graduate Seminar:
Interactive Physically-Based Simulation
Dr. John Keyser,
Associate Professor of Computer Science, Texas A&M University
4:10 p.m., Wednesday January 31, 2007
Room 124, Bright Building
Abstract
Visually realistic simulation of physical systems has become an important part of many computer graphics applications. For several such applications, including training simulators and games, performing calculations at interactive rates is especially important. We would like to have systems that can respond to user input in a physically-believable fashion, at a rate sufficient to allow a user to interact with the system as it develops.
This talk will present a number of techniques developed in the context of our group's ongoing work in interactive simulation for graphics applications. Among the techniques that will be discussed are
- Multi-representation object models for combining different object characteristics in a single simulation
- Particle-based simulations of more complex phenomena
- Simulation-guided deformations
- The use of lower-resolution simulation to guide higher-resolution simulation
- The use of level-of-detail simulation.
We will present applications of these methods to a variety of problems, including graphical simulations of fire, plant motion, wave behavior, and change in object composition.
Biography
John Keyser is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at Texas A&M University. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) in 2000, and B.S. degrees in Engineering Physics, Applied Mathematics, and Computer Science from Abilene Christian University in 1994. His research interests, broadly encompassing graphics, are specifically focused on issues of geometric and physically-based modeling. Current research projects focus on robust solid modeling calculations using computer algebra, geometric reconstruction and visualization of scanned neuron data, and physically-based modeling and simulation for computer graphics applications.
CPSC 681 Faculty Contact:
Lawrence Rauchwerger
(rwerger [at] cs.tamu.edu)
CPSC 681 Graduate Seminar:
Scale-up x Scale-out: A Case Study using Commercial Applications
Dr. Jose Moreira,
IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
4:10 p.m., Monday February 5, 2007
Room 124, Bright Building
Abstract
Scale-up solutions in the form of large SMPs have represented the mainstream
of commercial computing for the past several years. The major server vendors
continue to provide increasingly larger and more powerful machines. More
recently, scale-out solutions, in the form of clusters of smaller machines,
have gained increased acceptance for commercial computing. Scale-out solutions
are particularly effective in high-throughput web-centric applications.
In this talk, we discuss the behavior of two competing approaches to
parallelism, scale-up and scale-out, in emerging commercial applications.
We show that a scale-out strategy can be the key to good performance even
on a scale-up machine and we point out some existing limitations in scale-out
for commercial computing. We also discuss how scale-out solutions offer
better price/performance, although at an increase in management complexity.
Biography
Jose E. Moreira received B.S. degrees in physics and electrical engineering
in 1987 and an M.S. degree in electrical engineering in 1990, all from the
University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. He received his Ph.D. degree in electrical
engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1995.
Since joining IBM in 1995, he has been involved in several high-performance
computing projects, including the Teraflop-scale ASCI Blue-Pacific, ASCI White,
and Blue Gene/L, for which he was the System Software Architect. For the past
year, Jose has been the Chief Architect of the new Commercial Scale Out
initiative at IBM Research to develop superior scalable solutions for
commercial computing.
CPSC 681 Faculty Contact:
Lawrence Rauchwerger
(rwerger [at] cs.tamu.edu)
CPSC 681 Graduate Seminar:
A Framework for Analysis of Dynamic Social Networks
Dr. Tanya Berger-Wolf,
Assistant Professor of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Chicago
4:10 p.m., Monday February 12, 2007
Room 124, Bright Building
Abstract
Finding patterns of social interaction within a population has
wide-ranging applications including: disease modeling, cultural
and information transmission, conservation biology, and behavioral
ecology. Social interactions are often modeled with networks.
A key characteristics of social interactions is their continual
change. However, most past analyses of social networks are essentially
static in that all information about the time that social interactions
take place is discarded. I will present a new mathematical and
computational framework that enables analysis of dynamic social
networks and that explicitly makes use of information about when
social interactions occur. I will discuss several algorithms for
obtaining information about the structure of dynamic social networks
in this framework and pose many open questions.
The research is joint work with J. Saia (UNM), D.I.Rubenstein,
S. Sundaresan, and I. Fischoff (Princeton)
Biography
Dr. Tanya Berger-Wolf is an assistant professor in the Department of
Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research
is in applications of algorithmic and data mining techniques to population
biology, both human (epidemiology) and animal, from genetics to social
interactions. Dr. Berger-Wolf has received her B.Sc. in Computer Science
and Mathematics from Hebrew University (Jerusalem, Israel) in 1995 and
her Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
in 2002. She has spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the University
of New Mexico working in computational phylogenetics and a year at the
Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science
(DIMACS) doing research in computational epidemiology.
CPSC 681 Faculty Contact:
Lawrence Rauchwerger
(rwerger [at] cs.tamu.edu)
CPSC 681 Graduate Seminar:
MPEG4 AVC ILP extraction using dynamic compiler
Dr. Henri-Pierre Charles,
PRiSM, University of Versailles
4:10 p.m., Wednesday February 14, 2007
Room 124, Bright Building
Abstract
H.264, MPEG-4 Part 10, or AVC (for Advanced Video Coding), is a
digital video codec standard that is noted for achieving very high
data compression.
This talk presents work in progress in which we try to speed up the
MPEG4 compressor using all opportunities with a dynamic code generator.
The talk will present the basic algorithms used in the compressor, the
Itanium architecture and the "compilettes" we have used.
We will present preliminary results and some ideas to automate the process.
Biography
Henri-Pierre Charles is an assistant professor at the PRiSM laboratory
(Versailles University, France). His research interests are dynamic
compilation, hybrid compiler and instruction level parallelism (ILP)
extraction on multimedia applications.
CPSC 681 Faculty Contact:
Lawrence Rauchwerger
(rwerger [at] cs.tamu.edu)
CPSC 681 Graduate Seminar:
Automatic Parallelization with Hybrid Analysis
Dr. Lawrence Rauchwerger,
Professor of Computer Science, Texas A&M University
4:10 p.m., Monday February 19, 2007
Room 124, Bright Building
Abstract
Hybrid Analysis (HA) is a compiler technology
that can seamlessly integrate all static and
run-time analysis of memory references into a
single framework capable of generating sufficient
information for most memory related optimizations.
In this talk, we will present Hybrid Analysis as a framework
to perform automatic parallelization of loops.
For the cases when static analysis does not give conclusive results,
we extract sufficient conditions which are then evaluated
dynamically and can (in)validate the parallel execution of loops.
The HA framework has been fully implemented in the Polaris compiler
and has parallelized 22 benchmark codes with 99% coverage
and speedups superior to the Intel Ifort compiler.
Biography
Lawrence Rauchwerger is a Professor Computer Science and of Computer
Engineering in the Department of Computer Science, Texas A&M
University. He is also the co-Director of the Parasol Laboratory.
He received an Engineer degree from the Polytechnic
Institute Bucharest, a M.S. in Electrical Engineering from
Stanford University and a Ph.D. in Computer Science
from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Since 1996 he has been on the faculty of the Department of Computer
Science at Texas A&M where he co-founded the Parasol Lab.
He has held Visiting Faculty positions at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Bell Labs,
IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, and INRIA FUTURS, Paris.
Rauchwerger's research has targeted the area of high performance
compilers, thread level speculation in both software and hardware
implementation,
libraries for parallel and distributed computing, and
adaptive optimizations.
His current focus is STAPL, a parallel superset of the ISO C++ STL
library which is driven by his goal to improve the productivity of
parallel software development. His approach to parallel code
development and optimization (STAPL and SmartApps) has influenced
industrial products at major corporations.
CPSC 681 Faculty Contact:
Lawrence Rauchwerger
(rwerger [at] cs.tamu.edu)
CPSC 681 Graduate Seminar:
A Language and Environment for Composing Useful Use Cases
Dr. Clay Williams,
IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
4:10 p.m., Monday March 5, 2007
Room 124, Bright Building
Abstract
Use cases are a scenario-based technique for specifying requirements.
They are popular and widely used within industry. However, their
usefulness is constrained in unnecessary ways by a variety of factors.
In this talk, I will present an overview of use cases and discuss the
factors which limit their usefulness. I will then present a new
language for use case specification that overcomes many of the
limitations, as well as an appropriate environment to support users
of the language. The talk will include insights based on actual
usage of the language within IBM.
Biography
Clay Williams is Manager of the Software Quality and Testing Research Group
at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. His interests include software
engineering, software specification, software testing, governance of
development, and applications to medicine. He has a PhD from Texas A&M
University, and is a member of the ACM and IEEE.
CPSC 681 Faculty Contact:
Lawrence Rauchwerger
(rwerger [at] cs.tamu.edu)
CPSC 681 Graduate Seminar:
Emotional Intelligence Technology and the Death of Clippy
Dr. Rosalind W. Picard,
Director, Affective Computing Research Group; Co-Director, Things That Think Consortium, M.I.T. Media Laboratory
4:10 p.m., Monday, March 19, 2007
Room 124, Bright Building
Abstract
Skills of emotional intelligence include the ability to recognize and respond appropriately to another person's emotion, and the ability to know when (not) to display emotion. This talk will demonstrate new advances at M.I.T. giving several of these intelligence skills to computers. For example, I will attempt to demonstrate (live) our newest system designed to recognize complex cognitive-affective states in real time from a person's head and facial movements. This technology can discern when you are concentrating or interested, agreeing or disagreeing, confused or thinking. Thus, a computer can be better equipped to discern when is a good time to interrupt, to show you new things, or to change its behavior. A wearable version of this system is currently being explored for helping people with autism (who have trouble reading these cues). I also will show several other examples enabling emotional intelligence to be used for improving human experience with technology.
Biography
Rosalind W. Picard is founder and director of the Affective Computing Research Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Laboratory and co-director of the Things That Think Consortium, the largest industrial sponsorship organization at the lab. She holds a Bachelors in Electrical Engineering with highest honors from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and Masters and Doctorate degrees, both in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She has been a member of the faculty at the MIT Media Laboratory since 1991, with tenure since 1998. Prior to completing her doctorate at MIT, she was a Member of the Technical Staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories where she designed VLSI chips for digital signal processing and developed new methods of image compression and analysis. She was honored as a Fellow of the IEEE in 2005.
The author of over a hundred peer-reviewed scientific articles in multidimensional signal modeling, computer vision, pattern recognition, machine learning, and human-computer interaction, Picard is known internationally for pioneering research in affective computing and, prior to that, for pioneering research in content-based image and video retrieval. She is recipient (with Tom Minka) of a best paper prize for work on machine learning with multiple models (1998) and is recipient (with Barry Kort and Rob Reilly) of a "best theory paper" prize for their work on affect in human learning (2001). Her award-winning book, Affective Computing, (MIT Press, 1997) lays the groundwork for giving machines the skills of emotional intelligence. She and her students have designed and developed a variety of new sensors, algorithms, and systems for sensing, recognizing, and responding respectfully to human affective information, with applications in human and machine learning, health, and human-computer interaction.
CPSC 681 Faculty Contact:
Lawrence Rauchwerger
(rwerger [at] cs.tamu.edu)
CPSC 681 Graduate Seminar:
Security for Wireless Sensor Networks
Dr. Peng Ning,
NC State University
4:10 p.m., Wednesday March 21, 2007
Room 124, Bright Building
Abstract
Recent technological advances have made it possible to develop
distributed sensor networks consisting of a large number of low-cost,
low-power, and multi-functional sensor nodes that communicate in short
distances through wireless links. Such sensor networks are ideal
candidates for a wide range of applications such as monitoring of
critical infrastructures and military operations. In hostile
environments, the security and resiliency of such sensor networks
becomes a critical issue. However, it is very challenging to build
secure and resilient sensor networks due to a few unique features of
sensor networks, such as the resource constraints on sensor nodes and
exposure to node captures and physical attacks. In this talk, I will
give a brief overview of our recent research on sensor network
security, and present two recent results in more detail: (1) Message
specific puzzle, a weak authentication mechanism aimed at mitigating
Denial of Service (DoS) attacks against broadcast authentication, and
(2) TinySeRSync, a secure and resilient time synchronization subsystem
for wireless sensor networks.
Biography
Peng Ning is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at NC State
University. He was an Assistant Professor at NC State University from
August 2001 to July 2006. He joined NC State University in August 2001
after he graduated from George Mason University with a PhD degree in
Information Technology. Peng Ning received a BS degree in Information
Science and an ME degree in Communication and Electronic System in
1994 and 1997, respectively, both from University of Science and
Technology of China. Peng Ning's research interests are mainly in
computer and network security. He is a recipient of an NSF CAREER
award.
His research has been supported by the National Science
Foundation (NSF), the Army Research Office (ARO), the Advanced
Research and Development Activity (ARDA), SRI International, and the
NCSU/Duke Center for Advanced Computing and Communication (CACC). He
is on the editorial boards of Journal of Computer Security, Ad-Hoc
Networks, Ad-Hoc & Sensor Networks: an International Journal, and IEEE
Proceedings Information Security. Peng Ning served as the Program
Chairs of ACM SASN '05 and ICICS '06, and the General Chair of ACM CCS
'07. He is a founding Steering Committee member of ACM WiSec, which is
merged from ACM WiSe, ACM SASN, and ESAS workshops. He has served on
the organizing committees or program committees for over thirty
technical conferences or workshops related to computer and network
security. Peng Ning is a member of the ACM, the ACM SIGSAC, the IEEE,
and the IEEE Computer Society.
CPSC 681 Faculty Contact:
Lawrence Rauchwerger
(rwerger [at] cs.tamu.edu)
CPSC 681 Graduate Seminar:
Quality of Service in Datacenter-on-a-Chip Architectures
Dr. Ravi Iyer,
Intel
4:10 p.m., Wednesday March 28, 2007
Room 124, Bright Building
Abstract
As we enter the era of chip multiprocessor platforms with several
cores on the die, the diversity of the simultaneous workloads running
on them is expected to increase. The rapid deployment of virtualization
as a means to consolidate workloads on to a single platform is a
prime example of this trend. In this seminar, I will provide an overview
of datacenter-on-a-chip architectures where multiple workloads of a
datacenter are consolidated on a CMP platform. I will outline the key
challenges and opportunities for datacenter-on-a-chip architectures from
a performance, scalability and adaptability point of view.
In such architectures, the quality of service (QoS) that each individual
workload gets from the platform can widely vary depending on the behavior
of the other simultaneously running workloads. Traditionally, execution
environments (OS/VMM) have managed number of assigned cores and time on the
core through scheduling services. However, with multiple cores available,
the focus will need to shift to the rest of the shared CMP resources
(cache, memory, power, I/O, etc). Today, there is no hardware or
software support in todays platforms to control allocation of platform
resources such as cache (space) and memory (bandwidth) to individual
workloads. As a result, there is no notion of quality of service that
the platform can provide. To address this problem, I will compare and
contrast different approaches to enabling QoS in datacenter-on-a-chip
architectures. I will then describe a potential QoS-aware CMP architecture
and execution environment that enables priority-based resource allocation
and allows the creation of virtual platform architectures. Through
detailed measurements and simulation-based evaluation, I will show that
that it is important to support QoS in datacenter-on-a-chip architectures
and thereby provide better platform performance management, performance
differentiation, service level agreement guarantees and performance isolation.
Biography
Ravi Iyer is a Principal Engineer with the Systems Technology Lab in
Intel's Corporate Technology Group. His current research focus is on
large-scale CMP architectures and technologies. Before joining STL, he
held positions in the Communications Technology Lab (working on IO
acceleration research) and in the Enterprise Products Group (working on
server architecture and performance). He received his Ph.D. in Computer
Science from Texas A&M University. He has filed ~20 patents and published
60+ papers in the areas of computer architecture, server design, network
protocols/acceleration, workload characterization and performance evaluation.
He has held program committee member positions in various conferences and
workshops. Most recently, he has been a program committee member for
HPCA 2006, ISPASS 2007 and IISWC 2007, co-chair for the Commercial Workloads
workshop (CAECW) and the publications chair for IISWC 2006. He is also an
Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems
(IEEE TPDS) and is currently guest co-editor for a special issue on CMP
architectures.
CPSC 681 Faculty Contact:
Lawrence Rauchwerger
(rwerger [at] cs.tamu.edu)
CPSC 681 Graduate Seminar:
Reliability Challenges in Microprocessor Design
Dr. Cristian Constantinescu, AMD
4:10 p.m., Monday April 2, 2007
Room 124, Bright Building
Abstract
The relentless scaling of semiconductor devices has led to tremendous performance gains. However, lower transistor and interconnect dimensions, lower supply voltages, and higher operating frequencies have been posing significant reliability challenges. Particle induced soft errors have become more frequent, in particular in the case of complex integrated circuits. The rates of occurrence of transient and intermittent faults have been trending upward as well. This presentation will address the main challenges in VLSI circuit reliability. Solutions for increasing microprocessor reliability, from simultaneous multithreading to complex hardware implemented redundancy schemes will be discussed.
Biography
Cristian Constantinescu is a senior member of the technical staff with Advanced Micro Devices. His research interests include fault-tolerant computing, validation of highly dependable systems, and dependability modeling. Before joining AMD he was a reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) architect with Intel Corp. and a research associate with University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Duke University, Durham, NC. Cristian received a PhD degree in electrical and computer engineering from Polytechnic University of Bucharest, Romania, and has published over 50 technical papers. He is a senior member of IEEE.
CPSC 681 Faculty Contact:
Lawrence Rauchwerger
(rwerger [at] cs.tamu.edu)
CPSC 681 Graduate Seminar:
Specialized Execution Environments: A Path to Innovation in Systems Software
Dr. Dilma da Silva, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center
4:10 p.m., Monday April 9, 2007
Room 124, Bright Building
Abstract
If the operating system could be specialized for every application, many applications would run faster. However, traditional means of
transforming legacy systems into specialized systems are difficult to adopt because they require replacing the entire operating system.
This talk discusses how hypervisors can be leveraged to transform legacy software systems into high performance execution environments.
We present our results on building Libra, a library operating system specialized for running particular classes of workloads on the J9 JVM.
Biography
Dilma da Silva is a researcher at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in New York. She manages the Advanced Operating Systems group.
She received her Ph.D in Computer Science from Georgia Tech in 1997. Prior to joining IBM, she was an Assistant Professor at University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Her research in operating systems addresses the need for scalable and customizable system software. She also has worked in parallel computing, mobile computing, and software engineering.
CPSC 681 Faculty Contact:
Lawrence Rauchwerger
(rwerger [at] cs.tamu.edu)
CPSC 681 Graduate Seminar:
Optimistic Data-parallel Abstractions for Irregular Programs
Dr. Keshav K. Pingali, University of Texas at Austin
4:10 p.m., Wednesday April 18, 2007
Room 124, Bright Building
Abstract
The advent of multicore processors has shifted the burden of
improving program execution speed from chip manufacturers to software
developers. Experience has shown however that parallel
programming is very difficult; therefore, there is an urgent need for new
ideas in programming languages, compilers, and runtime systems.
In this talk, we describe the Galois system, an
object-based system that uses optimistic parallelization to speed
up complex "irregular" applications (i.e., applications that
manipulate large, pointer-based data structures such as graphs).
Two such real-world applications are described in this paper: a
Delaunay mesh refinement algorithm and a graphics application that
performs agglomerative clustering. Between them, these two
applications manipulate several of the more important irregular
data structures including lists, graphs, priority queues and trees.
There are three main aspects to the Galois system: (1) a small
number of syntactic constructs for packaging optimistic
parallelism as iteration over ordered and unordered sets, (2)
assertions about methods in class libraries, and (3) a runtime
scheme for detecting and recovering from potentially unsafe
accesses to shared memory made by an optimistic computation.
We show that Delaunay mesh generation and agglomerative clustering
can be parallelized in a straight-forward way using the Galois approach,
and we present experimental results on two different multiprocessors to
show that this approach is practical.
Biography
Keshav Pingali is a professor in the Computer Science department
at the University of Texas, Austin, where he holds the
W.A."Tex" Moncrief Chair of Grid and Distributed Computing.
He received the B.Tech. degree in Electrical Engineering from
IIT, Kanpur, India in 1978, and the S.M. E.E., and Sc.D. degrees
from MIT in 1986. He was on the faculty of the Department of
Computer Science at Cornell University from 1986 to 2006.
Pingali's research has focused on programming
languages and compiler technology for program understanding, restructuring,
and optimization. His group is known for its contributions
to memory-hierarchy optimization; some of these have been patented.
Algorithms and tools developed by his projects are used in many
commercial products such as Intel's IA-64 compiler, SGI's MIPSPro
compiler, and HP's PA-RISC compiler. In his current research, he is
investigating optimistic parallelization techniques for multicore
processors, and language-based fault tolerance. Among other awards,
Pingali has won the President's Gold Medal at I.I.T. Kanpur (1978),
IBM Faculty Development Award (1986-88), NSF Presidential
Young Investigator Award (1989-94), Ip-Lee Teaching Award of the
College of Engineering at Cornell (1997), and the Russell
teaching award of the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell (1998).
In 2000, he was a visiting professor at I.I.T., Kanpur where
he held the Rama Rao Chaired Professorship.
CPSC 681 Faculty Contact:
Lawrence Rauchwerger
(rwerger [at] cs.tamu.edu)
