2004-2005 AbstractsComputer Science Distinguished Lecturer Series: Software and Systems Research at IBMAlfred Z. Spector, IBM Research
1:30 p.m., Tuesday, September 14, 2004 AbstractIBM Research, in its 8 worldwide locations, engages in a broad agenda comprising projects from those made up of one or a few contributors to much larger efforts that are cross-organization in scale. In this presentation, I'll broadly describe major components of our research agenda and then present a few of our most exciting projects in greater detail. Among other things, I'll discuss some of our work in autonomic computing, the Blue Gene Project that is developing a 128,000 CPU Linux system, and our work in unstructured information management that is creating a unifying Unstructured Information Management Architecture. I'll conclude with a discussion of broader industrial research and likely opportunities for graduating students and collaborating faculty. BiographyAlfred Z. Spector is vice president of Services and Software in IBM Research, responsible for IBM's worldwide services and software research. Previously, Dr. Spector was the general manager of Marketing and Strategy for IBM's AIM business, responsible for a number of IBM software product families including CICS, WebSphere, and MQSeries, and the general manager of IBM's Transaction Systems software business. Dr. Spector was also founder and CEO of Transarc Corporation, a pioneer in distributed transaction processing and wide area file systems, and an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Spector is on the boards of the Security Industry Middleware Council and the Computing Research Association, and chairman of the NSF CISE Advisory Board. Faculty Contact: Valerie Taylor (taylor@cs.tamu.edu) Computer Science Distinguished Lecturer Series: Comparative Genomics Algorithms: From Genomics to Protein Folding and to SystemsSorin Istrail, Celera Genomics
4:10 p.m., Wednesday, January 19, 2005 AbstractWith the recent availability of tools for genome assembly, assembly comparison, and automatic annotation of genomes, genomics entered its post-genome sequence phase, where understanding the control systems of the cell is a basic theme. Building on its success in bio-molecular sequence analysis, comparative genomics is continually expanding its scope and methods towards the components of the cell.In this talk, I will present an overview of our work on geometries of protein folds, patterns of inheritance of complex disease, and logic functions of the genomic cis-regulatory code. BiographySorin Istrail has a Ph.D. in computer science from University of Bucharest, Romania. After his immigration to the US, he was a visiting scientist at MIT and also taught at Wesleyan University. He joined Sandia National Labs in 1992 where he held several positions, including Principal Senior Member of the Technical Staff. From 1992 to 2000, he led the Sandia National Labs research in genomics and structural proteomics within the Computational Biology Project, part of the DOE Applied Mathematics Program — program started at DOE by John von Neumann. In April 2000, he joined Celera Genomics. Currently he is Senior Director and Head of the Informatics Research Division at Celera/Applied Biosystems. In 2003 he also became Applied Biosystems Science Fellow.Istrail's work has been focused on combinatorial algorithms, computational complexity, programming languages, and on applications of computer science to biology, physics and chemistry. In 2000, he resolved a longstanding open problem in statistical mechanics, the Three-Dimensional Ising Model Problem; the negative solution shows the "impossibility" (computational intractability) of deriving closed forms explicit partition functions for every three-dimensional model. Recent work of Istrail's research group at Celera/Applied Biosystems has been devoted to algorithmic design and software development for the following areas: genetics of SNPs and haplotypes, high-throughput EST mapping, genomic vaccine design and comparative peptidomics, mass spec based proteomics and biomarkers, compu/combichem and protein structure, BLAST-replacement tools, genomic regulatory systems, literature datamining and machine learning, DNA array design and gene expression analysis, and game theory and pharma economic behavior. He is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Computational Biology, Co-Founder of the RECOMB Conference Series, Co-Editor of the MIT Press Computational Molecular Biology Book Series, and Co-Editor of the Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics Book Series. Faculty Contact: Nancy Amato (amato@cs.tamu.edu) Computer Science Distinguished Lecturer Series: From Packing Planes in 4-Space to Quantum Error-Correcting CodesNeil J.A. Sloane, AT&T Labs-Research
4:10 p.m., Wednesday, February 9, 2005 AbstractI will describe the route that took us from experimental work on a new packing problem (looking for "codes" in Grassmann manifolds - e.g., how should you place 18 planes through the origin in Euclidean 4-space so that they are as far apart as possible?) to the construction of codes for quantum computers.This work began as a project with Ron Hardin and John Conway, but many others (Peter Shor, Rob Calderbank, Eric Rains, Gabriele Nebe, ...) have since been involved. There are also applications to medicine, to visualizing multi-dimensional data, and to wireless communications. BiographyNeil J. A. Sloane grew up in Australia and received his masters and doctorate degrees from Cornell University. He joined AT&T Bell Laboratories in 1969 and is now at AT&T Labs-Research in New Jersey. Dr. Sloane has co-authored more than 10 books, including books on such diverse subjects as integer sequences and rock climbing. His On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences receives thousands of visits each day. Additionally, the prolific Dr. Sloane has authored 279 publications, which include papers on coding theory, spherical codes and designs, lattices and quadratic forms, packings in Grassmanian spaces, combinatorics, cryptography, and integer sequences. Among Dr. Sloane's prestigious awards are his election to the National Academy of Engineering in 1998, selection as the 1998 Shannon Lecturer of IEEE Information Theory Society (the Information Theory Society's highest award), and his winning of the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal for 2005. Dr. Sloane was an invited speaker to the 1998 International Congress of Mathematicians in Berlin and to the 2000 Deutsche Mathematische Vereinigung in Dresden. He is an AT&T Fellow. Faculty Contact: Andreas Klappenecker (klappi@cs.tamu.edu) Computer Science Distinguished Lecturer Series:
Compressing Surfaces, Volumes, and AnimationsJarek Rossignac, Georgia Institute of Technology
4:10 p.m., Wednesday, February 16, 2005 AbstractThe first part of the lecture presents new direct manipulation techniques (Twister, Bender) for the design of 3D shapes and animations. They were developed under the NSF Digital Clay project and permit to grab, warp, bend, and twist a 3D shape by moving both hands through space. The second part focuses on the representation (Corner Table) and compression (Edgebreaker, Delphi) of such 3D shapes and of their animations (Dynapack). It also discusses retiling approaches (PRM, SwingWrapper), which enhance compression, and post-processing approaches (EdgeSharpener, Sharpen&Bend), which automatically restore smooth surfaces and their sharp intersections from. Finally, it looks at the recent advances in the compression of structured and unstructured volumetric data sets and of their animations (Chapter, Lorenzo).BiographyJarek Rossignac is a Full Professor in the College of Computing and the Chair of the IRIS (Interaction with Robots, Images, and Shapes) cluster at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. He is also an active member and former Director of the GVU (Graphic, Visualization, and Usability) Center. His current research is focused on the interactive design, compression, progressive transmission, and visual inspection of multi-resolution representations of complex 3D and 4D models. He is also the PI of the NSF-CARGO project on the "Multi-scale Topological Analysis of Deforming Shapes" and a co-PI on the large NSF-ITR "Digital Clay" project focused on developing a computer-controlled surface that can be used to make real three-dimensional objects whose shape may be altered both by human hands and by software applications.In 1985, he received a PhD in E.E. from the University of Rochester, NY, for his work in Solid Modeling. Until 1996, he was Senior Manager and Visualization Strategist at IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center, where he oversaw research activities in 3D graphics, CAD, and VR and where he managed the development of two IBM Visualization products. He has authored 18 patents and over 100 papers, for which he received 5 Corporate Awards, 8 Best Paper Awards, and the Senior Faculty Research Award from the College of Computing. He chaired 20 conferences, program committees, or award juries and served on the Editorial Boards of 7 professional journals and on over 50 Technical Program committees. He was elected Fellow of the Eurographics Association in 2002 and is the Chair of the Solid Modeling Association and of the 2005 ACM Symposium on Solid and Physical Modeling. Faculty Contact: John Keyser (keyser@cs.tamu.edu) Computer Science Distinguished Lecturer Series: Corporate Technology & Intellectual Property at IBMSharon L. Nunes, IBM
2:00 p.m., Friday, February 18, 2005 AbstractDr. Nunes will present IBM's view of global technology directions, including trends in semiconductor technology, pervasive connectivity, legislation & data. In addition, Dr. Nunes will address the role of innovation and how it is changing the nature of research. BiographySharon Nunes is currently Vice President of Technology in IBM's Corporate Technology & Intellectual Property Group. In this role she works with IBM's Chairman and the senior executive team to set the technical agenda for the company. In addition, she is responsible for several programs focused on leadership development of IBM's technical community. Prior to this assignment, Sharon was the Vice President of Emerging Business at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York where she was responsible for identifying and growing new technologies into future businesses for IBM. Previously, she was Director of Life Sciences Solutions in IBM, bringing new technology solutions to the pharmaceutical and biotech markets. She has held many management positions in IBM, ranging from Research to Development and Manufacturing, as well as positions in hardware development, software development and networking. Sharon was responsible for the launch of IBM's Computational Biology Center in 1997, and was a key driver in highlighting IBM's business opportunities in the Life Sciences market. Sharon received her PhD in Materials Science in 1983 from the University of Connecticut. She is a member of the Advisory Council of the Whitaker Biomedical Engineering Institute at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland; a member of the Look College Engineering Advisory Council at Texas A&M University; and a Board Member for the Center for Security Technologies at Washington University in St. Louis. She was a National Academy of Engineering Frontiers of Engineering fellow in 2000 and has been a member of the National Academy of Engineering Engineer of 2020 advisory board. Sharon is an advocate for women in technology, and is co-chair of IBM's international conference for Women in Technology. She is a member of the executive advisory council of SWE (Society of Women Engineers) and is a member of the Anita Borg Institute's Senior Women's Leadership Group. Faculty Contact: Valerie Taylor (taylor@cs.tamu.edu) Computer Science Distinguished Lecturer Series: Architectures of Distributed Collaborative ApplicationsPrasun Dewan, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
4:10 p.m., Monday, March 28, 2005 AbstractThis talk will address classification, evaluation and implementation of architectures of existing collaboration systems such as NetMeeting, LiveMeeting, Webex, Groove, and VNC. The classification assumes a layered application model and separates architectures based on the highest replicated layer and the lowest shared layer. The evaluation consists of equations describing response and task completion times, and measurements of these times in experiments involving desktop and mobile computers. It shows that the centralized architecture is favored when the network delays are small, the computational complexity of the collaborative application is high, and differences in the processing powers of the collaborating sites are high. It also shows that the architecture that minimizes response times may not also minimize the task completion time. These results indicate that pervasive collaboration requires a single collaboration infrastructure that supports the entire architecture space and allows dynamic transitions among points in this space. The talk will present a log-based technique for implementing such an infrastructure.BiographyPrasun Dewan is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research interests are in frameworks for implementing single-user and multi-user applications. Dr. Dewan is an associate editor of ACM Transactions on Information Systems and ACM Transactions on Computer Human Interaction, and a member of the IFIP WG2.7 group on Engineering for Human Computer Interaction.Faculty Contact: Du Li (lidu@cs.tamu.edu) |
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