21 Sept 2009: Richard Ladner

28 Sept 2009: Raj Rajkumar

12 Oct 2009: John Q. Walker

2 Nov 2009: Clifford Stein

16 Nov 2009: Barbara Liskov

25 Jan 2010: Mary Lou Soffa

22 Feb 2010: Hari Balakrishnan

12 Apr 2010: Andrew Ng

19 Apr 2010: Fred Schneider

To Main Distinguished Lecturer Page

21 SEPTEMBER 2009
Speaker: Richard Ladner, Computer Science & Engineering, University of Washington
Title: New Directions in Accessible Computing
Host School: NCSU
NCSU Host: Matt Stallmann (matt_stallman at ncsu.edu)
Duke Host:
UNC Host: Gary Bishop (gb at cs.unc.edu)

Abstract
Accessible computing refers to software and hardware solutions that make computers and other aspects of life more accessible to persons with disabilities.  Many technologies specifically designed for persons with disabilities become mainstream technologies.  Examples include personal texting that was designed for deaf people to communicate over phone lines, optical character recognition that was designed so that blind people could read books, and speech recognition that was designed for people, who are unable to use a keyboard, to speak to a computer instead.  In this talk, new directions in accessible computing will be described.  The new directions assume that persons with disabilities can create or configure their own accessibility solutions.  This non-paternalistic approach respects the ability of persons with disabilities to determine their own destinies.  Accessibility research, done at the University of Washington and elsewhere, that follows this model will be described.  One example is the ASL-STEM Forum, a social networking site where deaf students and scientists can share signs for scientific terms and discuss them. Another example is the MobileAccessibility project where blind people can download applications to their cell phones that provide an accessibility feature such as using the camera to capture a barcode and give the name of the product. 

Biography
Richard E. Ladner, Boeing Professor in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington, received a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1971, at which time he joined the faculty of the University of Washington. In addition to his primary appointment, he is an Adjunct Professor in the Departments of Electrical Engineering and Linguistics. His current research interests include accessible computing, especially technology for deaf, blind, and deaf-blind people. His prior research career was in theoretical computer science. He is also currently leading education and outreach projects for students with disabilities. He was a Guggenheim Fellow and a Fulbright Scholar. He is an ACM Fellow and IEEE Fellow. He is a recipient of the 2004 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM). He is the recipient of the 2008 Computing Research Association's A. Nico Habermann Award. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of Gallaudet University in Washington D.C., the only liberal arts university serving deaf people in the world. For more details, please see http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/ladner/bio.html

28 SEPTEMBER 2009
Speaker: Raj Rajkumar, Dept. Electrical and Computer Engineering, CMU
Title: Cyber-Physical Systems: A Natural Convergence of Engineering and Computer Science
Host School: UNC
UNC Host: Kevin Jeffay (jeffay at cs.unc.edu)
Duke Host: Jeff Chase (chase at cs.duke.edu)
NCSU Host: Frank Mueller (mueller at cs.ncsu.edu)

Abstract
Cyber-physical systems (CPS) represent a tight integration of computing and communications with the physics and real-time dynamics of engineered systems.  They will revolutionize many sectors including transportation, critical infrastructures, manufacturing, healthcare and medical devices, aerospace and defense.   In this talk, we will present some grand challenges that can be met by advances in cyber-physical systems.   This will be followed by a detailed description of 3 areas of CPS research projects that the speaker is working on: (1) Planetary-scale sensor-actuator networks with applications to the smart grid, (2) Smart Surveillance systems, and (3) Autonomous Driving Systems.   Current status of each project will be complemented by a description of research challenges that need to be addressed.   These systems will hopefully offer insights into why the integration of engineering and computer science into a master discipline that can enrich both domains while yielding significant, perhaps even revolutionary, practical benefits.

Biography
Dr. Raj Rajkumar is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.  He also serves as a Co-Director for the General Motors-Carnegie Mellon Vehicular Information Technology Collaborative Research Lab, Co-Director of the General Motors-Carnegie Mellon Autonomous Driving Collaborative Research Lab and as a Director of the Real-Time and Multimedia Systems Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University.  He has served as General Chair and/or Program Chair of multiple conferences including the IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium, the IEEE Real-Time Technologies and Applications Symposium, the ACM/SPIE Symposium on Multimedia Computing and Networks, International Symposium on International Symposium on Vehicular Computing Systems and the International Conference on Networked Sensing Systems. He has chaired or co-chaired 5 NSF-sponsored workshops targeting a national research initiative on cyber-physical systems.  He is also currently serving as the Chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Real-Time Systems. He obtained his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Carnegie Mellon University in 1986 and 1989 respectively.   He has given several keynote talks and has 4 Best Paper Awards.  Dr. Rajkumar's research interests include all aspects of embedded real-time systems.  Some of his current research projects include FireFly wireless networks, resource kernels for guaranteed enforcement of throughput, timeliness and power-consumption in real-time operating systems, vehicular networks, and methodologies for model-based design and development.

12 OCTOBER 2009
Speaker: John Q. Walker, Zenph Studios
Title: Building the Music equivalent of Computer Graphics
Host School: UNC
UNC Host: Steve Weiss (weiss at cs.unc.edu)
Duke Host:
NCSU Host:

Abstract
Representing music performances with data and algorithms has a parallel in representing the visual world with computer graphics. This new “phono-realism” is introduced, using the familiar terminology of “photo-realism.” R&D here in the Research Triangle accelerated the rise of computer graphics 25 years ago – with its myriad of uses and the creation of whole industries. A similar prospect awaits the broad application of the symbolic representation of music. This talk compares these two fields, gives insight into the underlying science, and presents examples that point the way forward.

Biography
Dr. John Q. Walker is the president and founder of Zenph Studios, a software company in RTP building advanced software to understand – and recreate – how musicians actually play. Zenph’s first offerings have received GRAMMY nominations as well as numerous “Best of the Year” recognitions.

He was a co-founder of Ganymede Software in RTP, which was acquired by NetIQ in 2000. In his five years as vice president of product development, Ganymede products consistently won “Best Product” and “Product of the Year” awards. For example, only two companies won Network World magazine’s “World Class Award” twice in 1999: Dell Computers and Ganymede Software. Dr. Walker co-authored a pioneering book for Cisco Press on Voice-over-IP. He also co-authored a book on portable network programming for McGraw-Hill. He has written dozens of technical articles, and is frequently an invited speaker on practical networking, software engineering, and music technology topics. He holds four patents.

Dr. Walker has extensive experience in the development and management of emerging technologies. At IBM, he managed teams developing high-speed networking software.  He was influential in the creation of the IEEE 802 LAN and Wi-Fi standards. Dr. Walker holds Bachelor degrees in piano and mathematics, and a Masters degree in computer science from Southern Illinois University.  He received his Ph.D. in computer science from UNC-Chapel Hill, with a focus on natural behavior and software engineering. He was named a Distinguished Graduate Alumnus at the UNC Graduate School’s centennial.

2 NOVEMBER 2009
Speaker: Clifford Stein, Dept. of IE and OR, Columbia
Title: Optimization Problems in Internet Advertising
Host School: UNC
UNC Host: Sanjoy Baruah (baruah at cs.unc.edu)
Duke Host: Kamesh Munagala (kamesh at gmail.com)
NCSU Host: Steffen Heber (sheber at ncsu.edu)

Abstract
The use of the internet has led to the creation of fundamentally new forms of advertising.  In turn, this advertising provides the financial support for many on-line companies and technological breakthroughs.

The development of online advertising has raised many new questions in economics, mathematics, computer science and engineering, particularly around the design of auctions and markets, and in the design of algorithms to efficiently manage them. In this talk, we will survey a few problems in internet advertising and discuss some algorithmic and game-theoretic issues that arise. We will discuss problems both in sponsored search and in display advertising. We will describe the applications, the algorithmic problems that arise, and the solutions obtained. In particular, we will discuss the problem of how an advertiser should allocate its budget among various keywords in a sponsored search auction, and how a publisher should decide which display ads to accept.

Biography
Clifford Stein is Professor and Chair of the Industrial Engineering and Operations Research Department at Columbia University. He also holds an appointment as Professor of Computer Science at Columbia.  He received his B.S.E. from Princeton University in 1987 and his Ph.D. degree from MIT in 1992.  His research interests include the design and analysis of algorithms, combinatorial optimization, operations research, network algorithms, scheduling, algorithm engineering and internet algorithms.  He has published over 60 scientific papers and occupied a variety of editorial positions
including the journals ACM Transactions on Algorithms, Mathematical Programming, Journal of Algorithms, SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics and Operations Research Letters. He has been the recipient of an NSF Career Award, an Alfred Sloan Research Fellowship and the Karen Wetterhahn Award for Distinguished Creative or Scholarly
Achievement. He is also the co-author of the two textbook, Introduction to Algorithms, with T. Cormen, C. Leiserson and R. Rivest and Discrete Math for Computer Science, with Ken Bogart and Scot Drysdale.

16 NOVEMBER 2009
Speaker:Barbara Liskov, Dept .of EE and CS, MIT
Title: The Power of Abstraction
Host School: Duke
Duke Host: Xiaowei Yang (xwy at cs.duke.edu)
UNC Host: Jasleen Kaur (jasleen)
NCSU Host:

Abstract
Abstraction is at the center of much work in Computer Science.  It encompasses finding the right interface for a system as well as finding an effective design for a system implementation.  Furthermore, abstraction is the basis for program construction, allowing programs to be built in a modular fashion.  This talk will discuss how the abstraction mechanisms we use today came to be, how they are supported in programming languages, and some possible areas for future research.

Biography
http://www.pmg.csail.mit.edu/~liskov/

25 JANUARY 2010
Speaker: Mary Lou Soffa, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Virginia
Title: Parametric Scalable Path-Sensitive Analysis
Host School: NCSU
NCSU Host: Tao Xie (xie at csc.ncsu.edu)
Duke Host:
UNC Host:

Abstract
TBD

Biography
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~soffa/

22 FEBRUARY 2010
Speaker: Hari Balakrishnan, MIT
Title: TBD
Host School: Duke
Duke Host:
UNC Host:
NCSU Host:

Abstract
TBD

Biography
http://nms.csail.mit.edu/~hari/short-bio.html

12 APRIL 2010
Speaker: Andrew Ng, Stanford
Title: STAIR: The STanford Artificial Intelligence Robot project
Host School: Duke
Duke Host: Ronald Parr (parr at cs.duke.edu)
UNC Host:
NCSU Host:

Abstract
TBD

Biography
http://ai.stanford.edu/~ang/

19 APRIL 2010
Speaker:Fred Schneider, Dept. of Computer Science, Cornell
Title: Principles and Principals for Authorization in Nexus
Host School: NCSU
NCSU Host: Annie Anton (aianton at ncsu.edu)
Duke Host:
UNC Host:

Abstract
TBD

Biography
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/fbs/