Triangle Computer Science
Distinguished Lecturer Series
Speaker Biographies and Talk Abstracts 31
OCTOBER 2005
Speaker: Biswanath
Mukherjee
Title: Optical Networking: Its Inter-Disciplinary Nature and
New Research Challenges
Host School: NC State University
Duke Host:
UNC Host: Kevin Jeffay (jeffay@cs.unc.edu)
NCSU Hosts: Rudra Dutta (dutta@cs.ncsu.edu)
and David Thuente
Abstract
Optical fiber is the medium of choice for building high-capacity networks:
from broadband access networks to regional metro networks to long-haul
backbone networks. After the telecom bubble burst in 2000, the optical
networking (ON) industry went into a consolidation phase. But, in 2004,
ON equipment manufacturers started reporting profits again, and this
$5-Billion industry is poised to double in size over the next 4-5 years.
Successful growth of ON, however, will occur only if researchers from
multiple disciplines (physics, optics, communications, networking, computer
algorithms, operations research, and business school) are able to work
together in identifying, understanding (one another's jargons), and
effectively solving the important and exciting inter-disciplinary problems
in the field. A sampling of these inter-disciplinary opportunities and
new research challenges will be outlined in this talk.
Biography
Biswanath Mukherjee received the B.Tech. (Hons) degree from Indian Institute
of Technology, Kharagpur (India) in 1980 and the Ph.D. degree from University
of Washington, Seattle, in June 1987. At Washington, he held a GTE Teaching
Fellowship and a General Electric Foundation Fellowship.
In July 1987, he joined the University of California, Davis, where
he has been Professor of Computer Science since July 1995, and served
as Chairman of Computer Science during September 1997 to June 2000.
He is a winner of the 2004 Distinguished Graduate Mentoring Award at
UC Davis. Two PhD Dissertations (by Dr. Laxman Sahasrabuddhe and Dr.
Keyao Zhu), which were supervised by Professor Mukherjee, were winners
of the 2000 and 2004 UC Davis College of Engineering Distinguished Dissertation
Awards.
He is co-winner of paper awards presented at the 1991 and the 1994
National Computer Security Conferences. He serves or has served on the
editorial boards of the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, IEEE Network,
ACM/Baltzer Wireless Information Networks (WINET), Journal of High-Speed
Networks, Photonic Network Communications, Optical Network Magazine,
and Optical Switching and Networking journal. He also served as Editor-at-Large
for optical networking and communications for the IEEE Communications
Society. He served as the Technical Program Chair of the IEEE INFOCOM
'96 conference. He also serves as Chairman of the IEEE Communication
Society's Optical Networking Technical Committee (ONTC). He is Editor
of Springer's Optical Networks Book Series.
Mukherjee is author of the textbooks "Optical WDM Networks"
(to be published by Springer in 2005) and "Optical Communication
Networks" (published by McGraw-Hill in 1997). He is a Member of
the Board of Directors of IPLocks, Inc., Silicon Valley startup company
founded in March 2002. He has consulted for and served on the Technical
Advisory Board (TAB) of a number of startup companies in optical networking.
His current TAB appointments include: Teknovus, Intelligent Fiber Optic
Systems, and LookAhead Decisions Inc.
14
NOVEMBER 2005
Speaker: David
Johnson
Title: Compressing Rectilinear Pictures, with Applications to
Internet Routing
Host School: NC State University
Duke Host:
UNC Host: Jasleen Kaur (jasleen@cs.unc.edu)
NCSU Host: Matt Stallman (matt_stallman@ncsu.edu)
Change to UNC venue: This talk will be viewed in Peabody 08
at 4 p.m.
Abstract
We consider a geometric model for the problem of minimizing access control
lists (ACLs) in network routers. This model is a generalization of one
previously studied in the context of rectilinear picture compression.
It embodies an optimization problem that arises when drawing figures
using common software packages such as Excel and Xfig.
Here the goal is to create a colored rectilinear pattern within an
initially white square canvas, and the basic operation is to choose
a subrectangle and paint it a single color, overwriting all previous
colors in the rectangle. Motivated by the ACL application, we study
the special case in which all rectangles must be strips that extend
either the full length or the full height of the canvas. We provide
several equivalent characterizations of the patterns achievable in this
special case and present a polynomial-time algorithm for optimally constructing
such patterns when, as in the ACL application, the only colors are black
and white (permit or deny). We also bound the improvement one can obtain
by using arbitrary rectangles in the construction of such patterns,
and analyze heuristics for the case of general patterns.
This is joint work with David Applegate, Gruia Calinescu, Howard Karloff,
Katrina Ligett, and Jia Wang.
Biography
David S. Johnson is Head of the Algorithms and Optimization Department
at AT&T Labs-Research in Florham Park, NJ, and has been a researcher
at the Labs (in its many incarnations) since 1973, when he received
his Ph.D from MIT. The author of over 100 technical papers, he is perhaps
best known as the co-author of COMPUTERS AND INTRACTABILITY: A GUIDE
TO THE THEORY OF NP-COMPLETENESS, for which he shared the Lanchester
Prize of the Operations Research Society of America (1979). His research
interests (in addition to the theory of NP-completeness) include approximation
algorithms for combinatorial problems, and the experimental analysis
of algorithms, with special emphasis on bin packing, graph coloring,
and the traveling salesman problem. As one of the founders of ACM's
Kanellakis Prize, he is particularly interested in recognizing and encouraging
the interaction between theory and practice in computer science.
23 JANUARY 2006
Speaker: John
A. Stankovic, Computer Science, University of Virginia
Title: Self-Organizing Wireless Sensor Networks in Action
Host School: NC State University
Duke Host: TBA
UNC Host: Sanjoy Baruah (baruah@cs.unc.edu)
NCSU Host: Vincent Freeh (vin@csc.ncsu.edu)
and Xiaosong Ma (ma@csc.ncsu.edu)
Abstract
Wireless sensor networks (WSN), composed of large numbers of small devices
that self-organize, are being investigated for a wide variety of applications.
Two key advantages of these networks over more traditional sensor networks
are that they can be dynamically and quickly deployed, and that they
can provide fine-grained sensing. Applications, such as emergency response
to natural or manmade disasters, detection and tracking, and fine grained
sensing of the environment are key examples of applications that can
benefit from these types of WSNs. Current research for these systems
is widespread. However, many of the proposed solutions are developed
with simplifying assumptions about wireless communication and the environment,
even though the realities of wireless communication and environmental
sensing are well known. Many of the solutions are evaluated only by
simulation. In this talk I describe a fully implemented system consisting
of a suite of more than 30 synthesized protocols. The system supports
a power aware surveillance and tracking application running on 203 motes
and evaluated in a realistic, large-area environment. Technical details
and evaluations are presented for power management, dynamic group management,
and for various system implementation issues. Several illustrations
of how real world environments render some previous solutions unusable
will also be given.
Biography
Professor John A. Stankovic is the BP America Professor in the Computer
Science Department at the University of Virginia. He recently served
as Chair of the department, completing two terms (8 years). He is a
Fellow of both the IEEE and the ACM. He also won the IEEE Real-Time
Systems Technical Committee's Award for Outstanding Technical Contributions
and Leadership. Professor Stankovic also served on the Board of Directors
of the Computer Research Association for 9 years. Before joining the
University of Virginia, Professor Stankovic taught at the University
of Massachusetts where he won an outstanding scholar award. He has also
held visiting positions in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie-Mellon
University, at INRIA in France, and at the Scuola Superiore S. Anna
in Pisa, Italy. He was the Editor-in-Chief for the IEEE Transactions
on Distributed and Parallel Systems and is a founder and co-editor-in-chief
for the Real-Time Systems Journal. He was also General Chair for ACM
SenSys 2004 and will serve as General Chair for ACM/IEEE Information
Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN) 2006. His research interests are
in distributed computing, real-time systems, operating systems, and
wireless sensor networks. Prof. Stankovic received his PhD from Brown
University.
30 JANUARY 2006
Speaker: Steve Bellovin,
Columbia University
Title: Permissive Action Links, Nuclear Weapons, and the History
of Public Key Cryptography
Host School: UNC-Chapel Hill
Duke Host: Alan Biermann (awb@cs.duke.edu)
UNC Host: Frederick Brooks (brooks@cs.unc.edu)
NCSU Host: Peng Ning (pning@ncsu.edu)
Abstract
From a security perspective, command and control of nuclear weapons
presents a challenge. The security mechanisms are supposed to be so
good that they're impossible to bypass. But how do they work? Beyond
that, there are reports linking these mechanisms to the early history
of public key cryptography. We'll explore the documented history of
both fields, and speculate on just how permissive action links -- the
"combination locks" on nuclear weapons -- actually work.
Biography
Steven M. Bellovin is a professor of computer science at Columbia University,
where he does research on networks, security, and especially why the
two don't get along. He joined the faculty in 2005 after many years
at Bell Labs and AT&T Labs Research, where he was an AT&T Fellow.
He received a BA degree from Columbia University, and an MS and PhD
in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill. While a graduate student, he helped create Netnews; for this,
he and the other perpetrators were award the 1995 Usenix Lifetime Achievement
Award. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the
Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Advisory Board.
Bellovin is the co-author of "Firewalls and Internet Security:
Repelling the Wily Hacker," and holds several patents on cryptographic
and network protocols. He has served on many National Research Council
study committees, including those on information systems trustworthiness,
the privacy implications of authentication technologies, and cybersecurity
research needs; he was also a member of the information technology subcommittee
of an NRC study group on science versus terrorism. He was a member of
the Internet Architecture Board from 1996-2002; he was co-director of
the Security Area of the IETF from 2002 through 2004.
13 FEBRUARY 2006
Speaker: Alan Burns,
University of York, U.K.
Title: Modeling Temporal behaviour in Complex Socio-Technical
Systems
Host School: UNC-Chapel Hill
Duke Host: Jun Yang (junyang@cs.duke.edu)
UNC Host: James Anderson (anderson@cs.unc.edu)
NCSU Host: Frank Mueller (mueller@cs.ncsu.edu)
Abstract
Biography
See speaker's
homepage.
10 APRIL
2006
Speaker: Nicholas
Ayache, Research Director, Epidaure/Asclepios Laboratory, INRIA
Title: Computational Models for Medical Image Analysis
Host School: UNC-Chapel Hill
Duke Host: Jun Yang (junyang@cs.duke.edu)
UNC Hosts: Steve Pizer (pizer@cs.unc.edu)
and Guido Gerig (gerig@cs.unc.edu)
NCSU Host: Khaled Harfoush (harfoush@cs.ncsu.edu)
Abstract
Medical image analysis brings about a revolution to the medicine of
the 21st century, introducing a collection of powerful new tools designed
to better assist the clinical diagnosis and to model, simulate, and
guide more efficiently the patient's therapy. A new discipline has emerged
in computer science, closely related to others like computer vision,
computer graphics, artificial intelligence and robotics.
In this talk, I describe the increasing role of computational models
of anatomy and physiology to guide the interpretation of complex series
of medical images, and illustrate my presentation with applications
to cardiac and brain diseases. I conclude with some promising trends,
including the analysis of in vivo microscopic images.
References available at http://www-sop.inria.fr/epidaure/BIBLIO/
Biography
Nicholas Ayache is a Research Director at INRIA (French Research Institute
in Computer Science and Automatic Control), Sophia-Antipolis, France,
where he has been the scientific leader of the EPIDAURE research group
on medical image analysis and robotics since 1993. He is currently teaching
graduate courses in Computer Vision and Medical Imaging at Ecole Centrale
Paris and Ecole Normale Supérieure (Cachan), and was previously
teaching at the Universities of Paris XI and Nice-Sophia Antipolis.
Since 1984, he has been a scientific consultant for several industrial
companies or international research institutes, and participated in
the creation of several start-up companies in image processing, computer
vision, and bio-medical imaging.
Dr. Ayache received his Ph.D in 1983, and his "Thèse d'Etat"
in 1988, both in computer science, from the University of Paris XI,
on the development of vision cababilities for autonomous robots, more
precisely on topics related to model based object recognition, passive
stereovision, and multisensor fusion. Since 1988, Dr. Ayache's research
interests have been in Medical Image Analysis (including shape and motion
representation, rigid and nonrigid registration, tracking and analysis
of deformable objects), simulation of surgery (including the modelling
of soft tissue), and image guided therapy (in particular in the context
of medical robotics). Dr. Ayache has also been involved in the analysis
of functional images and their application to medicine and neurosciences,
and more recently in the analysis of microscopic images for medical
or biological applications. Dr. Nicholas Ayache is the author and co-author
of more than 200 scientific publications in these domains.
Dr. Ayache has several editorial responsabilities : he is the co-founder
and co-Editor in Chief of the scientific journal Medical Image Analysis
(Elsevier), an Associate Editor of Transactions on Medical Imaging (IEEE),
a member of the editorial board of Computer Assisted Surgery (Wiley),
Mathematical Modeling and Analysis (EDP Science), and Medical Imaging
Technology (Japanese Society of Medical Imaging). He was associate editor
of the Int. Journal of Computer Vision (Kluwer, 1992-2004), advisory
editor of Videre-Computer Vision Research Journal (MIT-Press, 1996-2000),
and associate editor of IEEE Trans. on Robotics and Automation (1988-93).
Dr. Ayache is the author of the book Artificial Vision for Mobile Robots
(MIT-Press) ( "Vision stéréoscopique et perception
multisensorielle", Inter-Editions) and Editor of the book "Computational
Models for the Human Body". He chaired the first International
Conference on Computer Vision, Virtual Reality, and Robotics in Medicine
(CVRMed) held in Nice in April 1995, and co-chaired the First Symposium
on Surgery Simulation and Soft Tissue Modeling in 2003. Dr Ayache has
been serving on the editorial board of major conferences in Medical
Imaging, Computer Vision, Visualisation, and Robotics including MICCAI,
ISBI, CVPR, ECCV and ICCV.
17 APRIL 2006
Speaker: Anne Condon,
University of British Colombia
Title: RNA Molecules: Glimpses Through an Algorithmic Lens
Host School: Duke University
Duke Host: Carla Ellis (carla@cs.duke.edu)
and John Reif (reif@cs.duke.edu)
UNC Host: Jan Prins (prins@cs.unc.edu)
NCSU Host:
Abstract
RNA molecules are increasingly in the spotlight, in recognition of the
important roles they are now knolwn to play in our cells, and their
promise in therapeutics. In this talk, we will give some background
on these fascinating molecules, and will describe ways in which computer
algorithms can help shape our understanding of their structure - particularly
secondary structure - and function.
Biography
My research interests are in computational complexity theory and biomolecular
computation. In the area of computational complexity, I am generally
interested in randomized models of computation and randomized algorithms.
My work in the area of biomolecular computation focuses on design of
DNA strands for molecular computations, and also on surface based DNA
computations, in collaboration with the Wisconsin DNA Computing Project
A goal of this research, which involves chemists, materials scientists,
and computer scientists at U. Wisconsin is to store digital information
in surface-bound DNA molecules in a scalable fashion and to perform
logical operations on that information using enzymatic and chemical
processes, thereby "computing" with DNA.
I am also interested in automatic methods for showing that cache coherence
protocols implement certain memory models, such as sequential consistency.
CANCELLED
24 APRIL 2006
Speaker: Michael
Kearns, University of Pennsylvania
Title: Behavioral Graph Coloring
Host School: Duke University
Duke Host: Sayan Mukherjee (sayan@stat.duke.edu)
UNC Host: David Plaisted (plaisted@cs.unc.edu)
NCSU Host:
Abstract
The pioneering work of Travers and Milgram in 1969 established the now-familiar
folklore of "six degrees" of separation in natural social
networks. More recently, researchers including Jon Kleinberg and Duncan
Watts have explored the algorithmic aspects of how messages are forwarded
in such networks. Perhaps the computer science view of this fascinating
line of thought can be best summarized as follows: Using relatively
local information, distributed human organizations can compute good
approximations to the all-pairs shortest paths problem. What other sorts
of distributed optimization problems can humans networks solve?
In this talk, I will describe the preliminary but thought-provoking
findings of a series of behavioral experiments we have been performing
at Penn. Human subjects attempt to perform distributed graph coloring
using a system that controls network structure, information conditions,
incentives, and a variety of other variables of interest. The experiments
shed early light on whether such problems can be solved by human networks,
under what conditions, and what algorithms they seem to adopt.
Joint work with Nick Montfort, Huanlei Ni, and Siddharth Suri.
Biography
I am a professor in the Computer and Information Science Department
at the University of Pennsylvania, where I hold the National Center
Chair in Resource Management and Technology.
I am also the head of quantitative strategy development in the Equity
Strategies department of Lehman Brothers in New York City. (Please send
any Lehman-related email to mkearns@lehman.com.)
At Penn, I am the co-director (with Linguistics professor Mark Liberman)
of Penn's interdisciplinary Institute for Research in Cognitive Science.
I also have a secondary appointment in the Operations and Information
Management (OPIM) department of the Wharton School.
In 2001, I took a brief sabbatical from pure research as Chief Technology
Officer of Syntek Capital.
I spent the decade 1991-2001 in basic AI and machine learning research
at AT&T Labs and Bell Labs. During my last four years there, I was
the head of the AI department, which conducted a broad range of systems
and foundational AI work. During my time at AT&T/Bell Labs, I also
served as the head of the Machine Learning department, and as the head
of the Secure Systems Research department.
I joined the Penn faculty in January 2002.
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