The big news this fall is that Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., Kenan professor, has won the 1995 Bower Award and Prize in Science. The award recognizes his achievements in computer science and computer science education. Congratulations, Fred! There's more information about the award in the "Congratulations to . . ." section.
Since our last newsletter, we have welcomed three new faculty members: Ming C. Lin, adjunct assistant professor; Timothy L. Quigg, associate chairman for administration; and Mary Whitton, research assistant professor. You will find more about them in this issue.
Peter Calingaert's retirement in May created a vacant faculty position. Peter, of course, is irreplaceable, but we will be recruiting this spring for someone in hardware to fill that position.
Thanks to the hard work of Jim Anderson, assistant professor, and generous support from the U.S. Army Research Office, the computer science departments at UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke, and NC State have formed the Triangle CS Distinguished Lecturer Series. See this issue for more details.
In our last issue we reported the sudden death on 3 April of a longtime staff member, Belmon Dean, Jr., who had served as an electronics technician since 1983. On 27 July, the Computer Services staff held a special celebration to share special memories of him. Many Department members attended as well as several members of Belmon's family, including his widow Lena Dean, his grandson Belmon Dean IV with his mother Cherri Riggsbee, and his granddaughters Patrice Scott and Genelle Dean. We have placed a plaque in his honor in the Electronics Shop.
J. Carlyle Sitterson, for whom our building was named, passed away on 19 May after a lengthy illness. He was 84. Sitterson served as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences from 1955 to 1965 and as chancellor from 1966 to 1971. Our new building was named for him in 1986 in recognition of his University service.
I am delighted to report that Mark Moir is the 1995- 96 recipient of the Computer Science Alumni Fellowship. Mark's work is described in the "Research Highlights" section. Generous contributions from our alumni and friends make this fellowship possible. We appreciate your contributions and welcome your continued support. This is especially important to us at this time of declining State support for students. I have enclosed a donation card and envelope as a subtle reminder!
We have a new Chancellor: Dr. Michael Hooker, a 1969 graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, has returned to lead us through what may be some difficult times. It was very encouraging to hear at his installation ceremony on University Day, 12 October, that he is a strong supporter both of graduate education at UNC-Chapel Hill and of information technology. He emphasized the significant contributions that our top-notch graduate students have made to critical research programs, which ultimately impact on the citizens of North Carolina, the nation, and the world.
As always, we enjoy hearing from you. We encourage you to send items of interest to our editors for future issues. Please stop by to see us whenever you are in town.
Steve Weiss
Timothy L. Quigg was appointed as lecturer and associate chairman for administration in July. Prior to joining us, he spent five years as senior contract specialist and negotiator for UNC-Chapel Hill's Department of Contracts and Grants, where he represented the University in all of its contract negotiations with federal agencies; managed all institutional research administration activities for all federally funded projects; and handled all of the international projects for various departments. Tim received his masters in Public Administration, with concentrations in research and analysis, from NC State in 1979. He has an extensive background in human services needs assessment, planning, and resource allocation.
Mary C. Whitton was appointed as a research assistant professor in May. She earned a B.A. in 1970 from Duke, an M.S. in Guidance and Personnel Services in 1974 from NC State, and an M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 1984 from NC State. She has been with us since fall 1994 as a visiting scholar. Mary is the project manager for virtual environments research. Her research areas are virtual and augmented reality systems for data visualization; head-mounted displays; and computer graphics system architecture.
Hilbert Levitz, visiting scholar, is working with David Plaisted, professor, during fall 1995. He is on leave from Florida State University where he is a professor of computer science. He is a logician and has written on recursive function theory, and applications of transfinite ordinal numbers to proof theory.
Following are the median credentials for the 30 first-year students who began our program in fall 1995:
Quantitative GRE 93rd percentile
Verbal GRE 87th percentile
(93rd with non-native speakers excluded)
Analytical GRE 94th percentile
GPA (undergraduate) 3.5/4.0
Darlene Freedman, technology transfer and outreach secretary for the Graphics and Image Lab, joined us in June. She works with Mary Whitton, research assistant professor, and with Linda Houseman, public affairs and special projects coordinator for graphics. Darlene comes to us after 12 years at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Mass., where she was assistant to the chairman. Also at UMass, Darlene was an editorial assistant for the journal ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology.
John Sopko, systems programmer/administrator, joined us in August. John moved here from the Cleveland, Ohio, area where he worked for Uniscan, Inc., a software integration company specializing in UNIX client-server document management solutions. He also worked for Loral Defense Systems in Akron, Ohio, doing UNIX system and network management. John has a B.S. in Electronic Technology and received his M.S. in Computer and Information Science from Cleveland State University in December 1994. He works for Computer Services and administers our Sun and DEC systems.
Michael D. Stone, electronics technician, joined us in May. He received his associates degree in Applied Science from Central Carolina Community College in 1987. Prior to joining us, Mike worked for five years at UNC-Chapel Hill's Electronic Office Service Center, performing maintenance and repairs on various computers and printers. He works for Computer Services, providing hardware support for Macintosh computers and laser printers.
David Eberly (Ph.D. 1994), research associate professor, who left in August for a position at SAS Institute in Cary, N.C. He works in research and development in statistical graphics.
Jodi Fruth, secretary, who left in July for a position in the Center for Public Heath Practice at UNC-Chapel Hill's School of Public Health. She is the project secretary for the Community-Based Public Health Initiative, sponsored by the Kellogg Foundation. Jodi had worked part time for the Medical Image Presentation Project since March 1994.
John Hughes, research associate, who left in June for a position as a customer support manager at Sarcos Corp., in Salt Lake City, Utah. John had worked with our Department for more than ten years. His primary work, with the GRIP project, was the restoration and maintenance of the Argonne Remote Manipulator and Sarcos hydraulic robot, along with all project records and purchases. He also helped to set up and to maintain the Graphics and Image Lab.
Carrie Stolle, secretary, who left in August to work at the Division of Continuing Education at UNC-Chapel Hill as a program facilitator in the Conferences and Institutes Office. Since April 1993, Carrie worked for several faculty members, including Prasun Dewan, Kye Hedlund, John Smith, and David Stotts. She also coordinated our bi-monthly birthday celebrations.
The framed certificate of appreciation hangs in a place of honor on the wall of my study. It did take a week of detective work to decipher some of the signatures: Steve Brumback and Audra Sugerman were the last to be unmasked. The framed color photograph of Sitterson Hall (without which no departure is official) stands in my living room. The gift certificate for travel will help to make possible my first trip to the Orient. The T-shirt with the Department's most famous monogram was inaugurated at a folk dance; to my chagrin no one asked for an explanation! It is unique in thought as well as in execution.
I am grateful to all who wrote, who contributed to the gifts, or who attended the retirement party, and also to those who were able to do "none of the above" but nevertheless mentally marked my departure with a kind thought.
Peter
Alumni news
Ronald Azuma (Ph.D. 1995) began working at
Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, Calif., in March. He continues to
work with virtual reality and plans to branch out into other areas of
computer graphics and human-computer interfaces. One project involves
building a car simulator to test new safety devices. He had a chance to meet
up with friends and colleagues from Sitterson Hall at two recent events close
to his new home turf: at the Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics in
Monterey, Calif., in April, and at SIGGRAPH '95 in Los Angeles, Calif., in
July.
In July, David C. Banks (Ph.D. 1993) joined the computer science faculty at Mississippi State University as an assistant professor. He is teaching a graphics course this semester and will teach a visualization course in the spring. His research areas are computer graphics, flow visualization, and mathematical visualization. Previously, David held a post-doctoral fellowship at ICASE, a research group located at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., and an adjunct faculty position in the Computer Science Department at Old Dominion University.
Rodger Blair (M.S. 1969) completed another M.S. in Computer Science in August, at the University of Pittsburgh. He is teaching a course on the structure of programming languages in the undergraduate computer science program at Pittsburgh. Rodger also consults with several high-tech software firms in the Pittsburgh area and has begun work on a new software product.
Following graduation, Andrew Brandt (M.S. 1993) moved to Colorado to start a multimedia CD-ROM software company called Inroads Interactive, which has since become an affiliate of Broderbund Software. Andy reports that the company's first CD-ROM titles, "Multimedia Dogs" and "Multimedia Cats," have been instant hits. The company continues to work on CD-ROM titles for the educational and entertainment markets.
Congratulations to Randy Brown (M.S. 1990), who was recently promoted to senior systems developer at SAS Institute in Cary, N.C. He has been transferred to the Advanced Visualization Division, where he is the project leader for SAS/SPECTRAVIEW, SAS's volume visualization tool.
Congratulations also to John Crawford (M.S. 1977), who is the 1995 winner of the Eckert-Mauchly Award.
Matthew Fitzgibbon (M.S. 1989) recently started work at Darwin Molecular, a small startup company in Seattle, Wash. He is a scientist in the computing group, and will be working on protein structure prediction, sequence analysis, and possibly also on molecular graphics.
John Gauch (Ph.D. 1989) and Susan Gauch (Ph.D. 1990) are both at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kan. John recently received a Whitaker Foundation grant entitled "Object Motion Analysis for Biomedical Applications." Susan is the recipient of a NSF Research Initiation Award entitled "A Testbed for the Application of Corpus Linguistics to Information Retrieval."
Andrew Glassner (Ph.D. 1988) recently joined the graphics group at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Wash., where he is working on 3D graphics algorithms, content, and the social implications of computers. He has been appointed editor-in-chief of ACM Transactions on Graphics, and has founded the new Journal of Graphics Tools. His latest book, Principles of Digital Image Synthesis, was published this summer by Morgan-Kaufmann. Andrew will play Angelo in an upcoming production of "The Comedy of Errors."
Timothy S. Gramling (M.S. 1995) has joined Sprint Corp. in Kansas City, Mo. He is engaged to Kim Sellers, who works at the National Institute for Environmental Health Services in Research Triangle Park, N.C.
In August, Richard L. Holloway (Ph.D. 1995) started work as a software engineer at Division, Inc., in Chapel Hill, N.C.
William Leler (Ph.D. 1987) is finishing his second book, 3D with HOOPS, about how to write graphics applications. It will be published by Addison-Wesley next spring. In his spare time he is learning to play the mandolin.
Mark Lumsden (M.S. 1982) works in Information Management at International Business Machines (IBM) Corp. in Research Triangle Park, N.C. He is working on architecture, technical strategy, and design for the Electronic Publishing and WebGroup families of products.
John Menges (M.S. 1990) has moved to Corvallis, Ore., to work for Hewlett-Packard on collaboration support for workstations.
Penny L. Rheingans (Ph.D. 1993) has joined the Computer Science faculty at the University of Mississippi, in Oxford, Miss.
Congratulations to Yen-Ping Shan (Ph.D. 1990) who was promoted in July to senior technical staff member at IBM Corp. He works in Advanced Object-Oriented Development at Research Triangle Park, N.C. Yen-Ping is chairman of the X3J20 ANSI Smalltalk Standard Committee and the lead architect on distributed and server Smalltalk.
Russ Tuck (Ph.D. 1990) recently started work on future architectures at Pyramid Technology in San Jose, Calif. The company makes high-availability servers for large commercial databases. He and his wife Debbi have a three-year-old son, Daniel, and are expecting a baby in January.
Edilberto N. Uichanco (M.S. 1988) married Marie Ann Villaruz on 7 October. They reside in the Philippines.
Some of our alumni now have their home pages linked to the Department's page at http://www.cs.unc.edu. If you'd like us to add a link to your home page, please let us know.
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*Computer Sciences Options of the Applied Sciences and Mathematical Sciences Curricula
John McHugh, former research associate professor, became chair of the Computer Science Department at Portland State University in Portland, Ore., on 1 September. Also in September, John was awarded an ARPA grant for $1.3 million to do research in mobile network security. He left us in summer 1993.
David and Jane Richardson are the first recipients of the Protein Society's Amgen Award. The award is given to researchers who have made innovations in protein science. David and Jane presented a lecture using interactive graphics (Mage and Sculpt) at the Protein Society's meeting in Davos, Switzerland. Their coauthored paper about the "alacoil," a new type of very tight, antiparallel coiled-coil found in globular proteins, will be published in the November issue of Protein Science. The magazine's cover will feature a picture created with VIEW (work by Larry Bergman [Ph.D. 1993]). Much of the work was done with Sculpt (work by Mark Surles [Ph.D. 1992]). David was a visiting associate professor in our Department during 1989-90, and Jane was a visiting research associate professor with us during 1990-91. They are both on the computer science faculty at Duke University.
Stephen F. Weiss, professor and chairman, who nominated him for the award, commented that Fred "did some things 30 years ago that are still part of computers today." System 360 allowed hardware and software to grow and change with users' needs.
The award of $250,000 which was announced on 13 November will be presented by the Benjamin Franklin Institute in Philadelphia on 2 May 1996. Other recipients of the prestigious prize include Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, and the Wright Brothers.
David V. Beard, adjunct associate professor, who has joined the College of Business at Idaho State University, in Pocatello, Idaho, as an associate professor of computer information systems.
Debbie Blalock, who was promoted to accounting technician II on 18 September.
Christina Burbeck, who was promoted to research professor on 1 May.
James Coggins, who was the Steelman Visiting Scientist Lecturer at Lenoir-Rhyne College in Hickory, N.C., on 1-2 October. He met with various members of the science faculty and gave two lectures: a public lecture on virtual reality research, and a more technical talk to a more focused audience on current trends in computer science. The Steelman Visiting Scientist program is funded by a Lenoir-Rhyne alumnus, Dr. Sanford L. Steelman, Sr., and the Merck Foundation.
Kevin Jeffay, assistant professor, who has been promoted to associate professor, with tenure, effective January 1996.
Amy K. Kreiling, systems programmer, and Helen Harrison of SAS Institute, who were selected as co-chairs of the 1996 USENIX System Administration (LISA) conference to be held in September in Chicago, Ill. With annual attendance figures of 1500+ system adminstrators from around the world, the LISA conference has established itself as the premiere conference for those in the profession of supporting a computing environment.
Eileen Kupstas (M.S. 1992), graduate student, and her husband Jeff Soo who each won their divisions in the recent N.C. Croquet tournament, making them North Carolina's first husband and wife state championship team. The pair was interviewed on Chapel Hill's WCHL radio (fittingly; it's the flagship for the Tarheel Sports Network!)
Michael North, who was promoted to Systems Programmer II on 1 May.
John Poulton, who was promoted to research professor on 1 July.
Jan Prins, associate professor, who was appointed to be the Department's new director of graduate studies in July.
Tim Quigg, who was appointed by Chancellor Hooker for a one-year term on the University's Faculty Conflict of Interest Appeals Committee. The Committee will hear, mediate, and advise on appeals that arise under the newly published "Faculty Policy on Conflicts of Interest and Commitment."
John B. Smith (Ph.D. 1970), who was promoted to full professor on 1 July.
Russell M. Taylor II (Ph.D. 1994), research assistant professor, who was reappointed for a five-year term.
Greg Turk (Ph.D. 1992), research assistant professor, who was reappointed for a three-year term.
Stephen F. Weiss, who received the Computer Science Students Association Teaching Award in April.
To those faculty and staff members who attained the following level of State service as of August:
10 years: Lynne Cohen Duncan (M.S. 1985), Madelyn Mann
25 years: Gyula Mago, Stephen F. Weiss
Ph.D. May 1995: Ronald T. Azuma, Jeffrey Hultquist, Bryan S. Morse
Ph.D. August 1995: Richard L. Holloway, Donald L. Stone
M.S. May 1995: Adam C. Duggan, Robert J. Dunn, Mark T. Finch, William F. Garrett*, Christopher L. Georges, Timothy S. Gramling, Elizabeth B. Graves*, George R. Greene*, Vinay S. Gupta, Vincent A. Illiano, Lawrence A. Kesteloot, Pat Ko, Kunal Kundu, Atul N.arkhede, Pritvinath Obla, Jaykumar Padmanabhan, Scott C. Randolph, Scott E. Shauf, Audra D. Sugerman, Brian B. Upton, Gregory F. Welch*, Robert W. Wheeler, Andrew W. Wooster, Yunshan Zhu*
*on to Ph.D. at UNC-Chapel Hill
Richard L. Holloway, "Registration Errors in Augmented Reality Systems" (Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.).
Jeffrey Hultquist, "Interactive Numerical Flow Visualization Using Stream Surfaces" (Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.).
Bryan S. Morse, "Computation of Object Cores from Grey-level Images" (Stephen M. Pizer).
Donald L. Stone, "Managing the Effect of Delay Jitter on the Display of Live Continuous Media" (Kevin Jeffay).
| Jonathan Cohen | Link Foundation Fellowship |
| Matthew Cutts | National Science Foundation Fellowship |
| Qiang Liu | Board of Governors Fellowship |
| David Luebke | IBM Fellowship |
| Leonard McMillan | Division Fellowship |
| Mark Moir | Department Alumni Fellowship |
| Grayson Morris | National Science Foundation Fellowship |
| Jon Munson | IBM Fellowship |
| Manuel Oliveira Neto | Brazilian Government Fellowship |
| James Riely | Graduate School On-Campus Dissertation Fellowship |
| Hans Weber | Link Foundation Fellowship |
| Kyle Wilson | Merit Assistantship from the Department |
These awards were renewed:
| Rui Bastos | Brazilian Government Fellowship (2nd year) |
| Carl Erikson | National Science Foundation Fellowship (2nd year) |
| Thomas Hudson | Board of Governors Fellowship (2nd year) |
| John Keyser | Office of Naval Research Fellowship (2nd year) |
| Mark Parris | IBM Fellowship (2nd year) |
| Viswanath Srikanth | Board of Governors Fellowship (3rd year) |
| Jason Wilson | National Science Foundation Fellowship (2nd year) |
Family matters
Nathan Samuel Bell was born on 2 October 1994 in
Mableton, Ga., to Andrew Bell (M.S. 1991) and Leslie Bell.
Fred and Nancy Brooks have two new grandchildren. Frederick Phillips Brooks was born on 27 October in Tarrytown, N.Y., to Roger G. Brooks and Ann Jarkesy Brooks. Mary Arwen LaDine was born on 26 June in Chapel Hill, N.C., to Jeff and Barbara (Brooks) LaDine.
David John Gauch was born on 29 October 1994, in Lawrence, Kan., to John Gauch (Ph.D. 1989) and Susan Gauch (Ph.D. 1990). He has two older siblings, Laura and Brian.
David Harrison and Karen Coley were married on 24 April in Charlottesburg, Va.
Rhiannon Sophia Faith was born on 9 July in Durham, N.C., to Rick Faith (M.S. 1994) and Melissa Clepper-Faith.
Dylan Raymond Mine was born on 4 November in Chapel Hill, N.C., to Mark and Sandra Mine.
Grant Steven Molnar was born on 1 November in Chapel Hill, N.C., to Steve Molnar (Ph.D. 1991) and Wanda Molnar. He has two older sisters, Jennifer and Laura.
Daniel Schilling Munson was born on 25 September in Chapel Hill, N.C., to Jon Munson and Beth Schilling.
Roman Annias Scher was born on 6 June in Durham, N.C., to Bruce Scher and Jannick Rolland. He has an older brother, Yvan, who is two and half years old.
Jonah Kyle Scher-Zagier was born on 24 August in Chapel Hill, N.C., to Alan and Ellen Scher Zagier.
Reid Walter Smith was born on 18 September in Greensboro, N.C., to Phillip and Dana Kay Smith. He has an older sister, Lucy, who is two and a half years old.
Xiaojun Wang and Jing Shi were married on 18 August in Hangzhou, China.
Mark is working with Jim Anderson, assistant professor, on his dissertation, "Efficient Shared Object Implementations for Shared-Memory Multiprocessors." The primary goal of his work is to enable the efficient and transparent use of highly concurrent shared objects in asynchronous (MIMD), shared-memory multiprocessing environments. The use of mutual exclusion in such environments can be quite problematic, especially if process delays are common. This is the case in multiprogrammed systems, for example, where processes are frequently delayed for relatively long periods of time due to preemption. Mark's work focuses on designing lock-free and wait-free implementations of shared objects. These implementations do not use mutual exclusion and, as a result, can greatly improve performance in multiprogrammed environments. They also are useful in real-time systems, where the use of mutual exclusion greatly complicates scheduling.
Previous lock-free and wait-free implementations for shared objects avoid the pitfalls associated with locking, but do so at the cost of high space and time overhead, which has generally been prohibitive. Mark seeks to overcome all of these problems by using new techniques for lock-free and wait-free shared object implementations. These new techniques significantly reduce both the time and space overhead of previous techniques and also greatly improve transparency.
Alumni fellow Mark Moir at work in his office (Photo by Li-Yun Yu)
A five-year HPCC grant, also from NSF, entitled "Application of High- Performance Graphics Supercomputers and Communication to Provide Improved Interfaces to Scanning Probe Microscopes," provides funding to explore the use of next-generation graphics and networking hardware. Principal investigators for the grants are Richard Superfine, assistant professor, and Sean Washburn, professor, of the Physics and Astronomy Department at UNC-Chapel Hill, and Fred Brooks, Kenan professor, Vernon Chi, MSL Director, and Russell M. Taylor II (Ph.D. 1994), research assistant professor, of our Department.
Three other chips--EMC (Enhanced Memory Chip), RHInO (Runway Host and IO), and GNI (Geometry Network Interface)--are nearing completion and are scheduled to be finished before the end of the year. Developers hope to demonstrate a working PixelFlow system, rendering millions of polygons per second, at SIGGRAPH '96.
Approximately 40 members of the N.C. House and Senate tried on the head- mounted display and went through the walkthrough demo. The demonstrators emphasized that this leading commercial product is based on technology developed at UNC-Chapel Hill and that it has resulted in a significant amount of business being introduced into the state. The demonstration was well-received and legislators seemed pleased to learn about the leading role that UNC-Chapel Hill's research is taking and about the successful technology transfer that has been taking place.
Other recent work focused on how the human visual system represents sets of similar objects, such as a row of fence posts, or a shelf of books. Researchers have found that the human brain encodes an accurate prototype together with a measure of the deviation from that prototype in the set, rather than representing each item individually. Christina and her colleagues have shown that this method of encoding affects the saliency of objects in the scene. This research is sponsored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
Jannick Rolland, research assistant professor, and fellow researchers have completed a prototype of an optical bench head- mounted display to study perception in virtual environments. The system allows for interpupillary distance adjustment as well as for virtual images location adjustment. In studies, researchers found that the shape of the stimuli used in judging relative depth of two objects plays a role in both accuracy and precision of perceived depth. Experiments are being run to quantify this finding more thoroughly. The research, supported by the Office of Naval Research, has benefitted greatly from informal collaborations with Nat Durlach and colleagues from MIT, Steve Ellis of NASA, and Heinrich Buelthoff of the Max-Planck Institute.
Jannick and Christopher Helvig, undergraduate, are working to understand how humans search for abnormalities in complex backgrounds. One application involves searching for a way to narrow blood vessels in angiograms. The techniques developed will have an impact on how researchers conduct future search experiments in complex backgrounds. This research is supported by the National Cancer Institute.
Other work includes pseudo-clinical studies in mammography, under the direction of Jannick and Etta Pisano, M.D., associate professor, of the Radiology Department at UNC-Chapel Hill. Researchers are using an eye-tracker device to monitor how radiologists look at subtle mammogram cases. The research is supported by the National Cancer Institute.
Graduate student Leonard McMillan presented his paper, "Plenoptic Modeling: An Image-Based Rendering System." Ron Azuma (Ph.D. 1995) presented his paper, "A Frequency-Domain Analysis of Head-Motion Prediction." Gary Bishop, research associate professor, co-authored both papers. Anselmo Lastra, research assistant professor, Mark Mine, graduate student, and three other lecturers, co-taught "Programming Virtual Worlds," an introductory virtual reality course.
Nick England, research professor, and Mary Whitton, research assistant professor, organized the NC/Vision booth, which promoted graphics and imaging technology in North Carolina, including work done at UNC-Chapel Hill. They also helped with NC/Vision's newsletter which was distributed at the conference. NC/Vision's campaign is sponsored by the Interactive Visual Technologies Center, a non-profit group created by the NC Board of Science and Technology. Nick, Mary, and Fred Brooks are on the board of directors.
Nearly 100 alumni attended a reunion on 9 August at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The reunion is an annual event held every year at SIGGRAPH.
ACM Hypertext '96, Washington, D.C., 16-20 March. David Stotts, associate professor, general chair.
ACM Workshop on Applied Computational Geometry, Philadelphia, Pa., 27-28 May. Ming Lin, adjunct assistant professor, and Dinesh Manocha, assistant professor, program co- chairs.
Second IEEE Real-Time Technology and Applications Symposium, Boston, Mass., 10-12 June. Kevin Jeffay, assistant professor, program chair.
Mathematical Psychology Conference, Chapel Hill, N.C., 1-4 August, Jonathan Marshall, assistant professor, co-chair.
2 October 1995 Monica S. Lam, Stanford University Host: Duke "The Stanford SUIF Parallelizing Compiler"6 November 1995 Dennis Gannon, Indiana University Host: UNC-CH "High Performance Computing: Life After the HPCC Program"
20 November 1995 Mitchell Marcus, University of Pennsylvania Host: Duke "New Trends in Natural Language Processing"
22 January 1996 Franco P. Preparata, Brown University Host: Duke "Horizons of Parallel Computing"
5 February 1996 John A. Stankovic, University of Massachusetts Host: NC State "Key Dilemmas in Real-Time Systems"
19 February 1996 H. T. Kung, Harvard University Host: UNC-CH "Traffic Management for Very High-Speed Networks"
18 March 1996 David Dobkin, Princeton University Host: UNC-CH "Applied Computational Geometry: Progress Report"
1 April 1996 Mani Chandy, California Institute of Technology Host: NC State "Patterns of Specifications"
15 April 1996 Gene H. Golub, Stanford University Host: NC State "Applications of the Theory of Moments to Large Scale Computations"
Talks at Duke Mondays, 4:00 p.m., 130A North Bldg. Receptions: 3:30 p.m., D106 LSRC Bldg. Talks at NC State Mondays, 4:00 p.m., Studio B, Park Shops Receptions: 3:30 p.m., Lounge, Park Shops
Talks at UNC-Chapel Hill Mondays, 4:00 p.m., 011 Sitterson Hall Receptions: 3:30 p.m., lobby, Sitterson Hall
The Mythical Man-Month continues to be popular after 20 years. Fred reports that the book has had a readership outside the software engineering community, generating reviews, citations, and correspondence from lawyers, doctors, psychologists, and sociologists, as well as from software people. Over 250,000 copies of the original English language edition are in print. It has also been translated into Dutch, German, Japanese, and Russian.
Recent publications
Anderson, J., and M. Moir. "Universal Constructions for Large Objects,"
Proc. Ninth International Workshop on Distributed Algorithms,
Sept. 1995. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 972, Springer-Verlag, 168-
182.
Anderson, J., and M. Moir. "Universal Constructions for Multi-Object Operations," Proc. 14th Annual ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing, Aug. 1995, 184-193.
Anderson, J., and S. Ramamurthy. "Using Lock-Free Objects in Hard Real- Time Applications," Proc. 14th Annual ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing, Aug. 1995, 272.
Azuma, R., and G. Bishop. "A Frequency-Domain Analysis of Head-Motion Prediction," Computer Graphics: Proc. SIGGRAPH '95, Los Angeles, Calif., 6-11 Aug. 1995, 401-408.
Blelloch, G. E., S. Chatterjee, and M. Zagha. "Solving Linear Recurrences with Loop Raking," Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, 25(1), Feb. 1995, 91-97.
Bollella, G., and K. Jeffay. "Support For Real-Time Computing Within General Purpose Operating Systems: Supporting Co-resident Operating Systems," Proc. IEEE Real-Time Technology and Applications Symposium, Chicago, Ill., May 1995, 4-14.
Burbeck, C., and S. M. Pizer. "Object Representation by Cores: Identifying and Representing Primitive Spatial Regions," Vision Research, 35(13), 1995, 1917-1930.
Chatterjee, S., J. R. Gilbert, F.J.E. Long, R. Schreiber, and S.-H. Teng. "Generating Local Addresses and Communication Sets for Data-Parallel Programs," Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, 26(1), April 1995, 72-84.
Chatterjee, S., J. R. Gilbert, R. Schreiber, and S.-H. Teng. "Optimal Evaluation of Array Expressions on Massively Parallel Machines," ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, 17(1), Jan. 1995, 123-156.
Cohen, J., M. Lin, D. Manocha, and K. Ponamgi. "I-COLLIDE: An Interactive and Exact Collision Detection System for Large-Scale Environments," Computer Graphics: Proc. 1995 Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics, Monterey, Calif., 9-12 April 1995, 189-196.
Dewan, P., K. Jeffay, J. B. Smith, D. Stotts, and W. Oliver. "Early Prototypes of the Repository for Patterned Injury Data," Proc. Digital Libraries '95, Austin, Texas, June 1995, 123-130.
Finch, M., V. Chi, R. M. Taylor II, M. Falvo, S. Washburn, and R. Superfine. "Surface Modification Tools in a Virtual Environment Interface to a Scanning Probe Microscope," Computer Graphics: Proc. 1995 Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics, Monterey, Calif., 9-12 April 1995, 13-18.
Goldberg, A., J. Prins, J. Reif, R. Faith, Z. Li, P. Mills, L.yland, D. Palmer, J. Riely, and S. Westfold. "The Proteus System for the Development of Parallel Applications," Prototyping Languages and Prototyping Technology, M. Harrison, ed., Springer-Verlag, 1995, 151-190.
Goldberg, A., P. Mills, L. Nyland, J. Prins, J. Reif, and J. Riely. "Specification and Development of Parallel Algorithms with the Proteus System," Specification of Parallel Algorithms, G. Blelloch, M. Chandy, and S. Jagannathan, eds., American Mathematical Society Press, 1995, 383-399.
Horwitz, S., J. Prins, and T. Reps. "Integrating Non-Interfering Versions of Programs," Software Merging and Slicing, V. Berzins, ed., IEEE Computer Society Press, 1995, 137-190.
Interrante, V., H. Fuchs, and S. Pizer. "Enhancing Transparent Skin Surfaces with Ridge and Valley Lines," Proc. Visualization '95, Atlanta, Ga., 30 Oct.-3 Nov. 1995, 52-59.
Kancherla, A. R., J. P. Rolland, D. L. Wright, and G. Burdea. "A Novel Virtual Reality Tool for Teaching Dynamic 3D Anatomy," Proc. CVRMed '95, 1995, 163-169.
Keller, K., and J. Poulton. "Commercial Packaging Solutions for a Research Oriented Graphics Supercomputer," Advances in Electronic Packaging 1995: Proc. International Intersociety Electronic Packaging Conference '95, Lahaina, Hawaii, 1, March 1995, 53-59.
Krishnan, S., and D. Manocha. "Numeric-Symbolic Algorithms for Evaluating One-Dimensional Algebraic Sets," Proc. ACM International Symposium on Symbolic and Algebraic Computation, Montreal, Canada, 1995, 59-67.
Krishnan, S., A. Narkhede, and D. Manocha. "Representation and Computation of Boolean Operations of Sculptured Models," Proc. ACM Conference on Computational Geometry, 1995, C8-C9.
Kumar, S., and D. Manocha. "Efficient Rendering of Trimmed NURBS Surfaces," Computer-Aided Design (Special issue on Visualization of Surfaces), 27(7), 1995, 509-521.
Kumar, S., D. Manocha, and A. Lastra. "Interactive Display of Large Scale NURBS Models," Computer Graphics: Proc. 1995 Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics, Monterey, Calif., 9-12 April 1995, 51-58.
Lastra, A., S. Molnar, M. Olano, and Y. Wang. "Real-Time Programmable Shading," Computer Graphics: Proc. 1995 Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics, Monterey, Calif., 9-12 April 1995, 59-66.
Lastra, A. A. "The Unix Programming Environment," The UNIX System Guidebook, D. Brock, ed., McGraw Hill, 1995, 69-110.
Lin, M. C., D. Manocha, and M. K. Ponamgi. "Fast Algorithms for Penetration and Contact Determination between Non-Convex Polyhedral Models," Proc. International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 1995, 2707-2712.
Luebke, D. P., and C. L. Georges. "Lazy Evaluation of Potentially Visible Sets," Computer Graphics: Proc. 1995 Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics, Monterey, Calif., 9-12 April 1995, 105-106.
Manocha, D., and J. Demmel. "Algorithms for Intersecting Parametric and Algebraic Curves II: Multiple Intersections," Computer Vision, Graphics and Image Processing: Graphical Models and Image Processing, 57(2), 1995, 81-100.
Manocha, D., Y. Zhu, and W. Wright. "Conformational Analysis of Molecular Chains using Nano-Kinematics," Computer Applications in the Biosciences, 11(1), 1995, 71-86.
Marshall, J. A. "Motion Perception: Self-Organization," invited review, The Handbook of Brain Theory and Neural Networks, M. Arbib, ed., Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, June 1995, 589-591.
Marshall, J. A. "Adaptive Perceptual Pattern Recognition by Self-Organizing Neural Networks: Context, Uncertainty, Multiplicity, and Scale," Neural Networks, 8, April 1995, 335-362.
McMillan, L., and G. Bishop. "Plenoptic Modeling: An Image-Based Rendering System," Computer Graphics: Proc. SIGGRAPH '95, Los Angeles, Calif., 6-11 Aug. 1995, 39-46.
McMillan, L., and G. Bishop. "Head-Tracked Stereo Display Using Image Warping, in Stereoscopic Displays and Virtual Reality Systems II," Proc. 1995 IS&T/SPIE Symposium on Electronic Imaging Science and Technology, #2409, San Jose, Calif., 5-10 Feb. 1995, 21-30.
Narkhede, A., and D. Manocha. "Fast Polygon Triangulation Based on Seidel's Algorithm," Graphics Gems, V, A. Paeth, ed., Academic Press, 1995, 394-397.
Olano, M., J. Cohen, M. Mine, and G. Bishop. "Combatting Rendering Latency," Computer Graphics: Proc. 1995 Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics, Monterey, Calif., 9-12 April 1995, 19-24.
Paramasivam, M., and D. A. Plaisted. "Automated Deduction Techniques for Subsumption Checking in Concept Languages," Proc. Fourth Golden West International Conference on Intelligent Systems, San Francisco, Calif., 12- 14 June 1995, 122-126.
Ponamgi, M., D. Manocha, and M. Lin. "Incremental Collision Detection Between Solid Models," Proc. 11th ACM Computational Geometry Conference, Vancouver, Canada, June 1995, V7-V8.
Ponamgi, M., D. Manocha, and M. Lin. "Incremental Algorithms for Collision Detection Between General Solid Models," Proc. ACM/SIGGRAPH Symposium on Solid Modeling, Salt Lake City, Utah, May 1995, 293- 304.
Rolland, J. P., D. Ariely, and W. Gibson. "Towards Quantifying Depth and Size Perception in Virtual Environments," Presence, 4(1), 1995, 24-49.
Rolland, J. P., F. A. Biocca, T. Barlow, and A. Kancherla. "Quantification of Perceptual Adaptation to Visual Displacement in See-thru Head-mounted Displays," Proc. IEEE VRAIS'95, 1995, 56-66.
Stone, D. L., and K. Jeffay. "An Empirical Study of Delay Jitter Management Policies," ACM Multimedia Systems, 2(6), Jan. 1995, 267-279.
Taylor, R. M. "Requirements and Availability of Application Programmer's Interfaces for Virtual-Reality Systems," our technical report TR95-009, April 1995.
Yang, J.-H., and J. Anderson. "A Fast, Scalable Mutual Exclusion Algorithm," Distributed Computing, 9, 1995, 51-60.
Yoshida, A., J. P. Rolland, and J. H. Reif. "Design and Applications of a High Resolution Insert Head-Mounted Display," Proc. VRAIS'95, 1995, 84- 93.
Chi, V. "Salphasic Distribution of Timing Signals for the Synchronization of Physically Separated Entities," U.S. Pat. No. 5,387,885, issued 7 Feb. 1995.
Gilbert, J. R., S.-H. Teng, R. S. Schreiber, S. Chatterjee, and F.J.E. Long. "Generating Local Addresses and Communication Sets for Data-Parallel Programs," U.S. Pat. No. 5,450,313, issued 12 Sept. 1995.
Poulton, J., S. Molnar, and J. Eyles. "Architecture and Apparatus for Image Generation," U.S. Pat. No. 5,388,206, issued 7 Feb. 1995.
New contracts and grants
James Anderson, assistant professor. "Mechanisms
for Scalable Object Sharing in MIMD Multiprocessing Systems," Young
Investigator Award from the U.S. Army Research Office.
James Anderson. "Research Triangle Computer Science Lecture Program," from the U.S. Army Research Office.
Fred Brooks, Kenan professor, Vernon Chi, MSL Director, and Russell M. Taylor II, research assistant professor (computer science); Richard Superfine, assistant professor, and Sean Washburn, professor (physics). "Application of High-Performance Graphics Supercomputers and Communication to Provide Improved Interfaces to Scanning Probe Microscopes," HPCC grant from the National Science Foundation.
Siddhartha Chatterjee, assistant professor. "Automatic Data and Computation Partitioning for Array-Parallel Languages," from the National Science Foundation.
Siddhartha Chatterjee. Faculty Research Award from the University Research Council at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Kevin Jeffay, assistant professor. "An Examination of Flow and Congestion Control Mechanisms for Media Transmission in Collaborative Systems," from IBM Corp.
Richard Superfine and Sean Washburn (physics); Fred Brooks, Vernon Chi, and Russell M. Taylor II (computer science). "Development of the Nanomanipulator: A Real-Time Scanning Probe Microscope Interface for Nanometer Science," Academic Research Infrastructure grant from the National Science Foundation.
Russell M. Taylor II. CISE Postdoctoral Research Associate grant from the National Science Foundation.
In the media
A photograph of Henry Fuchs, Federico Gil professor, presenting a lecture on
computed tomography data appears on page 61 of the July/August 1995 issue
of the Carolina Alumni Review, as part of an article about UNCÐ
Chapel Hill's reaccreditation process.
The Nanomanipulator was featured in a recent UPN network documentary
called "The
Secret of . . . ."
Some of our special visitors
Some of our guests during this past spring and summer:
Barry Aldred of IBM Corp. in Hursley, England, visited the DiRT group on 21 June. Kevin Jeffay was his host.
On 22-23 May, Jonathan Marshall and Jannick Rolland hosted Heinrich Buelthoff of the Max-Planck Institute, Germany, Raymond van Ee, Maarten Hogervorst, and Hendrik-Jan van Veen of the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands, and Eric Fredericksen (Ph.D. 1993) of McGill University, Canada. They met faculty and students to discuss research. The Utrecht visitors gave a presentation on their work.
Pau-Chen Cheng of IBM's T. J. Watson Research Center visited on 12 May and spoke on "Design and Implementation of Modular Key Management Protocol and IP Secure Tunnel on AIX." Jim Anderson was his host.
On 4 May, members of the N.C. Department of Commerce visited the Department to discuss research and to see demos of the Nanomanipulator and tracker.
Gunneer Daneels and Ketan Sampat of the Communications Technology Laboratory at Intel Corp., in Hillsboro, Ore., visited the DiRT group on 17 April. Kevin Jeffay was their host.
Paul Dietz, Mike Muuss, Paul Stay, and Paul Tannenbaum of the U.S. Army Research Laboratories visited on 26-27 June. Dinesh Manocha was their host.
Michael C. Doggett, a Ph.D. student in computer science at the University of New South Wales, Australia, visited on 11 and 12 September. He spoke on "An Array Based Design for Real-Time Volume Rendering." Steve Molnar was his host.
Gary DuBro of NASA and Dave Honam of the Johnson Space Center visited the Graphics and Image Lab on 23 August. They met with Fred Brooks, Henry Fuchs, and other project leaders.
Carla Ellis of the Computer Science Department at Duke University gave an overview of her department's systems research at Systems Lunch on 28 September. Kevin Jeffay was her host.
Jim Gray, Barron Housel, and Tim Tooley of IBM Corp. in Research Triangle Park, N.C., visited on 5 September. Kevin Jeffay was their host.
Paul Hemler of Stanford University visited on 1 March. He spoke on "A Quantitative Comparison of Residual Error for Three Different Multimodality Registration Techniques."
Tom Henderson, chair of the Computer Science Department at the University of Utah, visited the Graphics and Image Lab on 28 June. He gave a talk entitled "Computer Aided Prototyping." Dinesh Manocha was his host.
Marco Jacobs, a visiting scholar from the University of Delft, the Netherlands, arrived in October to spend nine months working with the Ultrasound group, while finishing a Master's thesis.
Twan Maintz, who researches multimodality image registration at the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands, visited in May and June. Stephen Pizer was his host.
David Orton of Silicon Graphics, Inc. visited on 21 April. He spoke on "Support Structures for Scalable Architectures in the SGI Reality Engine 2."
Fourteen visitors from Shimane, Japan, hosted by the U.S. Army Research Office, visited on 23 August for a demo of the Nanomanipulator and a tour of the Graphics and Image Lab.
Bob Steen of IBM Corp. in Research Triangle Park, N.C., visited the DiRT group on 22 June. Kevin Jeffay was his host.
Seth Teller of MIT visited on 26 April. He spoke on "Interactive Parallel Evaluation and Display of Global Illumination Data." Dinesh Manocha was his host.
The Graphics and Image Lab continues to attract numerous visitors. Linda Houseman, public affairs and special projects coordinator for graphics, reports that between 1 January and 30 September, the lab had nearly 1100 visitors. Between 1 April and 30 September, approximately 600 visitors were given demos.
Representatives from the special study section of the National Institutes of Health visited the GRIP Project on 15 June for its five-year renewal proposal.
Representatives from the National Science Foundation made a site visit to the Collaboratory group on 12 April.
U.S. Army Research Office representatives attended a site visit for the Nanomanipulator project on 5 June.
| President: | Michael Capps |
| Money Man & Surviving Stuff: | Tom Hudson |
| Athletic Guy: | Carl Erikson |
| Partymeisters: | Lars Bishop, Jason Smith |
| Soda Jerk: | Eddie Saxe |
Jim Anderson, assistant professor, and Steve Weiss, professor, were the 1995 recipients of the new CSA Teaching Award! Every year the CSA will present this award to two professors for their excellence in teaching. Recipients are nominated by either students or faculty members, and are then chosen by a student committee. The committee considers comments in the CSA Department Review pages and other criteria. Recipients are limited to one award every two years. A plaque bearing the names of award recipients will be installed in the first floor lobby of Sitterson.
David Musick checks out the new phone switch (Photo by Li-Yun Yu)
Research groups have ordered 13 new HP workstations which will be installed primarily in student offices. Michael North, systems administrator, is handling software support, while Fred and Mike Stone, electronics technician, are taking care of hardware installations. The purchase of these systems allows us to retire the last of our DEC 2100 computers, the slowest of our (still large) DEC fleet.
Ken and his staff have installed three ethernet switches on the FDDI (fiber) backbone. These switches provide dedicated 10 megabit connections to the backbone. Research groups are being encouraged to include these switches in grant proposals; the dedicated pipes to the backbone will provide substantial performance increases for the machines using them.
The last part of phase 1 was the purchase of a network analyzer. This box, which is a PC with special network interfaces and software, allows us to track down problems, balance subnetwork traffic, and make plans based on hard data on network use. Later phases of the network plan will involve adding more ethernet switches, putting servers directly on the FDDI backbone, and adding ATM switches.
News &
Notes is published during each fall and spring semester.
Jeannie M. Walsh, editor, walsh@cs.unc.edu
Claire L. Stone, co-editor, stonec@cs.unc.edu
Computer Science
UNC-Chapel Hill
CB#3175, Sitterson Hall
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3175
General information:
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Fax: 919/962-1799
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