Sami Benzaid UNC - Chapel Hill Computer Science Graduate Student Office: SN111 (Sitterson Hall, Room 111) benzaids <AT> email <DOT> unc <DOT> edu

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About Me:

• I'm currently a graduate student in computer science at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, NC). My range of interests within the field is very large. Networks, Databases, Image Processing, Computer Architecture, and HCI are just a few of the things on the list. I started attending UNC Chapel Hill in the fall of 2008. Prior to that, I attended Carleton College (Northfield, Minnesota) for my undergraduate degree (from September 2004 to June 2008).

CV/Resume:

• My resume is in PDF format, and can be downloaded here.

Research and Work Experience:

• May 2009 - Present: I am currently a Research Assistant for Professor Prasun Dewan. I'm working on finding ways to enhance various distributed collaboration contexts/scenarios using webcams (which are becoming increasingly widespread) and computer vision techniques. I'm writing my experiments in C/C++ using the OpenCV Library.
• August 2008 - May 2009: I was a Teaching Assistant for two undergraduate courses at UNC Chapel Hill. The first course (COMP110 - Introduction to Programming) ran from August 2008 to December 2008, and the second (COMP401 - Foundations of Programming) from January 2009 to May 2009. Tasks included holding office hours for students, preparing recitation exercises, leading recitations, e-mail correspondence with students (for answering questions), and assignment grading.
• September 2004 - June 2008: I worked at the Student Computing Information Center (SCIC) at Carleton College for the duration of my attendance. This involved providing students with both phone-in and walk-up technical support, as well as computer repairs and servicing such as removal of viruses and malware, hardware troubleshooting and installation, software troubleshooting and installation, data backup/recovery/migration, OS recovery and installation, among various other things.
• September 2007 - March 2008: I started and finished my senior comprehensive project, which was a group project with five students, all of whom were computer science majors as well. The goal for the project was to write a software application to make support vector machines (SVMs) quantitatively and visually more intuitive to a wider range of people. Our project advisor was Professor David Musicant. We have published a paper about this project (entitled "Understanding Support Vector Machine Classifications via a Recommender System-Like Approach"; see 'Publications' below).
• Summer 2007: I joined an already ongoing data mining research project. It is an interdisciplinary project, with computer scientists, chemists, and atmospheric scientists. The primary goal of the project during the summer months was to use data from an Aerosol Time-Of-Flight Mass Spectrometer (ATOFMS) to accurately predict the amount of environmental carbon (EC) in the atmosphere. I continued to work on this project during the 2007-2008 school year. The research advisor (for those of us in Computer Science) was Professor David Musicant. In addition, we also worked on a software application that had been started a few years prior ("ENCHILADA"; see 'Relevant Links', below) to analyze gathered atmospheric data, about which a paper ("Environmental Chemistry through Intelligent Atmospheric Data Analysis"; see 'Publications', below) was accepted for publication by Environmental Modeling and Software.
• Summer 2006: I was a research assistant for two months on a data mining project led by Professor Amy Csizmar Dalal. The goal of the project was to accurately predict the user-perceived quality of streaming media based on data from user surveys. A paper, of which I am a co-author, was published from this project, and is cited in the 'Publications' section ("Predicting User-Perceived Quality Ratings from Streaming Media Data").

Publications:

1. David Barbella, Sami Benzaid, Janara Christensen, Bret Jackson, Victor Qin, David Musicant. "Understanding Support Vector Machine Classifications via a Recommender System-Like Approach". Proceedings of The International Conference on Data Mining (DMIN '09), Editors: Robert Stahlbock, Sven F. Crone, and Stefan Lessmann. CSREA Press, 2009, pages 305-311.
2. Deborah S. Gross, Robert Atlas, Jeffrey Rzeszotarski, Emma Turetsky, Janara Christensen, Sami Benzaid, Jamie Olson, Thomas Smith, Leah Steinberg, Jon Sulman, Anna Ritz, Benjamin Anderson, Catherine Nelson, David R. Musicant, Lei Chen, David C. Snyder, James J. Schauer. "Environmental Chemistry through Intelligent Atmospheric Data Analysis". Accepted for publication by Environmental Modeling and Software. DOI: 10.1016/j.envsoft.2009.12.001
3. A. Csizmar Dalal, D. Musicant, J. Olson, B. McMenamy, S. Benzaid, B. Kazez, E. Bolan. "Predicting User-Perceived Quality Ratings from Streaming Media Data". In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC 2007), Glasgow, Scotland, June 2007.

Background Courses:

• A list of Computer Science courses that I've taken (reverse chronological order):
  • Personal History of Computing [taught by Dr. Fred Brooks] (UNC Chapel Hill, Spring 2010; Currently Auditing)
  • Software Design and Implementation (UNC Chapel Hill, Spring 2010; Textbook: Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software by Gamma, Helm, Johnson, and Vlissides; Currently Taking)
  • Data Mining (UNC Chapel Hill, Spring 2010; Currently Taking)
  • Distributed Collaboration (UNC Chapel Hill, Fall 2009)
  • Machine Learning Techniques in Image Analysis (UNC Chapel Hill, Fall 2009)
  • Computer Vision (UNC Chapel Hill, Spring 2009)
  • Computer Graphics (UNC Chapel Hill, Spring 2009)
  • COMP991: Reading and Research (Medical Image Analysis) - I'm reading various papers about diffusion-weighted imaging, diffusion tensor imaging, and atlas construction, among other things. The goal is to create atlases for diffusion-weighted imaging. (UNC Chapel Hill, Spring 2009)
  • Computer Networks (UNC Chapel Hill, Fall 2008; Textbook: Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach (4e) by James F. Kurose and Keith W. Ross)
  • Images, Graphics, and Vision (UNC Chapel Hill, Fall 2008)
  • COMP991: Reading and Research (Networks) - I read about various different high-speed TCP Congestion Control/Avoidance protocols, and ran simulations to compare how they get along when running simultaneously under varying conditions. (UNC Chapel Hill, Fall 2008)
  • Operating Systems (Carleton College, Spring 2008; Textbook: Modern Operating Systems (3e) by Andrew S. Tanenbaum)
  • Artificial Intelligence (Carleton College, Spring 2008; Textbook: Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (2e) by Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig)
  • Computer Networks (Carleton College, Winter 2008; Textbook: Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach (4e) by James F. Kurose and Keith W. Ross)
  • Software Design (Carleton College, Winter 2008; Textbooks: [1.] Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction (2e) by Steve McConnell, [2.] Head First Design Patterns (1e) by Elisabeth Freeman, Eric Freeman, Bert Bates, and Kathy Sierra, [3.] About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design (3e) by Alan Cooper, Robert Reimann, and David Cronin)
  • Natural Language Processing (Carleton College, Spring 2007; Textbook: Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing (1e) by Christopher D. Manning and Hinrich Schuetze)
  • Theory of Computation/Automata and Computability (Carleton College, Spring 2007; Textbook: Automata and Computability (1e) by Dexter C. Kozen)
  • Programming Languages (Carleton College, Winter 2007; Textbook: Programming Language Pragmatics (2e) by Michael L. Scott)
  • Algorithms (Carleton College, Winter 2007; Textbook: Algorithm Design (1e) by Jon Kleinberg and Éva Tardos)
  • Computer Organization and Architecture (Carleton College, Fall 2006; Textbook: Computer Organization and Design (2e) by David A. Patterson and John L. Hennessy)
  • Mathematics of Computer Science (Carleton College, Fall 2006; Textbook: Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications (6e) by Kenneth H. Rosen)
  • Database Systems (Carleton College, Winter 2006; Textbook: Database Management Systems (1e) by Raghu Ramakrishnan and Johannes Gehrke)
  • Data Structures (Carleton College, Fall 2005; Textbook: Objects, Abstraction, Data Structures and Design: Using Java 5.0 (1e) by Elliot B. Koffman and Paul A. T. Wolfgang)
  • Introduction to Computer Science (Carleton College, Spring 2005; Textbook: Java Software Solutions (Java 5.0 Version): Foundations of Program Design (4e) by John Lewis and William Loftus)
• A list of Mathematics courses that I've taken (reverse chronological order):
  • Graduate Level:
    • Scientific Computing I [Numerical Analysis] (UNC Chapel Hill, Fall 2009)
  • Undergraduate Level:
    • Advanced Linear Algebra
    • Differential Equations
    • Linear Algebra
    • Multi Variable Calculus
    • Probability and Statistics
    • Single Variable Calculus

Relevant Links:

• UNC Chapel Hill - The university at which I am now a graduate student.
• UNC Chapel Hill Computer Science Department - The Computer Science department at UNC Chapel Hill. Information on courses, research, etc...
• Carleton College - The college I attended for my undergraduate degree.
• Carleton College Computer Science Department - The Carleton CS department website; contains info about courses, faculty, past and present comps projects, among other things.
• ENCHILADA - "Environmental Chemistry Through Intelligent Atmospheric Data Analysis". This is a program that helps visualize and perform several different operations on ATOFMS (Aerosol Time-Of-Flight Mass Spectrometer) data. Part of what I did during the Summer of 2007 was work on parts of this software.
• EDAM ENCHILADA at SourceForge - This is the SourceForge page for the EDAM Enchilada project, where the source code can be obtained for those who are interested. (In case you haven't had enough acronyms, EDAM stands for Exploratory Data Analysis and Management).
• Randy Pausch's Last Lecture - Randy Pausch was a Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. This is a talk he gave at CMU entitled "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams". I listed this video here because I believe it conveys a very positive and encouraging message that is relevant to anyone (it isn't just for people in computer science).

Recreational Interests:

• I enjoy playing video games (primarily on consoles rather than on a computer, but I do have a few favorite computer games). Nintendo is my favorite console and game company, and I've been playing their games since I was six years old. I enjoy Nintendo's classics, like Mario games and Zelda games, among many others. However, in recent years, a lot of unique games have come to their systems that have really grown on me, such as the extremely well-written and addicting Ace Attorney series (Nintendo DS), and the surgery/puzzle game series Trauma Center (Nintendo DS and Wii). That said, I don't limit myself to Nintendo games; I enjoy role-playing games (primarily JRPGs), especially anything made by Squaresoft (now Square Enix) like the Final Fantasy series, Kingdom Hearts, or Chrono Games. I also enjoy "party" video games (there are many excellent ones on the Wii), and music sim games such as Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) and Guitar Hero.
• Of course, not all of the games I play require video screens. I also love board games, whenever I can get enough people together to play them. They can range anywhere from classics or family-style games, to more involved titles such as Settlers of Catan or Carcassonne. I also enjoy playing card games.
• My favorite books are The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and the Harry Potter series. Incidentally, these also serve (with the exception of The Hobbit, as it hasn't been made yet) as some of my favorite movies.
• I really enjoy movies, and am open to all different genres, although admittedly my favorite genre is comedy. I'm willing to give a chance to almost anything, from big blockbusters to smaller independent or foreign features.
• Music-wise, "Weird Al" Yankovic is my favorite American singer, but I like to listen to music in French and Japanese as well, when possible (although I don't claim to be able to understand the bulk of it). However, more than 50% of the time, I listen to the video game remix music of OCRemix, often from their stream site while I'm doing homework. Aside from these things, I like techno/electronic music, and pop music from whoever the artist of the moment/week/month/year is (I'm not too picky).
• I love traveling, although unfortunately I can't (yet) claim to have done much of it. During my sophomore year at Carleton, I studied abroad in Paris, France for a term (10 weeks). It's definitely one of the best things I've ever done, and has made me want to learn more languages and travel to as many different places as I can. I currently speak a little bit of French (which unfortunately is silently deteriorating, as I lack an effective way in which to practice it), and most recently I studied the Japanese language for a year (my senior year at Carleton College). I can put together some basic phrases in Japanese, but I still need a lot more work. I'm hopeful that one day I'll be able to spend enough time in both France and Japan to really learn the languages well, and explore the various regions of each.
• How to kill time on the Internet:
  • Slashdot - Science/Technology news aggregator
  • Reddit - News aggregator
  • Digg - Another news aggregator
  • xkcd - A math/science/technology-related webcomic
  • Penny Arcade - A gaming webcomic
  • Wellington Grey - Miscellanea - Another math/science/technology webcomic. There are some good flowcharts, too.
  • Homestar Runner - Entertaining Flash comics by some very talented people.
  
  
  • Wikipedia Breadth-first traversal:
    1. Go to the Wikipedia website.
    2. Pick an initial topic of interest, and visit the page for it. If you can't decide on an initial topic, try a featured article, or a random article.
    3. As you read the article, open each linked word or phrase of interest to you in a new browser tab (but stay with the current article until you've finished with it).
    4. When you're done with the current article, close its tab, and move on to the next tab.
    5. Repeat from step 3.

Page maintained by Sami Benzaid
Last updated 01/20/2010
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