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[Colloquium] Coexistence, Collaboration, and Coordination Paradigms in the Presence of Mobility

April 5, 2012

Watch Colloquium: 

M4V file (718 MB)

  • Date: Thursday, April 5, 2012 
  • Time: 11:00 am — 12:15 pm 
  • Place: Mechanical Engineering 218

Gruia-Catalin Roman
University of New Mexico Dean of the School of Engineering

Mobile computing is a broad field of study made possible by advances in wireless technology, device miniaturization, and innovative packaging of computing, sensing, and communication resources. This talk is intended as a personal intellectual journey spanning a decade of research activities, which have been shaped by the concern with rapid development of applications designed to operate in the fluid and dynamic settings that characterize mobile and sensor networks. The presence of mobility often leads to fundamental changes in our assumptions about the computing and communication environment and about its relation to the physical world and the user community. This, in turn, can foster a radical reassessment of one’s perspective on software system design and deployment. Several paradigm shifts made manifest by considerations having to do with physical and logical mobility will be examined and illustrated by research involving formal models, algorithms, middleware, and protocols. Special emphasis will be placed on problems that entail collaboration and coordination in the mobile setting.

 

Bio: Gruia-Catalin Roman was born in Bucharest, Romania, he studied general engineering topics for two years at the Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest and became the beneficiary of a Fulbright Scholarship. In the fall of 1971, Roman entered the very first computer science freshman class at the University of Pennsylvania. In the years that followed, he earned B.S. (1973), M.S. (1974), and Ph.D. (1976) degrees, all in computer science. At the age of 25, he began his academic career as Assistant Professor at Washington University in St. Louis. In 1997, Roman was appointed department head. Under his leadership, the Department of Computer Science and Engineering experienced a dramatic transformation in faculty size, level of research activities, financial strength, and reputation. In 2004, he was named the Harold B. and Adelaide G. Welge Professor of Computer Science at Washington University. On July 1, 2011, he became the 18th dean of the University of New Mexico School of Engineering. His aspirations as dean are rooted in his conviction that engineering and computing play central and critical roles in facilitating social and economic progress. Roman sees the UNM School of Engineering as being uniquely positioned to enable scientific advances, technology transfer, and workforce development on the state, national, and international arenas in ways that are responsive to both environmental and societal needs and that build on the rich history, culture, and intellectual assets of the region.