Grant & Award News Archive : UNM Computer Science

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CS Research in the Spotlight

Congratulations to UNM PhD students Navin Rustagi and Amitabh Trehan whose paper, "The Forgiving Tree: A Self-Healing Distributed Data Structure" was accepted at the Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC 2008) conference. PODC is the preeminent conference in distributed computing, with an acceptance rate around 15%. This paper, which was joint work with Thomas Hayes and Jared Saia, describes algorithms to ensure that a network keeps a small diameter, even if an adversary continually deletes nodes in the network.

Congratulations also to former UNM student, Maxwell Young (now at U. Waterloo) whose paper "Sleeping on the Job: Energy-Efficient Broadcast for Radio Networks" was also accepted at this conference. This paper, which was joint work with Jared Saia, Cynthia Phillips (from Sandia Labs), and Valerie King, describes algorithms to enable robust and energy efficient broadcast in a radio network.

Nate Swanson Wins UNM Innovations in Informatics Award

The CS Department's Nate Swanson received the UNM Innovations in Informatics Award at the Biocomputing @ UNM Conference on March 28, 2008. Nate, a PhD Research Assistant in the department, won for his work on the invention of dynamic gamma knife radiosurgery.

Gamma knife radiosurgery procedures are often used to treat brain tumors,and this new technique greatly speeds the delivery of this life-saving technique. Nate's advisor is Prof. Shuang Luan: the work was funded in part by the NSF.

Congratulations, Nate!

Related links: Shuang Luan; NSF ; Biocomputing @ UNM

Internet Alert Registry Site Mentioned in InformationWeek, CNET

Josh Karlin, a PhD student in the CS Dept, has a website hosted here at the CS Dept. called the Internet Alert Registry (IAR) which monitors Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) updates for suspicious routes. BGP is the routing protocol used to discover routes between the Internet's various networks.

The IAR was recently highlighted when an ISP in Pakistan, attempting to implement a government-ordered censoring of YouTube, inadvertently broadcast information that prevented users worldwide from accessing the wildly popular home of viral videos.

The incident, which lasted around 2 hours on February 24, 2008, was mentioned in InformationWeek as well as CNET, and the IAR was mentioned as a site helping to highlight the problem by listing dozens of potentially suspicious changes to BGP per day. A paper with co-authors Jennifer Rexford and Dept. Chair Stephanie Forrest, offers a way to greatly mitigate the security issues with BGP using an approach called Pretty Good BGP.

Want to be a CS Graduate Student? Munch on some free barbeque and find out more!

Join us Wednesday, Febuary 20th at 4pm in Farris Engineering Center (FEC) 141 for barbeque as faculty discuss their research and current graduate students demo their work. Find out more about it with this flyer (PDF).

Computer Science Students Making a Splash at School of Engineering Convocation

This upcoming School of Engineering Convocation (taking place 10:00 am, Saturday, December 15th at Popejoy Hall) will feature a strong presence from the Computer Science Department. Graduate student Monique Morin will be a speaker at the Convocation, and undergraduate student Laura Glendenning will receive the George F. Breece Award, which is awarded to the undergraduate in the School of Engineering with the highest GPA.

At the convocation, Monique will receive her PhD. Her dissertation deals with the development of new algorithms and tools for the reconstruction and characterization of phylogenetic networks. Monique, whose adviser is Prof. Bernard Moret, previously won an undergraduate Associated Western Universities Honorary Fellowship to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Laura will receive her Bachelor's degree at the convocation. Laura is no stranger to awards—she was also recipient of the Computer Science Departments's 2006 Outstanding Junior award and the Outstanding Senior award in 2007. Not content to wait for her graduate career to work on research, has worked on machine learning with Prof. Terran Lane in the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program.

Congratulations to both!

Related Links: Prof Lane; Convocation Information; REU; Prof. Moret

ThanhVu Nguyen Wins NASA Space Grant Fellowship

PhD student ThanhVu Nguyen won the NASA New Mexico Space Grant Fellowship for Spring and Fall 2008. ThanhVu's previous work with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles motivated him to apply for the fellowship. The fellowship will allow him to study computer security, specifically detecting abnormalities in desktop environments. ThanhVu has also researched evolutionary computing, more specifically genetic algorithm and programming, as well as agent-based optimizations. ThanhVu received an M.S. and B.S. degrees from Pennsylvania State, and is a first-year PhD student in the department. Department Chair Stephanie Forrest is his advisor.

Congratulations, ThanhVu!

Sushmita Roy Works on Nature Publication

Computer Science graduate student Sushmita Roy contributed to a paper published in the journal Nature, an accomplishment that also landed her as the lead headline on UNM's home page. Sushmita worked on a summer internship with Prof. Manolis Kellis and his team at MIT. The team used comparative genomics to analyze the genomes of 12 fly species. Sushmita is one of the authors on the paper discussing that work, "Discovery of Functional Elements in 12 Drosophila Genomes Using Evolutionary Signatures."

Her internship was sponsored by the Program in Interdisciplinary Biological and Biomedical Sciences (PIBBS) at UNM and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Interfaces program, and arranged by Microbial Sequencing Center Director Bruce Birren (MIT) and Professor Margaret Werner-Washburne (UNM Biology).

Sushmita earned her Master's from the department in 2005 and is currently working on her PhD with Professor Werner-Washburne and Computer Science Professor Terran Lane. Sushmita is also President of the Computer Science Graduate Students Association (CSGSA).

Eight New Grants Awarded Recently to the Department

The Computer Science department is working on a number of intriguing grants, ranging from sensors keeping a virtual eye on volcanoes to human and avian influenzas to attack-resistant peer-to-peer systems.

Also being studied are self-regenerative enterprise systems, visualizing uncertainly, as well as working on new cancer treatments and models of animal behavior. Take a look at the grants overview for more information. Sponsors of these grants include the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the NIH, the NSF, and National Cancer Institute.

New Computer Science FAQ

CS has a new FAQ, geared to answering questions prospective students might have about the Computer Science Department. Check out the CS FAQ (PDF, 120K).

UNM CS Professor Tests Chinese Internet Censorship

New CS professor Jed Crandall and a research team at UC Davis have been studying the Chinese firewall, and getting noticed in places like Slashdot and on the BBC web site for their surprising findings. They found that contrary to expectations, the firewall did not always stop censored traffic at the border of the network.

Using ConceptDoppler, a kind of automated weather report tool for censorship, they tested various censored keywords from the Chinese wikipedia and discovered that on 28% of the tested network paths, the data made it through. They also noted that that filtering in general was most erratic when traffic was busy, and uncovered 122 blacklisted keywords.

CS Dept Hiring Faculty

We're excited to announce that we are hiring for three tenure track or tenured faculty positions. See our Jobs page for more.

Eight New Grants Awarded Recently to the Department

CS Dept. Hires Jed Crandall

Jed Crandall started in August at the department as an Assistant Professor. Prof. Crandall's research area is computer security and computer architecture, ranging from architectural support for systems security to the capturing and analyzing of Internet worms. More recent work includes behavior-based analysis of malicious code—using a new technique called temporal search to detect timebombs within computer viruses based on their use of hardware timers—as well as work on semantic models of government censorship.

He received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Davis and his B.S. from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona.

Related links: Jed Crandall

Alumni in the News

UNM CS graduate Dino Dai Zovi was highlighted on SearchSecurity.com as a security researcher worth watching. Dino, who received his Bachelor's (with departmental honors) in 2002, discovered a Java-based vulnerability in QuickTime to win a $10,000 prize in the CanSecWest MacBook Pro hacking contest. The vulnerability, which affects both Windows and Mac Quicktime, was disclosed responsibly to Apple and has been patched.

Our congratulations to Dino!

Rory McGuire Spoke at the School of Engineering Convocation

Rory McGuire spoke recently at the School of Engineering Convocation. Rory received his Master of Science in Computer Science, with distinction. His research interests include computational medicine, focusing on radiological image processing, as well as networking and data security. Rory will work for Apple after graduation.

This marks the second time in a row that a convocation speaker was from the Computer Science department: Aaron Clauset spoke in Fall 2006.

Dr. Joe Kniss Hired as CS Professor

Dr. Joe Kniss has been hired as an assistant professor. Dr. Kniss received his PhD and Masters of Science from the University of Utah, and a Bachelors of Science from Idaho State University. Dr. Kniss conducts research in computer graphics areas such as scientific visualization, medical imaging, parallel and stream computing, as well as sensitivity and uncertainty analysis. He recently co-authored a book, Realtime Volume Graphics, which covers foundational and advanced methods for volume rendering.

Welcome, Joe!

Jared Saia Awarded NSF Career Award

Professor Jared Saia received a prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER Award for his research on "Foundations for Attack-Resistant Collaborative Peer-to-Peer Systems." This research aims to create algorithms to enable a group of hundreds of millions of people — a group the size of the entire population of the U.S. — to accomplish a collaborative task even if up to a one-third fraction of the group members are completely untrustworthy.

This research uses powerful new mathematical techniques such as extractor and expander graphs and the probabilistic method. It has the somewhat surprising property that it can guarantee security without the need for private communication, and can guarantee correctness without the need for a trusted third party. Applications of this research include: collaborative spam detection, collaborative worm and virus detection, data warehousing, running auctions, collaborative filtering, web search, mechanism enforcement, and running elections.

Faculty Candidate Search Colloquium: Jed Crandall

The second colloquia in the ongoing series of the faculty candidate colloquia took place on Thursday, February 1st from 11am to 12:15 in ECE 118. (Joel Kniss discussing "Multivariate Volume Visualization" was the first). It featured Jed Crandall discussing "Tools and techniques for understanding and defending real systems." See the colloquia page for more information.

Related links: Jed Crandall; Colloquia page

"Carbon-free energy and ecologically sustainable growth"

These are two problems that require an engineering approach to complex systems, and which Aaron Clauset, the graduate speaker at the recent School of Engineering convocation, pointed to as central to the future of engineering. After graduating, Dr. Clauset will continue his research on complex systems as a postdoc at the prestigious Santa Fe Institute. A complete copy of his convocation remarks are available. Take a look!

Barney Maccabe Named UNM CIO

CS Dept. Professor Barney Maccabe has been appointed interim Chief Information Officer of the University of New Mexico, effective February 1, 2007. In addition to the strategic leadership that Prof. Maccabe will provide, his expertise in the supercomputing area will prove useful as the Gov. Bill Richardson $25 million supercomputing initiative comes into play.

Related links: Barney Maccabe's Home Page

CS Department Hires New Professor: Melanie Moses

Melanie Moses earned her Bachelor's degree in Symbolic Systems from Stanford and recently earned her Doctorate from the Biology department at UNM. The hire accentuates the CS Department's ongoing move toward interdisciplinary work.

Prof. Moses' research focuses on complex systems and computational biology, more specifically on general principles that govern social organization, particularly how the size of a social system influences its efficiency in acquiring energy and information. Her research often uses scaling theory as a modeling tool.

Aaron Clauset Speaks at SOE Convocation

Aaron Clauset will speak at the School of Engineering Convocation, taking place this Saturday, December 16th at 10:00 am in the UNM SUB. He was often featured on this page for his research, which focuses on complex systems, statistical learning and social networks, and which has appeared in Physical Review Letters, the ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC), and the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML). He was named Outstanding Graduate Student in Spring 2006, and is now a postdoctoral fellow at the Santa Fe Institute.

CS Alumni Derek Smith Published in Science—Again

CS Dept. alumnus Derek Smith recently had his article "Predictability and Preparedness in Influenza Control" published in prestigious Science magazine. In the timely paper, Derek argues that mathematical models "...can derive estimates for the levels of drug stockpiles needed to buy time, how and when to modify vaccines, whom to target with vaccines and drugs, and when to enforce quarantine measures." This marks Derek's second Science appearance: his paper "Mapping the Antigenic and Genetic Evolution of Influenza Virus", a continuation of the work in his UNM PhD thesis, graced its pages previously.

Congratulations to Derek!

Survey says: Computer Science Best Career Path

Good news for CS grads looking for a job: MONEY Magazine lists software engineers as having the best job in America, followed by college professors. The ranking weighted salary data and projected growth most strongly, but also considered creativity, stress levels, number of positions and openings, and flexibility in hours and working environments, among other factors.

Stephanie Forrest to Become CS Dept. Chair

Effective July 1st, 2006, Professor Stephanie Forrest will become the CS Dept. chair. Prof. Forrest is widely known for her interdisciplinary research in adaptive systems, focusing on immunology and security. Educated at the University of Michigan, she has been a member of the CS Dept. faculty for 16 years, is currently a part-time researcher at the Santa Fe Institute, and served one year as its Interim Vice President. She received an NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award early in her career, is a Senior Member of IEEE, a Senior Fellow of the International Society for Genetic and Evolutionary Computation, and a patent holder, among many other accomplishments.

Related link: Stephanie Forrest's home page

CS Tech Report Earns Clauset Trip to Nation's Capital

Aaron Clauset attended the unclassified part of the Community Wide Predictive Analysis Workshop, held December 5th at the MITRE Corporation, (a sponsor along with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, DOD, and the Defense Intelligence Agency). Clauset presented "Scale Invariance in Global Terrorism" (PDF, 263Kb), which he wrote with Maxwell Young. The report, mentioned in The Economist and Nature, finds that the relationship between the frequency and severity of terrorist attacks is scale-free.

Related links: "Scale Invariance in Global Terrorism" (PDF, 263Kb); MITRE; Aaron Clauset; Maxwell Young

Welcome Back!

As the fall semester gets underway, a freshly updated course textbook list might well prove handy, as should a link to the CS Schedule of Classes over at the Master Scheduler site for Fall 2005. In other news, undergrads should come on down to the the ice cream social on Friday, August 26, 2005 from 12:30 - 2:00 p.m. in FEC 141.

New Mexico Information Technology Fellowship Launched

Any graduate student in CS for the 2005-2006 academic year who plans on working in New Mexico after graduation should consider applying for the fellowship, which pays tuition, health benefits, and a stipend. Applicants are now being accepted for the fellowship, funded by the McCune Foundation, for the '05-'06 academic year, and the grant is eligible for renewal as well.

Sushmita Roy Wins Biocomputing Award

Congratulations to CS grad student Sushmita Roy, who won the UNM Student Award for Innovation in Informatics for "Cell Population Deconvolution from Microarray Data using Particle Filters". She recently presented the paper at the Biocomputing @ UNM event. The award recognizes the degree of innovation or quality of the research, the application of informatics techniques, and the clarity of the proposal.

Prof. Darko Stefanovic Named Regents' Lecturer

CS Professor Darko Stefanovic was named the School of Engineering's Regents' Lecturer, based on his outstanding research, teaching and service accomplishments. Specifically, Prof. Stefanovic's work in biomolecular computation continues to break new ground, and he's received a number of NSF grants.

Congratulations, Darko!

Got Tutor?

Undergrads, is a class or a subject giving you fits? Take advantage of the tutoring happening in FEC 309—the 3rd-floor computer lab. The undergraduate tutoring schedule shows when CS student tutors Peter Lu, Breanna Ammons, and Rory McGuire show up.

Other resources include tutoring from the Math Department (including some CS course) and CAPS for more general courses.

1st CS UNM Student Conference Happens Friday, March 4th, 2005

It'll take place from 9am to 5pm in Student Union Building, Lobo Rooms A & B. Orran Krieger from IBM will give the keynote at the conference, which features works from CS students.

See the conference web site for more details.

Power Law Paper Accepted

CSGSA President Aaron Clauset, Prof. Cristopher Moore, and co-authors David Kempe and Dimitris Achlioptas had their paper "On the Bias of Traceroute Sampling—or: Why almost every network looks like it has a power law" accepted to the ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC), a top CS theory conference. Clauset will present the paper in May at the conference.

Welcome Back!

The recently updated course textbook list may interest some, while others may want to submit to the CSGSA's 1st Annual CS UNM Student Conference. Poster and talk submission deadlines are January 21st, so get busy.

Speaking of posters, the CS Dept recently acquired an HP DesignJet 800ps, which prints 42 inch wide posters at 2400x1200 dpi. Before you print, stop by Farris room 307 and talk to those systems folks about the right settings.

Scholarship and Mentoring Opportunities

The Anita Borg Scholarship deadline is January 14, 2005. This Google-sponsored scholarship is for both undergraduate and graduate women in the computer sciences.

In mentoring news, MentorNet, the E-Mentoring Network for Women in Engineering and Science, has immediately available mentors. While MentorNet's programs and missions focus on women, men may participate and are treated equally within the program. Contact Deborah Chavez-Kennedy for more information.

Rory McGuire Receives CRA Honorable Mention

CS Dept. Undergraduate Rory McGuire has won an Honorable Mention from the Computer Research Association's Outstanding Undergraduate Awards. Congratulations!

Rory's no stranger to awards: he snagged the 2004 School of Engineering Department of Computer Science Outstanding Junior Award.

Internet Mapping Paper Accepted at Physics Review Letters

The paper "Accuracy and Scaling Phenomena in Internet Mapping", by Aaron Clauset and Prof. Cristopher Moore, will be published in the prestigious Physics Review Letters (PRL). It explores the inherent sampling bias in using traceroutes to map the Internet's topology, and discusses how many additional sources are needed to make better maps.

A preprint of the article is available.

Eugene Spafford: Exploring Grand Challenges in Trustworthy Computing

Eugene ("Spaf") Spafford will discuss current research trends and how they relate to the four grand challenges in Trustworthy Computing. The colloquium happens Monday, November 15, 2004, from 2:30pm to 4:30 in Woodward 149—note the changed time.

Prof. Spafford teaches at Purdue University. He is a major figure in the computer security/infosec area, having built the first open scanner, widely-available intrusion detection tool, and the first formal bounds on intrusion detection, among many other accomplishments.

Ken Perlin: How will Hamlet find the Holodeck?

Ken Perlin will discuss contingent narratives and effective virtual actors as they relate to computer-mediated interactive media. Prof. Perlin won an Academy Award in 1997 for his work with noise and turbulence procedural texturing techniques, which are now widely used in films and television.

The colloquium happens Tuesday, October 26th, 2004, from 11am to 12:15pm in Woodward 149.

David Cohn Talks About Machine Learning Challenges at Google

David Cohn, a senior research scientist at Google, will give a colloquium on "Inference of, for and by the Web - Machine Learning Challenges at Google", Tuesday, October 19th, 2004, from 11am to 12:15pm in Woodward 149.

David will discuss what it's like to be "...in the heart of a company searching terabytes of data to serve over 200 million queries a day."

UNM Professors Discover Important Leukemia Related Gene

The UNM Engineering Magazine recently featured Prof. Paul Helman and Robert Veroff for their interdisciplinary work with Cheryl L. Willman, director of the UNM Cancer Research and Treatment Center, in finding a gene which may save the lives of children with leukemia. The professors used a Bayesian net to find the Outcome Predictor for Acute Leukemia 1 (OPAL1) gene, which is "...extremely predictive of whether or not someone would survive their leukemia", said Prof. Helman.

Congrats to the Scholarship Winners!

The International Test and Evaluation Association Scholarship:
Peter Lu

VanDyke Scholarship:
Lisa Glendenning

Harry and Mabel Leonard Scholarship:
Scott Griffin & Debra Morris

Edward J. Kobiela Memorial Scholarship:
Radhika Jujjavarapu, Justin Becker, Keith Wiley & Tharun Allu

Welcome Professor Luan!

We'd like to extend a big welcome to Prof. Shuang (Sean) Luan, Ph.D., who just joined the department this fall as an assistant professor. Dr. Luan earned his Ph.D. and M.S. in computer science from the University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN and his B.S. in Computer Science and Engineering from the Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China.

Dr. Luan's research interests include computational medicine and biomedical engineering, algorithm design, analysis and implementation, and computational geometry. He will collaborate with the Department of Radiology and Radiation Oncology in the UNM medical school on developing treatment planning algorithms/software for radiotherapy.

Undergraduate Tutoring Schedule Updated

Undergraduate advisors (UAs) will be available in the CS Computer Lab, Farris 309 for tutoring. See the Tutoring page for details.

UNM Phd Graduate Garners Prestigious Science Publication

A PhD graduate from the Computer Science Department, Derek Smith, had a research article published in the highly-regarded Science magazine (July 16, 2004, pp. 371-376). The paper, titled "Mapping the antigenic and genetic evolution of influenza virus" is a significant extension of the work begun in his 1997 dissertation, The cross-reactive immune response.

Scholarship Deadlines Approaching Fast

The Department of Computer Science is offering three scholarships for the 2004-2005 Academic Year. The Deadline for all three scholarships will be September 10, 2004.

The scholarships are:

Mabel and Harry Leonard Scholarship
Edward J. Kobiela Memorial Scholarship
International Test and Evaluation Association Roadrunner Chapter Scholarship

Interested students may pick up the applications in the main office from Sarah Dilmore. Contact her at 277-3112 or email her at sdilmore@cs.unm.edu for more info.

New Faces Joining CS Dept

We'd like to extend a warm welcome to Dr. Wenzhong Zhao, who is joining Prof. Terran Lane's group as a postdoctoral researcher working on machine learning and bioinformatics. He comes to the CS Dept from the University of Kentucky.

In other news, Chad Lundgren has been made webmaster for the CS Dept. on a permanent basis. I'm working hard to get CS Dept news and the most current information about classes on the web site. Please email with any additions, updates, corrections, or suggestions you might have.

Haixia Jia Wins NSF Graduate Research Fellowship

UNM graduate student Haixia Jia has been selected to receive a prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Congratulations, Haixia!

CS Dept. Senior Receives Honorable Mention in CRA's Award Program

CS Dept. senior Clint Morgan was one of twenty students nationwide selected for an Honorable Mention in the Computing Research Association's Outstanding Undergraduate Award for 2004. The program recognizes undergraduate students who show outstanding research potential in an area of computing research. Congratulations to Clint!

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