James Horey will speak at the SOE convocation to be held 10:00 a.m., December 20, 2008. This marks the fifth time in a row a computer science student has been selected to be a speaker—the others were Dennis Paiz-Ramirez, Rory McGuire, Monique Morin and Aaron Clauset. James is graduating with his PhD, and his research interests include programming interfaces, runtime systems, and privacy algorithms for sensor networks. He works with Prof. Arthur (Barney) Maccabe.
Related links: James Horey; SoE Convocation information
UNM CS Professor Melanie Moses was a co-author on a paper in the prestigious Science magazine called "Energy Uptake and Allocation During Ontogeny" (subscription required). The article was featured on UNM Today. The paper shows that the food young use to grow always stays proportional to how fast they are growing.
Related links: Melanie Moses; Science Article; UNM Today article
The Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research, a Department of Energy program, published an article discussing the work that CS graduate student Kurt Ferreira, his professor Patrick Bridges and Sandia team leader Ron Brightwell. The work involves "decomposing periodic services into smaller pieces that run more often" to reduce the impact of noise on application performance in large-scale, parallel systems.
Related: Patrick Bridges, Ron Brightwell; Article
ThanhVu Nguyen is the recipient of the New Mexico Space Grant Consortium research scholarship for the Spring 2009 semester. ThanhVu is no stranger to awards: last year he won the NASA New Mexico Space Grant Fellowship. ThanhVu received M.S. and B.S. degrees from Pennsylvania State, and is a PhD student in the department. Department Chair Stephanie Forrest is his advisor.
Congratulations, ThanhVu!
Related links: ThanhVu Nguyen; New Mexico Space Grant Consortium
Thomas Hayes, who joined the Computer Science department this fall, will discuss "Phase Transitions in Computer Science, Statistics, and Physics" this Friday, October, 24th, 2008 at 2 pm, in Mechanical Engineering (ME) room 218. Refreshments will be provided.
Related links:Thomas Hayes; Colloquium description;
The computer science department has hired three new professors to join the department. Here they are (in alphabetical order):
Dorian Arnold (pictured left)
focuses his research on reliability and scalability for large scale parallel and
distributed systems. He worked on creating a prototype tree-based overlay
network, and is receiving his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He
will officially join the department in Spring 2009.
Tom Hayes (shown to to the right) studies randomized algorithms for decision-making in complex systems. Hayes received his PhD from the University of Chicago, and subsequently completed postdoctoral studies at U.C. Berkeley and the Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago. Tom joins the department in Fall 2008.
Wenbo He (pictured left) has
such varied research interests as pervasive and ubiquitous computing, cyber
trust & security, and disruption tolerant networking.
She received her PhD and Masters degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She also worked at Cisco Systems, Inc, for five years. Wenbo joins the department in Fall 2008.
Please join us in welcoming all our new faculty. We look forward to working with them!
Related links: Dorian Arnold; Tom Hayes; Wenbo He
The computer science undergraduate and graduate curriculum has been revised for the 2008-2009 academic year, and so has the Degrees section on the computer science website. The graduate curriculum in particular has been streamlined to make it easier for professionals to earn their degree. Here are some useful PDFs related to these updates:
Related links: Degrees page on website; Oral Exam Specification; Undergraduate Course Flowchart
Albuquerque's ABC affiliate, KOAT 7, interviewed Prof. Jed Crandall on August 3rd, 2008 about the ConceptDoppler project, a kind of automated weather report tool for censorship. Then the August 6th issue of the Albuquerque Journal published a story about Jed Crandall's work, which is available on the website (subscription or free trial pass required). Next, Jed Crandall was interviewed August 7th on Santa Fe Public Radio (KSFR). Listen to the interview. (MP3). And last, and certainly not least, Jed was interviewed by KOAT 7 again on August 27th, 2008, to see what he found about Internet censorship during the Olympics held in Beijing.
ConceptDoppler has shown that the Chinese Internet censorship is not a true firewall. It tests keywords from the Chinese wikipedia and has discovered that on 28% of the tested network paths, the data made it through. During the Olympics, the filtering seemed lighter than normal, but was still present. In addition to sensitive topics such as Falun Gong and Tibet, many keywords on the blacklist are aimed at preventing rallies and protests. Thus, there is no way to know for sure what demonstrations might have occurred that were prevented by the censorship remaining in place.
Video of both interviews are available:
Related links: Jed Crandall's home page; Chinese wikipedia; ConceptDoppler; First Interview in Windows Media format; First Interview in Quicktime format; KSFR Interview in MP3 Format
New graduate students in the computer science department had a chance to attend the graduate student orientation on Friday, August 22nd. They learned all about the department, the logistics of living in Albuquerque, had an opportunity to talk with professors—not to mention enjoying some free food.
Welcome to all the new graduate students!
Related links: Larger version of picture of attendees
The graduate student orientation (which is required of all new students) will take place Friday, August 22nd, from 12 noon - 5 pm at Farris Engineering Center, room 141. The full orientation announcement (PDF) contains more details. New grad students may find the Google map showing the location of Farris handy. Also check out the no-appointment-necessary advisement times schedule (PDF).
Welcome new grad students!
Related links: Orientation Announcement (PDF); Advisement Schedule (PDF); Maps and Directions; Life in Albuquerque and New Mexico
Albuquerque's ABC affiliate, KOAT 7, interviewed Prof. Jed Crandall on August 3rd, 2008 about his ConceptDoppler project, a kind of automated weather report tool for censorship. With the Olympics in Beijing starting August 8th, 2008, the media has taken a renewed interest in Chinese Internet censorship.
ConceptDoppler has shown that the Chinese Internet censorship is not a true firewall. It tests keywords from the Chinese wikipedia and has discovered that on 28% of the tested network paths, the data made it through. They also noted that filtering in general was most erratic when traffic was busy. Those curious about which keywords are blacklisted can take a look at them on the ConceptDoppler site.
Update: The August 6th issue of the Albuquerque Journal has a story about Jed Crandall's work. The article is available on the website (subscription or free trial pass required).
Update 2: Jed Crandall was interviewed August 7th on Santa Fe Public Radio (KSFR). Listen to the interview. (MP3)
Video of the interview is available in Windows Media and Quicktime formats.
Related links: Jed Crandall's home page; Chinese wikipedia; ConceptDoppler; Interview in Windows Media format; Interview in Quicktime format; KSFR Interview in MP3 Format
In an article on NetworkWorld, the CS Dept's Associate Chair George Luger is quoted, discussing the real-world uses of artificial intelligence (AI) and where the field is headed. The article was picked up by tech hub Slashdot not long after. George literally wrote the book on AI—the sixth edition of Artificial Intelligence was recently released.
Related links: Prof. George Luger; NetworkWorld article; Slashdot article; AI 6th Edition website
The CS Department's Jonathan Baca won the 2008 Fellowship for Minority Undergraduate Summer Research Experience in Medical Physics. The American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) awarded the fellowship. Jonathan will conduct research with Prof. Shuang Luan on developing parallel simulated annealing solvers in the context of radiation therapy treatment planning.
Simulated annealing optimization is crucial to modern radiation therapy—most commercial radiotherapy planning systems use it. The research will develop parallel simulated annealing solvers on the latest multi-core architecture to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of current systems.
Related links: Prof. Shuang Luan; AAPM
Derek J. Smith, who received his PhD in computer science from the CS Dept, is now mapping influenza mutations at Cambridge University, where he is a full professor in the Zoology Department. His work is a continuation of the PhD and postdoc he did with Department Chair Stephanie Forrest.
He was called "Mapmaker for the World of Influenza" in a recent biographical piece in Science. His work on antigenic cartography is so highly regarded that he was invited to join the World Health Organization group that selects which strain of influenza will be used for the annual flu vaccine used worldwide by 300 million people.
Derek Smith and other CS Dept Alumni, Terry Jones, were authors on a paper published recently in Science magazine called "The Global Circulation of Seasonal Influenza A (H3N2) Viruses", which described the cycle of influenza mutations first appearing in East/Southeast Asia and later propagating to the the world. This work could help improve the vaccine millions depend on each flu season.
Related links: Derek J. Smith; Terry Jones; Science biography; Science Article
News & Events | People | Academics | Research | Jobs | Companies | Visitors | Computer Facilities | Home
