UNM Computer Science Department

Colloquium: "Nonconvex compressive sensing: getting the most from very little information (and the other way around)"

Rick Chartrand from Los Alamos National Laboratory will discuss "Nonconvex compressive sensing: getting the most from very little information (and the other way around)" this Friday, October, 3rd, 2008 at 2 pm, in Mechanical Engineering (ME) room 218. Refreshments will be provided.

Related links: Rick Chartrand; Colloquium description; LANL

Welcome Three New Faculty!

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

Curriculum Revised

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:

• New Oral Exam Specification for Master's Examination
• Undergraduate Course Flowchart - showing prerequisites, and which classes are fall or spring only

Related links: Degrees page on website; Oral Exam Specification; Undergraduate Course Flowchart

ConceptDoppler Project: In the Media Spotlight

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:

• First Interview: Windows Media format, Quicktime Format
• Second Interview: Windows Media Format: Quicktime Format

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

Welcome New Graduate Students

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

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