Picture of the Month

Boot Up! 2008

More than 150 College of Computing freshmen attended the annual orientation, Boot Up! Here students (l-r) Amanda O'Neal (CM), Israel Cabrales (CS) and Preston Smith (CS) work on their proposed design for the freshman T-shirt. The winning design will be put on T-shirts provided to all Boot Up! participants by Assistant Dean Cedric Stallworth of the Office of Outreach, Enrollment and Community.

Research News

Financial Dashboard July 2008

Newly Awarded Contracts

Grants/Gifts Received

People@CoC

Edwards Named to Microsoft Advisory Board

Keith Edwards, professor of Interactive Computing and recently named associate director of the GVU Center, has been appointed to the Microsoft Trustworthy Computing Academic Advisory Board. Eighteen leading experts from computing, law and public policy make up the board that advises, analyzes and critiques the security and privacy technologies of Microsoft's core products and services. Edwards is the first from Georgia Tech to be appointed to this board.

Haesun Park Wins New “Good to Great” Award

The Computational Science and Engineering Division recently created the “Good to Great" Award, a new award given by the CSE chair to individuals who have made significant contributions toward CSE being a “great” department. On Aug. 15, Chair Richard Fujimoto awarded the first G2G award to Professor and Associate Chair Haesun Park, recognizing her recent role in winning a $3 million grant from a joint NSF/DHS program in Foundations of Data and Visual Analytics (FODAVA), among ather accomplishments. As a founding member of CSE, Park has made numerous major contributions to the division including playing a key leadership role in winning a $6 million award to establish a joint graduate degree program in Korea; serving as PI or co-PI in winning five competitive NSF grants in the last two years (in addition to the FODAVA award); and serving as the director of graduate studies for CSE in recent years. The award includes a plaque and a $240 gift certificate.

GVU Director Named Conference Chair for CHI 2010

GVU Director Beth Mynatt has been named conference chair for CHI 2010 in Atlanta, and Associate Director Keith Edwards (along with Tom Rodden, Nottingham University) has been named Technical Program co-chair. CHI is the premier conference in the field of human-computer interaction.

Best Helps Lead Project on Public Information

Michael Best, joint assistant professor of Interactive Computing and International Affairs, co-hosted a meeting of the IPAI Research Working Group on Aug. 4-5. IPAI (Investigating the Social and Economic Impact of Public Access to Information and Communication Technology) is a $7.2 million (Canadian dollars) research project sponsored by Canada’s International Development Research Centre and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Best, who is affiliated with the GVU Center and the Center for International Strategy, Technology and Policy at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, is one of 10 experts leading this five-year project.

Stasko to Keynote 2 Visualization Conferences in Germany

Interactive Computing Professor John Stasko is giving the keynote lecture next month at the 2008 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC '08), Sept. 15-19, and the 2008 ACM Symposium on Software Visualization (SoftVis '08), Sept. 16-17. Stasko’s keynote address will be given jointly between the two conferences, which will take place in Herrsching am Ammersee near Munich.

Grad, Undergrad, Faculty Paper To Appear in Cooperative Work Journal

A paper by IC Ph.D. student Erika Poole, undergrad Lawrence Jarvis and Professor Keith Edwards was recently accepted to the Journal of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work. The paper is titled, “The Home Network as a Sociotechnical System: Understanding the Challenges of Remote Home Network Problem Diagnosis.”

Zha Gives Keynote Talk at SIGIR 2008 Workshop

Hongyuan Zha, professor in Computational Science and Engineering, gave a keynote talk at the Learning to Rank for Information Retrieval Workshop at SIGIR 2008, held July 20-24 in Singapore. The title of the talk was “A Structured Learning Framework for Learning to Rank in Web Search.”

SIC and GVU Going Strong into Fall Conferences
With six papers, the School of Interactive Computing and GVU Center have a strong showing at the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 2008) to be held in November. The papers are:
• “Imprint A Community Visualization of Printer Data: Designing for Open-Ended Engagement on Sustainability,” by Zachary Pousman, Hafez Rouzati and John Stasko
• “EatWell: Sharing Nutrition-Related Memories in a Low-Income Community” (nominated for best paper) by Andrea Grimes, Martin Bednar, Jay David Bolter and Beki Grinter
• “Leadership in Creative Collaboration,” by Kurt Luther and Amy Bruckman
• “The View from the Trenches: Organization, Power, and Technology at Two Nonprofit Homeless Outreach Centers,” by Chris Le Dantec and Keith Edwards
• “Are You Sleeping?” by Sunyoung Kim, Julie Kientz, Shwetak Patel, Gregory Abowd
• “Charitable Technologies: Collaborative Computing in Nonprofit Giving,” by Jeremy Goecks, Amy Voida, Stephen Voida and Beth Mynatt

At Ubicomp 2008, to be held in Seoul, South Korea, in September, the School of Interactive Computing and GVU Center have five papers appearing. They are:
• “Getting to Green: Understanding Resource Consumption in the Home,” by Marshini Chetty, David Tran and Beki Grinter
• “Reflecting on the Invisible: Understanding End-User Perceptions of Ubiquitous Computing,” by Erika Poole, Chris Le Dantec, James Eagan and Keith Edwards.
• “Living with the Tableau Machine: A Longitudinal Investigation of a Curious Domestic Intelligence,” by Zachary Pousman, Mario Romero, Adam Smith and Michael Mateas
• “Wideband PowerLine Positioning for Indoor Localization,” by Erich Stuntebeck, Shwetak Patel, Thomas Robertson, Matthew Reynolds and Gregory Abowd
• “A Quantitative Investigation of Inertial Power Harvesting for Human-powered Device,” by Jaeseok Yun, Shwetak Patel, Matt Reynolds and Gregory Abowd

Finally, at the UIST (ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology) held in Monterey, Calif., in October:
• “Re-framing the Desktop Interface Around the Activities of Knowledge Work,” by Stephen Voida, Beth Mynatt, and Keith Edwards

Grad student Chris Le Dantec also has a feature in the upcoming September/October issue of ACM Interactions.

Grad Students Participate in Values in Design Workshop

Four GVU Center graduate students were selected to participate in the prestigious, NSF-sponsored Values in Design workshop in Santa Clara on Aug. 8-16: Andrea Grimes, Chris Le Dantec and Erika Poole of Interactive Computing, and Jill Coffin of Literature, Culture and Communication. More students from Georgia Tech participated in the workshop than from any other university.

Vempala Speaks at Lovasz's 'Building Bridges' Conference

Computer Science Professor Santosh Vempala spoke before more than 200 theoretical computer scientists and leading combinatorics mathematicians gathered last month in Budapest, Hungary, to attend the conference "Building Bridges" and celebrate the 60th birthday of Laszlo Lovasz, president of the International Math Union. Vempala’s talk was titled “The Complexity of Sampling and Volume Computation.” A paper by Vempala and computer science graduate student Charlie Brubaker also will be included in a volume of papers produced from the conference. Lovasz is on the advisory board of the Algorithms and Randomness Center, of which Vempala is one of the founders. Vempala also gave an invited talk this summer on spectral algorithms at New Algorithmic Paradigms in Optimization, a summer school program in Switzerland, and offered four hours of lectures on Fourier Analysis and Probabilistic Methods at the University of California, Davis, summer school.

Edwards Gives Talk at Intel Research

IC Professor Keith Edwards gave an invited talk Aug. 7 at Intel Research Seattle on “Human-Centered Networking Research at Georgia Tech.”

Papers by Ram et al in Multiple Conferences

CS Professor Ashwin Ram and his students have had the following papers accepted at the following conferences:
AIIDE-08
• A. Trusty, S. Ontañón, A. Ram (2008).“Stochastic Plan Optimization in Real-Time Strategy Games.”
• M. Mehta, S. Virmani, Y. Kanetkar, S. Ontañón, A. Ram (2008). “An Intelligent IDE for Behavior Authoring in Real-Time Strategy Games.”
AAAI-08
• N. Sugandh, S. Ontañón, A. Ram (2008). “On-Line Case-Based Plan Adaptation for Real-Time Strategy Games.”
ECCBR-08
• K. Mishra, S. Ontañón, A. Ram (2008). “Situation Assessment for Plan Retrieval in Real-Time Strategy Games.”
• N. Sugandh, S. Ontañón, A. Ram (2008). “Real-Time Plan Adaptation for Case-Based Planning in Real-Time Strategy Games”

Grimes Invited to CSCW Doctoral Colloquium

IC graduate student Andrea Grimes was invited to participate in the Computer Supported Cooperative Work 2008 Doctoral Colloquium in San Diego, Calif., Nov. 7-8. The colloquium is a forum for Ph.D. students to meet and discuss their work with each other and a panel of experienced CSCW researchers and practitioners.

Gajbe Wins New CSE—ORNL Fellowship

Ph.D. student Manisha Gajbe of Computational Science and Engineering has been selected to receive the first graduate fellowship offered jointly by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and CSE. The fellowship covers Gajbe’s graduate research assistantship over the coming academic year. Her advisor, Professor David Bader, and an ORNL staff member will oversee her research in high-performance computing.

Vempala Gives Tutorial at SIGCOMM 2008

Computer Science Professor Santosh Vempala offered an all-day tutorial on spectral algorithms for networks at the 2008 SIGCOMM, held in Seattle, Aug. 17-22. SIGCOMM is the leading conference in computer networks.

Personnel Announcements

Mikisha “Mashan” Bowens has joined CoC as a computer services specialist in TSO effective Aug. 18. Her email address is mbowens@cc, her phone number is 4-7065 and she is located in CCB 148A. Welcome Mashan!
Lisa Guethlein has joined CoC as an academic advisor in CS effective Aug. 15. Her email address is lgueth@cc, her phone number is 5-7481 and she is located in KACB 3405. Welcome Lisa!
Elizabeth Collums has joined CoC as a Tech Temp in Community effective Aug. 18. Her email address is ecollums@cc and she is located in CCB 135. Welcome Elizabeth!
Ilya Lashuk has joined CoC as a post-doc in CSE working with George Biros effective Aug. 20. Welcome Ilya!
James Eagan has joined CoC as a part-time instructor effective Aug. 16. Welcome James!
Ieasha Hazel has joined CoC as a Tech Temp in IC working with Blair MacIntyre. Welcome Ieasha!
Vickie Suggs’ last day at CoC was July 25. Best wishes, Vickie!
Meredith Goodman’s last day at CoC was Aug. 15. Best wishes, Meredith!
Christa Jackson’s last day at CoC was Aug. 22. Best wishes, Christa!

Welcome to all new professors!
Michael Best (Assistant Professor), joint with IC and International Affairs, mikeb@cc
George Biros (Associate Professor), CSE, gbiros@cc, KACB 1324
Mark Braunstein (Professor of the Practice), CS, mbraun@cc, 5-3448
Tom Conte (Professor), CS, conte@cc, 5-7657, KACB 2334
Clinton Kelly (Professor of the Practice), IC
Guy Lebanon (Assistant Professor), CSE, lebanon@cc, 5-7652, KACB 1308
Asaf Shapira (Assistant Professor), joint with CS and Mathematics
Patrick Traynor (Assistant Professor), CS, traynor@cc, 5-7681, KACB 3138

General News

Provost Speaks at a Computing Town Hall Meeting

Georgia Tech Provost and Interim President Gary Schuster spoke to faculty and staff at the College of Computing Tuesday about Tech’s goals, the College’s role in defining “the alphabet of computing,” the search for a new president and dean of computing and, of course, the current budget situation. Despite an expected 6 percent cut in funding this fiscal year and perhaps next, Schuster said Tech will not sacrifice what he called the core missions of the Institute—maintaining the high academic functions of teaching and research while protecting the quality of both. Schuster said CoC is poised to have a huge role in how the relatively new field of computing develops and an enormous impact on the world by continuing to lead in such areas as robotics and supercomputing.

Korean-U.S. Endeavor Could Mean Big Funding for RIM@GT
The Center for Robotics and Intelligent Machines (RIM@GT) has been selected by the Korean government to formulate a full proposal on “cognitive consumer robotics.” The selection came as part of a research program, organized under the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, to engage American universities with Korean companies and universities. The RIM@GT proposal, involving Henrik Christensen, Andrea Thomaz and Beki Grinter, could result in funding of up to $10 million.

GVU Center Calls for Potential Foley Scholars to Apply

Applications for the first annual Foley Scholarships are due Friday, September 5. Named in honor of James D. Foley, IC professor, founder of the GVU Center and Interim Dean of the College of Computing, these unrestricted $5,000 scholarships are meant to support students who demonstrate brilliance and show potential to have a big impact on the field. Applicants must be current master’s degree or Ph.D. students in good standing and actively doing research with the GVU Center. Two students will be selected by October 1 by a committee of GVU alumni, industrial partners and faculty. Awardees will be honored at a special dinner October 22. For more information, contact Renata Le Dantec at GVU.

ARC Turns 2

The Algorithms and Randomness Center will celebrate its second anniversary with an event, ARC2, on Tuesday, Oct. 21. Leslie Valiant (T. Jefferson Coolidge Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, Harvard; Nevanlinna Prize '86; Knuth Prize '97; fellow, Royal Society; member, National Academy of Science) will be the distinguished speaker at the program, which also will include short talks on current center research and a student poster session. More details will be available soon.

GVU Ice Cream Social Kicks Off Fall Semester

The GVU Center hosted its traditional Ice Cream Social on Thursday, Aug. 21, to kick off the GVU Brown Bag series. Center faculty and staff donned white aprons to serve ice cream to more than 300 students in the Klaus Atrium. GVU Director Beth Mynatt welcomed everyone to the 2008-09 academic year and called for nominations for the first annual Foley Scholars.

Job Fair UROC-ked

Eighteen faculty members representing every area of research in the College spoke at the UROC Job Fair on Aug. 18. More than 70 undergrads attended to hear about research job opportunities. Organizer Amy Bruckman, professor in Interactive Computing, said, “I don’t know about everyone else, but I had three extremely clueful students approach me about jobs afterwards. Our undergrads seem to get sharper every year!”