Picture of the Month

College Website(s) Get Facelift

On March 16, new websites went live for the College of Computing and each of its three schools. In the works for nearly two years, the new sites offer significant upgrades in functionality and aesthetics, while also giving a bona fide web presence for the first time to the schools of Computer Science, Interactive Computing and Computational Science & Engineering. "Computing, as a discipline, no longer can be contained within a single set of boundaries," said interim Dean Jim Foley in announcing the sites' launch. "This was the thinking behind our dividing into schools four years ago, and it’s also the reason why those schools now need room to tell their own stories, to their own audiences—all under the umbrella of world-class research and education that is the Georgia Tech brand."

Research News 

 Financial Dashboard for February 2010

Newly Awarded Contracts for February 2010

People@CoC

Mynatt Chairing CHI 2010, April 10-15 in Atlanta

Professor Beth Mynatt (IC) is chairing CHI 2010 (ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems), the premier worldwide forum for exchanging information on all aspects of how people interact with computers. The conference will be held April 10-15 at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta. It offers two days of pre-conference workshops and four days of dynamic sessions that explore the future of computer-human interaction with researchers, practitioners, educators and students. More than 2,000 professionals from 40-plus countries are expected at this year’s conference, which marks 28 years of research, innovation and development of the human-computer interaction community. CHI 2010 is sponsored by the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Human Interaction (SIGCHI). Organizations contributing to the financial support of the conference include Google, Microsoft, the National Science Foundation and Yahoo!.

GVU to Represent @ CHI 2010

Georgia Tech and the GVU Center will have a strong presence at CHI this year, in both the conference organization—Professor Beth Mynatt (IC) is chair, Associate Professor Keith Edwards (IC) is technical program co-chair, and assistant professors Carl DiSalvo (LCC) and Jason Freeman (Architecture) are media showcase curators—as well as the number of presentations (click here for a full list). To show Georgia Tech leadership in HCI and HCC programs, GVU will also have an informational booth at the conference.

On Friday, April 16 (the day after CHI ends), GVU will host Atlanta HCI Tours. Thanks to the sponsorship of Turner Broadcasting, the center was able to invite CHI participants for a day of tours of the best HCI practices, cutting-edge research and innovation presented in the city. GVU’s Research Showcase, scheduled for that day from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., will be part of the tours.

Vazirani Co-Organizes Equilibrium Computation Seminar Workshop

Professor Vijay Vazirani (CS) helped organize a workshop for Equilibrium Computation, to be held April 25-30 in the Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz Center for Informatics in Germany. The main foci of the seminar are the theoretical and practical perspectives of the algorithmic problem in computing equilibria in games and market models, with one of the major themes being behavior that leads to the discovery of equilibria, and adaptive changes in collective behavior. Vazirani’s workshop will be centered on market equilibria algorithms and complexity results and how they can be applied to Nash Bairganing Games. Three more people from CoC have been invited to the conference: Gagan Goel (Ph.D. ’09), Pushkar Tripathi (Ph.D. CS), and Lei Wang.

Rehg Finalist for Best Paper Award at Pervasive Health Conference

Professor James Rehg (IC), along with M.S. student Priyal Mehta, co-authored the paper “AID-ME: Automatic Identification of Dressing Failures Through Monitoring of Patients and Activity Evaluation,” selected as a finalist for Best Paper award at the fourth International ICST Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare (Pervasive Health). The conference, held in Munich, Germany, from March 22-25, focused on the development and application of pervasive and ubiquitous computing for healthcare.

Senior Research Scientist Rosa Arriaga (IC) was the lead author of two papers also in the conference, “Asthma Management Practices of Families and Pediatric Patients with Asthma” and “Training Social Problem Skills in Adolescents with HFASD.” Altogether, six papers authored by CoC professors were accepted, accounting for more than 20 percent of the total accepted papers at the conference.

Feamster, Giffin, Lee Win 2010 Sigma Xi Faculty Awards

In March the Georgia Tech chapter of the Sigma Xi Research Society awarded Assistant Professor Jonathon Giffin and Professor Wenke Lee (both CS) a Faculty Best Paper Award, for which they received a plaque and $1,200. Assistant Professor Nick Feamster (CS) was the recipient a Young Faculty Award, also earning a plaque and $1,200. Sigma Xi, founded in 1886, is a multidisciplinary research society that promotes and honors scientific enterprise and achievement. The Georgia Tech chapter was established in 1946.

Goodman to Serve on NRC Computer Science & Telecomm Board

Professor Sy Goodman (CS) has accepted an invitation to serve on the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) of the National Research Council, operated by the National Academies. CSTB is “where the nation turns for independent and informed assessments of computing, communications and public policy,” according to its website. Board members serve terms of three to five years and participate in two annual meetings, as well as contribute input to board activities and help oversee CSTB programs.

President Peterson Visits GVU Center

President Bud Peterson and members of Georgia Tech's senior administration visited the GVU Center on March 16. The one-hour tour started with GVU Director Beth Mynatt’s (IC) overview of the center’s vision and initiatives, followed by several research demonstrations by GVU faculty and students. Peterson and members of his cabinet saw the latest research developments in gaming, mixed reality, workspace collaboration, personal health informatics and wearable and brain user interfaces.

Ram Invited as Keynote Speaker at ICCBR

Associate Professor Ashwin Ram (IC) has been invited to be a keynote speaker at the 18th International Conference on Case-Based Reasoning (ICCBR), one of the world’s premier international conferences on research and applications in case-based reasoning, to be held July 19-22 in Alessandria, Italy. This year marks the first time the two leading conferences on case-based reasoning, the ICCBR and the European Conference on Case-Based Reasoning, merge to make a single event with the same objective of emphasizing the connection between case-based-reasoning fields. Ram’s talk will address his research in interactive digital entertainment and game AI.

3 Faculty Honored at GT Teaching Day 2010

Three CoC faculty members were honored at the 2010 “Celebrating Teaching Day,” held March 18 in the Student Center ballroom. Lecturer Kristin Marsicano (CoC) was recognized for her Class of 1969 Teaching Scholar Award, granted for her project “Incorporating Active Learning Into Large Lectures.” Lecturer Jay Summet (CoC) and Regents’ Professor Mostafa Ammar (CS) both received “Thank a Teacher” notes during 2009-10 through a Center for the Enhancement of Teaching & Learning program that allows students to send individual notes of appreciation to instructors “who have made a difference in their education.”

CoC to be Well Represented at IMFAR Conference

Several faculty members and students will represent the College in the International Meeting for Autism Research Conference (IMFAR), to be held in Philadelphia in May. One of the goals of the conference is to foster interdisciplinary dialogue among autism scientists. Thanks in part to efforts of the Autism Speaks foundation's Innovative Technologies for Autism Board, of which Professor Gregory Abowd (IC) is a member, the computer science community has a growing presence in the conference. This year, six abstracts will be presented:
• "Training Social Problem Solving Skills in Adolescents with High Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorders (HFASD)," by Fatima Boujarwah, Hwajung Hong, J. Isbell, Rosa Arriaga and Gregory Abowd
• "Cold Probe Testing Tools for Autism Center," by Rongheng Lin, Rosa Arriaga, Gregory Abowd and A. Shillingsburg
• "Automatic Classification of Parent-Infant Social Games From Videos," by Ping Wang, Tracy Westeyn, Gregory Abowd and Jim Rehg
• "An Investigation of Parent's Ability to Report Problem Behavior," by N. Nazneen, Fatima Boujarwah, A. Mogus, S. Sadler, M. Habibulla, Gregory Abowd and Rosa Arriaga
• "Understanding the Context of Stereotypical Behaviors," by N. Nazneen, Yi Han, Rosa Arriaga, Gregory Abowd, N. Call and A. Findley
• "Can the Raven’s Progressive Matrices Intelligence Test Be Solved by Thinking in Pictures?," by Maithilee Kunda, Keith McGreggor and Ashok Goel

CS Grad Makes Finals of 2nd InVenture Prize

Christopher Stuckey, CS ’09, made the finals of Georgia Tech’s second annual InVenture Prize competition, held March 17 in the Ferst Center. Stuckey’s invention, FandomU, is a social networking website that caters specifically to the interests of fans of any particular activity or pastime. Stuckey, who manages MomoCon, North America’s largest anime convention, thought of the idea as a way to create a community for fellow anime fans. First place in the competition went to Patrick Whaley, a mechanical engineering student who invented weighted clothing that enable wearers to “work out” and burn calories simply by having it on. Second place went to aerospace engineering student Sarah Vaden, who designed pneumatically inflated drums that can be “tuned” during a performance.

Personnel Announcements

Robert "Bobby" Strickland has been hired permanently as a Graphics Specialist in Communications effective 3/1/10. His email address is rstrickl@cc, phone number is 5-2317 and he is located in CCB 140. Congratulations Bobby!

Meredith Goodman has been hired permanently as a Program Coordinator I in Community effective 3/15/10. Her email address is mgoodman@cc, phone number is 5-2378 and she is located in CCB 350. Congratulations Meredith!

Jennifer Whitlow has been hired permanently as a Program Coordinator I in Community effective 3/15/10. Her email address is jwhitlow@cc, phone number is 5-2441 and she is located in CCB 351. Congratulations Jennifer!

Meka Wimberly’s last day at CoC was 3/23/10

General News

CSE Elevated to School Status

On March 8, Georgia Tech announced the formation of the School of Computational Science & Engineering (CSE), which joins its fellow schools of Computer Science and Interactive Computing as operating units of the College of Computing. Growing out of an initiative in high performance computing research, the School of Computational Science & Engineering (CSE) began in 2005 as a division of the College and led the creation in 2008 of CSE interdisciplinary graduate programs that span eight academic units across campus. It now includes other core research areas of the CSE discipline—such as massive scale data and visual analytics, machine learning, modeling and simulation, and algorithms for continuous and discrete models—many in collaboration with other units on campus. The school's education programs strive to create a new type of scholar who is well versed in synthesizing principles from mathematics, science, engineering and computing to innovate, create and apply computational models to solve important real world problems.

TSO to Host Brownbag on SVN, TRAC Offerings, April 19

On Monday, April 19, from noon to 12:45 p.m., TSO and Georgia Tech’s Office of Information Technology will host a brownbag session on the SVN, Trac, PHP and MySQL offerings to be made available for use beginning this summer and the changes that are being made to the services in use now. All CoC faculty and TAs are invited and encouraged to attend. Presenters will discuss how faculty can request and use these new services and how end users will be able to utilize them. Links to administrative and user instruction manuals will be provided. The event will be held in Klaus 1116; for more information, contact the TSO Help Desk at 404.894.7065 or helpdesk@cc.gatech.edu.

Corrections

The emailed version of the March 2010 Compiler contained two errors:

A grant listed in the Dashboard was incorrectly attributed. The grant, "Multi Model Sec Location Determination & Verification," was received by Professor Ling Liu (CS).

The Photo of the Month caption incorrectly stated that the image was taken at a Computing at the Margins event. The picture is from Interactivity@GT, held Feb. 22 and cosponsored by the School of Interactive Computing and the GVU Center.

The Compiler staff regrets these errors.