Issue 56 | February 2012 View in a Web browser

Picture of the Month

GT Jams in Global Game Design Contest

Two teams comprising mostly current and former Georgia Tech computing students took first place at the Atlanta edition of Global Game Jam, held Jan. 27-29 at the Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD) Atlanta campus. The competition calls for participant teams to develop games around a particular theme over 48 hours, and the two winning entries were Team Angry Sun's "Sacrif<3" and Team Rocket's "Pangu." Picture above are Team Angry Sun members (clockwise from top, Georgia Tech students and alumni in bold) Rose Peng, Kelly Snyder, Hank Silman, Sam Mendenhall, Kevin Jones, Maiann Burns, Rhys Saraceni and Vu Ha. Not pictured are Team Rocket members Aaron Sumsky, Yan Xu and Aaron Yip. Photo courtesy of SCAD.

Research News 

Financial Dashboard for November 2011

Newly Awarded Contracts for November 2011

Grants/Gifts Received for November 2011

Financial Dashboard for December 2011

Newly Awarded Contracts for December 2011

Grants/Gifts Received for December 2011

People@CoC

Bader Elected 2012 Chair of SIAM Activity Group on Supercomputing

David Bader (CSE) has been elected chair of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics' activity group on supercomputing (SIAG/SC) for 2012. The group provides a forum for computational mathematicians, computer scientists, computer architects and computational scientists to exchange ideas on mathematical algorithms and computer architecture needed for high-performance computer systems. The activity group organizes a biennial SIAM Conference on Parallel Processing and awards the SIAG/Supercomputing Career Prize and the SIAG/Supercomputing Junior Scientist Prize.

Randall Co-Hosts MSRI Workshop on Discrete Lattice Models

A workshop co-organized by Dana Randall (CS) was held Jan. 12-13 at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley, Calif. Titled "Connections for Women: Discrete Lattice Models in Mathematics, Physics and Computing," the workshop kicked off a semester-long exploration of random spatial processes featuring a number of speakers (most of them women) from diverse backgrounds. It featured tutorials, advanced talks, a poster session and panel discussions; Randall presented a tutorial on "Counting and Sampling on Lattices: A Computer Science Perspective." This semester Randall is visiting at MSRI under an Eisenbud Professorship (see page 6 of newsletter).

Vetter Talks HPC Software at NVIDIA GTC Asia

Jeffrey Vetter (CSE) presented a talk on the "Critical Role of Software Systems in Exascale Computing" at an exascale workshop at NVIDIA's GTC Asia meeting in Beijing. The event, held Dec. 14-15, 2011, is the latest in NVIDIA's international series of GPU Technology Conference (GTC) events focused on the latest advances and research in science, academic and commercial fields enabled by GPU computing. While in Beijing, the presenters also visited the Chinese Academy of Sciences to see the Mole-8.5 system and National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin to see Tianhe-1A.

Lebanon to Co-Chair CIKM 2012, Set for Oct/Nov in Maui

Guy Lebanon (CSE) is serving as program co-chair for the 21st ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM 2012), to be held Oct. 29 to Nov. 2 in Maui, Hawaii. CIKM is a premier ACM conference in information retrieval, knowledge management and databases. Its purpose is to identify challenging problems facing the development of future knowledge and information systems, and to shape future research directions through the publication of applied and theoretical research findings.

UC-Irvine Gets a Visit from the Continuum With Ammar Lecture

Mostafa Ammar (CS) visited the West Coast for a Jan. 27 Distinguished Lecture at University of California-Irvine titled "Living on the WAM Continuum: Investigating Fundamental Properties of Wireless and Mobile Network." In his talk, Ammar discussed his work in the WAM ("wireless and mobile") Continuum Project, which is based on the observation that mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) and intermittently connected networks (ICNs) fit into a continuum that generalizes these two previously distinct categories. Building on this observation, the project develops a framework that goes further to scope the entire space of wireless and mobile networks.

Ram Delivers Keynote on User-Generated AI at RFIA 2012

Ashwin Ram (IC) delivered the keynote address at the RFIA 2012 conference, devoted to shape recognition and artificial intelligence. The event, held Jan. 24-27 in Lyon, France, is organized by the French Laboratoire d'Informatique en Image et Systèmes d'information (LIRIS), and its acronym stands for "Reconnaissance des Formes et l'Intelligence Artificielle." Ram's keynote focused on user-generated AI, which he calls the "next big frontier" in social gaming. He presented recent research on intelligent technologies to assist game AI authors, and showed the first Web 2.0 application that allows average users to create AIs and challenge their friends to play them—without programming.

Vazirani Takes New Angle on Digital Equilibrium at CMU Talk

Vijay Vazirani (CS) delivered a talk at Carnegie Mellon University on Jan. 20 titled "A Complementary Pivot Algorithm for Market Equilibrium Under Separable, Piecewise-Linear Concave Utilities." In it he explored using the linear complementarity problem and Lemke's algorithm to give a practical algorithm for computing an equilibrium for Fisher and Arrow-Debreu markets, concluding with a proof that the set of equilibrium prices is convex.

Vempala Talks M-Ellipsoids and Eigenvalues in Fall Invited Lectures

Last semester Santosh Vempala gave invited lectures and presentations at universities on the East Coast, West Coast and right in the middle of the country. First was the middle: Vempala spoke on "Algorithms and Applications of M-Ellipsoids" at a Sept. 27 workshop on high-dimensional phenomena at the University of Minnesota's Institute for Mathematics and its Applications (IMA). Next up was a trip to MIT to deliver a lecture, "Many Sparse Cuts via Higher Eigenvalues," on Nov. 15. Finally Vempala headed west to University of California-Berkeley for a Dec. 5-9 workshop on quantitative geometry at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI), where he again tackled the subject of m-ellipsoids.

Personnel Announcements

Paul Baker has joined CoC as the Associate Director of C21U effective 12/1/11. His email address is pbaker@cc and is located in the C21U offices at 760 Spring St. Welcome Paul!
Vadim Indelman has joined CoC as a Post-Doc in IC effective 12/1/11. His email address is vindelma@cc, phone number is 5-8547 and is located in CCB 218. Welcome Vadim!
Jae gul Choo has joined CoC as a Research Scientist I in CSE effective 12/17/11. His email address is joyfull@gatech.edu and is located in TSRB Lab 1305. Welcome Jae gul!
Jacob Eisenstein has joined CoC as an Assistant Professor in IC effective 1/1/12. His email address is jacob.eisenstein@cc, phone number is 5-4764 and is located in TSRB 228A. Welcome Jacob!
Christina Gardner has joined CoC as a Post-Doc in Outreach, Enrollment and Community effective 1/1/12. Her email address is christina.gardner@gatech.edu and is located in CCB 360A. Welcome Christina!
Barry Drake has joined CoC as a Sr. Research Scientist in CSE (joint appointment) effective 1/1/12. His email address is bldrake@cc. Welcome Barry!
Jingu Kim has joined CoC as a Post-Doc in CSE effective 1/9/12. His email address is jingu@cc, phone number is 4-6328 and is located in KACB Lab 1305. Welcome Jingu!
Jimmy Kriigel's last day at CoC was 1/27/12. Best wishes Jimmy!

General News

CoC to Host 2011 Nobel Prize Winner Shechtman, Feb. 23

Georgia Tech will host its second Nobel Prize-winning chemist in four months when 2011 laureate Dan Shechtman speaks in the College of Management's LeCraw Auditorium, Feb. 23 at 6:30 p.m. Shechtman was awarded the prize last year for his discovery of "quasicrystals," referring to regular and nonrepeating patterns he discovered in a mixture of aluminum and manganese. Shechtman is a professor of materials science at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel. He is also a professor at Iowa State University and a researcher at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory. Stay tuned to the CoC website for more details.

Zegura, Best Co-Chairing ICTD 2012 in Atlanta, March 12-15

Ellen Zegura (CS) and Mike Best (IC) are serving as conference co-chairs for the 5th International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD 2012), to be hosted by Georgia Tech, March 12-15. Co-located with ACM's 2nd Annual Symposium on Computing for Development, ICTD is the world's premier conference examining the role of computers and communications in social, economic and political development. The conference will attract some 500 leading scholars and practitioners working at the intersections of information technologies and global development. In addition to Zegura and Best, Beki Grinter (IC) is serving as a program co-chair; Santosh Vempala (CS) is serving as scholarship and visa chair; Marshini Chetty (IC) is serving on the program committee; Ph.D. students Jill Dimond and Thomas Smyth are serving on the open session committee; and Ph.D. students Deanna Brown, Sunil Garg and Smyth on the local organizing and mentorship committee.

CoC In the News

To help Compiler readers stay informed of the latest College of Computing media coverage, we share the month's headlines from the CoC website. Below are links to all headlines from January 2012 (most recent headlines at the top).

• Be Better at Twitter: The Definitive, Data-Driven Guide
• Your Data Has Probably Already Been Stolen
• Flashpoint Demo Day a Glimpse of How Entrepreneurs’ Dreams Come True
• MIT's Online Threat to the Higher Education Cartel
• Will Our Planet Have a Green or Black Future?
• Recipe for a Robot
• 6 New Job Titles that 4G Will Deliver
• People to Watch 2012
• Pindrop Security: Georgia Tech Spinoff Secures Silicon Valley Funding for Phone security Technology
• Drones in the Hands of the Paparazzi?
• Georgia Startups Have New York on Their Minds
• Bringing Robots to Living Rooms
• New Modes of Communication for Stephen Hawking?
• How to Paint an Ant in the Name of Science
• Flashpoint Accelerator Graduates Its First Class of Startups
• Get Smart: College Shopping Advice From a Pro
• Silicon Valley VCs invest in Pindrop
• Domains Explosion Fuels Internet Expansion
• More Web Users Aim to Thwart Prying Eyes
• Fault Lines: Robot Wars
• Augmented Reality Apps Seek to Alter Physical World
• Why We Should Teach More Computer Science Classes
• Chess Robots Have Trouble Grasping the Game