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Issue 57 | March 2012 View in a Web browser

Picture of the Month

Lessons from a Nobel Laureate

On Thursday, Feb. 23, students from George Washington Carver High School in Columbus, Ga., met with 2011 Nobel Prize winner Dan Shechtman for a brief visit prior to Shechtman's evening lecture in the College of Management (see story below). Students engaged in conversation about Dr. Shechtman’s research and participated in exercises led by Assistant Dean Cedric Stallworth of the Office of Outreach, Enrollment and Community. Following the meeting, alumnus Avery Roberson, MGT '08, accompanied the students to Shecthman's lecture before they headed home to Columbus.

Research News 

Financial Dashboard for January 2012

FY2012 YTD New Awards

$18,419,437

Proposed Contracts for January 2012

Total

$ Amount

CS

IC

CSE

6

$2,355,532

23%

53%

24%


Newly Awarded Contracts for January 2012

Sponsor

Value

PI

Co-PIs

Title

Samsung $148,329 Kishore Ramachandran None Systems Challenges for Supporting Transient Social Networks
US Department of Energy $625,000 Karsten Schwan Greg Eisenhauer; Matthew Wolf Scalable Data-Management, Analysis and Visualization
University of Pittsburgh $23,844 Jim Rehg None Automated Interpretation and Diagnostic System using Machine
Army $776,351 Eric Gilbert Irfan Essa; Constantine Dovrolis Social Media in Strategic Communication (SMISC)
US Department of Energy $436,450 Constantine Dovrolis None Advanced Performance Modeling with Combined Passive and Active Monitoring
Sandia $4,000 David Bader None

10th DIMACS Implementation Challenge

Intel $5,000 David Bader None 10th DIMACS Implementation Challenge

People@CoC

Peikert Speaks at 'Winter School' for Lattice Cryptography in Israel

Chris Peikert (CS) was a featured speaker at the 2nd Bar-Ilan Winter School on Lattice-Based Cryptography, held Feb. 19-22 in Tel Aviv, Israel. Organized by computer science faculty at Bar-Ilan University, the event provides in-depth coverage of lattices and their role in cryptographic constructions such as encryption, interactive protocols, advanced encryption (identity-based and others) and fully homomorphic encryption. Peikert and three other featured guests gave 18 hours of lectures (4.5 hours each) covering the background and recent developments in lattice cryptography.

CS Faculty Lend Wisdom to Younger Peers at CRA Workshop

The Computing Research Association (CRA) Career Mentoring Workshop, held Feb. 27-28 in Washington, featured advice from three School of Computer Science faculty: Mary Jean Harrold, Patrick Traynor and Ellen Zegura. Harrold opened with an overview of the two-day event, then was followed by Zegura speaking on a panel dedicated to "Time Management and Family Life," and Traynor, whose panel was titled "Advice from Early-Career Faculty."

Mynatt a Featured Speaker at CCC/NITRD Symposium

Beth Mynatt (IC) was an invited speaker at "Two Decades of Game-Changing Breakthroughs in Networking and Information Technology: Expanding Possibilities Ahead," a daylong symposium co-sponsored by the Computing Community Consortium and the National Coordinating Office for NITRD (Federal Networking and Information Technology Research & Development program), held Feb. 16 in Washington. The event explored the accomplishments and prospects of NITRD, which now involves 15 federal agencies as full partners. Former Vice President Al Gore served as keynote speaker, and he was joined by such notable names as Vint Cerf and Ed Lazowska, among others. Mynatt's address, "As We May Think: The Legacy of Computing Research and the Power of Human Cognition," was part of a session titled "Information Technology and People," and she also participated in a panel on "Future 'Big Ideas.'" Ph.D. alumnus Shwetak Patel also participated, delivering a presentation, "The Role of Sensors in Our Daily Lives," which was part of the "Information Technology in the Physical World" session.

Vazirani Finds Equilibrium for Arrow-Debreu Markets in West Coast Talks

Vijay Vazirani (CS) delivered invited lectures at Stanford (Feb. 2) and Caltech (Feb. 14) on "A Complementary Pivot Algorithm for Market Equilibrium under Separable, Piecewise-Linear Concave Utilities." Vazirani's talk explored a practical algorithm for computing an equilibrium for Fisher and Arrow-Debreu markets under separable, piecewise-linear concave (SPLC) utilities. His approach provides a combinatorial interpretation of Eaves' 1975 algorithm for the case of linear utilities to get a particularly simple proof that the set of equilibrium prices is convex.

Peikert, Stilman Receive CETL Young Faculty Teaching Awards

Chris Peikert (CS) and Mike Stilman (IC) were selected to receive the 2012 CETL/BP Junior Faculty Teaching Excellence Award from the Georgia Tech Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CETL). The award, offered through the joint support of CETL and BP America, provides Georgia Tech with the opportunity to highlight excellent teaching and the educational innovation that junior faculty bring to campus as they discover new knowledge through their research and choose teaching methods that make their knowledge accessible, applicable, and exciting to the learners they connect with in their classrooms and beyond. Each award carries a $3,000 prize.

Fujimoto a Leader in 1st National Modeling & Simulation Group

Richard Fujimoto (CSE) participated in the Inaugural Congress of the National Modeling and Simulation Coalition (NMSC), held Feb. 6 in Washington. The event was the first nationwide meeting of the modeling and simulation industry and focused on establishing a national agenda for maintaining the growth of modeling and simulation technology. Fujimoto serves as interim chair of the group's Education and Professional Development Committee, one of five standing NMSC committees. For more information, visit the GT Institute for Data & High Performance Computing website.

Ph.D. Student Kim Wins Best Paper for Look at Smartphone Storage

Ph.D. student Hyojun Kim (CS) won the Best Paper Award (cash prize $500) for his paper, "Revisiting Storage for Smartphones," at the USENIX FAST'12 conference, held Feb. 14-17 in San Jose, Calif. The paper, based on work done during Kim's internship at NEC labs in summer 2011, holds that storage has a significant impact on the performance of certain smartphone applications, contrary to popular wisdom. Kim and coauthors Nitin Agrawal and Cristian Ungureanu found that by varying the underlying flash storage, performance can be affected from 100 percent to 300 percent across applications, and in one extreme scenario the variation jumped to more than 2,000 percent.

Woodrow, Sundaresan Talk BISmark at CAIDA Workshop

Research Scientist Stephen Woodrow and Ph.D. student Srikanth Sundaresan (both CS) presented their work using BISmark on measuring Web performance in home networks at the 4th Active Internet Measurement Systems (AIMS) workshop at the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA), held Feb. 8-10.

Feamster Tours Universities to Talk About Battle for Internet Freedom

Nick Feamster (CS) has been delivering distinguished colloquia on "The Battle for Control of Online Communications" at several universities this spring. In the talk, Feamster describes approaches his lab has developed to preserve free and open communication on the Internet in the face of threats such as online censorship and traffic manipulation. On Feb. 1, he spoke at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; he's also delivered the talk at University of Michigan (Feb. 6); Brown University (Feb. 8); Boston University (Feb. 10); Columbia University (Feb. 13); and the University of California-Santa Barbara (Feb. 21). On March 2, he will deliver the talk at New York University.

Personnel Announcements

Nikea Davis has joined CoC as an Application Developer I in the Institute for Computing Education (ICE) effective 2/1/12. Her email address is ndavis@cc, phone number is 4-6858 and is located in CCB 305. Welcome Nikea!
Miles MacLeod has joined CoC as a Post-Doc in IC effective 2/1/12. His email address is mmacleod@cc, phone number is 4-3669 and is located in TSRB 221B. Welcome Miles!
Jessica Pater has joined CoC as a Research Associate I in C21U effective 2/15/12. Her email address is jpater@cc and is located in the C21U offices at 760 Spring St. Welcome Jessica!
Jussara Marandola Kofuji has joined CoC as a Visiting Research Student in CSE effective 2/16/12. Her email address is jkofuji@cc and is located in KACB 1333. Welcome Jussara!
Erica Edwards' last day at CoC is 3/14/12. Best wishes Erica!
Morgon Lindskog's last day at CoC is 3/20/12. Best wishes Morgon!
LerVerne Davis' last day at CoC is 3/30/12. Best wishes LerVerne!

General News

Adi Shamir, the 'S' in RSA Algorithm, to Speak on March 8

Professor Adi Shamir, Paul and Marlene Borman Professor of Applied Mathematics at the Weizmann Institute of Science and coinventor of the RSA algorithm for cryptography, will deliver a Distinguished Lecture on March 8 at 3 p.m. in Klaus 1116. The lecture, jointly sponsored by the Georgia Tech Information Security Center and the Algorithms & Randomness Center, is titled "How Cryptosystems Are Really Broken” and will discuss different types of physical attacks on cryptosystem implementations that can easily bypass "impenetrable" mathematical security. Shamir, along with RSA algorithm coinventors Ronald Rivest and Leonard Adleman, won the 2002 ACM Turing Award and has made many contributions to cryptography and cryptanalysis (code-breaking). He is well known for proving the equivalence of IP and PSPACE, and for his work on devices for factoring large integers. Shamir is also the recipient of (among others) the Erdos Prize and the Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award. A reception will follow his lecture.

Shechtman Lecture Travels Long Road to Nobel Prize

In a standing-room-only lecture on Feb. 23 at Georgia Tech, Dan Shechtman told the story of his 1982 discovery of quasi-periodic crystals, which went against everything that was known about the structure of crystals and resulted—30 years and many scientific battles later—in his being awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Shechtman is Philip Tobias Professor of Materials Science at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. In the end, of course, the discovery was accepted, and Shechtman pointed to a new definition of crystals, adopted in 1991 and based on his finding. "It is a soft, humble definition," he said. "And a humble scientist is a good scientist." Shechtman's visit was sponsored by the Georgia Tech colleges of Computing, Science and Engineering, as well as the Georgia Tech Executive Vice President for Research, the Georgia Tech Research Institute, the Georgia Tech Institute for Leadership and Entrepreneurship, the American-Israel Chamber of Commerce-Southeast Region, the American-Israel Educational Institute, and Given Imaging.

Shining Star Award Seeks Nominations from Faculty, Students

The College's Shining Star Award for staff employees seeks nominations this quarter from CoC faculty and students. The award is intended to highlight employees who have provided exceptional assistance and services to or on behalf of the College. All full-time staff from director level to Tech Temps who have been employed at CoC at least six months are eligible. To nominate, visit the Shining Star page on the College intranet. The deadline for this quarter's nominations is March 31.

Where Would You Go in Severe Weather? Prepare Now!

Feb. 6-10 was Severe Weather Awareness Week in Georgia. Georgia Tech employees are advised to prepare themselves now for severe weather possibilities in the future. The Institute Office of Emergency Preparedness offers the following tips for identifying an emergency shelter location before severe weather hits:
• Seek shelter indoors, away from windows on the lowest level possible, preferably a basement.
• If you're in a building without a basement, avoid windows. Go to the lowest floor, small center room (like a bathroom or closet), under a stairwell or in an interior hallway with no windows. Crouch as low as possible to the floor, facing down, and cover your head with your hands.
• Even in an interior room, seek shelter under a desk or sturdy table to protect against falling debris in case the roof and ceiling fail.
• Make sure you are signed up to receive emergency alerts through the Georgia Tech Emergency Notification System (GTENS). You can register your cell phone number through at https://passport.gatech.edu.
For more information, contact William Smith at william.smith@police.gatech.edu. The GT Police can provide Institute offices or departments with a Weather Hazards and Precautions class.

Keeneland Project Webcasts February Hands-On Tutorial at GT

The School of Computational Science & Engineering's Keeneland Project held another Keeneland Hands-On Tutorial on scalable heterogeneous computing at Georgia Tech, Feb. 20-21. Unlike prior tutorials, this one was webcast and recorded with the help of the College's Technology Services Organization and the GVU Center. Response to the webcast was very positive, said Keeneland PI Jeffrey Vetter (CSE), and the program has fielded requests for links to the video recordings.

CERCS to Hold March 30 Workshop on GT's Quest for Exascale

On March 30 the Center for Experimental Research in Computer Systems (CERCS) will hold a one-day invited workshop to examine the range of Georgia Tech activity in pursuit of exascale computing systems and applications. CERCS researchers have become deeply embedded in the race to exascale funded by the US Department of Energy. Karsten Schwan, Greg Eisenhauer and Matthew Wolf (all CS) are engaged in multiple DOE-funded projects, including the highly visible Combustion CoDesign project led by Jackie Chen at Sandia Labs (Albuquerque), and with additional joint efforts at Oak Ridge National Labs and Sandia. Joining in these efforts are industry partners, including Intel and IBM. In ECE, Sudhakar Yalamanchili is engaged in joint work with Los Alamos researchers, and there are additional joint initiatives with industry partners, including AMD and Logicblox (a local Atlanta company specializing in "big-data" applications). In the domain of high-end and big-data enterprise applications, Ling Liu and Calton Pu (both CS) are considering applications running in large-scale datacenter systems, and these cloud computing efforts are being conducted jointly with industry partners in industry and others at Carnegie Mellon University as part of the Intel Science and Technology Center for Cloud Computing. For details on the CERCS workshop, send email to Schwan or Wolf.

Corrections

The Financial Dashboard section of the emailed version of the February 2012 Compiler incorrectly detailed a research grant. The Intel grant for $70,000, supporting the Intel Science & Technology Center in Pervasive Computing, was awarded to principal investigator Jim Rehg (IC). The Compiler staff regrets the error.

 

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 February 2012 (most recent headlines at the top).

The Compiler is a publication of the Office of Communications
All content © 2011 The College of Computing at Georgia Tech
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March 01
ACO Distinguished Lecture: Sergiu Hart
Klaus 1116

March 02
ARC Colloquium: Sergiu Hart, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Klaus 1116W

March 04-05
2012 Accepted Student Overnight
College of Computing

March 08
GTISC ARC Distinguished Lecture: Dr. Adi Shamir
Klaus 1116

March 12-15
ICTD 2012 - Fifth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development
Georgia Tech Hotel and Global Learning Center

March 22
Teacher Workshop: Programming Simple Objects in Java
CCB 345

March 31
Teacher Workshop: Web Development with HTML5
CCB 345

2

Nobel Prize-winning chemists hosted by the College of Computing in 2011-12

 

95K

Viewings of YouTube video about BrailleTouch smartphone app, built by Mario Romero (IC) since Feb. 15 upload

 

39%

Growth in CoC Facebook fans over second half of 2011, now at 1,150 (click here & like us!)


Industry Outreach

The College would like to thank the following new Corporate Affiliates Program partners:

Macy's

Home Depot