NEW FACES...Jeremy Goodridge has joined the CNBC, coming by way of Dartmouth where he recently completed his doctoral dissertation. At Dartmouth, Jeremy was trained as a neurophysiologist under Jeff Taube, studying the rodent head direction system. He has come to Pittsburgh for postdoctoral training in neural modeling and will work primarily with David Touretzky, while also interacting with Bard Ermentrout and Bill Skaggs. Jeremy's office is in the CNBC at Mellon Institute.
HONORS...Peter Rander, P. J. Narayanan and Takeo Kanade won the Best Paper Award for their paper "Recovery of Dynamic Scene Structure from Multiple Image Sequences" at 1996 IEEE International Conference on Multi-Sensor Fusion and Integration for Intelligent Systems, Washington DC, Dec 8-11, 1996. The Award came with $1500 cash prize.
IN DEFENSE...Susan Older examined "A Denotational Framework for Fair Communicating Processes" on Monday, December 16 at 1:30 pm during her CS thesis oral . Her remarkably robust committee included: Stephen Brookes (Chair), Edmund Clarke, Jeannette Wing, and Prakash Panangaden (McGill University).
BLACK FRIDAY IS TUESDAY...is scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday. All meetings will be held in WeH 4623. The schedule includes: December 17 - 8:30 am (Theory), 10:00 am (PS), 1:30 pm (CS), 3:00 pm (AI); December 18 - 10:00 am (Group Meeting).
ON DANCER, ON PRANCER, ON DONNER and BLITZEN...On Staff, on faculty, on students to the SCS Holiday Party on Friday, December 20 from 3:00-5:00 pm in the Connan Room, the University Center. In addition to the reindeer, there will be good food and friends. Look forward to seeing you all!
SCS INVITED TALKS...
**Bruce Maggs was the Distinguished Speaker at Midwest Theory Day in Chicago
on December 7, where he discussed "Improved Routing and Sorting on
Multibutterflies."
**David Garlan gave an invited talk at the Univ of British Columbia on
"Towards an Engineering Discipline for Software Architecture" on December 5.
IN THE NEWS...
**Beaming from the pages of November 96 BYTE (pg 48) is a smiling Takeo Kanade,
who in addition to his photo, is interviewed in "Beyond R2D2: Robots Evolve."
He "reveals how robots will make our world better and more entertaining.
Copies are available from scstoday@cs.
**"Imagine a search engine that can quickly work through hundreds of hours of
video footable and find a particular clip from a certain newscast...", so
begins "Video Clipping Service: Search enginer retrieves images from video
vaults", an article appearing in the December 15 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
The Informedia system transcribes, indexes, and splits up video footage into
useful-sized clips called video paragraphs that can be retrieved on command.
As noted by Krishna Pendyala, "what we've really tried to show here is the
use of speech, image and language to create a meaningful index that will
help in the information retrieval task." Browse the article on your own.
**"Happy Birthday, HAL" is the feature of the January 97 WIRED. "The HAL 9000
computer - an artificial intelligence that could think, talk, see, feel, and
occasionally go berserk - was supposed to be operational in January 1997.
Has anyone seen HAL?" offers an exploration into where computers are today.
Among those interviewed are CS PhD alum Janet Baker of Dragon Systems, and
Takeo Kanade, who notes that HAL is a "general-purpose intelligence that can
understand whatever it sees", a task not yet perfected in current vision
systems. Fun reading. Copies are available from scstoday@cs.
WEEK OF DECEMBER 9, 1996
PROPOSALS.... HENRY A. ROWLEY offers "A Trainable View-Based Object Detection System" at his CS thesis proposal, Thursday, December 12 at 10:00 am in Wean 5409. His committee includes: Takeo Kanade (Chair), Shumeet Baluja, Dean Pomerleau, Manuela Veloso, and Tomsao Poggio (MIT).
IN DEFENSE...
**DAVID SIMON delivers "Fast and Accurate Shape-Based Registration" at his
Robotics thesis oral on Thursday, December 12 at 1:30 pm in Wean 4623. His
committee includes: Takeo Kanade (Chair), Michael Erdmann, Martial Hebert,
Eric Grimson (MIT).
**MARK LILLIBRIDGE looks into "Translucent Sums" A Foundation for Higher-Order
Module Systems" at his CS thesis oral on Monday, December 16 at 4:00 pm in
Wean 5409. His committee includes: Robert Harper (Chair), Peter Lee,
John Reynolds, and Luca Cardelli (DEC SRC).
UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH POSTER SESSION...The SCS community is invited to
join our CS undergraduates at the Fall 96 Research Poster Session on Wednesday,
December 11 from 4:30 to 6:00 pm in Wean 5403. Concurrently, undergraduates
engaged in independent study will also present their final reports from
4:30-6:00 in Wean 5403. A lot of hard work and effort has gone into the
term and this promises to be a wonderful opportunity to see what our students
are up to. Among the Research Reports to be presented are mid-year
presentations of the seniors working on Undergraduate Theses, including:
*BEN FOLK-WILLIAMS,"Texture Mapping Curved Surfaces on a PC"
*MURALI HARAN, "Recognizing Haptic Gestures for Virtual Environment
Interactions"
*MIKE HERG, "Fast Soft Shadows"
*BENJAMIN HSU, "Multicommodity Network Flow Problems and Applications"
*DEWITT LATIMER, "Utilizing Web in Application Programs"
*WAI YIN LIU, "Protection for Key Repository from Attackers"
*ANDREW NG, "ML Search: An Autonomously-Built Specialized Web Search Engine
for Machine Learning Pages"
*YU CHUNG NG, "A Formal Specification in IPv6"
*PATRAWADEE PRASANGSIT, "Data Analysis and Prediction Using GMDH Algorithm"
*CHOON QUEK, "Machine Classification of World Wide Web Documents"
*ANTON STAAF, "Evolving Gaits for Caterpillar Robots"
*HONGSUDA TANGMUNARUNKIT, "Middleware between the Application and Network"
*NICK VALLIDIS, "Making Black Widow Walk"
*DAVID WATSON, "Computer Understanding of Musical Style"
DEPARTURES...Maggie Muller will step down from her position as Assistant Business Manager of CS, effective January 6, 1997. Having finished her course requirements at Carlow College, Maggie is leaving to student teach art in the Shaler Area School District beginning in January. "Unfortunately, it is not possible to continue working at my present job while I'm doing the teaching." She adds that after working here for 14 years, "she is leaving with mixed emotions and will miss everyone in CS and Robotics." Congratulations on a challenging new career path!
HONORS...Yury Smirnov notes he was personally "surprised to find my name in the 1996 ranking", but surprise aside, he has earned the honor of "Runner of the Year in Pittsburgh", according to the December issue of Healthy and Fitness Journal. Yury celebrated this remarkable milestone by winning Max and Erma's Jingle Bell 5K last weekend (also adding...br-r-r, it was cold). What can we say, he just keeps going, and going, and going....
SCS INVITED TALKS...Mary Shaw delivered an invited talk on "Software Architectures: Perspectives on an Emerging Discipline" to the BNR/Nortel Design Forum in Ottawa on December 5. The Forum was broadcast to sites around the world.
WEB SITE OF THE WEEK...David Johnson's web page for his research project in adaptive protocols for wireless and mobile networking was chosen by PC Week Magazine as the "Web Site of the Week" in their December 6, 1996 issue. As noted, "The Monarch Project...at Carnegie Mellon investigates networking support for wireless and mobile technologies. The site lists pointers to various research papers, including mobility support in IP v6 and dynamic source routing." If you would like to see more, check out the online edition of the magazine at http://www.pcweek.com/ir/ir.html. (p) GOOD CHEER, TIDINGS AND JOY...and of course, delicious holiday victuals,can be yours on Friday afternoon, December 20 at the annual SCS Holiday Party. Mark you calendars and watch for particulars!
HO HO CALENDAR...The University will officially observe the Holiday Season and the New Year on Tuesday and Wednesday, December 24-25, and Tuesday and Wednesday, December 31, 1996 to January 1, 1997. All business offices will be closed. On the interim days, offices will be running with reduced staffing, so please plan accordingly. Normal office schedules will resume Thursday, January 2. Winter recess for students formally begins Wednesday, December 18, with all classes resuming Monday, January 13.
IN THE NEWS..."Bug Killer: CMU prof's program will ferret out software glitches" notes the December 7 issue of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "Roy Maxion has produced a tool that allows software developers to more accurately track down quirks when they test their products...for most home computer users, buggy interfaces are an annoying fact of life. But computers are now so widespread that a bad interface in the wrong situation could have calamitous consequences." Roy's MetriStation capitalizes "on a very human reaction to problems: We pause to think about it." The systems logs keystrokes, mouse movements, on-line video from the program under test --- all on the computer. MetriStation enables evaluators to go directly to an event rather than wading through tapes, etc. and helps uncover problems that might go unnoticed in more conventional evaluations. The articles is available from scstoday@cs.
WORDS FOR THOUGHT:
FRIDAY, 13 DECEMBER
**ROBOTICS SEMINAR: Eric Rollins, "Atacama Desert Trek: A Stepping Stone
to Planets", 3:00 pm (special time), Adamson Wing.
MONDAY, 16 DECEMBER
**POP SEMINAR: Luca Cardelli, "Foundations of Object-Oriented Programming",
9:30 am, Wean 5409.
WEEK OF NOVEMBER 25, 1996
PROPOSALS...
**STEPHEN BEALE is "Applying Constraint Satisfaction, Branch-and-Bound and
Solution Synthesis to Computational Semantics" at his LTI thesis proposal on
Tuesday, November 26 at 10:00 am, Cyert Hall 279 (Blue Room). His
satisfaction-seeking committee includes: Sergei Nirenburg (Chair), Jaime
Carbonell, Robert Frederking and Victor Raskin (Purdue).
**DAYNE FREITAG examines "Machine Learning for Information Extraction from
Online Documents" during his CS thesis proposal on Friday, December 6 at
2:00 pm, Wean 4623. His content searching committee includes: Tom Mitchell
(Chair), Jaime Carbonell, David Evens, and Oren Etzioni (University of
Washington).
IN DEFENSE...Lily Mummert discussed "Exploiting Weak Connectivity in a Distributed File System" during her CS thesis oral on Friday, December 6 at 12:30 pm in Wean 3412. Her coda-fied committee includes: Satya (Chair), Garth Gibson, James Morris, and Patrick Mitchell (Intel).
SCS INVITED TALKS...
**TOM MITCHELL gave the Computer Science Distinguished Lecture at Brown
University on November 22, speaking on "Does Machine Learning Really Work?"
**TAKEO KANADE delivered an invited talk on "Virtualizing Reality into a
3D Model" at the Supercomputing '96 Conference on November 19.
**STEVEN RUDICH has had a busy November, presenting "The Science of Modern
Cryptography" at an invited talk at the National Academy of Sciences
Frontiers of Science Symposium in Irvine, California. The audience included a
collection of leading scientists from every field of science (3-4 per field).
He also offered "Gaps, Isomorphism, and Stop Gaps" at the Plenary Lecture of
the Oberwolfach Workshop on Complexity Theory and Randomness in Germany.
BE DAY IS COMING...Several top executives of Be, Inc., a 6 year old computer firm (California) vying with Apple and Microsoft to develop a new architecture for personal computers, will be on campus to demonstrate their latest product, the Be Box, and the Be Operating System, on Monday, December 2. The campus community is invited to a demonstration of the system followed by a "Geekfest" from 4:00-6:00 pm in the McConomy Auditorium, University Center. The SCS community is also invited to a technical talk and demonstration of the system by Alex Osadzinski from Noon to 1:30 pm in Wean 4623. Both events are sponsored by the School of Computer Science.
SPECIAL STUFFING SEMINAR..."Gobble-Gobble" by the Thanksgiving Turkey, 3:30 pm, in a kitchen near you. Have a great holiday!
ON DISPLAY...Among the research exhibits on display at Supercomputing '96, was a set of SCS high-performance computing and communication projects. The work focuses on programming tools that support the parallelization of both regular and irregular applications and high-performance networking applied to distributed computing. The projects included: the Archimedes tool supporting unstructured finite element simulations (Dave O'Hallaron and Thomas Gross), the Credit Net high-speed network (Peter Steenkiste and Allan Fisher), the Dome distributed object library (Adam Beguelin), the Fx parallelizing FORTRAN compiler (Thomas Gross and Jaspal Subhlok), and the NESL high level parallel programming language (Guy Blelloch). These groups are working closely with application groups, including the NSF Grand Challenges on Earthquake Modeling and on Large-Scale Environmental Modeling.
FACILITIES UPDATE...Scads of new, higher quality, faster printers have shown up in the public printing areas over the past week or two. **Wean 8108: IRON is now an HP 5si (two-sided, high-capacity); **Wean 4215: STONE has evolved into an HP 5si, ONYX an HP 5m, and PALETTE a color HP 1600CM (Robert Havey adds a special note of caution, with PALETTE, be sure to use the supplied "HP CutSheet Paper" for best results). **The Op-Station in Wean 3610: CRAYON is now a color 1600CM for slides, and SLIDE1 is an HP XL300 also for slides. PRISTINE grown into an HP 5m for high-quality final drafts. Output from CHROME, CRAYON, PRISTINE, SLIDE1, and TABLOID is filed outside the Op-Station door hourly. Robert is also pleased to note that "more upgrades are planned or in progress".
IN THE NEWS..."An Internet Review: The Compleat Neuroscientist Scours the World Wide Web", a featured article in the November 15 SCIENCE, "takes a critical look at and recommends" the 5 best "giant" repositories for neuroscience-pertinent information. Receiving special recognition is "The Cognitive Neuroscience Resources" page of the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC) at CMU. It notes that "thanks to the clever people who created and maintain this site" (David Redish in CS!), this is a very useful resource that's simplicity belies the "deep pool of information" it offers. Complete reviews are in the article, now available from scstoday@cs.
CS FACULTY MEETING...next meeting is scheduled for Thursday, December 5. No turkey will be served :-)
WORDS FOR THOUGHT:
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 26
**GRAPHICS/THEORY SEMINAR: Barry Joe, Consultant, ANSYS, "Construction of
3-D Improved-Quality Triangulations Using Combinations of Flips", 1:30 pm,
Wean 4623.
**AI SEMINAR: Dean Pomerleau, "Recent Progress on CMU Intelligent Vehicles",
3:30 pm, Wean 5409.
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 28/FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 29
**EATING, EATING, EATING
MONDAY, DECEMBER 2:
**PROGRAMMING SYSTEMS SEMINAR: David Schmidt, Kansas State University,
"Abstract Interpretation, Data-Flow Analysis, and Model Checking of
Operational Semantics Definiations: An Attempt at a Unified Survey".
3:30 pm, Wean 5409.
WEEK OF NOVEMBER 18, 1996
AWARDS AND HONORS...
**SANDY ROCCO shares in the Andy Award for "Increasing Productivity in
the Payroll System", having served as part of a 15-member team cited for
"increasing productivity in the database that feeds the university's payroll
system. Rocco and the other members of the DRIVE Team (Distributed, Real-time,
Integrated, Validated Entry) re-engineered the human resource system to
computerize it, eliminating the paperwork! Congratulations on your second
Andy, Sandy :-)
**RAGUNATHAN RAJKUMAR will serve as the Program Chair for the Third IEEE
Real-time Technology and Applications Symoposium (RTAS) to be held June,
1997 in Montreal. The Call for Papers is accessible at
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rtas97.
IN DEFENSE...Jennifer Kay examines "STRIPE: Remote Driving Using Limited Image Data" at her CS defense on Monday, November 25 at 10:00 am in Wean 4623. The committee tracking her moves includes: Chuck Thorpe (Chair), Bonnie John, Eric Krotkov, and Larry Matthiews (JPL).
CS DISTINGUISHED LECTURE...Bruce Croft, Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Massachusetts, Lederle Graduate Research Center, and Director, NSF State/Industry/University Collaborative Research Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval, examines "Effective Retrieval Through Corpus Analysis" at the CS Distinguished Lecturer on Thursday, November 21 at 3:30 pm, Wean 7500 (please note the special time). Refreshments at 3:15 pm.
SCS INVITED TALKS...
**ED CLARKE gave a series of four lectures on Model Checking at the "BRICS
Autumn School on Verification" in Aarhus, Denmark, from Oct 28 through Nov 1.
**BONNIE JOHN delivered the keynote address on Cognitive Modeling for
Human- Computer Interaction, at the European Workshop on Cognitive Modeling,
held at the Technical University of Berlin, Germany, November 14-16.
THE FLOOD OF '96...On Friday, November 15, the 4200 corridor of Wean Hall was inundated by noah-sized waters cascading from the mechanical room in the 5200 corridor cluster. The heating coil in the air-conditioning unit ruptured, leaving the 4200 business offices, corridor and main office a nasty, sopping mess. Particularly hard hit were the offices of Jim Skees and Paul Stockhausen. Thanks to quick action on everyone's part, the damage was limited and contained to the area. Clean-up continued throughout the weekend, and everyone is back in business.
IN THE NEWS..."How Can American Schools Measure Up? National curriculum guidelines might help kids learn more" is a featured article in the November 25 Business Week. Especially noted is "Teacher in a Box: Math Software that Works", a special insert featuring the activities of Carnegie Mellon's Lifetime Math program (Anderson, Koedinger, Corbett, V. Fisher). As noted, "Lifetime Math is the core of Langley's [High School] curriculum in algebra and geometry --not a supplement to classroom instruction. Students work at their own pace, and they're free to ask for clues....the research draws on two decades of research about how students learn." Read on! Copies are available from scstoday@cs.
REMEMBER...Spring Registration is scheduled for November 18-22.
WORDS FOR THOUGHT...
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 19
**AI SEMINAR: John Wilbur, NLM/NIH, "What Can We Learn from Multiple Human
Relevance Judgments?", 3:30 pm, Wean 5409.
**CS/PSC SEMINAR: Monica Lam (Alum alert!), Stanford University, "The SUIF Parallelizing
Compiler", 4:00 pm, Hamerschlag B131.
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20
**LTI SEMINAR: Peter Brusilovsky, "Adaptive Hypermedia: State of the Art and
Prospects", 11:30 am, LTI Blue Room (Cyert Hall 279).
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22
**THEORY SEMINAR: Ramamohan Paturi, University of California, San Diego,
"Exponential Lower Bounds for Depth 3 Bollean Circuits", 3:30 pm, Wean 7220.
**ROBOTICS SEMINAR: Jon Webb, Visual Interface, Inc. (and CMU), "The Advent
of Shape Photography", 4:00 pm, Adamson Wing.
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 25
**PS SEMINAR: Roger Sherman, Microsoft, "Shipping the Right Software, at the
Right Time", 3:30 pm, Wean 5409.
WEEK OF NOVEMBER 11, 1996
AND HONORS...Randy Bryant will be awarded The President's Professorship of Computer Science, an endowed chair named for CMU's president, who has made the funds available for this position. As noted by Jim Morris, "since his days as a graduate student, Randy has been making breakthroughs by applying computer tools to the design of hardware. He is best known for the MOSSIM switch-level chip simulator and for OBDD's -- Ordered Binary Decision Diagrams --an amazingly effective way to represent Boolean Functions. They are a vital tool for some of the impressive results that Ed Clarke and others are achieving in the verification of hardware and software systems." A devoted teacher, an admired colleague, a committed citizen of our community, a faculty member "esteemed for his even-handed judgment", and a hard-driven athlete ...not bad for one guy. Join CMU in thanking Randy for his many and continuing contributions.
PROPOSALS, PROPOSALS...
**ROBERT MONROE encapsulates "Rapid Development of Custom Software Architecture
Design Environments at his CS thesis proposal on Monday, November 18 at
10:00 am in Wean 4623. His well-configured committee includes: David Garlan
(Chair), Mary Shaw, Steve Cross, and David Notkin (University of Washington).
**MICHAEL GARLAND examines "Multiresolution Modeling of Complex Surfaces"
during this proposal on Monday, November 18 at 1:00 pm in Wean 4623. The
committee rendering their opinions includes: Paul Heckbert (Chair), Andy
Witkin, Martial Hebert, and Jarek Rossignac (Georgia Tech).
IN DEFENSE...
**SOMESH JHA uses regular language to defend "Symmetry and Induction in
Model Checking" at his CS thesis oral on Thursday, November 14 at 10:30 am
in Wean 4615A. Checking his grammer are: Edmund Clarke (Chair), Stephen
Brookes, Daniel Jackson, and Robert Kurshan (Bell Labs/Lucent Technologies).
**CHRISTOPHER MAEDA evaluates "Service Decomposition: A Structuring Principle
for Flexible High-Performance Operating Systems" at his CS oral on Friday,
November 15 at 1:00 pm in Wean 3420. His well-tuned committee includes:
Brian Bashad (Chair), Garth Gibson, David Johnson, and Hank Levy (University
of Washington).
CS DISTINGUISHED LECTURE...Bruce Croft, Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Massachusetts, Lederle Graduate Research Center ,and Director, NSF State/Industry/University Collaborative Research Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval, will join us for the next CS Distinguished Lecture on Thursday, November 21 at 3:30 pm, Wean 7500. He will examine "Effective Retrieval Through Corpus Analysis."
SCS INVITED TALKS...David Johnson presented a half-day tutorial on "Internet Support for Wireless and Mobile Networking" at this year's OSDI conference (Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation), sponsored by USENIX and ACM) on Monday October 28.
SPRING TO ACTION...Spring Registration is scheduled for November 18-22. Don't forget the schedule: Monday (Seniors/Grads), Tuesday (Juniors), Wednesday (Sophomores), Thursday (Freshmen), and Friday (specials and leftovers :-)
SPEAKING OF LEFTOVERS...Make note! Thanksgiving recess is scheduled for Wednesday, November 27 through Sunday, December 1. All classes resume Monday, December 2. All University offices will observe the holiday on Thursday and Friday, November 28-29, and will reopen for regular business on December 2.
THE END IS NIGH...The last day of fall classes is Friday, December 6. Final exams are scheduled for December 9-17.
WORDS FOR THOUGHT...
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13
**SPECIAL SEMINAR: Peter Schwarz, IBM Almaden Research Center,
"Garlic: An Object-Oriented Heterogeneous Middleware System", 1:30 pm, Wean
4625.
**HCI SEMINAR: Michael Wicklund, Director, New England Research Center,
American Institutes for Research, "Usability Engineering of Medical and
Diagnostic Devices", 3:30 pm, Wean 5409.
**INTERDISCIPLINARY COLLOQUIUM: Kerstin Dautenhahn, "Social Agents" Embodied
and Virtual", 4:30 pm, CFA 314
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15
**THEORY SEMINAR: Eric Bach, University of Wisconsin, "Hueristic Models in
Algorithmic Number Theory", 3:30 pm, Wean 7220.
**POP SEMINAR: Carsten Schuermann, "Primitive Recursion for Higher-Order
Abstract Syntax", 3:30 pm, Wean 8220.
**ROBOTICS SEMINAR: Peter Lawrence, University of British Columbia, Vancouver,
"Partial Autonomy for Excavator-Based Machines", 4:00 pm, Adamson Wing.
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 18
**LTI SEMINAR: Hiroshi Tsuji, Hitachi Ltd, "Experimental Simulation for
Automatic Patent Categorization", 3:00 pm, Cyert Hall 281 (Red Room).
**PS TRAVELLING SALESMAN SEMINAR: Sreeranga Rajan, Fujitsu, "Modelling and
Verification of a Parameterized ATM Switch", 3:30 pm, Wean 5409.
**SPECIAL DEMO: WINDOWS NT, Gurdeep Singh Pall, Microsoft, 5:15 pm, Wean 5409.
WEEK OF NOVEMBER 4, 1996
**DAVID STEERE will be "Using Dynamic Sets to Reduce the Aggregate Latency
of Data Access" at his CS thesis defense on Tuesday, November 5 at 2:00 pm
in Wean 4623. His well-defined, transitory collection of committee members
includes: Satya (Chair), Garth Gibson, Jeannette Wing, and Hector
Garcia-Molina (Stanford).
**SRINIVAS AKELLA demonstrates "Robotic Parts Transfer and Orienting" at his
Robotics thesis defense on Friday, November 8 at 11:00 am in Wean 4623.
The committee examining his sequence of actions includes Matt Mason (Chair),
Michael Erdmann, Reid Simmons, and Kenneth Goldberg (Berkeley).
SCS ALUMNI LECTURE...Marc Donner, Vice President, Union Bank of Switzerland, will discuss "How to Succeed in Software" at the SCS Distinguished Alumni Lecture on Thursday, November 7 at 4:00 pm in Wean 7500. The event will be further punctuated by the very special appearance of alums Ed Frank, Advanced Technology Ventures, and Philip Lehman, Transarc Corporation. Join them all at 3:45 pm for distinguished refreshments.
PHI BETA KAPPA...Our heartiest SCS congratulations to Glenn E. Durfee, Benjamin E. Folk-Williams, Robert S. Raposa, Hongsuda Tangmunarunkit, and David L. Watson, who were initiated into Upsilon of Pennsylvania, Carnegie Mellon's chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, on Sunday, October 27.
ANOTHER BEST...An OSDI Best Paper award went to Peter Lee and George Necula for their work on "Proof Carrying Code". As noted by Bob Harper, "it's an honor for Peter and George, and exemplifies well the CMU tradition of crossing traditional boundaries. Peter and George's paper is concerned with using formal proof checking techniques in an OS kernel to support efficient kernel extensibility." The award was announced at the Second Symposium on Operating System Design and Implementation '96, October 29-31 in Seattle, a conference sponsored by USENIX, IEEE ICOS and ACM SIGOPS. Yet another 'proof' of talent...
SLEEPING BAGGERS ARE COMING...on Sunday and Monday, November 10-11. Prospective undergraduates will visit (along with some parents) for a weekend of departmental overviews, discussion, class visitations and "hanging out" with CMU undergrads. Watch for them in your classrooms :-)
SCS INVITED TALKS...Randy Bryant gave a Distinguished Lecture presentation on "Multipliers & Dividers: Insights on Arithmetic Circuit Verification" at the Computer Department, University of Washington, on October 24.
SHOW BIZ...
**This past weekend's presentation of "Bob Roberts", a film by Tim Robbins,
is a pseudo-documentary about one man's quest for a seat in the Pennsylvania
Senate. A pretty good movie, but even more noteworthy because it stars
Mark Maimone --- or as Mark more carefully notes, "well, actually, just my
voice in a choir for 5-10 minutes. But if you've got really good eyes you
might pick me out in a 15-frame excerpt. Sharon Burks was able to. :-)"
**Stephanie Riso, chanteuse extraordinaire, caps her list of performances
with a recent appearance in "Mephistofeles" at the Pittsburgh Opera.
ANDY AWARDS...The CMU Andy Awards, the university-wide program that "recognizes staff members for their dedication and outstanding performance" will be announced at a special noon ceremony in McConomy Auditorium, the University Center, on Wednesday, November 6. Forty-four individuals and teams have been nominated, including: 1) Excellence in Satisfying Customers-Team -- The CD ROM Training Team, which includes Roger Dannenberg (CS), and the DRIVE Team, including Sandy Rocco (Robotics); 2) Excellence in Satisfying Customers-Individual -- Maria Fischer (CS). Come celebrate this tribute to our SCS nominees and all staff members at CMU. All are winners!
REMEMBER YOUR COMMUNITY...The CMU United Way drive has almost reached its goal and encourages last minute contributors not to be discouraged by the late date. Your gift is welcome and greatly appreciated, whatever the size. The funds help assure our community organizations a more dynamic existence than might otherwise be possible. If you have questions, please contact the Heinz School at x2159.
WORDS FOR THOUGHT...
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 5
**HCI SEMINAR: William Newman, Rank Xerox Research Center, Cambridge,
"The CamWorks Over-the-Desk Scanner: Turning a Radical Technology into a
Potential Product", 12:00 noon, Wean 4623.
**SPECIAL CS SEMINAR: G. Knittel, Univeristy of Tuebingen, "Hardware
Devices for High Performance Graphics and Visualization", 10:30 am,
Wean 4601.
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6
**LTI SEMINAR: Wolfgang Menzel, University of Hamburg, "Architectures for
Incremental and Interactive Processing of Spoken Language", 11:30 am,
LTI Blue Room (Cyert 279).
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7
**SPECIAL LUNCH TALK: Norman Sondheimer, GE Corporate Research & Development,
"An Overview of Research Activities at GE CRD", 12:00 noon, Wean 7220.
Pizza will be served.
**SPECIAL VERIFICATION TALK: Mark Greenstreet, Department of Computer
Science, University of British Columbia, "Verifying that Continuous Circuits
Implement Discrete Behaviors", 10:00 am, Wean 7220.
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8
**ROBOTICS SEMINAR: Kenneth Goldberg, "Tele-Robotics via the WWW", University
of California at Berkeley, 4:00 pm, Adamson Wing.
**CS/PSC SEMINAR: Lixia Zhang, "Network Architecture Revisited: The Case
for Datagrams", 4:00 pm, Wean 5409.
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 11
**PS TRAVELLING SALESMAN SEMINAR: Aviel Rubin, Bellcore, "Key Distribution
Using Smart Cards", 3:30 pm, Wean 5409.
WEEK OF OCTOBER 28, 1996
IN DEFENSE...Anwar Ghuloum transforms "Compiling Recurrent and Irregular Serial Code for High Performance Computers" into his CS thesis defense on Monday, November 4 at 10:00 am in Wean 4623. The committee checking for syntactic perturbations includes: Allan Fisher (Chair), Thomas Gross, Guy Blelloch, and Geoffrey Lowney (DEC).
PROPOSALS...Santosh Vempala constructs "Geometric Tools for Algorithms" at his ACO thesis proposal on Monday, November 4 at 3:30 pm in Wean 8220. His His well-designed committee includes: Avrim Blum (Chair), Alan Frieze, Ravindran Kannan, and Laszlo Lovasz (Yale).
CMU COMPUTER EXPO '96...is scheduled from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm on Tuesday, October 29 in the Rangos Ballroom, University Center.
EMIGRATION CONTINUES...M. Satyanarayanan (Satya) examines "Recruiting CS PhDs: An Employer's Perspective" at the next Emigration Seminar: Jobs (Part II) on Friday, November at 10:00 am in Wean 5409. Come see how "attractive" you might be to prospective employers :-)
SCS DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI LECTURE...Marc Donner, Vice President, Union Bank of Switzerland in New York, will review "How to Succeed in Software" at the next Distinguished Alumni lecture on Thursday, November 7 at 4:00 pm in Wean 7500 (distinguished victuals at 3:45 pm). Watch for details.
SCS NETWORK UPGRADE PROGRESS REPORT...Paul Parker notes that "since mid-summer,the SCS network has undergone an overall upgrade which is continuing." To date, improvements have included: 1) A new network backbone has been installed, providing fast ethernet (100Mbit/sec) connections to the floors and certain buildings; 2) Each floor in Wean Hall has it's own ethernet switch which takes a fast ethernet uplink and distributes many 10mbit/sec ethernet segments so that only a few offices share each segment; 3) The gateway to campus and the rest of the Internet has been upgraded to a faster, more powerful router using fast ethernet for this link. Additional upgrades in progress include: 1) The machine room networks are being upgraded to provide more capacity for network traffic to AFS, web, and backup servers; 2) Routing of Appletalk and IPX (Novell) protocols between campus and SCS will be phased in providing more reliable connectivity for applications using those protocols; 3) More attachment points are being provided for separate networks consisting of project-supplied switches that keep heavy project-local traffic off the backbone. Paul notes that "other improvements are being planned and/or evaluated." Contact help+network@cs.cmu.edu with network specific questions.
CS FACULTY MEETING...Thursday, October 31 at 4:00 pm, Wean 4623. Contact sharon.burks@cs for particulars.
WORDS FOR THOUGHT...
MONDAY, OCTOBER 28
**ACO SEMINAR: Richard Anderson, University of Washington, "Tree Data
Structures for N-Body Simulation", 3:30 pm, Wean 8220.
**PS TRAVELLING SALESMAN SEMINAR: Shmuel Katz, The Technion, Israel and
currently CS/CMU, "Reconciliations: Expressing Detached COncurrency",
3:30 pm, Wean 5409.
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29
**PROGRAMMING SYSTEMS SEMINAR: Richard Anderson, University of Washington,
"Software Model Checking", 10:30 am, Wean 4615.
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30
**LTI SEMINAR: Tom Mitchell, "Thoughts on Machine Learning and the WWW',
11:30 am, LTI Blue Room (Cyert Hall 279)
**HCI SEMINAR: Robert Kraut, "HomeNet: A Field Trial of Residential
Internet Services", 3:30 pm, Wean 5409.
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1
**ROBOTICS SEMINAR: Raj Reddy, "To Err is Human", 4:00 pm, Adamson Wing.
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 4
**SPECIAL COMPUTING SYSTEMS SEMINAR: P. Geoffrey Lowney, DEC (Hudson, MA),
"NTOM: An Optimizer for Alpha NT Executables", 1:30 pm, Wean 7220.
WEEK OF OCTOBER 21, 1996
ZACK BUTLER IS 2ND IN WORLD...Another "WoW" for Zack Butler, who placed 2nd individually at the 1996 World Puzzle Championships in Utrecht, The Netherlands the week of October 14th. The U.S. Team, of which he was a prized member, placed 1st in the entire competition. This repeats a great performance last year, where Zack placed 4th in the world and the US Team placed first. So, what types of puzzles you again ask? Same as last year but even more language neutral puzzles including visual logic, more math-oriented problems, a 45-minute round done on video, and more "devious" items than ever. A portion of the competition was conducted in conjunction with the Dutch National Game Board Convention, with one round of puzzles based on games appearing at the convention, including Triominoes and Mastermind. It remains an a-maze-ing competition and warrants inquiries, but since Zack has just returned, give him a few days to relax before asking him MORE questions!
@PGH.CAFE...Tuesday, October 22 from 3:00 to 7:00 pm, in the McConomy Auditorium and Connon Room, University Center. This program is a new effort to build relationships and awareness between CMU faculty, staff and students and the Pittsburgh Software community. As a way "to break the ice", the program offers a social (with food!) and informal atmosphere in which students and faculty can meet with local software executives, scientists and engineers to learn about job opportunities, project parallels and overall awareness of the growing software community in Pittsburgh. The host for the event is the Pittsburgh High Technology Council. Check www.cs.cmu.edu/~atpgh for details or check the bboards (scs and general) for particulars.
ROBOTICS ROAD SHOW...A major robotics exhibit, "Robotics" has opened at the Carnegie Science Center and runs through September 1997. The Robotics Institute faculty and staff (and some alumni) helped to make it happen! Among the offerings: Dante and the Terregator. A CD Rom developed by Eric Krotkov, highlighting many of our robots, including Dante, Ambler, the NavLab(s), the Intelligent Bending Workstation, and multiple robotic arms. The CD includes quick time movies featuring some of our researchers and graduate students discussing their work. David Bourne's "drawing arm system", which takes a picture of your face and sketches it, will be there, along with his exhibit focused on "tying your shoes like a robot." And Simlab offers a virtual reality mission to Mars. In addition to the displays, many SCS faculty and staff served as advisers, leading off with Takeo Kanade, who gave his support and encouragement to pursue this first travelling, interactive exhibit "conceived and built in Pittsburgh." Dave Pahnos, Red Whittaker and R. Craig Coulter also lent their expertise. So check it out!
HOMECOMING TG...SCS will host a Homecoming TG on Friday, October 25 at 4:00 pm in Wean 4623. SCS past and present are welcome to participate :-)
IN THE NEWS..."The Net supported an estimated $200 million in commerce last year. Five years from now, that's going to look like pocket change. Already, there's a bank that exists entirely online: Security First Network Bank..." notes Jane Bryant Quinn in the October 14 Newsweek. The article "HTTP://WWW.JBZ.OK.COM: The Internet is safer for business than you think" features a few words from Doug Tygar. Copies are available from scstoday@cs.
WORDS FOR THOUGHT:
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 23
**HCI SEMINAR: Dan Boyarski (CMU/Design), "Interval Interaction Design
Project", 3:30 pm, Wean 5409.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 25
**THEORY SEMINAR: Eric Allender, Rutgers University, "Reductions in Circuit
Complexity: An Isomorphism Theorem and a Gap Theorem", 3:30 pm, Wean 7220.
**ROBOTICS SEMINAR: Gill Pratt, MIT Leg Laboratory, "Three Steps Towards
Autonomous Bipedal Walking: Synchronous Power Conversion, Series-Elastic
Actuators, and Virtual Model Control", 4:00 pm, Adamson Wing.
WEEK OF OCTOBER 14, 1996
IN DEFENSE...Mark Wheeler has his sites set on "Automatic Modeling and Localization for Object Recognition" at his CS thesis oral on Friday, October 18 at 2:30 pm in Wean 4623. His noiseless, clutterless, full of data committee includes: Katsushi Ikeuchi (Chair), Martial Hebert, Steven Shafer, and Eric Grimson (MIT).
@PGH.CAFE...26 selected companies from the Pittsburgh region are bringing their "latest and greatest" software solutions to the " @pgh.cafe " on Tuesday, October 22 at the McConomy Auditorium, University Center. The program, sponsored by the Pittsburgh High Technologyÿÿÿÿÿÿ +#gÇ +#gÇ€Þà €»!0& public¡&Laboeet senior management, scientists, and and project engineers from these organizations to learn what they are up to. Beginning with an introductory session by Alfred Spector, Transarc Corporation and Vice President of Transaction Processing at IBM, and Mayor Tom Murphy, there will be research demonstrations, opportunities to see projects, and time to talk informally with management and technical staff from the participating companies. Good food and beverage will round out the day. The program begins at 3:00 pm and runs until 7:00 pm. Check the bboards or visit http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~atpgh for additional information.
SCS INVITED TALKS...Ralph Hollis delivered the keynote lecture entitled "Whither Microbots" at the 7th International Conference on Micromachine and Human Science, MHS '96, on October 2 in Nagoya, Japan. The lecture explored future possibilities for "teensy tiny robots...." :-)
NETBILL AND YOU...CMU faculty, students and staff are invited to test the NetBill System, a prototype on-line payment system enabling "customers" to order, receive and pay for information goods like journal articles, comics, or movie reviews on the Internet. The system reduces transaction costs for very small amounts of information (a page or less) to about 1-cent for a 10-cent item. Until now, consumers have not been able to use credit cards to make a 10 cent purchase. NetBill provides a "unique, certified delivery mechanism that guarantees customers will be charged for information goods if, and only if, they have been successfully delivered. The system also incorporates state-of-the-art cryptographic techniques to protect against fraud and ensure consumer privacy." For this prototype, CMU customers are issued accounts of $1,000 in "funny money", enabling the purchase of cartoons from the Comic Gallery, a NetBill-operated site. Payment is accomplished via an account established at the NetBill Web site. Customers can view a number of cartoons and indicate if they wish to make a purchase, check the price, approve the purchase, and monitor the cost subtracted from their account. The system, activated October 2, is accessible from any Solaris workstation using a Netscape Navigator 3.0 browser. Complete information on opening a NetBill account is available at www.netbill.com. The NetBill project is directed by Marvin Sirbu and Doug Tygar, in partnership with VISA and Mellon Bank, N.A.
WHEN IS SCS SUMMER SCHOOL?...An early notice! The SCS Computer Summer School is scheduled for June 23-27, 1997. Check www.cs.cmu.edu/~summerschool/ in the coming weeks, to see course offerings and particulars on the program.
IN FLIGHT ACTIVITIES...Another computer scientist takes to the skies. Edo Biagioni completed his first solo flight on October 7. Bravissimo!
CALENDAR OF EVENTS:
CMU International Festival - October 16-20
SCS Homecoming TG - October 25 (Wean 4623, 4:00 pm)
CMU Homecoming - October 25-26
WORDS FOR THOUGHT...
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15
**AI SEMINAR: David Kortenkamp, NASA Houston, "Using Active Vision Techniques
and Intelligent Control Architectures to Create Human/Robot Teams",
3:30 pm, Wean 5409.
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 16
**HCI SEMINAR: H. Rex Hartson, Virginia Tech, "Putting More Into, and
Getting More Out Of, Usability Evaluation", 3:30 pm, Wean 5409.
**LTI SEMINAR: Jaime Carbonell, WWW-related Opportunities for Language
and Information Technologies, 11:30 am, LTI Blue Room (Cyert Hall 279).
**REINFORCEMENT LEARNING SEMINAR: Sridhar Mahadevan, University of South
Florida, "Improving the Quality of Industrial Simulation Using
Reinforcement Learning", 12:oo noon, Wean 7220.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 18
**ROBOTICS SEMINAR: Yanxi Liu, "Symmetry and Intelligence", 4:00 pm,
Adamson Wing, Baker Hall.
WEEK OF OCTOBER 7, 1996
PROPOSALS...Girija Narlikar hopes for a good performance during "Space-Efficient Implementation of Nested Parallelism", her thesis proposal on Friday, October 11 at 10:30 am in Wean 5409. The committee determining her memory requirements includes: Guy Blelloch (Chair), Thomas Gross, Bruce Maggs, and Charles Leiserson (MIT).
HAPPY 10TH ANNIVERSARY...to our colleagues and friends at the Center for Machine Translation! A special symposium is now in progress, Monday and Tuesday, October 7-8, during which the many advances and accomplishments of the center and field will be highlighted. Noted scientists, including Makoto Nagao (Japan), Christian Boitet (France), and Yorick Wilkes, are among the invited speakers. The program, scheduled for McConomy Auditorium in the University Center, includes several project presentations, panel discussions, system demonstrations and a banquet. The CMU SCS community is invited to attend the entire symposium (free for SCS members only). For particulars, please contact jspotter@cs or hkuzmiak@cs, or call 412/268-6591. The www site for the symposium is http://www.lti.cs.cmu.edu/New/
GEDANKENFEST FOR HERBERT SIMON..."Creativity and Computation: A Gedankenfest for Herbert Simon" is scheduled for Thursday-Saturday, October 10-12 in the McConomy Auditorium of the University Center. A stimulating program of events is in the offering, as invited speakers examine "The Computer as Scientist" (morning Oct 10), ""The Computer as Artist" (afternoon, Oct 10), "The Computer as Player" (morning Oct 11), "The Computer as Teacher" (afternoon Oct 11), "The Computer as Design Engineer" (morning Oct 12), and "How Computers Think, How People Think" (afternoon Oct 12). A reception will be hosted by the deans of the colleges following each of the afternoon sessions on October 10-11, and the luncheon on Saturday, October 12. A complete schedule is available at http://gollum.mac.cc.cmu.edu/simon.html. Haben a great time!
HONORS AND AWARDS...
**ROY MAXION has been appointed to a Sematech (national consortium of North
American semiconductor manufacturers) Advisory Panel charged with writing
the National Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors. This select group will
"examine current and anticipated problems facing the semiconductor industry,
and establish the research paths for successfully guiding semiconductor
fabrication into the next century, through the year 2015." Roy has worked
extensively in fault detection and diagnosis for semiconductor fabrication
processes.
**MARK KANTROWITZ has been awarded a National Association of Graduate and Professional Students [NAGPS] President's Award (one of 10 awardess this year) and will be formally recognized at the NAGPS Annual Awards Dinner on October 25 in Santa Monica, California. As noted by Jon Feller, Board President, "this year's award winners represent the best in student leadership and in service to graduate/professional students...these outstanding people, and the organizations for which they toil, provide invaluable assistance...to our nation's 2-million-plus graduate/professional students."
GRAND OPENING FESTIVITIES: CNBC...A series of talks will provide a forum for the inauguration of the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition's new facility in Mellon Institute (1st floor) on Friday, October 11. The talks scheduled from 3:00 to 4:30 pm are: "Spatial Representations in the Brain" by Marlene Behrmann and Carl Olsen, and "Brain Mechanisms of Reading" by Julie Fiez and David Plaut, in the Mellon Institute Conference Room. The Keynote Speaker is Leslie Underleider, National Institutes of Mental Health, who molds our thinking on "Brain Imaging Studies of Plasticity" at 5:00 pm, in the Mellon Institute Auditorium. A reception will follow.
PITTSBURGH JOB FAIR 96...will be held Tuesday, October 8 from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm in the Rangos Ballroom, University Center. Sponsored by the Pittsburgh High Technology Council and the CMU Career Center, 50 local companies will be on hand to discuss career opportunities and their research. Visit the Council's website at http://www.tc-p.com for particulars on the participating companies.
SCS INVITED TALKS...David Baraff attracted a gathering at the "Cutting Edge Cafe", a university-wide program spotlighting various research projects, on October 3, where he speculated on "If Isaac Newton Had Owned A Computer..." He offered an "accessible" look at his research in the realistic modeling of contacting and colliding objects for computer graphics and robotics applications.
HE'S BACK...Yah, that vas Pradeep Khosla you are seeing in the hallways these past weeks. He has returned from his DARPA assignment and is back fulltime on campus. Do feel free to stop in to see him.
SCS GREAT RACERS...Some familiar faces were spotted "ahead" of Mayor Tom Murphy, at the 20th anniversary running of the "Great Race", on Sunday, September 29. Yury Smirnov improved his 25th place, which he held in 1994 and 1995, up to 18th overall, even though his time was slightly "worse" (30:46 vs. 30:20 in 1995). This was due, he noted, "to a noticeable front wind along the whole course." First year grad student, Adam Berger, and faculty members Frank Pfenning and Guy Blelloch, were also cheered along, as they endured the harrowing miles to the finish line...well ahead of the Mayor :-) Congratulations to our fleet of foot!
IN THE NEWS... **"Ralph Hollis believes that if jeans and gears can be designed and produced instantly to order, then factories should too...he hopes to see his vision of snap-together minifactories become a reality by the year 2004", notes the article "Factory-Fresh Factories" appearing in the September issue of Ambassador, the magazine of Trans World Airlines and Trans World Express.
**"Data Mining, Sophisticated Algorithms Put Machine Learning on Fast Track", notes this interview with Tom Mitchell, featured in the September Pittsburgh TEQ, a publication of the Pittsburgh High Technology Council. Also highlighted are Cliff Mercer, Jim Morris and Alfred Spector, who are quoted in "Selling City to Top Tech Grads Hinges on Great Jobs, "Cool Projects", an article studying the local region's failure to achieve "brain gain", to keep local graduates and talents in the Pittsburgh area. Interesting. Copies of all articles are available from scstoday@cs.
WORDS FOR THOUGHT...
MONDAY, OCTOBER 7
**CULTURAL EXCHANGE: Raul Valdes-Perez, "Ask Not What Can't Do: CS Research
on Scientific Discovery", 3:30 pm, Wean 5409.
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 8
**AI SEMINAR: Steve Richardson, Microsoft, "MindNet: A Large-Scale Lexical
Knowledge Base for Natural Language Processing", 4:00 pm, Wean 5409.
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 9
**HCI SEMINAR: Craig Vogel, Associate Dean CFA and Associate Professor,
Department of Design, "The Integration of Industrial Design in the Wearable
Computing Division of EDRC", 3:30 pm, Wean 5409.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 11
**THEORY SEMINAR: Joan Feigenbaum, AT&T Laboratories, "Trust Management",
3:00 pm, Wean 7220.
WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 23, 1996
IN DEFENSE...
**SERGIO VALE AGUIAR CAMPOS (phew!) will offer "A Quantitative Approach to
the Formal Verification of Real-Time Systems" at his CS defense on Wednesday,
September 25 at 10:00 am in Wean 4623. His efficient and reliable committee
includes: Ed Clarke (Chair), John LeHoczky (Statistics), Daniel Jackson, and
Rance Cleaveland (North Carolina State University).
**RICHARD GOODWIN efficiently and (hopefully) effectively executes "Meta-Level Control for Decision-Theoretic Planners" at his CS oral on Wednesday, September 25 at 1:00 pm in Wean 4623. The decision makers on his committee include: Reid Simmons (Chair), Tom Mitchell, Herbert Simon, and Michael Wellman (University of Michigan).
**JOHN GREINER introduces a framework for "Semantics-based Parallel Cost Models and their Use in Provably Efficient Implementations" on Monday, September 30 at 1:30 pm in Wean 4623. The committee checking his fork-and-join parallelism includes: Guy Belloch (Chair), Robert Harper, Gary Miller, and Guy Steele, Jr. (Sun Microsystems).
**JULIO ROSENBLATT gives a "DAMN: A Distributed Architecture for Mobile Navigation" during his Robotics thesis defense on Monday, September 30 at 1:30 pm in FRC 100. The committee of command arbiters sending votes includes: Charles Thorpe (Chair), Martial Hebert, Anthony Stentz, and David Payton (Hughes Research Labs).
THE SCS UNDERGRADUATE PHOTO...is on for Tuesday, September 24 at 4:45 pm (sharp!). Assemble on the 5th floor patio of Wean Hall. Think sun!
TOC WEEK IS HERE...The Technical Opportunities Conference is scheduled for Thursday, September 26 from 10:00 am - 4:00 pm in the University Center Gymnasium. A slew of companies (over 120) will have representatives at the site. Resume submissions are welcomed and informal discussion will be possible.
HP OPEN HOUSE...On Tuesday, September 24, Hewlett-Packard will host an Open House in Wean 5409 at 6:30 pm. Representatives from the company will be available to discuss new research activities at HP and to show one of their new systems.
PARALLEL RETREAT AND WORKSHOP...The Parallel Data Laboratory is hosting its 1996 Workshop & Retreat at Wisp Resort in Deep Creek, Maryland from September 23-25. Among their guests are representatives from HP, IBM, DEC, StorageTek, Seagate, Compaq, Data General, and Symbios Logic.
SCS INVITED TALKS...Ed Clarke delivered an invited lecture on "Model Checking and Symmetry", at The 21st International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science from September 2-6 in Cracow, Poland.
EVENTS...
**CS Faculty Meeting, September 26, 4:00 pm, Wean 4623
EMIGRATION 1996...JOBS are the focus of the next Emigration Seminar,
scheduled for Friday, October 4 from 10:00-12:00 in Wean 5409. David
Steere emerges "From the Trenches: Advice on Landing a Job." A complete
list of upcoming programs are in http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/Web/csd/phd/emigration.html
WORDS FOR THOUGHT...
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 27
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 30
(RE)NEWED FACES...Ellen Borison has joined the HCI Institute as a
Systems Scientist, working with Brad Myers on the Amulet Project. Ellen is
an SCS grad, having received her PhD in CS in 1989, and has come back to CMU
because she likes us :-)
AWARDS AND HONORS...
**ROY MAXION has been awarded $1,483,333 by DARPA for his work in combatting
information terrorism through automated intruder detection. The 3-year project
involves interactions with the national information infrastructure, in
cooperation with CERT and industry. The automated detection mechanism will
adapt to different and changing environments, and detect and classify
unanticipated attacks on system integrity. An adaptive synthetic environment
will be constructed to aid in system validation.
IN DEFENSE...
**CHRIS OAKSAKI explores "Purely Functional Data Structures" at his CS oral
on Monday, September 16 at 10:00 am in Wean 4623. The strict evaluators on
his committee include: Peter Lee (Chair), Robert Harper, Daniel Sleator, and
Robert Tarjan (Princeton).
PROMOTIONS...The Robotics Institute is pleased to report that Scott
Boehmke and Wenfan Shi have been promoted to Senior Research Engineer, and
Senior Research Programmer, respectively.
SCS GROUP PHOTO...Don't forget, the SCS Group Photograph is scheduled
for Wednesday, September 11 at 12:00 pm (sharp) on the 5th floor Patio of
Wean Hall. ALL members of the SCS should partake!
A PRETTY GOOD RACE!...Who's says members of SCS are all brain and no
brawn. Prove the skeptics wrong. Take your place among the denizens who have
tackled this 5K course through the hills, valleys and wild terrains of
Schenley Park at the "6th Phil Miller 16th Annual Pretty Good Race" on Friday,
September 13 at 4:30 pm. Entry forms are available outside Wean 3205, 4624 or
at the SEI Message Center. The race starts at the Schenley Park Trails, under
the Pather Hollow Bridge. Runners, walkers and even crawlers are welcome to
participate If you aren't racing, just come by to cheer your favorite
competitor on. Deadline for registration is noon, Thursday, September
12, so don't delay.
'SEARCHING' FOR A GREAT TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER SEMINAR...Michael "Fuzzy"
Mauldin, Founder and Chief Scientist at Lycos, Inc., will review "CMU and Tech
Transfer: Can You Get Rich by Selling Your Invention?" during the IC on
Thursday, September 12 at 11:00 am in Wean 5409. Hear it from a pro!
SCS INVITED TALKS...Sebastian Thrun presented "The Role of Transfer in
Learning" at an invited talk at the Cognitive Science Conference this
summer in San Diego, and will deliver the Keynote Address on "Robot Learning"
at the Cottbus Workshop on Aspects of Neural Learning, Cottbus, Germany on
September 30.
SCS SENIOR PROGRAM...The next "The Not-Quite Mandatory-But Strongly
Encouraged" SCS Senior Meeting, sponsored by CMU's Career Center and SCS, is
scheduled for Wednesday, September 11 at 4:30 pm in Wean 4625, and will
focus on resume construction and job search strategies. Graduate students
needing "refreshers" in these areas are also welcome to attend.
JEEVES CLEANS UP AT AAAI...The "Jeeves" robot team, consisting of
Hans Nopper, Real World Interface Inc. (a robot manufacturer) and Sebastian
Thrun won first prize at the preliminaries and tied for first-place in the
finals of the AAAI mobile robot competition in Portland, Oregon on August 2-8.
The task, cleaning up a tennis court and capturing moving "squiggle balls"
provided an opportunity for some of the best international research labs to
exhibit their most advanced techniques and results at this truly exciting
competition", notes Thrun. The robot Jeeves, under development for the
past 6 months as a high-performance, low-cost service robot, has evolved
with an eye towards commercialization. If you play tennis, watch for
Jeeves! On September 19, (8:15 pm German Time), Thrun and two of his
robots, Jeeves and RHINO, which "picks-up things and follows a moderator",
will be guests on "Wat is?" a major German TV show.
**The annual ROBOTICS PICNIC for robo-families and friends is scheduled
for Sunday, September 8 at the Upper St. Clair Municipal Park from 1:00 pm
to whenever their energy runs out. Food begins at 4:00 pm.
NEW FACES...Rosie Hornyak has joined the CS support team, working
for John Reynolds, Daniel Jackson, Frank Pfenning, and Peter Lee. She is
located in Wean 8106. Rosie has a great family, 2 wonderful kids, and
loads of interesting experiences to share. Stop by and introduce yourself.
IN DEFENSE...Peter Wehyrauch will be "Directing Interactive Drama" at
his CS thesis defense on Friday, September 6 at 2:00 pm in Wean 4623. The
dramatic characters on his committee include: Joseph Bates (Chair),
Jaime Carbonell, Roger Dannenberg, and Brenda Laurel (Interval Research
Corporation).
AWARDS AND HONORS...David Maltz, Arup Mukherjee, and Sasha Wood have
been selected as the recipients of the 1996 SCS Graduate Teaching Assistant
Award, in recognition of the skill, caring, and dedication that dominates
their teaching efforts. Allan Fisher notes that the awardees were honored on
Wednesday, September 4 "with a certificate and emolument", a small token to
some extraordinary efforts by these TAs. Congratulations!
BE A PART OF HISTORY...Welcome to our 140 incoming undergraduates and
new HCII, MSE, LTI, CS, and RI graduate students. A veritable alphabet of
students :-) Now that everyone is back into the academic flow, be sure to
take a few minutes to join us for the ANNUAL SCS GROUP PHOTOGRAPH on
Wednesday, September 11. Assembly starts at noon "sharp" on the 5th floor
patio of Wean. We amass and then, in time-honored tradition, say "cheese"
just in time for the photo. 15 minutes is all we need. ALL members of the
SCS community are encouraged to pile-up!
SCS SENIOR PROGRAM...The next "The Not-Quite Mandatory-But Strongly
Encouraged" SCS Senior Meeting, sponsored by CMU's Career Center and SCS,
is scheduled for Wednesday, September 11 at 4:30 pm in Wean 4625. Focussing
on resume construction and career service options, discussions will also
include: a report on upcoming events, independent job search strategies,
accessing the on-campus interviewing program, and more. Graduate students
needing exposure/refreshers in these areas are also welcome to attend.
Mona Singhvi, Career Consultant at the Career Center will lead the program.
SCS INVITED TALKS...
**DAVID TOURETZKY will also risk the reputation of Friday (Sept) the 13th to
give an invited talk at The Fourth International Conference on Simulation
of Adaptive Behavior (SAB96) on "Representations of Space in the Rodent
Brain". He'll also present a brief talk on "Falling Off the Edge of the
Cognitive Map" at a panel discussion on the hippocampus that same day.
This all follows his presentation of a paper on "Skinnerbots" prepared by
by David and Lisa Saksida on September 11. The conference will be held in
North Falmouth, on Cape Cod.
JAVA DAY IS COMING...on Saturday, September 21 from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm
in the McConomy Auditorium in the University Center. All CMU faculty, students
and staff are welcome to attend this unique event hosted by SCS and Sun.
A complete schedule can be found at: http://www.sun.com/edu/hot/java-days/
cmu.html. The speakers, creators and application developers, will include
some former CS faculty and graduates: Bud Tribble, Guy Steele, Rick Cattell,
M. Majdalany, Ted Goldstein, Roger Riggs, S. Stern and Marc Tremblay.
Don't miss this!
DATES TO REMEMBER...Technical Opportunities Conference, University
Center, on Thursday, September 26. Business Opportunities Conference,
University Center, Friday, September 27.
IN THE NEWS...The Financial Aid Information Page, developed by Mark
Kantrowitz, was selected for a Hot Site Award in the August 27 edition of
USA Today Online. His other recent media mentions include Time Magazine
(special college issue), the New York Times, Money Magazine, Smart Money
Magazine, and an award from I-Way Magazine. The number of visitors to the
site (http://www.finaid.org) has soared by 15% to about 18,500 (275,000
hits) following these exposures. As a result of his investigations into
financial aid offerings (and abuses), Mark recently participated in a
special Federal Trade Commission conference in Washington DC, helping to
launch their campaign against scholarship scams, a disservice to students
that has cost them upwards of $10 million per year.
CHECKMATE!..."Internet Chess Club moves ancient game ahead and wins
top players" notes the September 3 issue of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "These
days, playing chess is as easy as dialing into your local Internet provider
You'll see the chess board on-screen, but your unseen opponent could just
as well be on the other side of the world". So begins this great overview
on the ICC--the Internet Chess Club (headquartered in Pgh)--and it's
President and Club Treasurer, Daniel and Lilya Sleator, respectively. As
noted by Gabriel Schwartzman, the new U.S. Open Chess Championship winner,
the ICC "has about twice the features" and is "much better managed" than
other free chess services. Visit http://chess.lm.com for details.
THE MOVIE LINE..."a film review site created by Pittsburgher could
be the internet's most comprehensive" noted the August 18 Post-Gazette,
highlighting the monumental efforts of Stewart Clamen, CS doctoral candidate,
and others in developing the Movie Review Query Engine. As noted, as of
August 3, the site hand links to 19,653 reviews of 4,482 movie titles!
Visit http://www.cinema.pgh.pa.us/ for particulars. Copies of all articles
are available from scstoday@cs.
THE COACH BECOMES HEAD COACH...We are pleased to announce that
Jim "Coach" Tomayko will be assuming primary responsibility for the MSE
Program, as its newly appointed Acting Director. In addition to all his
efforts with the MSE program, Jim recently developed and saw to a very
successful fruition the first SCS Summer School. Many congratulations.
CONVOCATION 96...The University Convocation Ceremony is scheduled for
Thursday, August 22. Mark Stehlik, Assistant Dean for Undergraduate
Education in SCS, is the Keynote Speaker at the ceremony taking place from
4:00-5:00 pm in the Orientation Tent on the Mall. Jim Tomayko is also a
scheduled speaker. This formal presentation will be followed by a community
picnic on the CFA Lawn from 5:00-7:00 pm (rain location: Highlander/Rangos
Hall). All faculty and staff are invited to attend. New students greatly
value an opportunity to meet and interact with faculty, staff and all those
many others who will be a part of their new academic experience. Please
join in as we celebrate this beginning...
A PREVIEW OF THINGS TO COME...JAVA DAY, sponsored by Sun Microsystems
and CMU, is scheduled for Saturday, September 21 in the University Center
Auditorium. This special, all-day program, will include presentations by
Budd Tribble, Guy Steele, Rick Cattell, and Ted Goldstein...to name but a
few. The program affords a unique opportunity to learn all you ever wanted
to know about Java. Check out Java Day on the SCS calendar of events for
early particulars.
IN THE NEWS..."Video Games Teach CMU Researchers About Fast Thinking"
notes an article in the July 28 News Records. "If we learn how much
information someone can absorb, then we can design systems that only let in
that much information" says Bonnie John, who along with Malcolm Bauer, is
studying novices' use of Super Mario Brothers 3 by Nintendo. Their goal is
to develop a model of human reaction skills, upon which others can layer
additional research. As Bonnie adds, "The wonderful thing about this is that
even though computers are changing so quickly, people don't. What we learn
today will still apply in 10 years." Copies are available from scstoday@cs.
ORIENTATION NOTE...Incoming undergraduates this fall are the official
"Class of 2000." Orientation formally begins Tuesday, August 20
(but expect to see students and families on the 19th) and concludes
Sunday, August 25. A complete schedule of activities is available from
scstoday@cs.
**TAI-SING LEE will be joining SCS this fall as an Assistant Professor in
Computer Science and the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC).
He arrives following a post-doc position at MIT (System Neuroscience) and
Harvard (Computational Vision). Tai-Sing completed his Ph.D. in Engineering
Sciences: Medical Engineering and Medical Physics, awarded jointly by MIT
and Harvard.
PROMOTIONS...A toast to the following CS faculty on their recent
promotions: JEANNETTE WING has been promoted to Professor. ROBERT HARPER
and GUY BLELLOCH are tenured Associate Professors. DAVID GARLAN is an
Associate Professor. WAYNE WARD and REID SIMMONS have been promoted to Senior
Research Computer Scientists and ROY MAXION, CHRIS McGLONE and ALEX RUDNICKY
are now Senior Systems Scientists. ALLAN FISHER, in addition to his
responsibilities as Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education, has been
promoted to Principal Systems Scientist. And LILY HOU has been promoted to
Senior Lecturer. Congratulations all!
IN DEFENSE...Christopher Colby presents a "Semantics-based Program
Analysis via Symbolic Composition of Transfer Relations" at his CS thesis oral
on Friday, August 9 at 10:00 am in Wean 4623. The committee checking his
language includes: Peter Lee (Chair), Robert Harper, John Reynolds, and
Patrick Cousot (E'cole Normale Supe'rieure).
IN THE NEWS...
**"New Robotics Plant Ready to Provide Gateway to the Stars: Lawrenceville
facility will spearhead battle to develop mobile robots" was the feature of
a July 30 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PPG) article reviewing the dedication
ceremony and goals of REC. As noted by NASA Administrator, Daniel Goldin,
"I'd like to think about this not as an opportunity for Pittsburgh but as
an opportunity for the United States." The article compliments another
feature in the PPG's July 28 edition, "Moon May be Next Great Theme Park:
CMU researchers say lunar dune buggies will be all the rage", detailing the
$200 million plan in development by the Robotics Institute and LunaCorp to
land a pair of lunar dune buggies on the moon in 1999 or 2000.
**David Pahnos is "Moved by Robots: NASA Consortium's Pahnos is excited by
market potential", notes a profile in the Executive in the Spotlight series
of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on August 4. All clips are available from
scstoday@cs.
DATE ALERT...
**Freshmen Orientation: August 19-25
IN DEFENSE...Erik Altmann recalls "Information Access in Expert
Programming" at his CS thesis defense on Thursday, August 1 at 10:00 am in
Wean 4623. His long-term memory rich committee includes: Bonnie John (Chair),
John Anderson, Jim Morris and Clayton Lewis (University of Colorado at
Boulder).
MUSIC TO OUR EARS...This spring, Roger Dannenberg participated as a
composer in the Carlisle Project's workshop for the professional development
of choreographers and dancers. Roger created a ballet in collaboration with
Montreal choreographer Howard Richard and dancers from the Pittsburgh Ballet
Theatre. Their ballet, selected for a performance at the Carlisle Project's
Grand Alumni Reunion, is scheduled for Saturday, August 3 at 5:30 pm at the
Mathers Theater, Dickinson College, in Carlisle, PA.
AWARDS AND HONORS...The National Association of Student Financial Aid
Administrators (NASFAA) has conferred it's Meritorious Achievement Award on
Mark Kantrowitz "in recognition of his outstanding achievement in developing
and maintaining FinAid: The Financial Aid Information Page on the World Wide
Web."
CMU COLLEGE BOWL...is scheduled for Saturday, September 7. Sponsored
by the CMU Student Organization, this faculty/staff/student tournament,
welcomes up to 4 teams (of 4 participants) for participation in this academic
jousting :-) Please contact Anne Witchner (aw0w@andrew.cmu.edu) for
particulars on registering. It ought to be interesting!
RECRUITING CALENDAR ALERT...
FALL 96 TEXTBOOK ORDERS...Faculty requesting books for the Fall term
should have submitted their requests to Kathy Sutton (kathy.sutton@cs) by now.
If you have forgotten, please do so immediately to assure prompt delivery of
materials (ie, before classes start)!
ABOUT YOUR SUMMER EMPLOYEES...If you are intending to retain the
services of your summer employee for the Fall 96 term, you must notify Kathy
Sutton by August 18, the last official day of summer employment, in order
to renew their appointments. Sooner is always better, if you want be sure
your worker's employment is secure for the next term.
IN THE NEWS...Coinciding with the dedication of Robotics Engineering
Consortium Building, an extensive article appeared in the Sunday Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette highlighting the many accomplishments in CMU Robotics. Rewarding
reading.
AND AWARDS...Hui Zhang has received a National Science Foundation Career
Award for Young Investigators, for his proposal entitled "Integrated Traffic
Management Based on Accurate and Practical Packet Fair Queueing Algorithms".
IN DEFENSE...
**BRUCE MAXWELL looks at "Segmentation of Multiple Physical Hypotheses of
Image Formation" during his Robotics thesis defense on Friday, July 26 at
10:00 am in Smith Hall, 2nd floor seminar area. His easily identifiable
committee includes: Steve Shafer (Chair), Katsu Ikeuchi, Andy Witkin, and
Linda Shapiro (University of Washington).
ALUMNI UPDATE..."Hammerhead: fast, fully automated docking of flexible
ligands to protein binding sites", a paper by WILLIAM WELCH, Jim Ruppert and
AJAY JAIN, of Arris Pharmaceutical Corporation in California, appeared in the
June 96 issue of Chemistry & Biology, a well-regarded journal which publishes
high quality rsearch papers and reviews in all areas "at the interface of
chemistry and biology." Hammerhead, a docking algorithm, is a "fast, automated
tool to screen for the binding of flexible molecules to protein binding
sites. "A review copy is available from scstoday@cs.
IN THE NEWS..."When School Lets Out, These Kids Go To College", an
article in praise of Andrews Leap, SCS's 6-week advanced summer program for
high school students (13-17 years of age), was featured in the July 7
Tribune-Review. As noted by Steven Rudich, director of the program, "it's a
pretty special program in that high school students can actively research an
interest and have premier scientists as teachers." Read the article and watch
for the students! Copies are available from scstoday@cs or via the SCS News
Board.
WORDS FOR THOUGHT...
MONDAY, JULY 22
WEDNESDAY, JULY 24
IN DEFENSE...
**HERMAN HERMAN digs into "Autonomous Subsurface Mapping of Buried Objects"
at his robotics thesis defense on Monday, July 15 at 10:00 am in FRC 100.
His 5-D(octorate) committee includes: Anthony Stentz (Chair), Martial
Hebert, Ben Motazed, Hans Moravec, and Jeffrey Daniels (Ohio State).
SCS INVITED TALKS...Andrew Moore was invited speaker at the
International Machine Learning Conference, where he presented "Reinforcement
Learning in Factories: The Auton Project", in Bari, Italy on July 6. He will
also deliver an invited talk at the 18th Annual Conference of the Cognitive
Science Society in San Diego.
IN THE NEWS..."A Richer Harvest: Robotic reaper passes tests here and
heads for the farmlands of Kansas and California" is the featured July 12
article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Business section. Developed at the
REC in Lawrenceville, the New Holland harvester called Demeter is one further
example of technology, designed originally for planetary rovers, in new
terrains and applications. As noted by Kerien Fitzpatrick, project manager,
what the "future holds is unmanned robot harvesters that bring in the crops by
themselves." Bountiful reading! Copies are available on the SCS News Board
or from scstoday@cs.
SCS INVITED SPEAKERS...Steve Roth was the June 7 Distinguished Lecturer
at the Oregon Graduate Institute's Distinguished HCI Lecture Series, speaking
on "The SAGE Project: Towards a Highly Interactive, Knowledge-based
Information Visualization Environment."
RISING STAR...Stephanie Riso, robotics administrative staff by day,
renowned chanteuse/performer by night :-) has another busy summer of
performances, which began with a role in "The Desert Song" (along with REC's
Tim Meadows); continuing with her current role in "Annie"; followed by parts
in "Into the Woods" at the Benedum Center from July 2-7; and finishing up with
"My Fair Lady" from July 9-21; and "42nd Street" from July 23-August 4. Call
the Benedum at 456-6666 for show particulars!
PARKING REMINDER...Morewood Parking Lot resurfacing is scheduled for
July 5-12. The work will be completed in two parts, beginning with the
lower half of the lot. If you are unable to find a space during this time
period, there will be overflow parking in the East Campus Garage (via the
Beeler Street Entrance). Check cmu.cs.scs for particulars or contact the
parking office.
AU REVOIR VIE DE FRANCE...Vie de France is no longer serving food on the
5th floor of Wean Hall, having ended their food contract with CMU on June 28.
A new service, Complete Vending, will handle this local dining operation,
on an interim basis, beginning Monday, July 1.
EXPLOSIVE EVENT PLANNED...In celebration of Independence Day, the
university will be officially closed Thursday, July 4. Normal operations
resume post-fireworks and picnics, on Friday, July 5. Enjoy!
GET A KICK ON THE INTERNET..."Mark Wheeler's U.S. Soccer Web Pages site
serves as a good hub for the virtual soccer community...this seemingly
bottomless Web page provides original content, interactive features and links
to other 'cool' soccer sites" notes the Sports Section of a June edition of
the Atlanta Constitution. As Mark notes, he is trying "to provide
comprehensive U.S. soccer information on an as-needed basis." The site is
located at: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mdwheel/us-soccer (check the links).
IN THE NEWS..."Japanese Industry Aims for Moon's Resources" is a
featured article in the July Popular Mechanics. Mitsubishi Corporation would
like to see a Japanese rocket transport the first commercial payloads to the
Moon and is sponsoring a study with LunaCorp, to see if a version of Japan's
H-2 rocket can lift the anticipated 880-pound payload. Mitsubishi also "has
it's eye on the next generation of Moon rovers", mobile vehicles capable of
performing sophisticated research tasks. They are helping to support this
research at the Robotics Institute, LunaCorp's academic partner in the
development of these rovers. Copies of the article are available on the SCS
News Board or from scstoday@cs.
ON THE NEWS...CNN aired a segment on the Autonomous Helicopter,
developed by Omead Amidi and Takeo Kanade, on the Science & Technology Week
program this past weekend (June 29-30). The fourth in a series of features
taped at CMU by CNN this year, the other segments have included: NavLab 5
(Dean Pomerleau), the Robotic Minifactory (Ralph Hollis), and Journey into the
Living Cell (Lans Taylor/Carnegie Science Center).
PITTSBURGH CONFERENCE ALERT...
IN DEFENSE...Jeffrey Shufelt takes a rigorous look at "Projective
Geometry and Photometry for Object Detection and Delineation" at his CS
thesis defense on Friday, June 28 at 10:30 am in Wean 5409. His PIVOTal
committee includes: David McKeown (Chair), Katsushi Ikeuchi, J. Chris McGlone,
and W. Eric L. Grimson (MIT).
Xudong Zhao investigates "Verification of Arithmetic Circuits" at his
CS defense on Thursday, June 27 at 1:00 pm in Wean 5409. His thesis-checkers
include: Edmund Clarke (Chair), Randy Bryant, Peter Andrews, Masahiro Fujita
(Fujitsu America Labs), and Gary D. Hachtel (Univ. of Colorado at Boulder).
SCS SUMMER SCHOOL BEGINS...Monday, June 24 and runs through Friday,
June 28. Per Jim Tomayko, Director of the program, sixteen courses are being
offered in areas such as machine learning, web technologies, software
development, networks, distributed systems, robotics and HCI. For additional
information, visit http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~summerschool or send mail to
summercs-info@cs.
SCS INVITED TALKS...
**Robert Kraut was the May 17 Distinguished Lecturer at the Oregon Graduate
Institute's Distinguished HCI Lecture Series, where he discussed "The
HomeNet Project."
SCS CALENDAR OF EVENTS...An SCS-wide calendar of events now resides
on the SCS homepage at http://www.cs.cmu.edu. Simply click on SCS events at
the bottom of the page. Submissions are welcome round the clock to copetas@cs.
Be sure to include links to detailed information sites when available.
FROM WRECK TO REC..."When David Pahnos walks through the century-old
industrial warehouse that is being transformed into the home of the Robotics
Engineering Consortium (REC) in Lawrenceville, he wears a hard-hat and blue
jeans, shouts over the deafening construction machinery, and hops over cables
and potholes every other step." So begins a great profile of the REC's
executive director and what he has experienced and anticipates for the
center and the Pittsburgh region, appearing in the May issue of Pittsburgh
T.E.Q. Good reading.
IN THE NEWS...
**"We are working on technology but not content. We need to get all the
authored works of mankind online" notes Raj Reddy in a June ComputerWorld
article entitled "Predicting the Future: Industry pioneers ponder software,
robots and a 'collapsing' Internet." Read what Raj and other leaders of
the industry have to say.
**"The best computer interface is my car's antilock braking system," notes
CS Alum Randy Pausch, "I jam on the pedal and a computer makes thousands of
complex decisions for me and saves my life." Dan Olsen, Director of the
HCII, adds that "we now have the computing power to adapt computers to what
we need, not the other way around." Many other ideas are shared in a special
report on "Making Computers Disappear: Why should we have to see them?",
appearing in the June 24 issue of Business Week.
**The Intelligent Cognitive Tutor, the teaching package enabling students to
learn algebra while working at their own pace, is "winning teachers's
accolades." A June 9 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article, "Finishing the
Equation", overviews the project, its successes, and the new search for
commercial partners. As perfectly noted in the June 11 Valley News Dispatch,
"a new math program developed by CMU is showing great promise for improving
math skills...We urge our public school administrators to look into the CMU
math software." All the above listed articles are available
on the SCS News Board or from scstoday@cs.
HONORS AND AWARDS...Jim Morris has been elected to the Computing
Research Association (CRA) Board. The CRA, an association of over 150 north
american academic departments of computer science and computer engineering,
industrial laboratories engaging in basic computing research, and affiliated
professional societies, represents and informs the computing research
community while supporting and promoting its shared interests.
PHI KAPPA PHI...SCS is pleased to announce that 9 students have been
inducted into Phi Kappa Phi, the honor society recognizing scholastic
achievement and integrity. CS seniors Kin-Chong Chan, Christian D. Hoffman,
Saleem Mukhtar, Arthur T. Turco, and Stephan A. Zdancewic, and graduate
students Arn Hyndman (MSE), Angela C. Jury (MSE), Mark L. Kantrowitz (CS),
and Jose G. Rivera (MSE) were formally recognized in a ceremony in May.
Congratulations to this inspiring crew.
PROPOSALS...Justin Boyan investigates "Learning Evaluation Functions"
at his CS thesis proposal on Monday, June 17 at 1:00 pm in Wean 5409. The
committee functioning as high-quality evaluators includes: Andrew Moore
(Co-chair), Scott Fahlman (Co-chair), Tom Mitchell, and Thomas Dietterich
(Oregon Graduate Institute).
IN THE AMAZING CATEGORY...On June 9, Randy Bryant completed the Alcatraz
Triathlon, having decided to enter this grueling competition only 10 weeks
in advance. The competition begins by jumping off a boat into the 59 degree
water of San Francisco Bay behind Alcatraz Island, is followed by a 1.5 mile
swim to San Francisco, a 2 mile run to the Presidio, an 18 mile bike, and a
10 mile run. If that wasn't enough, Randy even wrote up a complete race
report, which can be found on: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bryant/alcatraz96.html.
This was all sandwiched in between a conference June 3-7 and an industrial
site presentation on June 10-11. Bravo to the brave!
IN DEFENSE...Xuemei Wang approaches "Learning Planning Operation by
Observation and Practice" at her CS thesis defense on Monday, June 24 at
10:30 am. The "observers" on her committee include: Jaime Carbonell (Chair),
Herbert Simon, Manuela Veloso, Jill Fain Lehman, and Douglas Fisher
(Vanderbilt University).
ANDREW'S LEAP...SCS's summer program for high school students, begins
Monday, July 1 and runs for six weeks through August 9. As noted by Steven
Rudich, Director, "through special classes and independent projects, students
will be exposed to the frontiers of computer science" and will "leap" ahead in
their understanding of the field. Andrew's LEAP was first introduced in 1991
by Merrick Furst and Steven, and has been scheduled each consecutive summer.
Over 100 students have participated. An exciting component of the program is
the robotics section, under the guidance of Matt Mason. Andrew's Leap is
made possible by the support of the Allegheny Foundation, the Vira I. Heinz
Foundation, and the Scaife Family Foundation.
SCS INVITED TALKS...Jeannette Wing gave an invited talk, "Mathematics
for Software Engineering" at the Twelfth Workshop on the Mathematical
Foundations of Programming Semantics", in Boulder, Colorado on June 4, 1996.
HOT OFF THE PRESS..."Mind Matters: A Tribute to Allen Newell", edited by
David M. Steier and Tom M. Mitchell, has been published by Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates (1996/ISBN: 0-8058-1363-2). As noted by Tom, "Allen is most often
described as one of the founders of artificial intelligence, but he could
be equally well described as a founder of cognitive science, the field of
human-computer interaction, or the systematic study of computational
architectures..." The book, drawn from the symposium held at CMU, includes
contributions and commentaries from top scientists in all these disciplines.
Great summer reading :-)
"ON THE FRONT LINES"..."Ken Lang Thinks Prudence Will Pay in Marketing
on Net" was featured in a June 14 Wall Street Journal article devoted to Ken,
his work on a personalized information gathering service and his new company,
Empirical Media Corporation, of which he is Chairman and CEO. This is a
great review of Ken's work and entrepreneurial efforts with "WiseWire". A
must reading! As Tom Mitchell notes in the article, "He [Ken] combines an
amazing amount of creativity with a seat-of-the-pants realism about business."
Copies are available on the SCS News Board or from scstoday@cs.
ON THE NEWS...Discovery on Line has a special online article at: http:
/www.discovery.com/DCO/doc/1012/world/technology/robotics/robot1.html.
Takeo Kanade and Hans Moravec are featured in the story, "There's a Robot in
Your Future." The piece is produced in four parts, with CMU being noted in
the section on "Droids". A clip of Dante's adventures in Antarctica is
included.
DAS NEWS..."Gullivers Reisen: US-Forscher planen den Bau von
Miniaturfabriken, die mit unglaublicher Pra"zison arbeiten" was a featured
article in an April edition of Wirtschaftswoche. The research, clearly noted
around the world, features Ralph Hollis' work on Miniature Factories. Copies
of the articles (without translation!) are available on the SCS News Board or
from scstoday@cs.
ROBOTICS FACULTY CANDIDATE...Illah Nourbakhsh, Stanford University,
will knock us dead with "Interleaving Planning and Execution: Making
Planning Tractable through Execution" on Tuesday, June 4 at 3:30 pm in
the Adamson Wing. Faculty host is Matt Mason.
ON THE NEWS...CNN Technology Week aired a story on NavLab 5 on
Saturday morning, June 1. It featured Dean Pomerleau, who demonstrated
the NavLab and discussed technologies for collision warning and
autonomous guidance.
ROBOTICS FACULTY CANDIDATE...S.K. Gupta focuses on "Efficiently
Generating High Quality Setup Plans" on Friday, May 31 at 3:30 pm in the
Adamson Wing. His faculty host is Matt Mason.
MRCAS III...The first joint conference of CVRMed II and MRCAS III
(Translation: Computer Vision, Virtual Reality and Robotics in Medicine and
Medical Robotics and Computer Assisted Surgery) is scheduled for March 20-22,
1997 in Grenoble, France. Serving on the Advisory Board are Takeo Kanade and
Anthoy DiGioia. Details are in http://www.timc.imag.fr/cvrmed-mrcas.
SCS INVITED TALKS...D. Navin-Chandra was invited speaker at Ohio
University's Stocker Lecture Series on May 21. He explored "Electronic
Commerce on the Internet: From Web-based Transaction Systems of Today to
Distributed Autonomous Agent Societies."
FALL CALENDAR ALERTS...
**Robotics Immigration Course: August 19-23
HONORS AND AWARDS...Justin Boyan has been awarded a NASA Graduate
Students Research Program Fellowship. He will be applying
reinforcement-learning techniques to several NASA optimization problems.
Sponsored by NASA headquarters, he will be working closely with a team at the
Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
COMMENCEMENT WRAP-UP...Another astounding group of graduates received
their degrees on Sunday: 21 CS PhD, 13 RI PhD, 12 CS MS, 14 MSE, and 92 BS
students were formally graduated. Congratulations to our Class of 1996!
ALLEN NEWELL AWARD...Kevin (Kip) Walker, a 1996 graduate, is this year's
recipient of the Allen Newell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research,
in recognition of his undergraduate thesis work on "User-Level TCP in a
Flow Controlled ATM LAN." As noted by Allan Fisher, Allen Newell embodied
the tenets of good science---he believed real problems, real evidence and
really hard work were essential in any scientific pursuit. Allen would have
been proud of Kip, as are all of us in SCS.
NEW FACES...
**Anne Byrne has joined CS as an Executive Assistant to Satya and Garth Gibson.
**Jan Koehler has joined us permanently (!) and will be providing support to
Doug Tygar, Manuela Veloso and Stephen Brooks.
**Nancy Watson, has leaped from Physics to CS and will be Executive Assistant
to Jeannette Wing, and Davids Garlan and Touretzky.
**Margaret Weigand comes to CS by way of Chemistry, and will serve as
Executive Assistant to Mary Shaw, David McKeown, Chris McClone, and Steve
Cochran. Welcome!
SCS INVITED SPEAKERS...Bruce Maggs is giving the opening Keynote
Address at the 1996 "International Symposium on Parallel Architectures,
Algorithms, and Networks" on June 12 in Beijing, China.
TEL SYMPOSIUM...CMU is sponsoring the First "CMU Symposium on Technology
Enhanced Learning", Tuesday and Wednesday, May 21-22 in the Adamson Wing.
The symposium addresses issues of research and practice in TEL, including
computer-based learning environments, multimedia, distance learning,
technology/network mediated collaborative learning, classroom instruction,
simulation, AI, and instructional design. A complete schedule can be found
at http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rbd/telsym/telsym.html.
IN THE NEWS..."Creating Science", where "creativity is the production of
original and interesting ideas--the sort of ideas that involve a leap of the
imagination rather than mere development from what came before", is a topical
article in the June 1996 PC PRO Magazine. Mention is made of the work of
Raul Valdes-Perez, who is working on computer discovery. Copies are available
on the SCS News Board or from scstoday@cs.
HAVE A MEMORABLE MONDAY...The University will observe Memorial Day on
Monday, May 27. All university offices will be closed. Classes and regular
work schedules will resume Tuesday, May 28. Have a great weekend!
*WACTLAR APPOINTED ALUMNI RESEARCH PROFESSOR...Jim Morris is delighted
to announce the appointment of Howard Wactlar as Alumni Research Professor
of Computer Science. "Howard richly deserves this honor. He has led or
participated in many of the departments key research projects, starting
with C.mmp and most recently Mach, Multicomputing,... [and] conceived of
the Informedia digital library project as an integrating project to leverage
our systems and AI research..." Please join SCS-Today in extending our
thanks and congratulations to Red and Howard. Bravo!
HONORS AND AWARDS...MARIA FISCHER and JOE MATTIS are this year's
recipients of the SCS Staff Recognition Awards, in honor of their "continuing
excellent job performance, dedication, positive attitude and contributions
as team players." They each received the "SCS Crystal Obelisk" and lots of
cash :-), as tokens of our collective appreciation. A number of other SCS
staff were recognized with Service Recognition Awards, in tribute to their
years of service to the School. Please join us in a bellowing applause for
Maria and Joe and a thanks to those countless many whose years of service
have helped make SCS the exciting environment it is.
NEW INTEL FELLOWS...Guei-Yuan Lueh (ECE) and Peter Dinda (CS) have
each received an Intel Graduate Fellowship Award 1996.
OF SPECIAL NOTE...ROBERT HARPER has been named the Programming
Languages Editor for the Journal of the ACM, effective June 1.
TEL SYMPOSIUM...CMU is sponsoring the First "CMU Symposium on Technology
Enhanced Learning", Tuesday and Wednesday, May 21-22 in the Adamson Wing.
The symposium will address issues of research and practice in TEL, including
computer-based learning environments, multimedia, distance learning,
technology/network mediated collaborative learning, classroom instruction,
simulation, AI, and instructional design. The event, free to faculty, staff
and students, does require advanced registration. Do so quickly as seats are
filling up fast! Details on the symposium and registration are available at:
telsym@cs or http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rbd/telsym/telsym.html
ON THE NEWS...The Agile Assembly Architecture/Minifactory project with
Arthur Quaid and Ralph Hollis was featured on CNN's "Science and Technology
Week" program on Saturday, May 11.
CAPS AND GOWN PICK-UP...is scheduled for Wednesday thru Sunday, May 15
(10:00-4:00), May 16 (10:00-6:00), May 17 (10:00-4:00), May 18 (10:00-3:00),
and Sunday, May 19 (9:00-12:00) in Porter Hall 125-C. It is suggested you NOT
wait until the last minute to pick up you garb. Return dates are Sunday
and Monday, May 19-20 (same location).
SENIOR HONORS CONVOCATION...a ceremony in honor of all seniors
graduating with university and/or college honors, will take place in the
Baker Hall Tent at 11:00 am on Saturday, May 18. All members of the SCS
community are welcome to attend.
COMMENCEMENT SUNDAY AT A GLANCE:
MORE AWARDS AND HONORS...
**DAVID McKEOWN is recipient of the prestigious Photogrammetric Award
(Fairchild) by the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing.
Dave was formally honored at the Society's 62nd Annual Meeting and Awards
Program in Baltimore, Maryland on April 22-25, 1996, "in recognition of
his sustained contributions in computer science research appled to digital
mapping." The award, funded by the Loral Fairchild Corporation and
established in 1944, is designed to stimulate the development of the art
of aerial photogrammetry in the U.S. As head of the Digital Mapping Lab
in SCS, Dave has been "conducting research at the intersection of image
understanding, artificial intelligence, cartography, and large-scale
spatial databases, particularly for distributed interactive simulation."
Congratulations Dave!
**MARK KANTROWITZ has been awarded the 1995-96 Carnegie Mellon Community
Service Award. He will be recognized at a formal reception on Thursday,
May 9 from 12:00-1:00 pm in the West Wing Tech Lounge. Thanks for
everything, Mark!
IN DEFENSE...
**ALI-REZA ADL-TABATABAI gets down to "Source-Level Debugging of Globally
Optimized Code" at his CS thesis defense on Friday, May 10 at 10:00 am in
Wean 5409. His well-compiled committee includes: Thomas Gross (Chair),
Bernd Bruegge, Peter Lee and Susan Graham (UC Berkeley).
**FRED SOLOMON opens our eyes on "Illumination Planning for Photometric
Measurements" at his Robotics thesis defense on Wednesday, May 8 at 1:00 pm
in Wean 4623. His committee includes: Katsushi Ikeuchi (Chair), Takeo
Kanade, Eric Krotkov, and Shree Nayar (Columbia University).
**JAY GOWDY reveals "Emergent Architectures: A Case Study for Outdoor Mobile
Robots" at his robotics defense on Monday, May 13 at 1:30 pm, Wean 4623.
His committee includes: Chuck Thorpe (Chair), Tony Stentz, Len Bass (SEI),
and Ed Durfee (Univ. of Michigan).
FACULTY CANDIDATE...Heung-Yeung (Harry) Shum offers "Modeling from
Reality: Representation and Integration" on Wednesday, May 8 at 3:30 pm in
Wean 5409. His faculty host is Matt Mason.
SCS UNDERGRAD RESEARCH THESIS...students will present brief synopses of
their theses on Tuesday, May 7 from 10:30 am to 12:30 pm. The students will
offer their presentations during two parallel sessions, consisting of four
10-minute talks and a 5-minute Q&A session, in Wean 5403 and 5409. There will
be a 15-minute break from 11:30-11:45 am in each room. Those presenting
include: WEAN 5403--Steve Zdancewic, Matthew White, Amy McGovern, Kin Chan,
Sang Kwon, Eddy So, Wasinee Rungsarityotin; WEAN 5409--Dan Wang, Kip Walker,
Stan Simon, Emile Litvak, Rawesak Tanawongsuwan, Steve Marks, Brian Hawkins.
A complete listing of their thesis topics can be found on cmu.cs.scs.
MEETING OF THE MINDS...The 1996 Carnegie Mellon Undergraduate Research
Symposium, a presentation of undergraduate student projects university-wide,
is scheduled for Thursday, May 9 from 1:00-5:00 pm in Posner Hall. The
concurrent sessions provide CMU undergraduates the opportunity to share their
research and creative projects through oral, poster and artistic presentations.
The program also includes panel discussions, live performances, and displays
of video/electronic media work. The event will be followed by a closing
reception in honor of award winners and students who have completed research
projects (including our SCS participants) in the CFA lobby. Try to attend.
It will be well worth it!
SCS UNDERGRADS TAKE TO THE PATIO IN DROVES...for the annual SCS
Undergrad Picnic on Tuesday, May 7 at 4:30 pm on the 5th floor Wean Hall
Patio. Word has it they'll be hungry!
SCS GOES A-FROLICKING...The SCS Annual Picnic is scheduled for Thursday,
May 9 from 1:00 pm until 9:00 pm at the Vietnam Veterans' Pavilion in
Schenley Park (near the community swimming pool). All kinds of picnic
fixins' will be available. It should be fun!
REMINDER! THE 1996 SCS STAFF RECOGNITION AWARDS... will be presented in
Freehof Hall at Rodef Shalom, on Tuesday, May 7 at 2:00 pm. A reception
immediately follows. All members of SCS are invited to attend, as awards
will be presented for both Staff Recognition and Staff Service.
SCS DIPLOMA CEREMONY SPEAKER...Bill Joy, a founder of Sun Microsystems,
will join us on Sunday, May 19 at the SCS Diploma Ceremony. Mr. Joy has
led Sun's technical strategy, designing their NFS Network File System and
as a co-designer of the SPARC Architecture, and now the basic design for
the UltraSparc-IV. Contact copetas@cs for his schedule.
COMMENCEMENT CALENDAR...
MAY 18 ==> Senior Honors Convocation, in honor of students who will be
graduating with University and/or College Honors. The program
takes place in the Baker Hall Tent at 11:00 am.
MAY 19 ==> SCS Commencement Brunch, Field Robotics High Bay, 10:30 am-12:00 pm;
CMU Commencement, Main Tent on Cut, 1:00 pm;
SCS Diploma Ceremony, IM Field Tent, 3:30 pm
????'s ==> Send mail to commencement@cs
URL NEWS...David Redish maintains a WebSite called "Cognitive
Neuroscience Resources" as part of the Center for the Neural Basis of
Cognition (CNBC) Web. It was recently approved by the Argus Clearinghouse
(University of Michigan WWW Subject-Oriented Guides) for Cognitive
Neuroscience and Neurobiology and is listed on the Lycos A2Z. If you would
like to check it out, look at: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/Web/Groups/CNBC/CogNeuro
**VLADIMIR BRAJOVIC, recent Robotics Ph.D. and currently a systems scientist
in Robotics, has won the Best Student Paper Award at the "International
Conference on Robotics and Automation '96" for his paper "A Sorting
Sensor: An Example of Massively Parallel Intensity-to-time Processing for
Computational Sensors", which he co-authored with Takeo Kanade.
IN DEFENSE...
**MOSUR K. RAVISHANKAR offers "Efficient Algorithms for Speech Recognition"
at his thesis defense on Tuesday, April 30 at 9:00 am in Wean 4625. His
well-spoken committee includes: Roberto Bisiani (Co-Chair, Univ. of Milan),
Raj Reddy (Co-Chair). Alexander Rudnicky, Richard Stern, and Wayne Ward.
**WILLIAM NIEHAUS explores the "Design of Maximum-Cardinality and
Maximum-Weight Clique Heuristics with Applications" during his ACO thesis
defense on Wednesday, May 1 at 3:30 pm in Wean 4623. His optimized committee
includes: Egon Balas (GSIA, Chair), Alan Frieze (Math), Ravi Kannan, and
Mike Trick (GSIA).
**IAN DAVIS, evolves "A Modular Neural Network Approach to Multi-sensor
Autonomous Navigation" at his robotics defense on Thursday, May 2 at 10:30 am
in FRC 100. His "mammoth"-sized committee includes: Mel Siegel (Co-Chair),
Tony Stentz (Co-Chair), Dean Pomerleau, and William Kaufmann (CMRI).
PROPOSALS...See-Kiong Ng maps out "Automating Computational Molecular
Genetics" at his thesis proposal on Friday, May 3 at 10:00 am in Wean 5409.
The genotypes on his committee include: Mark Perlin (Chair), Scott Fahlman,
Jim Morris, and Rovert Ferrell (Univ of Pittsburgh, Dept. of Human
Genetics).
FACULTY CANDIDATES...
**DEAN TULLSEN, University of Washington, offers "Simultaneous Multithreading"
on Tuesday, April 30 at 10:00 am in Wean 4623. His CS faculty host is
Bruce Maggs.
**CLARK F. OLSON, Cornell University, explores "Object Recognition Using
Subspace Techniques" at this robotics faculty candidate talk on Thursday,
May 2 at 3:00 pm in Wean 5409. His faculty host is Matt Mason.
CS PHD TOWN HALL...All CS Ph.D. students are encouraged to attend the
next Graduate Town Hall on Thursday, May 2 from 4:00-6:00 pm in Wean 7500.
The topic for discussion will include recent feedback from the SCS Advisory
Board and future plans based on discussions pursuant to the meeting.
Jeannette Wing welcomes your opinions.
SPRING ==> UNDERGRAD PICNIC...and Undergrad Picnic means hamburgers,
baked beans, and other springtime delectibles. SCS faculty and all undergrads
are invited to partake on May 7 at 4:30 pm on the 5th floor Wean Patio.
SCS AWARDS PROGRAM COMING SOON...The 1996 SCS Staff Recognition Awards
Ceremony is just around the corner, at the Freehof Hall in Rodef Shalom,
on Tuesday, May 7 at 2:00 pm. A reception will immediately follow. Awards
will be presented for both Staff Recognition and Staff Service. The whole
SCS gang is invited to attend.
SCS INVITED TALKS...
**ED CLARKE gave a distinguished lecture, entitled "Advances in Temporal Logic
Model Checking", at the Institute for Discrete Mathematics and Computer
Science (DIMACS) at Rutgers University on March 22. On April 22 he presented
a talk at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, entitled "Analytica: A
Theorem Prover for Mathematica."
**SANTOSH VEMPALA was invited to speak at the Mathematics Colloquium at
GeorgiaTech, on Wednesday, April 26, where he discussed "The Geometry of
Graphs."
**FRANK PFENNING gave an invited talk on "The Practice of Logical Frameworks"
at the 21st International Colloquium on Trees in Algebra and Programming
(CAAP'96) in Linkoping, Sweden.
ON THE NEWS...Mark Kantrowitz appeared on a CNN broadcast on Monday,
April 22 from 3:15-3:30 pm, talking about his Financial Aid Information Page
and offering practical advice on how to find aid.
PROPOSALS...
**MOSUR K. RAVISHANKAR (Ravi!) talks about "Efficient Algorithms for Speech
Recognition" at his thesis proposal on Wednesday, April 24 at 9:00 am in
Wean 4601. The committee assessing his lexical trees includes: Roberto
Bisiani (Co-Chair, Univ. of Milan), Raj Reddy (Co-Chair). Alexander Rudnicky,
Richard Stern, and Wayne Ward.
**EKA GINTING gives us some "TIP"s on "Automatic Hint Generation for I/O
Optimization" at his proposal on Thursday, APril 25 at 3:00 pm in Wean 4623.
The committee taking his hints includes: Garth Gibson (Chair), Peter Lee,
Jaspal Subhlok, and Joel Saltz (Univ. of Maryland).
IN DEFENSE...
**KEITH GREMBAN works his way through "Combinatorial Preconditioners for
Large, Sparse, Symmetric, Diagonally Dominant Linear Systems" at his
thesis defense on Friday, April 26 at 2:00 pm in Wean 4623. His plentiful
committee includes: Gary Miller (Chair), Guy Blelloch, Paul Heckbert, Bruce
Maggs, Omar Ghattas (CMU/CivE) and Mike Heroux (Cray Research).
**QI LU is optimistic about "Improving Data Consistency in Mobile File Access
Using Isolation-Only Transactions" during his defense on Monday, April 29
at 9:00 am in Wean 5409. His committee includes: Satya (Chair), Jeannette
Wing, David Garlan, and Eliot Moss (Univ of Massachusetts).
FACULTY CANDIDATES...
**MARKO PETKOVSEK, University of Ljubljana, offers "Automated Proofs of
Combinatorial Identities" on Wednesday, April 24 at 10:00 am in Wean 4623.
His faculty host is Ed Clarke.
CAREER TALKS...Bob Wheeler, D.E. Shaw and Company, will present an
overview of current research at D.E. Shaw on Thursday, April 25 at 6:30 pm
in Wean 5409. He welcomes all it want to get a handle on the innovative
new efforts in the financial arena. Pizza will be served.
SCS INVITED SPEAKERS...
**RANDY BRYANT has been busy! He recently gave a seminar entitled
"Multipliers & Dividers, Insights on Arithmetic Circuit Verification" at the
Computer Science Department, University of Utah; and gave a seminar on "Formal
Verification of Sequential Processors" at the Intel "Frontier's in CAD
Symposium", in Hillsboro, Oregon. While at Intel, he gave a presentation
at a lunch for CMU Alumni. There are about 35 alums working at Intel in
Oregon, including such key technical people as Fred Pollack, Bob Colwell,
and Manpreet Khaira.
**D. NAVIN-CHANDRA is invited speaker at Chrysler's Vehicle Recycling
Partnership. Navin will present work on linear time planning algorithms for
disassembly optimization on Monday April 22 at the Chrysler Technology
Center, Detroit.
1995-96 CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY COMMUNITY SERVICE AWARDS...are
"given to recognize the meaningful service students are providing to the
Greater Pittsburgh or campus community." Nominations are due at the Office of
Resident Life by Friday, April 26 at 5:00 pm. See cmu.cs.scs for a
description of criteria and a nomination form. Contact Kevin Hughes at
x2142 with any questions.
1996 BUHL LECTURE...Dr. John N. Bahcall, Astrophysicist with the
Institute for Advanced Study looks (and shows) some "Recent Discoveries with
the Hubble Space Telescope" at 4:30 pm in the Mellon Institute Auditorium. A
reception will following at 5:30 pm. The program is hosted by the Dept.
of Physics and all members of SCS are welcome to attend.
FREE JAVA EDUCATION...An Education Series on Java is being offered by
CMU's Computing Services. "Writing Programs with Java" will be covered from
10:30-11:30 am on Wednesday, April 24. "Advanced Java Topics" is the offering
on Friday, April 26 from 12:30-1:30 pm. Both seminars take place in the GSIA
Mellon Auditorium. Contact computer-education@andrew.cmu.edu or call x3086
for details. No registration is required.
A COMMENCEMENT INTERLUDE...Now just sit back and ask yourself these
questions. Have I found my family and friends a place to sleep for
Commencement weekend? Did I RSVP for the special CMU programs offered on
Saturday, May 18? Did I actually order my cap and gown or did I just think
about doing it? Did I send in my RSVP form for the SCS Commencement Brunch,
the "Big Top" Ceremony, and the SCS Diploma Ceremony? Have I really, really
considered how enjoyable it will be to be a part of the SCS Diploma Ceremony
Platform? If I haven't, what am I waiting for? This has been another in a
series of commencement moments.
IN DEFENSE...Jyi-shane Liu relies on "Coordination of Multiple Agents
in Distributed Manufacturing Scheduling" at his robotics defense on Thursday,
April 18 at 3:00 pm, in Wean 4623. His committee includes: Katia Sycara
(Chair), Stephen Smith, Sarosh Talukdar, and Michael Huhns (University of
South Carolina).
THESIS PROPOSALS...
**Astro Teller explores "Algorithm Evolution for Signal Understanding" at
his CS thesis proposal on Monday, April 15 at 1:30 pm in Wean 4623. The
orchestrated variety of experts on his committee include: Manuela Veloso
(Chair), Katsuchi Ikeuchi, Tom Mitchell, and Rodney Brooks (MIT).
**Manish Pandey engages in "Verification of Arrays" during his proposal on
Thursday, April 18 at 1:00 pm in Wean 4623. His well-arrayed committee
includes: Randy Bryant (Chair), Allan Fisher, Rob Rutenbar, and Richard
Raimi (Motorola).
FACULTY CANDIDATES...
**Michael Dahlin, University of California at Berkeley, cuts through
bottlenecks with "Serverless Network File Systems" on Tuesday, April 16 at
10:00 am in Wean 4623.
**Ragunathan Rajkumar, SEI/CMU, offers "Operating System and Real-Time
Mach Support for Real-Time and Multimedia Applications" on Wednesday,
April 17 at 10:00 am in Wean 4623.
MONEY...is addressed by Duane Adams and Bill Scherlis at the next
Emigration Course program on Friday, April 19 from 10-12 in Wean 5409.
SPRING HAS SPRUNG...and that can only mean Carnival is nigh.
Festivities of all sorts are scheduled for Friday and Saturday, April 19-20.
Please note, there are NO classes on Friday. Party hard :-)
NEW BOOKS..."Software Architecture: Perspectives on an Emerging
Discipline" by Mary Shaw and David Garlan has just hit the bookstands.
Published by Prentice Hall, the book "provides the best general framework
and set of techniques for dealing with software architectures that is
available today," says Barry Boehm of USC. If you would like to see a copy,
stop by their offices for a preview.
CS BLACK FRIDAY...is scheduled for Thursday, May 16 (8:30 am--Computer
Systems; 10:00 am--Programming Systems; 1:30 pm--Theory; 3:00 pm--AI) and
Friday, May 17 (10:00 am The Whole Gang).
ROBO BLACK MONDAY...is scheduled for Monday, May 20. Marce will send
details in the coming weeks.
TASTEFUL NEWS...The April 1996 American Institute of Wine & Food
Newsletter has a delicious article showcasing the talents, tastes and
tastebuds of the Dinner Co-op. "...for a handful of computer science grad
students at CMU, dinnertime is worth looking forward to. Five nights a week,
they enjoy a home-cooked meal together, perpetuating a tradition that is
entering its ninth year." The article features recent menus by Jose Carlos
Brustoloni and Barry Brummitt, a slicing/dicing action photo of Rob Driskill
and a-blending Karen Haigh, Ari Rapkin and others dining and chatting
congenially over a wonderful collection of foods and beverage. More about
the Co-op via http://gs216.sp.cs.cmu.edu/dinnercoop/home-page.html.
DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI LECTURE...Ralph Guggenheim, Vice President, Feature
Animation, Pixar Animation Studios; and Co-Producer of Walt Disney's "Toy
Story", will take us "To Infinity and Beyond: The Making of Toy Story" today,
Monday, April 8 at 4:00 pm in Porter Hall 100. As a special note, the film
"Toy Story" is scheduled for viewing on Saturday, April 13 in Doherty 2200.
SCS ADVISORY BOARD CONVENES...The SCS Advisory Board Advanced Research
Directions and Educational Directions Committees will convene on two
successive weeks: April 15/16 and April 22/23, respectively.
FACULTY CANDIDATES...
**SETH GOLDSTEIN, University of California at Berkeley, works hard on "Lazy
Threads: Compiler and Runtime Foundations for Multi-Threading or Threads on
the Cheap" on Tuesday, April 9 at 10:00 am in Wean 4623. His faculty host
is Robert Harper.
**JAMES SALEHI, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, compresses his thoughts
on "Scheduling Network Processing on Multimedia and Multiprocessor Servers"
on Wednesday, April 10 at 10:00 am in Wean 4623. His faculty host is
Peter Steenkiste.
LECTURER CANDIDATE...RICHARD PATTIS, Turing TarPit Software and
University of Washington, offers "Teaching OOP Early in CS1 via Frameworks",
on Thursday, April 11 at 4:00 pm, Wean 4623.
SCS STAFF AWARDS...The 1996 SCS Staff Recognition Awards Ceremony is
scheduled for Tuesday, May 7 at the Freehof Hall in Rodef Shalom. The
ceremony begins at 2:00 pm and will be followed by a reception. Awards will
be presented for both Staff Recognition (excellence in job performance,
dedication, positive attitude and contributions as a team player), and
Staff Service (years of service). The whole SCS Community is invited to
attend!
THE EMIGRATION COURSE CONTINUES..."Money" is the next topic at the
Emigration Course, and will be presented by Duane Adams and Bill Scherlis on
Friday, April 19 from 10:00 am - 12:00 pm in Wean 5409. As noted, this is a
great opportunity if you "are a CSD Ph.D. graduate student about to take a
faculty position? Are you a junior faculty member writing your first grant
proposal?" If you fit the bill, you'll probably be interested in attending
this talk "on how to get money and how two funding agencies operate."
SCS INVITED SPEAKERS...Brad Myers was an invited speaker at the
AAAI Spring Symposium on "Acquisition, Learning and Demonstration: Automating
Tasks for Users", where he presented an overview of "Demonstrational
Interfaces".
ALUMNI UPDATE...Richard Lipton, Princeton University, will discuss
"Using DNA to Compute" at this week's Modern Computational and Applied
Mathematics Conference (on the CMU campus!). His talk is at 1:30 pm in the
SEI Auditorium.
IN THE NEWS..."Vision Systems, GPS Guide Helicopter" is a featured
article in the March 19 Aviation Week and Space Technology. "CMU is
developing a helicopter [Yamaha 50] to operate autonomously by relying on
GPS and vision systems for guidance, which could free pilots from performing
dangerous missions.... The work has progressed to the point where the
helicopter is flying and hovering autonomously near CMU's campus...." It's
interesting reading (especially if you are near the test site :-).
IN DIE DEUTSCH NEWS..."Alle Macht den Maschinen" is a key article in
this month's ZEITmagazin. "Dein Freund, der Roboter. Maschinen, die immer
kluger werde, kriechen in Vulkane, schlecken Asbbest von den Wanden, helfen bei
Operationen und lenken Autos. Ist es nur noch eine Frage der Zeit, bis
der Mensch uberflussig wird?" Now, if you can't read this, the article
won't do you much good...but the big, impressive photographs of Takeo Kanade,
Red Whittaker, Omead Amidi and others are well worth it :-)
MOBOT PRELIMINARY RACE...Wind your way to the 2nd Annual Mobot Slalom
Races on Wednesday, April 3. The preliminary heats will begin at 11:30 am on
the sidewalk in front of Wean Hall. Come cheer on your favorite, sub-sized,
autonomous vehicle as they make their way through gates and over the winding
terrain. The Mobot Finals will take place Spring Carnival Weekend, on
Friday, April 19. Details are available from mobot@cs.
SCS DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI LECTURE...Ralph Guggenheim, Vice President,
Feature Animation and Co-Producer of "Toy Story", Pixar Animation Studios,
will venture "To Infinity and Beyond: The Making of Toy Story" on Monday,
April 8 at 4:00 pm in Porter Hall 100. As a special bonus, "Toy Story" will
be shown by the activities board on Saturday, April 13 in Doherty Hall 2200.
FACULTY CANDIDATES...
**Steven Reinhardt, University of Wisconsin, shares his thoughts on
"Mechanisms for Distributed Shared Memory" on Tuesday, April 2 at 10:00 am
in Wean 4623.
**John Chapin, Stanford University, is abuzz about "Hive: Fault Containment
for Shared-Memory Multiprocessors" on Wednesday, April 3 at 10:00 am in
Wean 4623.
"NEED TEACHING BE A LONER'S SPORT?"...is the focus of Herbert Simon's
talk at the next Center for Innovative Learning (CIL) Distinguished Lecture,
on Tuesday, April 2 at 4:30 pm in Doherty Hall 2210. A reception follows.
All are welcome to attend.
COMMENCEMENT 96...The Hyatt Hotel, soon to become the Marriott Hotel
through recent acquisition, will be closing April 1. As the "host hotel" for
CMU's commencement, this means the Hyatt can no longer honor the reservations
for the anticipated 400 guests they were to accommodate. The Marriott Corp.
has assigned staff members to relocate these commencement guests. They will
call all guests, but if you prefer, you can reach them directly at
1/888-456-6600. Have your parties identify themselves as a member of the CMU
Commencement Group. A listing of alternative hotels is being sent to families
and students, but is also available from commencement@cs.cmu.edu. Don't delay!
Rooms fill quickly.
SCS INVITED SPEAKERS...D. Navin-Chandra presented a 4-hour workshop on
the future of electronic commerce on the Internet, on March 20. The National
Manufacturing Week, held every March in Chicago, attracts over 65,000
attendees from academia and industry.
PARDON OUR APPEARANCE...
**The 4500 corridor (aka "Carpal Tunnel") leading to the Wean 4600 corridor,
is experiencing a floor-lift. The old surface is being removed in
anticipation of better things to come!
**Several academic building windows will be cleaned inside and out from
April 1-4. Smith Hall is among those scheduled for spring cleaning. You
are asked to "clean off your window sills, however you don't need to
move furniture." If you have any concerns with the scheduling,
please contact Barb at bk11@andrew.cmu.edu
FACULTY CANDIDATE...Sandeel Singhal, Computer Science Department,
Stanford University, examines "Effective Remote Modeling in Large-Scale
Distributed Interactive Simulation Environments" on Tuesday, March 19 at
10:00 am in Wean 4623.
HANK WAN MEMORIAL LECTURE...Richard Stearns, Computer Science
Department, State University of New York at Albany, is the next distinguished
speaker in this annual lecture series. He ponders "What is Subproblem
Independence" on Thursday, March 21 at 4:00 pm in Wean 7500. Distinguished
refreshments at 3:45 pm.
SCS WEST COAST REUNION...The SCS West Coast Reunion is scheduled for
Friday, March 29 and will be hosted by Sun Microsystems at their Menlo Park
Campus in California. If you would like details, or anticipate being out
that way, contact alumni@cs for particulars.
CAREERS: INFORMATION SESSIONS...
**ROBERT SANSOM, Vice President of Engineering, FORE Systems, will discuss
"FORE Systems: At the Forefront of ATM Networking" on Tuesday, March 19 at
6:30 pm in Wean 5409.
**SAL CALTA, Manager of Solution Delivery for the Internet, IBM, offers at
technical overview of current activities in this division, on Wednesday,
March 20 at 7:00 pm in Wean 5409.
ROBOCOPTER..."CMU's newest robotic challenge is designing a self-piloted
chopper that will use stereoscopic video, a laser rangefinder and military
GPS to carry out assigned missions" notes a featured article in the March 18
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Last week, "over a barren farm field outside of
Zelienople, a sleek Yamaha helicopter was indeed flyng itself under the
watchful eyes of Omead Amidi and two colleagues......representing the first
baby steps for CMU's Autonomous Helicopter Project."
SPRING IS SPRINGING...The Vernal Equinox officially begins Wednesday,
March 20 and is a clear sign that Spring Break can't be far away. Classes
will adjourn the week of March 25, with normal schedules resuming Monday,
April 1.
REMINDER...Nominations for the "Graduate Student Service Award" and
"Graduate Student Teaching Award" are due Friday, March 22. All CMU
grad students are eligible for nomination. Nominations are welcomed from
any member of the CMU community and "should describe the qualities and
activities of the nominee that make him or her an excellent candidate for
the award(s)." Contact Margaret Michael at x8/2075 with any questions.
UP-AND-COMING EVENTS:
MOBOT PRELIMINARY RACES...The 2nd Annual Mobot Prelinary trials are
scheduled for Wednesday, April 3 (at lunchtime) on the race course in front
of Wean Hall. It's not too late to get your entry built and registered.
Contact mobot@cs for particulars.
SCS DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI LECTURE...Ralph Guggenheim, Vice President, Feature
Animation, Pixar Animation Studios; and Co-Producer of Walt Disney's "Toy
Story" will be going "To Infinity and Beyond: The Making of Toy Story" on
Monday, April 8 at 4:00 pm in Porter Hall 100. Won't want to miss this :-)
CMU CS NO. 1...The March 11 edition of Newsweek contains the rankings
and related statistics for graduate CS programs, acknowledging CMU as number
one, along with MIT, Stanford and Berkeley. Other worthy graduate rankings
deserving mention: CIT is ranked 6th among engineering schools and GSIA is
14th among business schools. You know the rest by now :-)
FACULTY CANDIDATE...Robert Givan, MIT, discusses "Type Inference with an
Expressive Type Language" at 10:00 am in Wean 4623.
PROPOSALS...Garrett Pelton's thesis proposal of Monday, March 11 is
"Gone But Not Forgotten: Planning, Memory and Intention with Many Goals." His
well-activated committee included: Jill Fain Lehman (Chair), Reid Simmons,
Manuela Veloso, and Barbara Hayes-Roth (Stanford).
SCS INVITED TALKS...Takeo Kanade examined "Virtualized Reality" as
the invited speaker at the Barr Systems Distinguished Lecture, University
of Florida, on February 18. He will reexamine this topic on March 11, at a
Distinguished Lecture at the University of North Carolina.
IN THE NEWS..."The New Magic Machines: built with the latest chips and
software, mobile robots make their move" says the March 18 US News & World
Report. A recent study "asserts that robotics for agricultural machinery,
mining and cargo handling will represent a $2 billion industry by the year
2006..." while other "...envisioned markets include entertainment, defense,
lumbering, inspections and security." Of special note are "Heli", "Dante II",
"Demeter", "Rover", "Xavier" and "Rosie"...but you'll have to read about them
yourself.
MICROSOFT TECHNICAL AWARD...Patrick Doan (freshman), Andrew Ng (Junior)
and Katherine Smith (Sophomore), all CS undergradates, are the new recipients
of Microsoft Technical Awards. Consisting of a $1500 tuition grant for
1996-97, the award is given in recognition of "strong academic records and
interest in making contributions to the software industry." Congratulations!
IN DEFENSE...
**R. CRAIG COULTER gets moving on "A Systemic, Control Theoretic Approach to
the Engineering of Autonmous Speed Control Systems for Conventional Vehicles"
at his robotics defense on Thursday, March 7 at noon in FRC 100. The
committee detailing the merits of such formulation includes: Red Whittaker
(Chair), Tony Stentz, Matt Mason, Thomas Gillespie (University of Michigan),
and Anton Heiss (BMW).
**SCOTT NEAL REILLY is attached to "Believable Social and Emotional Agents"
and will defend their existence at his CS defense on Friday, March 8 at
3:30 pm in Wean 4623. The agents on his committee include: Joseph Bates
(Chair), Jaime Carbonell, Reid Simmons, and Aaron Sloman (University of
Birmingham, England).
PROPOSALS...LORIN GRUBB sings out in praise of "Robust, Real-Time Score
Following of Vocal Performances" at his thesis proposal on Thursday, March 7
at 3:00 pm in Wean 5409. The committee accompanying him includes: Roger
Dannenberg (Chair), Tom Mitchell, Jack Mostow, and Shuji Hashimoto,
University of Waseda).
**PHOEBE SENGERS was crazy for "Symptom Management for Schizophrenic Agents"
at her successful CS/Literary & Cultural Theory thesis proposal on February
27. The committee studying their behavior included: Joseph Bates (Chair),
Camilla Griggers (LCT), Jill Lehman, and Simon Penny (CFA/RI).
PACT CENTER 1ST ANNIVERSARY...The Pittsburgh Advanced Cognitive Tutor
Center (PACT), formed one year ago under the joint leadership of John Anderson,
Albert Corbett and Ken Koedinger, continues to nurture the application of
cognitive science principles to computer-based education. Community
fundraising has been very successful and includes the Howard & Vira Heinz
Endowments and the R.K. Mellon, Pittsburgh and Buhl Foundations, who have
jointly contributed $928,000 to begin development and deployment of cognitive
tutors for high school geometry and algebra II. The Center's PUMP Algebra I
Project successfully expanded this year from its original 3 city high schools
to include 3 suburban high schools. Year-end assessments of the 94-95 PUMP
Algebra I program replicate earlier findings: Students double their ability
to apply algebraic knowledge in reasoning about authentic problem solving
situations. What a year!
FACULTY CANDIDATE...Gail Murphy, University of Washington, touches upon
"Lightweight Structural Summarization as an Aid to Software Evolution"
ROGER + BALLET DANCERS = SUCCESS!...Roger Dannenberg was one of four
Pittsburgh composers selected to participate in the Carlisle Project, which
brought together composers, choreographers, and dancers in a 5-day workshop
from February 28 through March 3. Roger teamed up with Montreal-based
choreographer Howard Richard and dancers from the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre,
a coupling which culminated in a public presentation of their work on Sunday
afternoon. From all and varied reports, the performance was a rousing success!
MULTIMEDIA ROBOTICS TUTORIAL ON DISPLAY...The display case in the E&S
library features a Multimedia Robotics Tutorial developed by Eric Krotkov
and Nathan Fullerton. Take a moment from your busy day to try it! This
project is a preview of work to appear soon in a robotics exhibit at the
Carnegie Science Center. It's worth the time.
SCS INVITED SPEAKERS...Ed Clarke gave two distinguished lectures on
model checking at the University of Texas at Austin on February 18-20.
ALUMNI UPDATE...Eric Cooper and FORE Systems are "Taking a lead in the
race for speed" notes an article in the February 26 US News & World Report.
WANTED: MOBOTS...don't forget, the annual Mobot Race is coming soon.
Preliminaries are April 3, Finals April 19. Prizes includes: $1000 1st Place;
$500 2nd Place; $250 3rd Place; and $250 Open Class. Send mail to mobot@cs
for details.
IN THE NEWS...
**"Furst and 10: This CMU scientist's work has drawn the interest of the NFL
and venture capitalists" is the February 19-25 People to Watch column in the
Pittsburgh Business Times. Among his noted accommplishments, is Merrick's
work leading to the creation of Chiloe, Inc "which has an electronic library
of National Football League game footage which eventually will be accessible
on the Internet." Check the SCS News Board or send mail to scstoday@cs for
a copy.
**"A Robochpper with its Own Eagle Eyes", an article appearing in the March
11 Business Week, notes the robot helicopter under development in Robotics.
Omead Amidi and Takeo Kanade have worked on implementing a robochopper that
"steers itself using global positioning satellites and advanced artificial-
-vision technology." The helicopter, thru its maneuverability, will enable
it to perform high-risk tasks without endangering a human pilot and might be
"ideal for boring tasks such as inspecting remote utility lines." Check
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/chopper/www/heli_project.html for
particulars.
EDS SCHOLAR WINNERS...The School of Computer Science is proud to
announce the winners of this semester's $300 Textbook Scholarships, sponsored
by Electronic Data Systems Corporation. Juniors Lin-chih Hsu and Relja
Ivanovic, Sophomores Christine Hui and Michael Monaco, and Freshmen Yelena
Malyutina and Patrick Riley are each to be awarded $300 by EDS based on their
outstanding academic performance during the Fall 1995 term.
NEW GRANTS..."What would it take to be able to train a robot the way
you train a dog or a rat?" NSF will be funding David Touretzky's proposal, "A
Computational Theory of Operant Conditioning with Application to Trainable
Robots", in order to find out. Amelia (Xavier's roommate) is serving as their
testbed. As David notes, "Sunflower seeds are the preferred reward for
training gerbils in our animal navigation lab; with Amelia we use a Logitech
radio trackball to deliver virtual rewards."
IN DEFENSE...Kevin Lynch wraps up his thoughts on "Nonprehensile Robotic
Manipulations: Controllability and Planning" at his robotics thesis oral on
Thursday, February 22 at 1:00 pm in Wean 4623. The committee seizing his
ideas includes: Matt Mason (Chair), Michael Erdmann, Ralph Hollis, and Dan
Koditschek (Univ. of Michigan).
SCS PROGRAMMING TEAM...The team of Zhenyu Wang (first-year grad
student), Josh deCesare (senior), and Sean Cier (sophomore) competed over
the weekend in the 20th ACM International Programming Contest in Philadelphia.
CMU solved 5 of 7 problems and finished 15th out of 43 schools competing in the
finals (out of 1001 teams which entered the 17 regional competitions held
throughout the world). Four teams solved 6 problems, the winner being the
University of California, Berkeley. Teams are ranked first by number of
problems solved and then by fewest accumulated total minutes.
SCS INVITED SPEAKERS...Daniel Jackson was guest speaker at Cornell's
Distinguished Lecture Series on Thursday, February 15. He carefully
examined "Nitpick: A Specification Checker."
ALUMNI UPDATE..."In an unexpected victory of machine over man, Deep
Blue, the brand new IBM chess computer, trounced the world chess champion,
Garry Kasparov, Saturday in the first game of their scheduled six-game match
at the Pennsylvania Convention Center" noted the NY Times on February 11.
"Kasparov's Mettle Proves Too Much for Metal Challenger" notes the February 19
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Feng-Hsiung Hsu (CS'89) and Murray Campbell (CS'87)
members of the IBM team, were steadily on hand at the 6-game match. Kasparov
was ultimately victorious with 4 wins. Reporting live from the Philadelphia
competition was Hans Berliner, whose articles have appeared daily in the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. As he notes, "...Deep Blue showed much mettle, but
just as clearly, there is still quite a difference between the best human
chess player and a metal and silicon challenger."
MORE CHESS IN THE NEWS..."A Mean Chess-Playing Computer Tears at the
Meaning of Thought" is a featured article in the Monday, February 19 NY Times.
Herbert Simon, who predicted in 1957 "that a computer would be the world chess
champion" is interviewed. "He notes that "Deep Blue has to be considered a
thinker...because along with its colossal ability "to spin its wheels", the
brute force calculation which is the traditional strength of computers, it
also has a sophisticated evaluation system." All these articles are
available on the SCS News Board or from scstoday@cs.
IN THE NEWS...What do Asim Smailagic, Daniel Siewiorek, Satya, David
Johnson, David Maltz, and Bernd Bruegge have in common? Their research is
featured in the February 1996 IEEE Personal Communications' special issue on
Mobile Computing at Carnegie Mellon. "Modalities of Interaction with CMU
Wearable Computers" (Smailagic/Siewiorek), "Mobile Information Access" (Satya),
"Protocols for Adaptive Wireless and Mobile Networking" (John/Maltz), "A
Wireless Data Network Infrastructure at CMU" (Hills/Johnson), and "Applications
of Mobile Computing and Communication" (Bruegge/Bennington) are highlighted
along with articles from ECE and the INI.
NEW FACES...Al Rizzi has joined the Microdynamic Systems Laboratory
in the Robotics Institute as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow, where he is
working with Ralph Hollis. Al arrived by way of the University of Michigan,
having recently completed pioneering work in robotic juggling.
CS DISTINGUISHED LECTURE...Persi Diaconis, Harvard University,
reflects on the "Practical Aspects of Random Number Generation" at the
Gaschnig/Oakley Memorial Lecture on Thursday, February 8 at 4:00 pm in
Wean 7500. Distinguished refreshments at 3:45 pm.
THE EMIGRATION COURSE..."Are you a CSD PhD graduate about to
interview for a job in academic or industry?" If so, you won't want to miss
"Tips on the Interview Process", a special seminar by Jeannette Wing, on
Friday, February 9 at 10:00 am in Wean 5409. Discussion and questions are
welcomed.
SCS STAFF RECOGNITION AWARDS...Established in 1995 to honor outstanding
staff members, the SCS Staff Recognition Awards recognize members of the SCS
community who "exhibit strength in the areas of job performance, dedication,
positive attitude, and contribution as a team player." The award includes a
$1000 gift. This year's presentation ceremony is scheduled for Tuesday, May 7.
Nominations are welcomed from any CMU staff or faculty member and graudate or
undergraduate student and must be submitted by Friday, February 16 to: SCS
Staff Recognition Award (Wean Hall, Smith or CMT drop off sites). Check the
complete nomination guidelines forms posted throughout SCS.
PITTSBURGH HIGH TECHNOLOGY COUNCIL: JOB FAIR...Local Pittsburgh
employers will be available to meet with interested students to discuss
internship, part-time and permanent employment opportunties from 10:00 am to
4:00 pm on Tuesday, November 6 at the Drill Deck in the Student Center. Check
the bboards for a complete listing of participating companies.
CAREER WEEK...Feb 5-10, 1996. Check campus calendars, bulletin boards
and the Career Center for a complete schedule of Events!
SCS INVITED TALKS...
**Mary Shaw was a distinguished lecturer at the Georgia Tech College of
Computing Distinguished Lecture Series on January 25, where she presented
"Prospects for an Engineering Discipline of Software." She was also an
invited speaker at the Georgia State CIS Research Collquium on January 26,
where she discussed "Abstractions for Software Architecture and Tools to
Support Them".
**Herbert Simon will be the February 9 distinguished speaker at the University
of Pittsburgh's Center for Philosophy of Science Annual Lecture Series. His
topic will be, "Thinking: The Roles of Logic, Language and Pictures in
Inference." (3:30 pm, 817 Cathedral of Learning).
SO WHEN IS COMMENCEMENT?...Mark Commencement on your calendars for
Saturday and Sunday, May 18-19. If you anticipate attending, you should be
"well" into the process of finding suitable housing/hotels for your family,
friends and loved ones. Local accommodations fill rapidly! Send mail to
commence@cs with general inquiries.
MOBOT OPEN HOUSE...On Thursday, February 15, the Mobot Committee will
host an informal Open House for all potential contestants at 6:00 pm in Wean
7500. Videotapes from last year's competition, members of the Mobot Committee,
and pizza will be available. Questions are welcome! Contact mobot@cs.cmu.edu
for details. Plan ahead: The Preliminary competition is scheduled for
Wednesday, APRIL 3; Final Competition for Friday, APRIL 19 (Spring Carnival
Weekend).
IN THE NEWS..."Tiny factories may solve big problems", a featured
article in the February 5 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, includes a big photograph
of a large Ralph Hollis, kneeling beside a (tiny) full-size model of a
miniature factory. As noted, "CMU researchers are working to create
minifactories---snap-together assembly lines that could be rearranged to make
a new product line during a single 8-hour shift. ...about the size of a
conference room table, (the minifactories) would be composed of multiple
units." But why read this tiny summary, check the SCS News Board or request
a copy from scstoday@cs.
CS DEPARTMENTAL AWARDS...Congratulations to Michael Accetta, Jacobo
Carrasquel, Martha Clarke, Joan Maddamma, Phil Miller and Jim Skees,
recipients of this year's CS departmental awards, in recognition for their
unerring and indispensable assistance to the department. As Jim Morris noted,
their cumulative accomplishments and contributions "keep this place going."
Don't we know it!
FAREWELL...Marge Profeta, who has been with CS for 6 years and at CMU
for 13 years will be departing our hallowed halls on Friday, February 2 as she
begins "retirement". This means she will be travelling extensively with her
family, exploring all life has to offer, and never trying to schedule a
conference room in Wean Hall again! We wish her well as she begins this
wonderful new phase of her life. Stop by and say goodbye. Thanks Marge!
NEW FACES...Steward Buskirk has joined the HCI Institute as a Research
Assistant, where he'll be working with the HomeNet Project.
CMU SLEEPING BAG WEEKEND...is scheduled for Sunday and Monday, February
4-5. SCS will host prospective undergraduates and their families, helping
them to gain some insights into the organization of SCS and the academic
rigors of the undergraduate program. Allan Fisher (Sunday, 3:30 pm) and Mark
Stehlik (Monday, 10:30 am) will offer two information sessions for our
visitors.
PITTSBURGH HIGH TECHNOLOGY COUNCIL JOB FAIR...Local Pittsburgh
employers will be on campus on Tuesday, February 6, to meet with students
interested in pursuing internships, part-time jobs, and permanent employment.
The fair, scheduled for 10:00 am to 4:00 pm on the (newly refurbished) Drill
Deck in the Student Center, is open to all students. A complete list of
participating companies is available on cmu.cs.scs. Resumes are welcomed.
THE CAMPUS IS ABUZZ WITH RECRUITORS...Check the Career Center for a
listing of all the recruitors who will be visiting CMU in the next 2 weeks.
The list is extensive. The Center can be reached at x2064 or 2065.
SHOW BIZ...Stephanie Riso was a stand-in for the female lead in Sweeney
Todd at the Pittsburgh Public Theater this past week. She performed
(excellently) the role of Joanna at several performances. Her repertoire
grows!
WING APPOINTED ASSOC. DEPT HEAD...Jim Morris has announced the
appointment of Jeannette Wing as Associate Department Head for the Ph.D.
Program in the CS Department. "Jeannette has already gotten involved in
things via the DRC and the Programming Systems faculty, and has initiated
some real improvements," notes Jim. In addition to these new
responsibilities, Jeannette will also continue her previous commitments as
Dragon Lady :-). Congratulations!
IN DEFENSE...Vladimir Brajovic, looked at "Computational Sensors for
Global Operations in Vision" at his robotics thesis oral on Monday, January 22.
Despite some last ditch efforts to close down Wean Hall with leaking
cylinders of hydrogen disulfide gas, the thesis took place after a quick move
to Smith Hall :-) His sensor-tive committee included: Takeo Kanade (Chair),
Steve Shafer, Rick Carley (CMU/ECE) and Andreas Andreou (Johns Hopkins).
CS DEPARTMENTAL MEETING...The next CS Departmental Meeting is scheduled
for Thursday, January 25 at 4:00 pm in Wean 7500. All faculty, staff, and
students are invited.
HABERMANN COMPUTING CLASSROOMS DEDICATED...On Thursday, 18 January, the
A. Nico Habermann Computing Classrooms (Wean 5419), used in teaching the
Introductory Programming Courses, were formally dedicated at a special lecture,
demonstration and ceremony attended by members of Habermann family and our
CMU/SCS community. As noted by Phil Miller, "I can think of no better
way to honor the memory of our first Dean of the School of Computer Science
than to dedicate this facility in his name....This is but a small token to
preserve the legacy we have received from Professor A. Nico Habermann,
gentleman, scholar and friend."
NEW GRANTS...Ralph Hollis, M. Satyanarayanan [Satya], and Mark Kryder
(DSSC) have received a $2.2M 4-year grant from the National Science
Foundation's Multi-Disciplinary Challenge Program to develop a distributed
architecture enabling the "speedy" design, set up and deployment of
mini-factories operated by robots. Ralph points out that "by combining high
performance computing, modular robotics, and the latest communication
technologies, we hope to develop a prototype for designing, setting up and
programming factories will give U.S. manufacturers an edge in responding to
rapidly changing global market conditions."
SCS INVITED TALKS...Jeannette Wing recently delivered two invited talks
while visiting the United Nations University/Institute of Information Science
and Technology in Macau, on "A Behavioral Notion of Subtyping Using Belief to
Reason About Cache Coherence."
GET MORPHED...Students in Paul Heckbert's 15-463, the undergraduate
Graphics 2 course, will be morphing their faces into other people's faces to
create a piece of video animation. If you'd like your face to appear in this
animation (and are willing to run an x-windows program to set up
correspondence between your face and another person's face), then visit
Doherty Hall 4301 between 10:30 am and 12:30 pm on Tuesday, January 23 to
have your picture taken.
PITTSBURGH OUTSTANDING CITIZEN...Mark Kantrowitz has been named one of
six winners of the 1995 Pittsburgh Outstanding Citizens prize by the Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette and KDKA-TV, and will be awarded the Jefferson Medal by the
American Institute for Public Service in Washington DC. Featured in a
recent Post-Gazette article and profiled on KDKA, the award includes a
$1,000 prize, to be awarded to a charity of Mark's choice. Mark is delighted,
as is SCS.
IN THE NEWS...PC Magazine has announced it's "Top 100 Web Sites", to
appear in the February 6 issue of PC Magazine. Among the cited sites is Mark
Kantrowitz's Financial Aid Information Page. As noted, "when...you can't dig
the tuition out of your porcelain piggy bank, the Financial Aid Information
home page may be your savior...[his] collection of books, phone numbers,
Usenet newsgroups, services, bibliographies, and mailing lists gives you a
roadmap to all the latest grants, loans, scholarships and fellowships..."
CS IN DEFENSE...
**(John) Gregory Morrisett will be "Compiling with Types" at his defense on
on Tuesday, December 12 at 2:00 pm in Wean 5409. The committee compiling
his ideas includes: Robert Harper (Co-Chair), Jeannette Wing (Co-Chair),
Peter Lee, and Andrew Appel (Princeton).
**Scott Nettles provides "Safe and Efficient Persistent Heaps" at his thesis
defense on Wednesday, December 13 at 10:30 am in Wean 5409. His committee
includes: Jeannette Wing (Chair), Peter Lee, Satya, and Eliot Moss (Univ.
of Massachusetts, Amherst).
ROBOTICS IN DEFENSE...David Wettergreen explored "Robotic Walking
in Natural Terrain" at his defense on Monday, December 11 at 1:00 pm. The
committee watching his steps included: Red Whittaker (Co-Chair), Chuck Thorpe
(Co-Chair), Michael Erdmann, David Miller (Institute for Practical Robotics),
and Sehung Kwok (Monterey Naval PostGraduate School).
PROPOSALS...Yan-bin Jia goes "From Touch to Grasp" at his robotics
thesis proposal on Wednesday, December 13 at 1:30 pm in Wean 5409. The
committee latching on to his work includes: Michael Erdmann (Chair), Matthew
Mason, Katushi Ikeuchi, and Bruce Donald (Cornell).
UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH POSTER SESSION...All students, faculty, and
staff are invited to this semester's "SCS Undergraduate Research Poster
Session" on Wednesday, December 13, beginning at 4:30 in Wean 5403. The
poster session will showcase the progress of 17 students engaged in the
year-long Senior Honors Thesis program, as well as another 15 students doing
independent study projects this semester. Stop by to see the students'
presentations and to support their research efforts!
CS BLACK FRIDAY...Thursday, December 14 and Friday, December 15!
HO, HO, HO...Come eat, drink and be very merry (unless you are a Mary,
then you should be Merry Mary) at the SCS Holiday Party on Friday, December 15,
from 3:00-5:00 pm in the Smith Hall, 2nd floor lounge area. We await you!
SCS INVITED TALKS:
**Randy Bryant delivered a "distinguished lecture" at Cadence Design Systems,
Chelmsford, MA, on December 4, entitled "Division Pentium Style: An Analysis
of Intel's Mistake(s)."
**Navin Chandra is presenting a position paper on "Advanced Engineering
Services on the Web" at the 4th WWW Conference in Boston, on December 11.
ON DISPLAY...An exhibit of 60 origami models by Mark Kantrowitz (CS),
Goran Konjevod (Math), and Doug Philips (Transarc) is on display at the
Bookworm/Heads Together on Murray Avenue, Squirrel Hill, until January 15.
IN THE NEWS..."Old PCs Are 'Liability Scrap'", an article in the
November 6 Investor's Business Daily, quotes Navin Chandra on his research
in Green Engineering.
IN DEFENSE...David Wettergreen traverses "Walking and Natural Terrain"
at his Robotics thesis defense on Monday, December 11 at 1:00 pm in Wean 4623.
The committee checking his steps includes: Red Whittaker (Co-Chair), Chuck
Thorpe (Co-Chair), Michael Erdmann, David Miller, and Sehung Kwok (Monterey
Naval PostGraduate School).
ALMOST HERE, THE SCS HOLIDAY PARTY...is scheduled for Friday, December
15, from 3:00-5:00 pm in Smith Hall, 2nd floor lounge area. Be prepared to
partake of victuals, beverages, frolicking and good cheer.
CS BLACK FRIDAY...is back! Thursday, December 14 (Computer Systems, AI,
Theory and Programming Systems) and Friday, December 15 (Group Meeting
starting at 10:00 am in Wean 4623. Check with Sharon Burks for particulars.
ROBOTICS BLACK FRIDAY...is back soon. It is scheduled for Friday,
January 12, 1996. Contact Marce Zaragoza for details.
SCS INVITED TALKS...
**Bonnie John gave an invited talk at the Krasnow Institute for Advanced
Study at George Mason Univeristy near Washington DC. The title was "A
Unified Theory Approach to Modeling Learning under Time-Pressure." The
audience was drawn from the whole campus, including CS, Psychology,
Neurobiology, and others interested in cognition.
**Mel Siegel will offer a seminar on "Display System Technology and Software
for 3D-TV and Computer Workstations," at the University of Pittsburgh,
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, on December 4. He is also
scheduled to speak to the Pittsburgh Chapter of the Optical Society of
America (OSA) on "Display System Technology and Optics for 3D-TV and
Computer Workstations" on February 6, 1996. In November, Mel delivered a
presentation at the Kelly Air Force Base, Robotics and Automation Center
of Excellence (RACE) on topics related to mobile robots for inspection of
aging aircraft.
USER INTERFACE AND SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY...The UIST'95 symposium was a
great success and, as noted in the November 27 Pittsburgh Business Times,
was a "nod to CMU's 1-year old research organization." Per Brad Myers,
chairman of the event, "The goal of the national get-together was to present
the best of the new ideas" that are improving the relationship between humans
and computers, while facilitating new explorations into research that will
get these new tools and products into the hands of consumers.
IN THE NEWS...**"Why Robots Are In Demand Among Manufacturers Again"
is an issue Red Whittaker and David Pahnos address in a November Investor's
Business Daily article. As noted by Dave, "Now the technology is ready to
do what was promised 20 years ago." **"Companies race to make it safer to
spend on line", an article in the November 13 USA Today, briefly notes NetBill.
As pointed out in the article, "Already, 2.5 million individuals have made
purchases using the Internet, according to a new CommerceNet-Nielsen Media
Research study...the Internet business applications are unlimited." Doug
Tygar and Marvin Sirbu will be keeping pace.
WORTH(Y) NEWS..."Downloading Warren Buffett's Brain: Can a Computer
Beat the Master?" is a featured article in the December/January 1996 issue
of Worth Magazine. "Is your computer a smarter investor than Warren Buffett
or Paul Tudor Jones?" This question is being investigated by researchers,
including our own Katia Sycara. She notes, "Most of the computerized investment
strategies are sophisticated analytical techniques for prediction...what we
would like to do is have some more content-based ways, rather than just
statistical manipulation." Her work and that of her students is discussed.
IN THE NEWS..."Walking & Talking with Xavier"...notes that "researchers
at Carnegie Mellon are working on a robot that can perform tasks too dangerous
for people--and that can make small talk, too" in a featured article in the
November 20 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Per Reid, "The hope really is that
the robot will become such a part of the environment that people won't pay
any attention to it." A great photo of Reid "avoiding" Xavier is included.
THANKS FOR GIVING...us a 4-day weekend. The University will be closed
Thursday through Sunday, November 23-26, 1995 in observance of Thanksgiving.
There will be no classes on Wednesday, November 22, as students head for
wherever students go on holidays :-) Normal office hours and class schedules
will resume Monday, November 27. As turkeys are fond of saying: Gobble,
Gobble, Gobble...which using the JANUS system's new and improved
speech-to-speech translation system, means: Have a great weekend!
PROPOSALS...Richard McDaniel offers "Improving
Programming-by-Demonstration With Better Semantic Expression" at his thesis
proposal on Tuesday, November 14 at 10:30 am in Wean 4623. His committee
includes: Brad Myers (Co-Chair), David Garlan (Co-Chair), Roger Dannenberg,
and David Canfield Smith (Apple Computer).
IN DEFENSE...Frederick "Fritz" Knabe defends (or verteidigen-s when
in Germany or defender-s if in Chile) "Language Support for Mobile Agents" at
his thesis oral on Thursday, November 16 at 10:00 am in Wean 4623. The
essential properties on his committee include: Jeannette Wing (Chair), Peter
Lee, Doug Tygar, and Alessandro Giacalone (European Computer-Industry Research
Centre).
FINISHING YOUR PH.D...Fritz Knabe is offering a special seminar on
"Finishing Your Ph.D. Away from CMU: Tips and Advice" on Friday, November 17
at 10:00 am in Wean 5403. He'll discuss the risks, rewards and motivations
to finish based on his own very interesting path from CMU, to Germany, to
Chile!
JOINT SCS/ECE DISTINGUISHED LECTURE...Bob Colwell, Intel Corporation,
examines "The P6 Microprocessor" at this special lecture on Thursday, November
16 at 4:00 pm in Wean 7500. Bob, an ECE alumnus, is the chief architect of
the Pentium Pro Processor (P6). A reception will follow the talk in
Hamerschlag Hall 1112.
SCS INVITED TALKS...
**Mary Shaw presented "A Sightseeing Tour of the Information Superhighway" to
the Woman's Club of Sewickley Valley on Monday, November 6, as a way to help
the local community more fully understand the implications of the "net."
The talk was greatly appreciated.
**Daniel Jackson will give to invited talks at Rice University on Wednesday
and Thursday, November 15 and 16. His topics include: "Everything You Always
Wanted to Know About SE* but Were Afraid to Ask" (*Software Engineering);
and "Nitpick: An Automatic Specification Checker."
NEW HONORS...Congratulations to Mary Shaw, who has been designated an
"ACM Fellow", an honor awarded to those "who have distinguished themselves by
outstanding technical and professional achievements in information technology"
by the ACM through their Fellows Program. Alan Perlis would be pleased, as
is all of SCS.
NEW GRANTS...David Johnson received a grant from the AT&T Foundation,
under their Special Purpose Grants in Science and Engineering Program, for
work on "Routing in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks." Dave was honored at an award
luncheon on October 30.
SCS DISTINGUISHED LECTURE...Tomaso Poggio, UNCAS and Helen Whitaker
Professor at the AI Laboratory and Center for Biological Information
Processing at MIT, reviews his efforts in the domains of vision and graphics
on "Networks that Learn and How the Brain Works", at the SCS Distinguished
Lecture on Thursday, November 9 at 4:00 pm in Wean 7500. Distinguished
refreshments at 3:45 pm.
LITA NELSEN...irector, Technology Licensing Office, MIT, reviews
"Technology Transfer from University to Industry: The MIT Experience" at the
next Technology Transfer Distinguished Lecture on Thursday, November 9 at
2:30 pm in Wean 7500. Light refreshments will be available before the
presentation.
IN DEFENSE...Amy Moorman Zaremski successfully completed her work on
"Signature and Specification Matching" at her thesis defense on November 1.
The committee whose signatures she received included: Jeannette Wing (Chair),
David Garlan, Peter Lee, and Steve Garland (MIT).
SCS INVITED SPEAKERS...
**Katia Sycara will deliver an invited lecture on "Intelligent Agents and
the Information Revolution" at the Symposium on Intelligent Agents and
their Business Applications, on November 9th, in London, U.K. On November
13, she will present an invited talk on "Distributed Agent Coordination in
Job Shop Scheduling" at the Research Center of Daimler-Benz in Berlin,
Germany.
**Steve Cross gave an invited talk entitled "The Future of Intelligent
Systems" to the Air Force 2025 Technology Symposium at Maxwell Air Force
Base in Montgomery, Alabama on October 18, 1995.
**Gary Miller was the Keynote Speaker at the Opening Session of the Seventh
IEEE Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Processing on October 25 in San
Antonio, Texas. He discussed "Algorithm Design for Parallel Scientific
Computation."
IN THE NEWS...UIST'95, The User Interface Software and Technology
Symposium is scheduled for November 14-17, 1995 at the Westin William Penn
Hotel (Pittsburgh!). The Symposium, chaired by Brad Myers, is fully detailed
in http:/www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/UIST95. As noted by Brad in the November 2
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "It's basically a researchers' conference, where all
the kinds of people who are trying to invent the next generation talk to other
researchers about what they're thinking about...so they can work out the
problems early." Among the local speakers are Jim Morris (Banquet Speaker),
Steve Roth, Mei Chuah, Joe Mattis and John Kolojejchick, CMU will host an
evening of demonstrations and a reception on Wednesday, November 15. Copies
of the article are available on the SCS News Board or from scstoday@cs.
Contact bam@cs.cmu.edu for additional details on registration.
IN CELEBRATION...On Friday, November 3, all of SCS is invited to
celebrate Jaime Carbonell's appointment to the Allen Newell Professorship in
Computer Science at a special reception in Wean 4623 at 3:00 pm. Join us
in wishing Jaime many new successes.
SOME FAB-ULOUS WORK...Capping off five years of research by David
Bourne and his group on generative planning for the production of sheet metal
parts, was its announcement as a product at the FABTECH show in Chicago in
October. The work will also be previewed/announced in Japan in November. The
goal of the project has been to "design a new sheet metal part and in 30
minutes have it in your hand." Not bad :-)
PDL GOES INTO RETREAT...The Parallel Data Laboratory is holding its
annual workshop on October 30-November 1 at WISP Resort. The whole group is
gone! Contact leann@cs for any specifics.
SCS INVITED TALKS... **Jim Tomayko delivered an invited talk on "Things
That *Should* Go Right in Software Project Management, But Rarely Do" at the
annual Manager's Technical Conference of Andersen Consulting on October 17 in
Chicago. He followed this with an October 23 presentation at the Air Force
Technology Symposium at Andrews Air Force Base on "The Air Force and the
Development of Fly-by-Wire Technology." **Manuela Veloso gave an invited
lecture on "Planning and Learning in Intelligent Agents" at EPIA-95, the
Portuguese Conference on AI, on October 6 in Madeira, Portugal. EPIA, an
international conference, attracted over 320 participants from around the
world.
UPCOMING SPEAKERS...Lita L. Nelsen, Director, Technology Licensing
Office, MIT, offers insights into "Technology Transfer from University to
Industry: The MIT Experience" at the next Office of Technology Transfer
Distinguished Lecture, on Thursday, November 9 at 2:30 pm in Wean 7500.
NEW FACES...Mark Smith, formerly of the University of Durham in England,
has joined CS as a Post-Doctoral Fellow. He will be working with Jill Fain
Lehman, with a focus on NL-Soar.
SCS DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI LECTURE...Ed Frank will "Follow the Money:
A Look at Past and Future Trends in the Computer Industry" at 4:00 pm in
Wean 7500. Distinguished donuts (from 1985 ;-) will be available at 3:45 pm
outside the room.
SO LONG STEVE...Come say your farewells to Steve Shafer on Tuesday,
October 10 at 3:30 pm in the Smith Hall, 2nd Floor Lounge Area.
AN SCS HOMECOMING-TG...is scheduled for Friday, October 13 at 4:00 pm in
Wean 4623, kicking off a weekend of special programming and events. Dean
Pomerleau will navigate NavLab5 up to the Baker Hall tent for display on
Saturday, October 14, giving all visitors an opportunity to see the vehicle
up close. Many of the weekend events will commemorate the 50th anniversary
of of the end of World War II, capped off by a presentation by U.S. Secretary
of Defense William Perry at 9:00 am on Sunday, October 15. Contact the
alumni office at x8/2060 for a complete schedule of events.
SCS INVITED TALKS...Jeannette Wing offered "Specifications and Their
Use in Defining Subtypes" as an Invited Speaker at ZUM'95, the Z Users Group,
in Limerick, Ireland on 8 September 1995. She also discussed "Teaching
Mathematics to Software Engineers" as an Invited Speaker for Education Day
at this conference on 9 September 1995.
ALLEGHENY SINGER RESEARCH INSTITUTE SUBCONTRACTS TO CMU...Expertise in
video indexing, developed as part of the Informedia Digital Video Library
project, has earned CMU a key subcontractor role in a $51M effort to develop
a national multimedia database network for doctors. The National Medical
Practice Knowledge Banks will develop digital libraries enabling doctors to
have access to the latest medical information and technology from experts 24
hours a day--via the Internet or private medical networks. CMU will work with
Allegheny Singer Research Institute (ASRI), the applied research arm of
Allegheny General Hospital, AT&T's Human Interface Technology Center, its
Enterprise Solutions and Business Communication Services divisions, and
InSoft Inc. of Mechanicsburg, PA. These partners will provide funds and
services in support of the Knowledge Bank project, a 5-year effort addressing
the development of a multimedia repository to archive, browse, retrieve and
index and search data in still image, video, audio, and text form. The
Knowledge Banks will provide centralized repositories for complex medical
information--dignostic indicators, details of preferred treatments or
surgical procedures--information a doctor would usually get from an expert
consultant. The prototype knowledge bank will specialize in neurosurgery.
Based on its success, other prototypes will be developed in oncology and
cardiology. Per Stephen Cross, Director of the ITC and Acting Director of
Information Technology Research for ASRI. "The project extends CMU's
nationally recognized multimedia digital library technology into the
medical field..."
CS/CNBC FACULTY CANDIDATE...Geoffrey J. Goodhill, Salk Institute, thinks
over "Computational Models of Brain Development" at a Joint CS/Center for
the Neural Basis of Cognition seminar (faculty candidate) on Thursday,
October 12 at 2:00 m in Wean 4623.
TAKE A BREAK...Mid-semester break is scheduled for Monday, October 16.
No classes will be held, although business offices will remain open. Normal
class schedules resume Tuesday, October 17.
IN THE FARM NEWS..."Down on the Farm With R2D2: Mobile Robots Leaving
Factory Cousins in Dust" was a featured article in the October 7 New York
Times. A driverless, red harvesting machine "cuts through fields of alfalfa,
using satellite signals, artificial vision and a computer to sense its location
and adjust the steering to keep cutting a straight line over the rolling
hills of western Pennsylvania." Per Red Whittaker, "the work has crossed
the line from black magic and mystery to engineering." A very interesting
article on this effort and other autonomous projects.
SCS ADVISORY BOARD...The Research Directions Committee of the SCS
Advisory Board will be meeting October 2-3. Contact copetas@cs for details.
ON THE ROAD AGAIN...Steve Shafer will head off to Microsoft on
November 1, after 18 glorious :-) years at CMU. Please join us in extending
him "good luck and best wishes" on Tuesday, October 10, before he embarks on
this new "windows" of opportunity. Feting begins at 3:30 pm in the lounge area,
2nd floor, Smith Hall.
ALUMNI UPDATE...James Gosling was featured in a September 25 New York
Times article, "Making the PC Come Alive: A Software Language That Puts You
in the Picture."
SCS INVITED TALKS...Ed Clarke presented an invited lecture on
"Verification of the Futurebus+ Cache Coherence Protocol" at
Euro-DAC/Euro-VHDL on Tuesday, September 19, in Brighton, England.
IN THE VISIONARY NEWS..."Computer Visionary: Robotics genius Takeo
Kanade wants computers to really see" is featured in the Science Section of
the Monday, October 2, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Takeo is at the Robotics
Industries Association's International symposium this week, receiving the
Joseph Engelberger Robotics Award in acknowledgement of his numerous
contributions to robotics technology. This article pays equal tribute to his
achievements in and devotion to computer vision. "A decade ago, computer
graphics were as rudimentary as computer vision is now. Sophisticated computer
graphics have since become commonplace, found in even the lowliest video game",
the article notes "I think vision is sort of on the verge of that", Takeo
notes. Copies of the article are available from scstoday@cs
ED FRANK RETURNS...as our SCS Distinguished Alumni Lecturer on Thursday,
October 12 at 4:00 pm in Wean 7500. He'll be frank about how to "Follow the
Money: A Look at Past and Future Trends in the Computer Industry," Check
the bboards for details.
HOMECOMING TG AND MORE...CMU Homecoming will be celebrated
Friday/ Saturday, October 13-14. To commemorate the return of SCS'ers to our
hallowed concrete halls, a TG-T will be held on Friday, October 13 in Wean
4623, beginning at 4:00 pm. As part of the weekend festivities, Dean
Pomerleau will have NavLab5 by the Baker Hall tent on Saturday, October 14,
providing an opportunity for members of SCS and visitors to see this
accomplished vehicle up close.
CS PROPOSALS...David Redish steers his way through "Rodent Navigation: A
Theory and Computational Model" at his thesis proposal on Wednesday,
September 27, at 3:30 pm in Wean 4623. The committee assessing his learning
mechanisms includes: David Touretzky (Chair), James McClelland, David Plaut,
and Bruce McNaughton (University of Arizona, Tucson).
SCS DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI LECTURE...is coming soon. Ed Frank, NetPower
Corporation, will "Follow the Money: A Look at Past and Future Trends in the
Computer Industry" on Thursday, October 12 at 4:00 pm, Wean 7500. Watch
the bboards for details.
SCS INVITED TALKS...Mary Shaw will deliver a keynote address on
"Software and Some Lessons from Engineering" at the Pacific Northwest
Software Quality Conference on Thursday, September 28, 1995.
IN THE NEWS..."Developing GEMS: An Environmental Modeling System", by
Bernd Bruegge, Erik Riedel, Armistead Russell and Gregory McRae is a featured
article in the Fall 1995 Computational Science & Engineering of IEEE. It
summarizes the "Geographic Enviornmental Modeling System (GEMS), which began
as a project in the Advanced Software Engineering taught by Bernd in 1992.
"GEMS, which has been used by CMU researchers to study the potential impact
of alternative fuel regulations in California...will be used in a forthcoming
study of ozone in the northwestern U.S. The experiences gained are being
absorved by modeling groups at the EPA and an industry consortium that are
developing the next generation of regulatory tools." As noted, this is a
great example of what is termed "From Classroom to Public Policy"!
NEWS FROM BUSINESS WEEK..."Is There Money on the Moon?" could be one
approach to exploring space. David Gump, President of LunaCorp," wants to
send a pair of Dante's offspring to the moon in 1998 and cover the $150
million cost [$80M for the launch, $43M for four rovers, 2 being spares] with
information fees--from network exclusives to live video feeds into theme
parks..." Based on the "half-million hits on Dante II's Web page" during its
descent and ascent from a volcano, the interest just might be there. Read on
yourself. Both Red Whittaker and Eric Krotkov are quoted in the article.
IN DEFENSE...Anja Feldmann bursts with information regarding "On-Line
Call Admission for High-Speed Networks" on Friday, September 22 at 10:00 am
in Wean 5304. Her robust committee includes: Daniel Sleator (Co-Chair),
Bruce Maggs (Co-Chair), Allan Fisher, and Tom Leighton (MIT).
CS DISTINGUISHED LECTURE...Laszlo Lovasz, MIT, will stroll through the
"Mixing of Random Walks and Avalanches on Graphs" at the CS Distinguished
Lecture on Thursday, September 21 at 4:00 pm in Wean 7500. Distinguished
donuts at 3:45 pm, outside the lecture hall.
TOC CONFERENCE...The CMU Technical Opportunities Conference is scheduled
for Thursday, September 21, beginning at 10:00 am in the gymnasium.
Representatives from over 60 companies will be present to accept resumes,
discuss career opportunities, and overview their company activities with YOU.
Take a moment and visit the TOC. Can't hurt and can almost certainly help.
SPECIAL HP SEMINAR...Dr. Mary Loomis, Director, Software Technology Lab,
Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, will assess "The Future of Database
Technologies" at a special HP Lecture on Tuesday, September 19 at 2:30 pm in
Scaife Hall 125.
ANDREW TECHNICAL CONFERENCE...Thursday and Friday, September 21-22,
are the dates for the 1995 Andrew Technical Conference and Annual Meeting,
"Andrew and the Web," featuring the Andrew User Interface System (AUIS)
software package developed at CMU. On Thursday, the Andrew Consortium staff
offers informal consulting and demonstrations to their members and other
attendees. The Annual Meeting begins at 4 pm (100 FRC). Technical
presentations on a Web browser, HTML editors, and Widgets for Andrew take
place on Friday from 9 am to 12:30 pm (100 FRC). The SCS community is welcome
to attend. Additional information is available from: Andrew Consortium,
x8-6710 or http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~AUIS.
THEY'RE BACK---MOBOTS!...The 2nd Annual Mobot (MObile Robot) Slalom Race
is scheduled for Spring Carnival, Friday, April 19. Preliminaries will take
place Wednesday, April 3. Open to all full-time members of the CMU
undergraduate community, entrants (teams encouraged) will race home-made
autonomous vehicles along the course on the paved walk in front of Wean Hall.
Cash prizes galore await the winners. NOTE: A new, special, "Open" category
for members of the CMU community (ie, non-undergraduates) is being initiated.
If you would like to participate in the race(s) or need additional information/
clarification, please send mail to: mobot@cs.cmu.edu.
PRETTY GOOD RACE RESULTS ARE GOOD...Congratulations to Yury Smirnov,
winner of the 1995 Pretty Good Race for the third year in a row! He retains the
course record of 16:03 minutes. Elizabeth Stuck captured the first place
female title. A new course record of 37:00 minutes, for running backwards,
was awarded to Dirk Kalp. This well-breaks the old record of 45+ minutes.
A complete listing of competitor standings will appear on cmu.cs.general in
the next few days. To our ragged warriors, congratulations on a race well
run :-)
MANAGING A WEALTH OF DIGITIZED INFORMATION...Nobel laureate economist
Herbert Simon points out in the September Scientific American, "What
information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its
recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention,
and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of
information sources that might consume it." In the same article, Univ. of
California, Berkeley Dean, Hal Varian, predicts the emergence of "information
managers" who provide a value-added filtering process in sifting and managing
information to make it meaningful to the rest of society. Read on...
NEW FACES...Zuzana Bodikova has joined Facilities as a Systems
Programmer, taking the position that was held by Charles Silvers (who headed
off to California to seek fame and fortune). Originally from Slovakia,
Zuzana has her M.S. in Computer Science from the Technical University in
Kosice, Slovakia. Her husband is a Mellon Fellow doctoral student in CS
at the University of Pittsburgh.
SOAR WORKSHOP...The 15th North American Soar Workshop will be held
Friday through Sunday, September 15-17 at CMU. Faculty, scientists, graduate
students and technical staff, drawn from a wide geographic community of users,
will converge for a weekend of personal interactions, dialogue on various Soar
research efforts, and discussion of future initiatives. Complete details are
in: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/soar/public/www/workshop95.html or
contact Jill Fain Lehman
BE SHOT IN 3-D...Jon Webb is going to make 3-D photographs -- suitable
for viewing on an SGI using Inventor or conversion into VRML files that can be
viewed on the World Wide Web[b] -- of new grad students and whomever else
wants one, using a new stereo vision algorithm he developed with Larry
Zitnick. The algorithm is far faster, more accurate and more reliable than
any previous. The demo sessions will be held on Tuesday, September 12 and
Thursday, September 14 from 3:00-4:00 pm in Wean 1324.
PRETTY GOOD TIME FOR A PRETTY GOOD RACE...The Phil Miller 15th Annual
SCS Pretty Good Race is scheduled for Friday, September 15 at 4:30 pm in
Schenley Park. All members of the SCS community (and SEI) are welcome to
run, walk, or hobble through the race. Admiring masses and cheering crowds
are always invited. Get your registration forms in this week to Ellen Saxon
or the SEI Message Center by Noon, Thursday, September 14.
IN THE NEWS..."this story is only about radical new ways to tell
stories, only about the nascent medium called 'interactive storytelling'--a
yarn-spinning process that taps new technologies to let the audience
participate in the tale...", begins "The Future of the Story", an article
that appeared in the July Los Angeles Time Magazine. Special note is made
of the Woggles and Joseph Bates.
CMU EDUCATION AWARDS CEREMONY...will be held on Wednesday, September 13
at 4:30 pm in the tent on the Baker Hall lawn. Awards will be presented to
the 1995 recipients of the Doherty Prize, Ryan Teaching Award, Undergraduate
Advising Award, Graduate Student Teaching Award (CHRIS OKASAKI), the
Graduate Student Service Award (JADE GOLDSTEIN), and honors students. Also
receiving special recognition are the college teaching award winners,
including BERND BRUEGGE, recipient of SCS's Herbert A. Simon Award for
Teaching Excellence in Computer Science.
NEW FACES...Elizabeth Stuck has joined the Robotics Institute as a
Visiting Scientist, coming to us by way of the National Research Council of
Canada in Ottawa, where she worked first in mobile robotics and then in
human-computer interaction. Liz is working with Steve Roth on the SAGE
Project, which involves the study of automatic and interactive design of
graphical presentations of information. She is especially interested in
information visualization and usability issues.
**Jane Margolis has joined CS as a Visiting Research Scientist and will be
working with Allan Fisher.
PROPOSALS...Dennis Grinberg employs his best grammatical skills to
explore "Statistical Language Modeling Using Grammatical Information" at this
CS thesis proposal on Monday, September 11 at 9:30 am in Wean 5409. His low
perplexity committee includes: Daniel Sleator (Chair), John Lafferty, Alex
Waibel, and Michael Miller (Washington University in St. Louis).
NEW CLUSTERS...Check out Wean 5419A-D, the exiciting new computing
clusters developed by Phil Miller and Jacobo Carrasquel of the Introductory
Computing Group. The facilities are experiencing their first workout with
Computer Science, Math (discrete math course) and English (using Prep Editor)
courses being offered this term.
CS VOLLEYBALL LEAGUE LIVES ON...Per Amy McGovern, "the CS Spring Volleyball league has been transformed into the CS We-love-volleyball-too-much-to-stop
League." The undergraduate Student Advisory Committee (SAC) has reserved the
small gym on Saturday nights from 8;00-10:00 pm for pursuit of this indoor
fare. Faculty are particularly welcome to attend ;-)
WHO'S IN CHARGE...of the various seminar series in SCS? Raul
Valdes-Perez (AI Seminar); Daniel Jackson (PS Seminar); Peter Steenkiste
(CS Seminar); Steve Rudich/Avrim Blue (Theory Seminar); Ken Koedinger
(HCI Seminar); and Stephen Brookes/Frank Pfenning (Logic Colloquium).
(RE)NEWED FACES...MARKO PETKOVSEK has rejoined CS as a Fulbright
Scholar and will working closely with Dana Scott. Marko will be developing
and teaching Mathematica-based courses.
**RONI ROSENFELD is really back (sightings have been reported) from
Northwestern and has assumed a position as a Research Computer Scientist in
CS. Among his interests are statistical language modeling, human language
technology and speech recognition.
**JANE ARONSON, post-doctoral fellow, is working with Robert Kraut as the
Project Manager for HomeNet.
NEW FACES...KLAUS SUTNER has joined CS as a Senior Lecturer in the
Introductory Programming Group. He comes to SCS via Stevens Institute of
Technology in New Jersey, where he was an Associate Professor of Computer
Science. His research interests include computational aspects of dynamical
systems and symbolic computation.
IN DEFENSE (CS)...The first CS thesis defense of the new term! ALON
LAVIE examines "GLR*: A Robust Grammar Focused Parser for Spontaneously Spoken
Language" on Friday, September 1 at 12:30 pm in Wean 4623. The committee
parsing his thoughts includes: Masaru Tomita (Chair), Jaime Carbonell,
Alex Waible, and Edward Gibson (MIT).
IN DEFENSE (RI)...The first Robotics defense is offered by YALIN XIONG,
who looks into "High Precision Image Matching and Shape Recovery", on Friday,
September 1 at 1:00 in Wean 4625. The comittee focusing in on his ideas
includes: Steve Shafer (Chair), Katsushi Ikeuchi, Martial Hebert, and
Narendra Ahuja (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne).
WELCOME TO THE SCS CLASS OF 19"99"...The SCS Undergraduate population
has increased by "99" talented new students, with the arrival of this year's
freshmen class. Great to have you!
IN THE NEWS..."The Soul of a New Machine", an article in the August 21
Newsweek, predicts "in 20 years smart cars will perform better, ride more
safely and practically drive themselves--if we're smart enough to let them."
Mentioned in the article are Dean Pomerleau, Todd Jochem and RALPH (the
Rapidly Adapting Lateral Position Handler), who recently completed their
No-Hands Across America, autonomous odyssey.
LOGIN BALL...Get ready for this year's social event! The SCS Login
Ball will be held Saturday, August 26 at 8:00 pm at the the Westing William
Penn Hotel Ballroom in downtown Pittsburgh. Come join us for a rousing
evening of conversation, music (Mon Gumbo and The Bridge City String Quarter)
and food! Parking is available at the garage adjacent to the hotel.
IN DEFENSE...Alon Lavie will speak on GLR*: A Robust Grammar Focused
Parser for Spontaneously Spoken Language" at his defense on Friday,
September 1 at 12:30 pm in Wean 4623. The committee parsing his thoughts
includes: Masaru Tomita (Chair), Jaime Carbonell, Alex Waible, and Edward
Gibson (MIT).
NEW AWARDS..."Intelligent Tutoring Goes to School in the Big City",
by Ken Koedinger, John Anderson, Bill Hadley and Mary Mark, received a best
paper award (1 of 2) at the recent AI and Education Conference. The paper
documents the development, deployment and evaluation efforts of the PUMP
Algebra Tutor.
"REINVENTING THE PC"..."Twenty years after its birth, the PC is set to
disappear into the fabric of everyday life. Here are ways it might resurface"
explains a featured article in the September 95 Discover magazine. Special
note is made of Alex Waibel's research on getting" computers to understand
their human masters no matter how they express themselves." Tom Mitchell's
experience with a computer-software driven "personal secretary/scheduler" and
news weeder, are also well-noted.
ANDREW CONSORTIUM ANNUAL MEETING...The 1995 Andrew Technical
Conference and Annual Meeting is scheduled for Thursday and Friday,
September 21-22. The meeting "will showcase Andrew and the WorldWideWeb,
both as exclusive entities and as mutually-evolving vehicles, which improve
your ability to process information." Check cmu.cs.scs for particulars
on scheduling and registration. Contact AnnMarie Zanger at
annmarie@cmu.edu with questions.
THESIS DEFENSES...
**BRAD NELSON explores "Object Schemas and Port-Based Agents for Assimilating
Disparate Sensory Feedback" at his robotics thesis defense on Thursday,
August 10 at 10:00 am in Wean 4623. His dynamically configured committee
includes: Pradeep Khosla (Chair), Takeo Kanade, Chuck Thorpe, Ramesh Jain
(University of California, San Diego), and Nikos Papanikolopoulos (University
of Minnesota-Minneapolis).
**ALONZO KELLY gets rolling on "An Intelligent, Predictive Control Approach
to the High-Speed, Cross-Country, Autonomous Navigation Problem at his
robotics defense on Thursday, August 10 at 2:00 pm in Wean 4601. The
control layer of his committee includes: Anthony Stentz (Chair), Martial
Hebert, William Whittaker, and Larry Matthies (JPL).
NEW GRANTS...Norman Sadeh and Steve Smith have been awarded a grant from
Raytheon and ARPA to develop an Integrated Process Planning/Production Shell
to support Agile Manufacturing practices. The shell will make it possible to
dynamically interleave process planning and production scheduling decisions.
The system, to be demonstrated in a large and highly dynamic machine shop at
Raytheon's Andover facility, is expected to significantly enhance the ability
of the facility to adapt to changing conditions and result in significant
performance improvements. Particulars on this project can be found in:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/project/mboss/www/IP3S-home.html.
IROS '95...The 1995 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent
Robots and Systems, focussing on "Human-Robot Interaction and Cooperative
Robots", is taking place in Pittsburgh (William Penn Hotel) from August 5-9.
Among the scheduled events is a Keynote Address on August 7 by Raj Reddy;
overview of the Robotics Institute by Takeo Kanade on August 8, with campus
tours on on August 9; and sessions/talks by CMU faculty and students
throughout the conference. Katsushi Ikeuchi and Pradeep Khosla are serving
as General Chairs for the entire conference.
IC RESEARCH MINI-SYMPOSIUM...The Third Annual IC Research Mini-Symposium
is scheduled for September 12 at 2:00 pm. Consisting of a poster session
and computer demonstrations, participation is open to grad students in the
CS or RI graduate programs who "will not yet have presented their thesis
proposal by September 15," says Reid Simmons, organizer of the event. The
symposium offers "students an opportunity to showcase their research
accomplishments, and to demonstrate to the entering class the level of
research expected of them during their first years at CMU."
IN THE NEWS..."Look Ma, No Hands" - "Business Week rides with 'Ralph',
the smartest car yet" is the featured article in the August 14 Science &
Technology section of Business Week. The author "tagged along" on a segment
of the epic journey of NavLab 5, the Pontiac Minivan, from Washington to San
Diego. Affectionately dubbed, "No Hands Across America", the van was guided
by the computer program, Ralph. Todd Jochem and Dean Pomerleau, the support
team and developers, successfully "tested and demonstrated the state of the
art in automated steering." Got to (no) hand it to these guys!
**The Advanced Research Directions Committee of the SCS Advisory Board
will convene September 30-October 1.
**Siemens Day in SCS is scheduled for October 2
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25
**SPECIAL SEMINAR: Michael Wellman, University of Michigan, "Progress in
Market-Oriented Programming", 10:30 am, Wean 4625.
**ROBOTICS SEMINAR: Hans Moravec, "Robot Spatial Perception by Stereoscopic
Vision and 3D Evidence Grids", 4:00 pm, Adamson Wing
**CULTURAL EXCHANGE: Frank Pfenning, "How to Reason About Languages",
3:30 pm, Wean 5409.WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 9, 1996
**D. NAVIN-CHANDRA has been selected as one of the top 25 'Network Technology
Drivers' by Network Computing Magazine in their September 1 issue. Navin's
work on intelligent agents was cited in the feature article, which
highlighted 5 visionaries (including Navin) among the 25 people honored.
**THOMAS M. STRICKER offers "Direct Deposit: A Communication Architecture
for Parallel and Distributed Programs" at his CS thesis oral on Friday,
September 13 at 10:30 am in Wean 5409. His data rich committee includes:
Thomas Gross (Chair), Guy Blelloch, David O'Hallaron, Peter Steenkiste,
and Kai Li (Princeton University).WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 3, 1996
**The SCS IC RECEPTION will be held at the Henry Clay Frick Estate (including
the museum, grounds, carriage house and greenhouse!) in Point Breeze on
Sunday, September 8 from 7:00-11:00 pm. Buffet dinner and music by the
"Symphony Jazz Trio" will round out this festive evening. As noted by
Steven Rudich, attire is on the "formal side of casual."
**MEL SIEGEL gave an invited seminar on "Robots and Sensors for Difficult
Measurements in Difficult Environments" at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Headquarters, Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research, on August 29. He will
also present "Research Outside Traditional Physics Based on a Physics
Education: 3D-Stereoscopic Television, Aging Aircraft Inspection, etc" as
an invited seminar speaker at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Physics Department on (Friday!) September 13.WEEK OF AUGUST 12, 1996
WEEK OF AUGUST 5, 1996
**MSE/HCII Immigration: August 19-23
**Robotics Immigration: August 19-23
**CS Immigration: August 26-Sept 13
**LTI Immigration: August 29-30
Check SCS Events Calendar (off http://www.cs.cmu.edu) for complete listings.WEEK OF JULY 29, 1996
**CMU Technical Opportunities Conference - Thursday, 26 September.
**CMU Business Opportunities Conference - Friday, 27 September.
**Pittsburgh High Technology Fair - Tuesday, 8 October.
Check the SCS Events Calendar (on the SCS homepage) for additional
details and pointers.WEEK OF JULY 22, 1996
**LONNIE CHRISMAN has no uncertainty about "Approximation of Graphical
Probabilistic Models by Iterative Dynamic Discretization and Application to
Time-Series Segmentation" during his CS thesis defense on Monday, July 22 at
1:30 pm in Wean 4623. His multi-dimensional committee includes: Tom Mitchell
(Co-Chair), Reid Simmons (Co-Chair), Matthew Mason, and Padhraic Smyth
(University of California at Irvine and JPL Labs).
**SPECIAL SEMINAR: Padhraic Smyth, Information & Computer Science, University
of California, Irvine, "Finding the "Right" Number of Clusters: Unsupervised
Learning using Cross-Validated Likelihood", 10:00 am, Wean 4623.
**MANIPULATION LAB SEMINAR: Bruce Randall Donald, on leave from Cornell and
visiting Stanford University, "Massively-Parallel Distributed Manipulation",
4:30 pm, Wean 4601.WEEK OF JULY 8, 1996
**HEUNG-YEUNG SHUM (Harry) tries "Modeling From Reality: Representation and
Integration" during his robotics thesis defense on Monday, July 15 at
1:00 pm in Wean 4623. His integral committee includes: Raj Reddy (Co-Chair),
Katsushi Ikeuchi (Co-Chair), Martial Hebert, Chuck Thorpe, and Demetri
Terzopolous (Univ. of Toronto).WEEK OF JULY 1, 1996
*Supercomputing '96 is scheduled for November 17-22, 1996, with the main
events taking place at the David Lawrence Convention Center.
*ISARC, the 14th International Symposium on Automation and Robotics in
Construction is planned for June 8-11, 1997 at the West William Penn.WEEK OF JUNE 24, 1996
**Raul Valdes-Perez has just returned from teaching a 2-week course on
"Scientific Discovery in the Computer Age" at the Technical University of
Madrid, followed by serving on a thesis jury at the University of Paris-6
on "An inductive approach to medical discovery: the cases of scurvy
and leprosy". As Raul has noted, "The French tradition of "pot de these"
(champagne + delectables after the thesis) is definitely worth imitating,
if not duplicating." :-)
**"Steeltown's Techno-Esthetes", a feature article in the June 17 Wall Street
Journal, makes note of Roger Dannenberg's work with his colleagues at the
Studio for Creative Inquiry. Since 1989, the Studio has been "exploring
the interface between art and science" and "the ideas being explored...span
the spectrum from the way-out to those with potentially great practical
import." Roger has worked with music professors Marta Sanchez and Annabelle
Joseph, "to create a computer-driven piano tutoring system that is now being
marketed commercially."WEEK OF JUNE 17, 1996
WEEK OF JUNE 3, 1996
WEEK OF MAY 27, 1996
**MSE/HCII Immigration Course: August 19-23
**Freshmen Orientation: August 20-23
**CS Immigration Course: August 26 - September 13WEEK OF MAY 20, 1996
WEEK OF MAY 13, 1996
SCS Commencement Brunch: 10:30-12:00, Field Robotics High Bay (RSVP);
CMU Commencement Ceremony: 1:00 pm, Main Tent on the Cut,
Speaker: Steven Bochco, Producer;
SCS Diploma Ceremony: 3:30 pm, IM Field Tent (next to Gesling Stadium),
Speaker: Bill Joy, Founder and Vice President of
Technology, Sun MicrosystemsWEEK OF MAY 6, 1996
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