Bren School faculty, students and research initiatives are some of the most well regarded successes on the UC Irvine campus. We are pleased to announce the following noteworthy achievements for 2006.
Awards, grants and other honors can be sent to icsnews@ics.uci.edu to be considered for publication.
December 2006
Sim awarded funds to study traceability in extreme programming
Susan
SimAssistant professor of informatics Susan Elliot Sim has been awarded $5,000 from the Ted and Janice Smith Faculty Seed Fund for her project entitled Maintaining Traceability Links in Extreme Programming.
Traceability is the problem of establishing relationships between products of the development process, for example, predecessor-successor or master-subordinate relationships between requirements and source code.
Currently, associate links between User Stories and code are created during check-in to a revision control system. However, these links are not properly maintained and synchronized as User Stories, test cases, and source code change over time.
Sim has implemented a prototype Eclipse plug-in, STITCH (STory Integration and Tracking for CompreHension) to support traceability under Extreme Programming (XP), an agile software development model that emphasized the ability to adapt to change, by associating User Stories with test cases and source code.
The proposed research project will address this shortcoming by implementing a mechanism to maintain traceability links as the artifacts on either end of the relation evolve.
The competitive Faculty Seed Fund awards provide seed funding for Bren School faculty projects and was made possible through the generous donation of local philanthropists Ted and Janice Smith.
November 2006
Dean Richardson appointed to Governor's Broadband Task Force
Debra J.
RichardsonCalifornia Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced the appointment of Bren School Dean Debra J. Richardson and Calit2 Director Larry Smarr, and 19 other experts to a newly-created, bipartisan Broadband Task Force.
The Broadband Task Force will bring together public and private stakeholders to remove barriers to broadband access, identify opportunities for increased broadband adoption and enable the creation and deployment of new advanced communication technologies.
In October, the Governor signed an Executive Order to clear the government red tape for expanding broadband networks and to create the Broadband Task Force, which was expanded to 21 members earlier this month.
"California is number one in so many different things, whether it is biotechnology, stem cell research, protecting our environment, creating jobs or our university system. The Golden State must remain competitive in the telecommunication revolution so that we can continue to attract the best, the brightest and the most creative workforce in the world," said Governor Schwarzenegger. "Broadband will help build California so we can grow our economy, create great jobs and stay ahead in the global marketplace."
Dean Richardson, 52, came to UCI in 1987 and was appointed chair of the then-department of ICS in July 2000.
Under her leadership, the department was promoted to the first computer science school in University of California history in December 2002. She was named the Ted and Janice Smith Dean of the new school in January 2003.
As a member of the Informatics faculty, she has developed leading edge tools, and has worked with several companies in adopting technology to improve the quality of critical software systems.
Calit2's Smarr, has served as director of Calit2 and a professor of computer science and engineering in UCSD's Jacobs School of Engineering since 2000, after 15 years as director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Fourteen others were also named to the Broadband Task Force: Ellis Berns, Rachelle Chong, Charles Giancarlo, William Huber, Wendy Lazarus, Lloyd Levine, Michael Liang, Bryan Martin, Timothy McCallion, Sunne Wright McPeak, Milo Medin, Peter Pennekamp, Rollin Richmond, Emy Tseng and Jonathan Taplin.
For more information on the Broadband Task Force, read Governor Schwarzenegger's news release.
Goodrich awarded IEEE Technical Achievement Award
IEEE Computer Society award
winners Roberto Tamassia (left)
of Brown University and Michael
Goodrich (right) with IEEE
ComputerSociety President
Michael Williams.Computer science professor Michael Goodrich has been awarded the 2006 Technical Achievement Award from the IEEE Computer Society.
The award cites his "outstanding contributions to the design of parallel and distributed algorithms for fundamental combinatorial and geometric problems".
Goodrich was also recently elected elected a Distinguished Scientist of The Association for Computing Machinery.
Goodrich's research is directed at the design of high-performance algorithms and data structures for solving large-scale problems surrounding the increased demands of computer graphics, information visualization, scientific data analysis, information assurance and security, and the Internet.
Students' game to be screened at TELIC Arts Exchange
A scene from STORYmixer, an
interactive artistic game
created by Bren School
students.STORYmixer, an interactive artistic game created by Bren School students, has been selected from a range of submissions for the final screening of “Games for 5 joysticks” at the TELIC Arts Exchange in Los Angeles.
The screening will take place on Friday, December 1 from 7 to 9 p.m.
The exhibit focuses on what kind of games are possible when 5 people with 5 joysticks are sitting in the same room, looking at the same screen.
STORYmixer allows players to be a part of a combinatorial art piece by collaboratively telling stories and simultaneously mixing a sound-collage.
The STORYmixer constitutes an interface for playful collaborative art creation that combines literary and audio elements.
Art and collaboration are the main game elements and in applying these elements the player is involved in an interactive process to create an artistic piece.
The four students, Marisa Cohn, Silvia Lindtner, Jeff Ridenour, Luv Sharma, from the department of Informatics and Arts, Computation and Engineering program, drew their inspiration from John Cage's Ars Combinatoria and Mozart's dice game.
October 2006Gillen appointed to FDA advisory committee
Daniel
GillenDaniel Gillen, associate professor of statistics has been appointed to the Federal Drug Administration's advisory committee for Reproductive Drugs as a statistician for the panel.
Gillen was recommended and selected for the four-year appointment based upon his work in the design and analysis of clinical trials.
Professor Gillen's research focuses on the development of statistical methods for the analysis of survival time data and group sequential methods for the design and monitoring of clinical trials.
In particular, Gillen's interests include the development of methods that robustly incorporate time-varying effects on survival in the settings of observational cohort studies and clinical trials.
His primary areas of application are in nephrology and cancer.
FDA advisory committees offer the FDA advice on related questions posed by the Agency on a product of regulated industry. The FDA has 30 advisory committees, divided along product lines (e.g., food, devices, drugs, and biologics) and body systems (e.g., cardiovascular or gastrointestinal products).
For more on FDA advisory committees please visit, http://www.fda.gov/oc/advisory/
Baldi and Dutt named Chancellor's Professors
Pierre
Baldi
Nikil
DuttPierre Baldi and Nikil Dutt, professors of computer science, have been awarded the title of Chancellor’s Professor, effective Wednesday, Nov. 1.
The title is conferred for a five-year renewable term and recognizes scholars who have demonstrated unusual academic merit and whose continued promise for scholarly achievement makes them of exceptional value to the university.
Baldi's research areas include: bioinformatics, computational biology probabilistic modeling and machine learning. He is also the director of the Institute for Genomics and Bioinformatics.
Dutt's research areas include compilers, architectures and computer-aided design, with a specific focus on the exploration, evaluation and design of domain-specific embedded systems that span research issues in hardware, software, networked, and ubiquitous systems.
Goodrich elected Distinguished Scientist of ACM
Michael
GoodrichMichael Goodrich, professor of computer science, has been elected a Distinguished Scientist of The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the world's leading professional association for computer scientists.
Altogether, ACM selected only 50 Distinguished
Members, Scientists and Engineers from around the world.Distinguished Scientist status is a rare honor one step above Senior Member and is awarded only to those who have made significant impact on the computing field.
Goodrich's research is directed at the design of high-performance algorithms and data structures for solving large-scale problems surrounding the increased demands of computer graphics, information visualization, scientific data analysis, informationassurance and security, and the Internet.
To view the list of 2006 ACM Distinguished Members, and for information on selection criteria, visit http://distinguished.acm.org.
Franz elected Distinguished Member of ACM
Michael
FranzMichael Franz, professor of computer science, has been elected a Distinguished Member of The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the world's leading professional association for computer scientists.
Altogether, ACM selected only 50 Distinguished
Members, Scientists and Engineers from around the world.Distinguished Member status is a rare honor one step above Senior Member and is awarded only to those who have made significant impact on the computing field.
Franz was elevated to senior member status in IEEE last month.
To view the list of 2006 ACM Distinguished Members, and for information on selection criteria, visit http://distinguished.acm.org.
El Zarki appointed Cor Wit Chair
Magda
El ZarkiMagda El Zarki, professor of computer science, has been appointed Cor Wit Chair at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.
Established in 2003 by the Cor Wit Foundation, the Cor Wit chair is awarded annually to international researchers in the field of telecommunications and informatics who focus on research questions at the interface of technology and society.
Recipients are invited to work in the Telecommunications Department of the Faculty Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (EEMCS) at Delft University of Technology.
El Zarki's main research area is networking with particular emphasis on Multimedia and Wireless Systems and she also heads the Video over IP group in the Bren School.
El Zarki is also a member of the IEEE, the Association for Computing Machinery and Sigma Xi, is editor of several journals in the telecommunications area and is actively involved in many international conferences.
Student and professor win IEEE conference Best Paper Award
Computer science Ph.D.
candidate Love Singhal, (l)
accepts the Best Paper Award
at the 2006 IEEE International
Conference on Field
Programmable Logic
and Applications.Love Singhal, a Ph.D. candidate in computer science, and professor of computer science Eli Bozorgzadeh received the Best Paper Award at the 2006 IEEE International Conference on Field Programmable Logic and Applications (FPL'06) that took place in Madrid, Spain, August 28-30 2006.
The awarded paper is titled "Multi-layer Floorplanning on a Sequence of Reconfigurable Designs".
The dynamic partial reconfigurability of programmable devices such as FPGAs is characterized by their ability to reconfigure subsets of their logic and routing resources at runtime.
This intrinsic dynamic reconfiguration results in accommodation of complex and dense designs, on-fly adaptivity, and design modification.
In this paper, a new multi-layer sequence-pair-based floorplanner is proposed for a given sequence of reconfigurable designs. In the experiments, compared to a traditional sequential floorplanner, the new floorplanner removes infeasibility in many designs, and provide faster timing closure.
FPL is the largest conference on programmable logic which encompasses a wide range of research area on FPGAs, including applications, novel system architectures and CAD tools, embedded processors, dynamic reconfiguration, etc.
The acceptance rate in FPL 2006 was 28 percent, out of 307 submissions.
Baldi awarded $45,000 gift from Microsoft
Pierre
BaldiMicrosoft Research has awarded computer science professor Pierre Baldi an unrestricted gift of $45,000.
The award will be used to support Machine Learning research in the Baldi group and help develop the new upcoming Bren School Center for Machine Learning and Data Mining.
An interdisciplinary researcher, Baldi is the director of the Institute for Genomics and Bioinformatics at the Bren School.
Baldi's research focuses on several areas including artificial intelligence, data mining, machine learning, bioinformatics and communication networks.
Projects in his group include understanding and predicting protein structures, analyzing and modeling gene expression data and regulatory networks, developing a computer GO player, analyzing and designing communication networks (Internet, Ultra Wide Band Radio), and quantifying information.
Franz elected senior member of IEEE
Michael
FranzProfessor of computer science Michael Franz has been elected a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), the world's leading professional association for the advancement of technology.
Senior Member status is a rare honor attained by fewer than eight percent of IEEE's 367,000 members.
It is conferred only on those who have outstanding research achievements and who have performed great service to the scientific community.
September 2006
Lopes conference chair of Ubicomp 2006
Cristina
LopesAssociate professor Cristina Lopes recently led Ubicomp 2006, the Eighth International Conference of Ubiquitous Computing, as conference chair.
Ubicomp, hosted by UC Irvine and the Bren School was held September 17-21 at the Newport Beach Marriott.
Ubicomp is the premier international forum for research in ubiquitous computing, bringing together designers, computer scientists, social scientists, and artists, to discuss recent developments and future advance.
Bruce Sterling, a contributing editor of WIRED magazine gave a keynote speech titled Reifying the Fantastic. Sterling is best known for his eight science fiction novels and his nonfiction work including The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier.
His keynote address can be podcast online.
The ubiquitous computing conference featured high-quality research contributions including: tools and techniques for designing, implementing, and evaluating ubiquitous computing systems; mobile, wireless, and ad hoc networking infrastructures for ubiquitous computing; laboratory and in situ studies of ubiquitous computing technologies in use; location-aware and context-based systems for ubiquitous computing; and privacy, security, and trust in ubiquitous and pervasive systems.
UbiComp’s workshop program allowed for small groups to gather for intensive discussion around focused topics of interest.
The goal of workshops was to share understandings and experiences, to foster research communities, to learn from each other and to envision future directions.
Professor Paul Dourish and Assistant Professor Don Patterson served as Program Chair and Local Arrangements Chair, respectively.
Lopes' research is related to languages and communication systems. The ultimate goal of her research is to deepen the knowledge about communication, in particular in systems that involve humans and machines.
Dourish's primary research interests are in the areas of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, Human-Computer Interaction, and Ubiquitous Computing.
He is especially interested in the foundational relationships between social scientific analysis and technological design.
Patterson's areas of research interest lie at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Ubiquitous computing and he has applied this work to transportation and activity assistance.
For more information on Ubicomp and the 2007 conference in Austria, visit the Ubicomp web site.
Yang receives NSF awards to improve Internet architecture
Xiaowei
YangXiaowei Yang, assistant professor of computer science, is the recipient of two NSF awards to study ways to improve Internet architecutre.
The first award, provides $300,000 to NeTS FIND: An Internet Architecture For User Controlled Routes. The project will attempt to develop an Internet architecture that enables users or their end-systems to select the paths their packets take through the network.
Such user-controlled routes are desirable for both economic and technical reasons.
Economically, user-controlled routes are a key factor in maintaining the competitiveness of the ISP marketplace, just as long-distance carrier selection has had a lasting impact on telephony.
Technically, user-controlled routes provide a fundamental means for improving the performance and reliability of network communications.
The second project, awarded $200,000 and entitled a CT-ER: A DoS-Resistant Internet Architecture, funds research to design and evaluate an Internet architecture that is resistant to Denial-of-Service (DoS) flooding attacks of any scale.
DoS attacks have become an increasing threat to the reliability of the Internet. These attacks are capable of knocking any user, site, and server right off the Internet.
This research targets the root cause of the DoS flooding problem: the network's inability to intelligently handle overload.When DoS attacks occur, the network drops legitimate traffic and attack traffic alike, leading to heavy losses of legitimate traffic.
Yang's research area is in networked and distributed systems, with an emphasis on protocol and architecture design, performance analysis, modeling, and measurement.
Learn how you can use your Bren School degree to teach
The University of California launched the California Teach Science and Math Initiative in 2005 in response to the critical shortage of highly qualified math and science teachers in the state.
Through this initiative, the UC system has committed to significantly increase the number of new math and science teachers it prepares.
Each campus has developed strategies to encourage its math, science, engineering, and computer science majors to learn about and prepare for teaching as a career option, including undergraduate courses, programs, advising, and financial support.
Students interested in becoming middle school or high school teachers can explore the following resources at UC Irvine:
- Seminars and fieldwork opportunities for UCI students at all levels to explore teaching
- Math and science degree programs with concentrations for teaching
- A Minor in Educational Studies with selected courses that provide a foundation and head start toward earning a teaching credential
- A teacher credential program (completed after earning a math or science bachelor's degree) with options for paid teaching internships and for combining a credential with a master's degree
- UCI California Teach Resource and Advising Center
- Financial assistance programs for future math and science teachers
- On-campus housing for future teachers: The Careers in Teaching Theme HouseFor more information, visit the CalTeach Web site.
August 2006
Project RESCUE to be featured on Today Show
Sharad
MehrotraProfessors of computer science Sharad Mehrotra and Nalini Venkatasubramanian are scheduled to appear on the Today Show airing Sunday September 10th at 6 a.m on KNBC.
Mehrotra and Venkatasubramanian, along with a team of graduate students working on Project RESCUE, will discuss and demonstrate emerging technologies for security and emergency communications.
Funded by a National Science Foundation grant of $9 million, the largest research grant in UCI history, Project RESCUE seeks to transform how information is gathered, coordinated, managed and disseminated during a crisis - particularly at the earliest stages.
A major goal will be improving the ability of early responders to act as "human sensors" for gathering information. Another goal will be establishing a system that quickly integrates this information with data from other sources.
The research group works closely with first responders from the Irvine and San Diego police departments, the City of Los Angeles, County of Los Angeles and the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services.
More information: Project RESCUE
Li recipient of Google Research Award
Chen
LiAssistant professor of computer science Chen Li is the recipient of a Google Research Award for $37,500.
The funds, renewable for a second year, will be applied to Li's research entitled "Efficient Approximate String Searching in Large Dictionaries" which will research data cleaning, especially on approximate string searching.
Li's research interests are in the fields of database and information systems, including data integration, data warehouses, data cleansing, multimedia databases, and XML.
Li was also the recipient of a $7,000 Microsoft Research award in April.
Franz receives $400,000 NSF grant for Trusted Computing
Michael
FranzComputer science professor Michael Franz has received a $400,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for his research project entitled MLS-VM: Design and Implementation of a Next-Generation Information-Centric Target Platform for Trusted Internet Computing.
Franz is also the lead principal investigator in an NSF Information Technology Research grant for $2 million, and he received $312,000 from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency, as well as a $300,000 NSF grant for Virtual-Machine Techniques.
More information is available at Franz's faculty profile.
Informatics professors receive IBM Eclipse Innovation Awards
Thomas
AlspaughProfessors Thomas A. Alspaugh, Cristina V. Lopes and Richard Taylor were recently awarded IBM's Eclipse Innovation Award.
The Bren School faculty are among 43 recipients of the 2006 award worldwide -- the largest number of honorees of any university. This brings the total number of Eclipse award winners at UC Irvine to eight, which is also the most of any university worldwide.
The IBM Eclipse Innovation Award program is an international award competition designed to encourage the use of open source and open standards-based tools for academic curricula and research. Qualified faculty and researchers submit proposals for work with applications in teaching, research or community building around Eclipse.
Eclipse is an open universal platform for tool integration - an open extensible Integrated Development Environment (IDE), and an open source community.
The Eclipse community creates royalty-free technology as a universal platform for tools integration. Eclipse-based tools give developers freedom of choice in a multi-language, multi-platform, multi-vendor supported environment supported by multiple vendors.
The operating system platforms that Eclipse has been targeted to includes Windows, Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, and Mac OS. In addition, Eclipse provides a unique environment for members of the academic community to build new tools for teaching, research, and further growth of the Eclipse community.
Alspaugh's research is in the area of requirements engineering. He is interested in how we can describe and reason about software, especially at points when code has not yet been written or will be re-written, and while the software's specification is still incomplete and its requirements are in flux. His recent work has investigated the use of scenarios to specify the behavior of a system.
Lopes' research is related to languages and communication systems. The ultimate goal of her research is to deepen the knowledge about communication, in particular in systems that involve humans and machines.
Taylor's research is focused on design -- the issues, techniques, and agents involved in creating and evolving software artifacts and processes. Specific emphases include software architecture and architecture-based software development environments.
Past Eclipse award recipients from the Bren School include David Redmiles (2005), Susan Sim (2004, 2005) and André van der Hoek (2004, 2005).
More: http://www.ibm.com/university/eclipseinnovation
Professors to lead International UbiComp Conference
Cristina
LopesAssociate Professor Cristina Lopes will be leading Ubicomp 2006, the Eighth International Conference of Ubiquitous Computing, as conference chair.
Professor Paul Dourish and Assistant Professor Don Patterson will serve as Program Chair and Local Arrangements Chair, respectively.
Ubicomp, hosted by UC Irvine will be held September 17-21. Ubicomp is the premier international forum for research in ubiquitous computing, bringing together designers, computer scientists, social scientists, and artists, to discuss recent developments and future advance.
The Ubicomp conference has traditionally had a strong workshop program. The goal of workshops is to share understandings and experiences, to foster research communities, to learn from each other and to envision future directions.
Lopes' research is related to languages and communication systems. The ultimate goal of her research is to deepen the knowledge about communication, in particular in systems that involve humans and machines.
Dourish's primary research interests are in the areas of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, Human-Computer Interaction, and Ubiquitous Computing. He is especially interested in the foundational relationships between social scientific analysis and technological design.
Patterson's areas of research interest lie at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Ubiquitous computing and he has applied this work to transportation and activity assistance.
For more information on Ubicomp 2006, visit http://www.ubicomp.org.
Professor to chair IEEE SecureComm'06 in Baltimore
Gene
TsudikAssociate Dean Gene Tsudik will be chairing the technical program at the second annual IEEE International Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Networks (SecureComm) later this month.
SecureComm brings together security and privacy experts in academia, industry and government as well as practitioners, standards developers and policy makers. SecureComm also serves as a venue for learning about state-of-the-art security and privacy research.
Presentations reporting on cutting-edge research results are supplemented by panels on controversial issues and invited talks on timely and important topics.
Tsudik's primary interests lie in computer/network security and applied cryptography.
Much of his recent work is in secure group communication, in particular, group key agreement, group signatures and group access control.
He also is interested in database security and public key cryptography.
Outstanding faculty and graduate student awards announced
Sharad
MehrotraSharad Mehrotra, professor of computer science, was recently awarded the 2005-06 Bren School Outstanding Mentor Award. Mehrotra was nominated by eight of his Ph.D. students.
In addition, the following students were recognized with 2005-06 Bren School awards:
Outstanding TA Award ($250 and plaque)
has been awarded to ICS PhD students
Michael Sirivianos
Bryan SemaanDissertation Fellowship
Jianlin Cheng
Emily Navarro
Nitesh Saxena
Robert Mateescu
Radu CorneaDissertation Award
Girish Suryanarayana
Ilya Issenin
John Augustine
(Jonathan) Zheng Sun
June 2006
Franz receives NSF grant for Virtual-Machine Techniques
Michael Franz, associate professor of computer science, has received a $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation.Michael
FranzFranz received the grant in Computer Systems Research for his project, “Virtual-Machine Techniques for Resource-Constrained Devices: Reconciling Reliability with Reusability and Low Development Costs in the Embedded Systems Space.”
Franz also is the lead principal investigator in an NSF Information Technology Research grant for $2 million, and he received $312,000 from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency.
May 2006
Four students recognized for submissions to business plan competition
Four Bren School students were recently recognized at the 2006 Stradling Yocca Carlson and Rauth Business Plan Competition organized by The Paul Merage School of Business’ Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Sixty-five UC Irvine students, divided into 16 teams, competed for cash awards of up to $15,000.
Hartaj Kandola, Ho-Fan Kang, Samuel Mandell, and Shravan Panyam represented the Bren School in three teams.
IntelliHealth led by Mandell, placed third in the overall competition for a $1,500 award. IntelliHealth focused on the automated collection and analysis of personal fitness data. Team members include David Vasser (Biomedical Engineering) and Vasudev Bailey (John Hopkins School of Medicine).
Kandola and Panyam of Team Revolution placed second in the undergraduate division, which earned them a $750 award. Their business plan involved free wireless voice over Internet protocol service. Other team members were Nishkoam Mehta (EECS), Esha Shah (Economics) and Neil Anantani (biological sciences).
ZotMatch, in which Kang was the team leader, placed third in the undergraduate division for their plan on campus-based online social networking system. Team members include Ryan Cheng (EECS) and Michael Brugstaller (Economics).
Teams made their presentations to 22 judges. Three winners in the open competition, plus two wild-card selections made by the judges, moves on to a second competition, the first-annual Tech Coast Angels Seed Financing Invitational. Seed financing of up to $1 million will be awarded for a teams’ business ideas.
Ceremony honors students for outstanding achievements
The Bren School will honor its outstanding achievers in an invitation only ceremony on June 9. Students will receive awards for Phi Beta Kappa, Campuswide Honors, Outstanding Contribution to Research and others. View a complete list of award recipients.
ICS faculty recognized as best faculty advisors
Professor David Kay (r) and
INSA representatives posing
with the Advisor Participation
Award.Professors André van der Hoek and David Kay were recognized at the 2006 UC Irvine Student Organizations Recognition Night with the Advisor Participation Award for their continued involvement with the Informatics Student Association (INSA).
INSA was created last spring to promote a unified and successful Informatics community by providing academic support, employment and research opportunities, community outreach, and social events.
INSA's goal is to help support the growth of the new department and encourage collaboration between its students and faculty.
“This award demonstrates how great the faculty is at the Bren School.” Said Gabriela Marcu, a sophomore Informatics major, INSA president and founders. “Our faculty help us in our efforts to meet our goals, and always provide advice and support. This is why their involvement has earned them this recognition.”
Professor van der Hoek's research lies in the fields of configuration management and software architecture, focusing on two research questions: (1) how to better coordinate the activities of multiple, geographically distributed developers and (2) how to better leverage higher levels of abstraction in designing and implementing software systems.
Van der Hoek also explores how simulation can aid students in learning more about the software engineering process.
David Kay is a lecturer in computer law, programming languages, social analysis of computerization, human-computer interaction, and communications skills for computer science.
WICS recognized for innovative outreach program
The Bren School's Women in Information and Computer Sciences (WICS) was recently recognized at the 2006 UC Irvine Student Organizations Recognition Night. WICS won the Most Outstanding New Program Award for their Elementary School Outreach Roadshow.
Members of WICS accepting
the award for Most
Outstanding New Program.“WICS provided a day that was educational and fun, which is difficult to accomplish with elementary girls,” said Kimberly Hamish, elementary school coordinator for Girls Inc. “The WICS women who were involved in this event were extremely caring and thoughtful.”
WICS attributes the success of the Roadshow to many ICS faculty including Dean Debra J. Richardson, Professors Bill Tomlinson, Dan Frost, Eric Mjolssness, and Project Scientist Suzanne Schaefer. In addition, the contributions of an anonymous donor, the Girls Inc. organization, and Harnish were community supporters of the new program.
WICS was established to help and encourage women to pursue a college degree and a successful career in the information and computer sciences field.
Paper on blogging rated most downloaded
Associate Professor of Informatics Bonnie A. Nardi’s research paper entitled “Blogging as a Social Activity, or, Would you Let 900 Million People Read Your Diary? (PDF)” was recently ranked as the most popular paper downloaded from the Association for Computing Machinery’s refereed journals and conference proceedings.
Bonnie
NardiThe paper, co-authored with Diane J. Schiano and Michelle Gumbrecht was originally submitted in November 2004 for the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work.
Professor Nardi's research interests include theory in human-computer interaction and computer-supported collaborative work; computer-mediated communication technologies; and studies of scientific collaboration.
She specializes in the use of ethnographic methods to study technology. Her theoretical orientation is activity theory. Current research includes a study of blogging and an investigation of scientific collaboration among ecologists.
Professor selected as Fellow of the American Statistical Association
Professor of Statistics, David van Dyk has been selected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA) by the 2006 ASA Committee on Fellows.
David
van DykEach year, ASA members nominate their peers as fellows of the ASA. Qualifications include having made outstanding contributions in some aspect of statistical work.” ASA annually selects no more than one-third of one percent of its members as fellows.
Professor van Dyk's scholarly work focuses on methodological and computational issues involved with Bayesian analysis of highly structured statistical models and emphasizes serious interdisciplinary research.
He is particularly interested in improving the efficiency of computationally intensive methods involving data augmentation, such as EM-type algorithms and Markov chain Monte Carlo methods.
His primary area of interdisciplinary work is Astro-statistics and focuses on constructing and fitting highly structured models for data obtained with the Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Statistics chair Hal Stern and professor Wesley Johnson are also ASA fellows.
April 2006
Scherson elected Senior Member of IEEE
Professor of computer science Isaac Scherson has been elected a Senior Member of IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers), a professional organization of Electrical and Computer Engineers and Computer Scientists.
Isaac
SchersonSenior Member status is a rare honor that only eight percent of the 320,000 IEEE members hold and is conferred only on those who have outstanding research achievements and who have performed great service to the scientific community.
Scherson's research interests fall in the general areas of parallel computer architecture and applications of concurrent computation.
His work on interconnection networks for massively parallel systems involves the development of cost-effective high performance networks capable of supporting thousands or millions of processing elements.
In addition, Scherson is applying the results of his seminal networks research to Intelligent Networks on Chip for Embedded Systems.
Givargis wins ACM TODAES Best Paper Award
The Editorial Board of ACM TODAES has selected assistant professor of computer science Tony Givargis' paper, entitled Zero cost indexing for improved processor cache performance, for the the ACM Transaction on Design Automation of Electronic Systems (TODAES) 2006 Best Paper Award.
Tony
GivargisGivargis will recieve the award, which comes with a $1,000 check and a plaque, during the opening ceremony of the 43rd Design Automation Conference which will be held this July in San Francisco.
February 2006
Student and professors win Best Paper Award
Fifth year Ph.D. candidate in computer science Jun Lu and professors of computer science Lichun Bao received the best paper award at the 2005 IFIP International Conference on Embedded And Ubiquitous Computing (EUC 2005). The conference was held in Nagasaki, Japan, December 6 - 9, 2005.
Computer science candidate
Jun Lu, (r) receives his Best
Paper Award at the 2005 IFIP
International Conference on
Embedded And Ubiquitous
Computing.The EUC 2005 is a major conference specializing in embedded systems and ubiquitous computing with 30 technical paper sessions, 3 panel sessions and 5 workshops. Two best papers were awarded among 330+ paper submissions.
The paper, titled Coverage-Aware Sensor Engagement in Dense Sensor Networks, proposed a novel coverage maintenance scheme for sensor networks, which considerably improves the energy efficiency and reduces the computation and communication costs to maintain the required coverage degree in a dense sensor network.
Jun Lu's research is on sensor networks and ad hoc networks, he received his BECS and MSCS from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China, in 1997 and 2000, respectively and worked for Lucent Technologies as a software engineer before entering the Bren School Ph.D. program.
Student and professor win Best Paper Award
Fourth year Ph.D. candidate in computer science Sudeep Pasricha and professor of computer science, Nikil Dutt received the Best Paper Award at the Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (ASPDAC) that took place in Yokohama, Japan January 24 - 27, 2006.
Professor Nikil Dutt, (left) and
computer science Ph.D.
candidate Sudeep Pasricha
(middle) receive their Best
Paper Award.The paper, titled Constraint-driven Bus Matrix Synthesis for MPSoC, proposes novel techniques to reduce the cost and development time of communication architectures for high performance electronic systems used in the next generation electronic devices such as mobile phones, video game consoles and high-speed networking equipment.
January 2006
Professors win Best Paper Award
A paper written by professors of computer science Magda El Zarki, Nikil Dutt and Nalini Venkatasubramanian has been awarded the Best Paper Award, 1st Place Winner at the 3rd IEEE Consumer Communications and Networking Conference that took place in Las Vegas January 8-10, 2006.
The paper titled Backlight Optimization Scheme for Video Playback on Mobile Devices, examined ways to create substantial energy savings by dynamically adapting backlight intensity levels on lowpower portable devices like the Compaq iPAQ.