"This course material is as timely as today's headlines," said Tom Pilsch, the College's assistant dean for Continuing Education. "We built the course especially for technical and non-technical leaders at all levels who finally have heard the wake-up call and are looking for a 'how-to' roadmap."

This course goes beyond traditional information security courses that focus on technologies such as firewalls and encryption to secure data. "Blueprint for Information Security" will touch on security technology but will concentrate on risk management and policy issues to assist managers in creating a data protection plan consistent with the needs of their organization.

"Recent national events have motivated us to accelerate this program," noted Pilsch. "The interest and need definitely are there."

"Blueprint for Information Security" is the lead course for a new certificate on Managing Information Security beginning in January 2002. This series of short courses will fill in the details on policy, planning and implementation for building a comprehensive information risk management program. The full certificate also will cover the common body of knowledge elements for the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) certification.

Online registration and directions to the Georgia Tech Computer Training Facility are available at http://www.gtcoc.com.

Contact Tom Pilsch for more information.

The lecture series is generously sponsored by Atlanta-based SecureWorks Inc., which offers a 24x7 real-time intrusion prevention service to protect networks from security breaches.

Created in 1998, GTISC is an interdisciplinary center focused on conducting research and providing education and outreach programs on information security issues. Recently, the National Security Agency named GTISC a Center of Academic Excellence in Information Security Assurance Education.

Some 20 faculty and 45 students from across the Georgia Tech campus are involved in approximately $6 million of funded research in information security through GTISC. The Center also offers a number of courses on the topic and expects to offer a Master¹s in Information Security starting sometime in 2002.

"Information security is one of the most important and challenging issues facing our society today," said Dr. Peter Freeman, acting director for GTISC and John P. Imlay, Jr. dean and professor in the College of Computing.

"As we understand more about the subject, it is clear that there are a myriad of opportunities for cutting-edge research in computer science as well as policy studies. This set of outstanding speakers has been chosen to help us all better understand the intellectual challenges and policy decisions we face."

About SecureWorks

SecureWorks is the first "next generation" network security service designed to prevent network intrusions by professional hackers. The company provides comprehensive intrusion prevention by offering three key components: real-time intervention, data fingerprint correlation and dynamic inoculation technology. SecureWorks¹ proactive security solution is based on its information security appliance, the iSensor, and its technology working in concert with security specialists located at the company¹s security operations center.

The complete schedule for the 2001 Fall lecture series follows:

September 6
Dr. Michael O. Rabin
Thomas J. Watson Sr. Professor of Computer Science
Harvard University

October 4
Dr. Eugene H. Spafford
Purdue University
Professor of Computer Science and Philosophy
Director, Center for Education Research Information Assurance and Security

October 18
Dr. Edward W. Felten
Princeton University
Associate Professor of Computer Science

November 8
Dr. Matthew A. Bishop
University of California, Davis
Associate Professor of Computer Science

December 6
Dr. Donald Prosnitz
Department of Justice
Chief Scientist

Dr. Foley is Professor and Associate Dean in the College of Computing, and Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He earned the Ph.D. in Computer Information and Control Engineering at the University of Michigan and the BSEE at Lehigh University, where he was initiated into Phi Beta Kappa, Tau Beta Pi and Eta Kappa Nu.

Dr. Foley first came to Georgia Tech in 1991 to establish the Graphics, Visualization and Usability Center, which in 1996 was ranked #1 by US News and World Report for graduate computer science work in graphics and user interaction. In 1996, he became director of Mitsubishi Electric Research Lab in Cambridge and then in 1998 chairman and CEO of Mitsubishi Electric ITA, directing corporate R&D at four labs in North America. He returned to Georgia as Executive Director and then CEO of Yamacraw, Georgia's economic development initiative in the design of broadband systems, devices and chips.

Dr. Foley is a Fellow of ACM and IEEE, an inaugural member of the ACM/CHI Academy, and recipient of the biannual ACM/SIGGRAPH Stephen Coons Award for Outstanding Creative Contributions to Computer Graphics. The graphics textbooks he has co-authored are widely used and have been translated into six foreign languages. In 1992, the Georgia Tech College of Computing graduate students named him, "most likely to make students want to grow up to be professors."

In July 2001, Dr. Foley will become chairman of the Computing Research Association - an organization of over 200 computer science and computer engineering university departments, professional societies and industrial research labs.

About Stephen Fleming

Stephen Fleming is a fifth-generation Atlanta native, who graduated summa cum laude from Georgia Tech in 1983 with a BS in physics. During his years on campus he was involved in student government, undergraduate curriculum affairs, and the ANAK honor society. He was the recipient of the Phi Kappa Phi Scholarship cup for the highest academic achievement (4.0) in his graduating class.

Mr. Fleming has a varied background in telecommunications operations, having managed optical fiber, broadband, and interactive telecommunications projects since his co-op assignments while at Georgia Tech. His career has included increasingly senior positions at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Northern Telecom (Nortel), and LICOM, a venture-backed startup.

He joined Alliance Technology Ventures as the second general partner in early 1995, and has played a key role in building ATV's reputation as one of the leading early-stage technology venture funds in the Southeast. Mr. Fleming has held board seats at over a dozen of ATV's portfolio companies, both public and private. As of 2001, Alliance Technology Ventures has been successful in raising three venture funds; the Georgia Tech Foundation has been an investor in each fund. Five of ATV's investments to date have involved technology transfer of Georgia Tech research.

Mr. Fleming is a past member of the board of directors of the Georgia Center for Advanced Telecommunications Technology (GCATT), and is a current member of the boards of advisors for the College of Computing and the DuPree College of Management, both at Georgia Tech. He has served as an advisor to the Georgia Research Alliance, and is heavily involved in the state's public policy debates regarding high technology. He is also the founder of the LIGHT (Linking Investors to Georgia High Technology) program, which is sponsored by GCATT, ATDC, the DuPree College, and the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG).

To: The College of Computing Community

I am pleased to tell you that the 2003-4 academic year was one of remarkable growth for the College. Thanks to the dedicated effort of the CCD and ICD recruiting committees chaired by Mustaque Ahamad and Irfan Essa, and a great support team led by Linda Williams, we will add five new faculty:

Eric Vigoda will join CCD as an Associate Professor on July 15th. His office will be located in CCB 237. Eric received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley in 1999. Prior to joining the College, he was an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago. Among his research interests are new techniques for analyzing Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods.

Alexandra (Sasha) Boldyreva will join CCD as an Assistant Professor on August 15th. Her office will be located in CCB 254. Sasha received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California at San Diego in 2004. Her research interests include cryptography and information security.

Alessandro (Alex) Orso will join CCD as an Assistant Professor on August 15th. His office will be located in CCB 218. Alex received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Politecnico di Milano, Italy in 1999. Alex is currently a CoC Research Scientist. His research interest is in software engineering with an emphasis on program analysis and testing. He was the recipient of the CoC 2004 Outstanding Research Scientist Research Faculty Award.

Keith Edwards will join ICD as an Associate Professor on September 27th. His office will be located in TSRB. Keith received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Georgia Tech in 1995. Keith joins us from The Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) where he was a senior member of the research staff. His research interests include ubiquitous computing, infrastructure to support novel user interfaces, and computer-supported cooperative work.

Rebecca (Becki) Grinter will join ICD as an Associate Professor on September 27th. Her office will be in TSRB. Becki received her Ph.D. in Information and Computer Science from the University of California, Irvine in 1996. Becki is also joining us from PARC where she is a member of the research staff. Her research interests include computer supported cooperative work (CSCW), human computer interaction (HCI), and software engineering.

We also have two virtual additions: previously announced faculty members that were hired last year but spent the year on leave at other institutions:

Assistant Professor Subhash Khot (CCD) arrived on July 1st after spending a year at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton. Here are Subash's coordinates:
Office: CCB 234
E-mail: <a xhref="mailto:khot@cc.gatech.edu">khot@cc.gatech.edu</a>
Phone: (404) 385-6603

Assistant Professor Gabriel Loh (CCD) will arrive on August 15th after spending a year on leave at Intel. Here are Gabriel's coordinates:
Office: CCB 221
E-mail: <a xhref="mailto:loh@cc.gatech.edu">loh@cc.gatech.edu</a>
Phone: (404) 385-6604

Please join me in welcoming our new colleagues to Georgia Tech and the College of Computing.

Rich DeMillo

“We are very proud of Mike’s accomplishment and gratified that he was able to take advantage of our new graduate degree in Information Security so quickly,” said Rich DeMillo, John P. Imlay, Jr. Dean of Computing, Distinguished Professor of Computing and Director, Georgia Tech Information Security Center (GTISC). “We are working to build one of the best information security programs in the country.”

Torrey completed his undergraduate degree in computer science from the Catholic University of America in May 2001, where his interest in information security began. Torrey considered graduate school at Duke University, James Madison University, Johns Hopkins, and University of Central Florida but felt Tech was leading the way in the InfoSec field. In his first semester Torrey greatly enjoyed the introductory courses in information security and cryptography and knew he wanted to concentrate in that area. When the new degree was approved in February, Torrey had already completed many of the required courses.

“What has impressed me most about the program has been the faculty,” said Torrey “It is a difficult task simply to keep up with all of the new developments or in fact be responsible for new developments in the InfoSec field, let alone teach it. In my opinion the faculty have done an amazing job in both cases.”

Torrey is considering a conditional job offer from the National Security Agency and an offer from Anteon Corporation.

The first graduate program of its kind in Georgia, the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia approved the new Master of Science degree in February. The degree is designed to help fill the high demand for individuals with both the practical skills and theoretical understanding of information security. Students can focus on either technical or policy issues of information security. The 32-hour interdisciplinary program is housed in the College of Computing with coordination with the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, the DuPree College of Management, and the Georgia State University Management Information Systems program.

The Georgia Tech Information Security Center (GTISC), a National Security Agency Center of Excellence in Information Assurance Education, developed the comprehensive curriculum and brings together faculty and resources in information security from across campus.

The Georgia Institute of Technology announced today that it has named Richard A. DeMillo as the John P. Imlay, Jr. Dean of Computing of the nationally ranked College of Computing, one of the largest computer science programs in the country. DeMillo, one of the most visible figures in the computing industry in recent years, was first Chief Technology Officer for computer giant Hewlett-Packard Company before joining Georgia Tech. He has been a leader making national policy in information technology including in the development of software solutions for the U.S. Defense Department.

He left his position as vice president at HP and recently returned to Georgia Tech to assume the helm of the Georgia Tech Information Security Center. He had also previously taught at Tech from 1976-87. Regarded as one of the pioneers of the Internet, DeMillo’s distinguished technology career spans business, government and academia, including major positions at HP, the National Science Foundation (NSF), Telcordia Technologies (formerly Bellcore), Purdue University and Georgia Tech. Effective December 1, DeMillo fills the position formerly held by Dr. Peter A. Freeman, who joined the National Science Foundation in May.

Rich’s vision and three decades of experience are precisely what is needed to lead the College of Computing to even higher levels," said Jean-Lou Chameau, provost and vice president for academic affairs at Georgia Tech. "He brings experience at the highest levels of industry, government, and academia, and his leadership will provide a tremendous boost to the College. His research strengths dovetail perfectly with the research going on currently in the College and his long-time relationships with current faculty ensure a smooth transition and a fast start toward enhancing the reputation of an already solid academic unit."

DeMillo will lead the education, research and outreach activities of the College including such research areas as cognitive science, computer architecture, database systems, educational technology, future computing environments, graphics and visualization, human computer interaction, information security, intelligent systems and robotics, networking and telecommunications, programming languages and compilers, parallel and distributed systems, software engineering, and theoretical computer science.

"This is a very exciting time to be joining the Georgia Tech community, there are tremendous changes taking place in information technology and Georgia Tech has always been at the forefront of that change. I look forward to helping Georgia Tech continue its climb to the very top ranks in computing," said DeMillo.

About DeMillo

At Hewlett-Packard, DeMillo had worldwide responsibility for technology, technology strategy and the HP patent portfolio. He also chaired HP’s Technology Council. DeMillo was responsible for many innovations in the oversight and governance of R&D at HP. He also starred in a national television ad campaign that featured him as a famous inventor that is changing the world but is relatively unknown outside the industry when compared to the type of attention afforded other pop cultural icons.

Prior to joining HP, he directed computer science research and applied research at Telcordia Technologies, in support of Telcordia’s software businesses, telecommunications consulting businesses, as well as government and other externally sponsored R&D.

Prior to joining Telcordia in 1995, DeMillo was professor of computer science at Purdue University and served as director of the Software Engineering Research Center, a NSF Industry-University Cooperative Research Center (a consortium of universities). Under DeMillo’s leadership the Software Engineering Research Center became one of the most successful industrial research consortia in the nation.

From 1989 to 1991, DeMillo was director of the Computer and Computation Research Division at NSF. In this capacity he managed the largest computing research division at NSF and was responsible for most of the academic computer science research in the U.S., including programs in software engineering, theoretical computer science, numeric and symbolic computation, computer architecture, graphics, operating systems and programming languages. Among other achievements at NSF, DeMillo was responsible for successful national initiatives in High Performance Computing and Communications and Computational Biology.

From 1976 until 1987, DeMillo was Professor of Information and Computer Science at Georgia Tech and was founding director of Georgia Tech’s Software Engineering Research Center. DeMillo’s accomplishments as head of this center included the development and successful application of advanced software quality technology to high-visibility national security initiatives and systems such as the Patriot Air Defense System and the Strategic Defense Initiative. He also directed the Software Test and Evaluation Project for the Office of the Secretary of Defense. In this role DeMillo was the chief architect of Department of Defense policy for software testing and evaluation.

DeMillo has held faculty appointments in Electrical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Electronics and Informatics at the University of Padua in Padua, Italy where he helped establish an international master’s program in software engineering on whose Executive Committee he still serves.

DeMillo received his Doctoral degree in Information and Computer Science from Georgia Tech and received his Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from College of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota.

About the College of Computing

The Georgia Tech College of Computing houses one of the largest computer science programs in the country with 68 academic faculty and 39 research faculty. The College strives to provide high quality instruction and to integrate computing knowledge into other academic disciplines as well as aspects of daily life. Approximately 2,000 students are enrolled in the college, including approximately 1,580 undergraduates and 410 graduate students, some 270 of which are Ph.D. students. The College is ranked 12th overall at the doctoral level and houses several interdisciplinary research centers including the Georgia Tech Information Security Center (GTISC), the Graphics, Visualization and Usability Center (GVU), Center for Experimental Research in Computer Systems (CERCS), and the Modeling & Simulation Research and Education Center (MSREC).

DeMillo will direct the applied research, education and outreach activities of GTISC, which was named a National Security Agency (NSA) Center of Excellence in Information Assurance Education last year. GTISC has developed courses for a Master’s Degree in Information Security and new basic research and educational funding of approximately $2.7 million for FY 2001. GTISC focuses on researching security technologies, policy research on information security, information security education, applied research and development, and service and outreach to academia, government and industry.

"Rich is an outstanding addition to GTISC, the College of Computing and to Georgia Tech," said Jean-Lou Chameau, provost and vice president for academic affairs at Georgia Tech. "He is highly regarded in the worlds of industry, government, and academia and his presence will provide our information security initiative a tremendous boost," he said.

"He brings incredible experience and knowledge from his impressive career in academia, government, and business," said Ellen Zegura, interim Dean of the College of Computing. "Our students and faculty will benefit greatly from his presence at Tech," she said.

"This is a very exciting time to be joining the Georgia Tech community, and I hope I will be able to contribute to Tech’s long-term success," said DeMillo. "Information security has become the critical technology problem of the decade and I look forward to helping Georgia Tech become a national resource in Cyber Security."

GTISC was established in Spring 1998 upon the recommendation by business, government and education leaders meeting at Georgia Tech for the Sam Nunn NationsBank Policy Forum entitled, "Information Security: Risks, Opportunities, & the Bottom Line."

The Center uses an interdisciplinary approach to conducting research and development in the field of information security. Its mission is to conduct research contributing to the development and testing of concepts, techniques, and models that will become the foundation for the discipline of information security; to develop and commercialize new information security technologies; and to educate and train information security professionals through degree, non-degree, and public information programs. The interdisciplinary center reports to the Office of the Provost and involves faculty from the College of Computing, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, and the School of Public Policy—both schools in the Ivan Allen College.

A native of Huntsville, Ala., Ozment becomes only the second Georgia Tech student in 20 years to win the prestigious Marshall Scholarship, established in 1953 for U.S. students by the British in appreciation for assistance received after the Second World War under the Marshall Plan. Financed by the British Government, the Scholarships provide an opportunity for American students, who have demonstrated academic excellence and leadership potential, to continue their studies for two or three years at a British University.

Long regarded as one of the highest undergraduate accolades, the Marshall Scholarship covers the scholar's tuition costs, books, travel and living expenses while in the United Kingdom. Prominent former Marshall scholars include the U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Stephen Breyer; former U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt; The New York Times foreign affairs columnist, Tom Friedman; and the scientist/inventor, Ray Dolby.

As an undergraduate, Ozment was well rounded academically and active in the Georgia Tech community. In addition to his B.S. in computer science, Ozment obtained certificates in history, music and business Spanish, and served as a teaching assistant. Ozment was a President's Scholar, a member of the Honor Advisory Council and a Georgia Tech Ambassador. In addition to his stellar academic performance, Ozment was a cooperative education student at Nortel Networks and pursued undergraduate research. His research project on cheating resulted in a presentation at the 2000 conference of the American Society of Engineering Education and was published in the proceedings.

Currently Ozment is a full-time Research Scientist for the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, working for both the Computing and Networking Services (CNS) group and the Georgia Tech Information Security Center (GTISC). On a part-time basis, Ozment is pursuing an M.S. degree at Georgia Tech in Information Security with an emphasis on technical policy.

"We are extremely happy for Andy in winning this prestigious Marshall award and are proud of his accomplishments as a student in the College," said Peter A. Freeman, dean of the College of Computing. "Andy is indicative of the caliber of student we seek to attract in the College, and this award serves as an encouragement to faculty as well as our students for the work we are doing in our program."

Marshall Scholarship Web Site

Some 41 students in the College participated in the survey, conducted from March 30 ­ August 15, including one Ph.D. graduate. The students were among 670 students from 35 computer science programs nationally participating in the survey and 32,000 graduate students from 1,300 doctoral programs across all disciplines.

The web-based survey consisted of 48 questions in nine areas relevant to doctoral education: information provided for prospective students, preparation for a broad range of careers, teaching and teaching assistantship preparation, professional development, career guidance and placement services, controlling time to degree, mentoring, program climate, and overall satisfaction. The College ranked higher in nearly every category than the national average. Students gave the College highest marks for mentoring (A-), preparation for a broad range of careers (B+), and overall satisfaction (B+). Complete results may be viewed at http//survey.nagps.org.

Other computer science programs ranked in the top quartile include Carnegie Mellon University, Cornell University, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Rice University, Stanford University, University of California-Berkeley, University of California-San Diego and the University of Washington ­ Seattle.

"We strive to constantly improve the student experience at all levels in the College and to create a nurturing environment and a sense of community by listening and responding to students¹ needs," said Dr. Peter A. Freeman, John P. Imlay, Jr. Dean of the College of Computing. "This survey is a strong indication that we are succeeding at the doctoral level and mirrors what we have heard from our students as well."

Dr. Larry Hodges, Ph.D. recruiting committee chair, says that he is not surprised at the results of the survey. "The size of our faculty and the vast variety of innovative research projects and groups in the College of Computing gives each of our students a great deal of choice in terms of research areas and advisors," he said.

NAGPS is an advocacy organization representing 900,000 graduate and professional students across 200 campuses in the U.S. dedicated to improving the quality of graduate and professional student life in the United States.

CoC undergraduate honored with an award from the Computing Research Association.

College of Computing undergraduate, Leo Singleton, has been selected for Honorable Mention in the Computing Research Association's Outstanding Undergraduate Award for 2005.

CoC undergraduate honored with an award from the Computing Research Association.

College of Computing undergraduate, Leo Singleton, has been selected for Honorable Mention in the Computing Research Association's Outstanding Undergraduate Award for 2005.

Atlanta (May 13, 2004) - President George W. Bush awarded the Computing Research Association's Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W) the 2003 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM) for "significant achievements in mentoring women across educational levels."

White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director John H. Marburger, III, presented CRA-W Co-Chair Dr. Mary Jean Harrold (Georgia Tech, College of Computing) and CRA-W representative Dr. Jan Cuny (University of Oregon, Computer Science Department) with the citation at a noon ceremony in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. CRA-W was one of just eight institutional winners of the annual award, given to those organizations identified as "exemplars" and leaders in the national effort to more fully develop the Nation's human resources in science, mathematics and engineering.

The award cites CRA-W's work providing "hands-on research experiences, mentoring, role models and information exchange to women pursuing careers in [the] field." CRA-W programs seek to increase the number of women involved in computer science and engineering, increase the degree of success they experience, and provide a forum for addressing problems that often fall disproportionately within women's domain.

In a message from the President read by Marburger at the ceremony, Bush noted that new technology was redefining the American workplace and that, "in order to stay on the leading edge we must insure the participation of people from diverse backgrounds and experiences."

"The programs recognized today will serve as role models [in that process]," the President's message said. "I'm incredibly pleased that the long-term work of CRA-W has received this recognition," Harrold said. "CRA-W's success is owed to a long progression of women in computing who gave – and give – of their time and effort to share their knowledge and experiences with the next generation. As the President noted, the country will be well-served by continuing to increase the participation of underrepresented groups."

"The problem is particularly acute in computing," Cuny said. "Five of the 10 fastest growing occupations in the next decade will be computer related, but women make up less than a third of the IT workforce and an even smaller percentage of the academic pipeline. This underrepresentation represents a loss of talent and creativity that we will need shaping the future role of technology in society."

In addition to the Presidential Citation, the award also includes $10,000 to be used by CRA-W to further its efforts. In addition to the eight institutional awards, the President also named nine individual awards for 2004.

Photo (left to right): Dr. Mary Jean Harrold, Georgia Tech (Co-Chair of CRA-W); Dr. Jan Cuny, University of Oregon (former Chair of CRA-W), Dr. John Marburger, Director OSTP, Dr. Maria Klawe, Dean of Engineering, Princeton University (co-founder of CRA-W and current President of the Association for Computing Machinery), Peter Freeman, National Science Foundation (NSF) assistant director of the Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE).

More information about the PAESMEM program can be found at: http://www.ehr.nsf.gov/EHR/HRD/paesmem.asp

The Computer Research Association's Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W) is an action oriented organization dedicated to increasing the number of women participating in Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) research and education at all levels. The current CRA-W co-chairs are Mary Jean Harrold (Georgia Tech) and Carla Ellis (Duke University). For more information: http://www.cra.org/Activities/craw/aboutCraw.html

The Computing Research Association (CRA) is an association of more than 200 North American academic departments of computer science, computer engineering, and related fields; laboratories and centers in industry, government, and academia engaging in basic computing research; and affiliated professional societies. For more information: http://www.cra.org

CRA-W Co-Chairs 2003-2006
Mary Jean Harrold, Georgia Institute of Technology
Carla Ellis, Duke University

Current Members:
Fran Allen, IBM Fellow Emerita
Nancy Amato, Texas A&M University
Carla Brodley, Purdue University
Sheila Castañeda, Clarke College
Lori A. Clarke, University of Massachusetts
Anne Condon, University of British Columbia
Jan Cuny, University of Oregon
Faith E. Fich, University of Toronto
Kathleen Fisher, AT&T Labs Research
Joan Francioni, Winona State University
Jessica Hodgins, Carnegie Mellon University
Mary Jane Irwin, Penn State University
Leah Jamieson, Purdue University
Susan Landau, Sun Microsystems Laboratories
Nancy G. Leveson, MIT
Renée J. Miller, University of Toronto
Joann Ordille, Avaya Labs
Lori Pollock, University of Delaware
Ann Redelfs, San Diego Supercomputer Center
Mary Lou Soffa, University of Pittsburgh
Telle Whitney, Institute for Women in Technology

CoC undergraduate honored with an award from the Computing Research Association.

College of Computing undergraduate, Leo Singleton, has been selected for Honorable Mention in the Computing Research Association's Outstanding Undergraduate Award for 2005.

College of Computing undergraduate, Leo Singleton, has been selected for Honorable Mention in the Computing Research Association's Outstanding Undergraduate Award for 2005.

CoC undergraduate honored with an award from the Computing Research Association.

College of Computing undergraduate, Leo Singleton, has been selected for Honorable Mention in the Computing Research Association's Outstanding Undergraduate Award for 2005.

CoC undergraduate honored with an award from the Computing Research Association.

College of Computing undergraduate, Leo Singleton, has been selected for Honorable Mention in the Computing Research Association's Outstanding Undergraduate Award for 2005.

CoC undergraduate honored with an award from the Computing Research Association.

College of Computing undergraduate, Leo Singleton, has been selected for Honorable Mention in the Computing Research Association's Outstanding Undergraduate Award for 2005.

CoC undergraduate honored with an award from the Computing Research Association.

College of Computing undergraduate, Leo Singleton, has been selected for Honorable Mention in the Computing Research Association's Outstanding Undergraduate Award for 2005.

CoC undergraduate honored with an award from the Computing Research Association.

College of Computing undergraduate, Leo Singleton, has been selected for Honorable Mention in the Computing Research Association's Outstanding Undergraduate Award for 2005.

CoC undergraduate honored with an award from the Computing Research Association.

College of Computing undergraduate, Leo Singleton, has been selected for Honorable Mention in the Computing Research Association's Outstanding Undergraduate Award for 2005.

Existing automated debugging techniques have limitations that prevent them from scaling to industrial systems. Harrold's project will investigate fault-localization techniques that can be used in practice through several activities: the research will develop improved techniques that can more quickly guide the user to the faulty regions of the system and exploit programmer knowledge and guidance; the research will design and conduct controlled experiments and case studies to evaluate cost-benefits of new and improved techniques, as well as to understand the factors contributing to those costs-benefits; the research will also assemble an infrastructure of programs, faulty versions, and test suites for future fault-localization approaches.

For more information regarding this award, as well as the other 12 NSF Awards Mary Jean Harrold has received throughout her career, click here.

The rankings released on the web and to media today, are based on a survey of deans and department chairs at CS programs around the country. For a complete listing of CS program rankings and extensive specialty rankings, visit the U.S. News web site. All new and old rankings will be available in U.S. News’ “Best Graduate Schools” guidebook, which will hit newsstands next week.

The following are the College of Computing’s CS rankings by U.S. News in previous years:

• 1996--18
• 1997--18
• 1999--13
• 2002--12

The College was ranked in additional CS specialty areas this year which include: Artificial Intelligence (12), and Computer Science Systems (13). There were no rankings again this year for graphics/visualization, which received a 4th place ranking in 1999, or in databases, which received a 7th place ranking in 1999.

The College of Computing’s excellent reputation is due to its outstanding quality of research, unprecedented educational programs, renowned faculty, and diversity of students. As the College forges the new face of computing and encourages the kind of true innovation that leads to real world impact, Georgia Tech can only expect to excel in these CS rankings.

"I’m very proud of the work done by our faculty, graduate students, and staff to achieve these rankings,” said Dean Rich DeMillo. “We’re consistently competing well against some of the finest universities in the world. It’s important that the College maintains its excellence while improving in areas for which we’re less-well known. I’m confident that those trends will continue and that our programs will gain prominence across the board.”

For the Institute-level release regarding the rankings, click here.

NSF CAREER Awards are one of the highest honors given to young university faculty in science and engineering. Boldyreva earned her Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California at San Diego, and her B.S. and M.S. in Applied Mathematics from St. Petersburg State Technical University in Russia. Boldyreva is on the Eurocrypt 2006 program committee and an active member of the Georgia Tech Information Security Center (GTISC).

ATLANTA (April 4, 2006) – The College of Computing at Georgia Tech, a national leader in the creation of real-world computing breakthroughs that drive social and scientific progress, today announced that it has appointed international robotics expert Dr. Henrik Christensen to the newly endowed KUKA Chair of Robotics. With Dr. Christensen’s appointment as the KUKA Chair of Robotics, a position endowed by a $1.5 million grant from KUKA Robotics, the North American subsidiary of KUKA Roboter GmbH and a global leader in robot manufacturing, the College of Computing further solidifies its position as a national academic leader in robotics.

“The addition of a globally respected robotics expert such as Henrik Christensen to our already distinguished faculty enables the College of Computing to make a significant and immediate impact on growth in the robotics arena,” said Richard A. DeMillo, the John P. Imlay Jr. Dean of the College of Computing at Georgia Tech. “With the generous support from our friends at KUKA Robotics, the faculty and students of the College of Computing will lead our nation’s charge to invent tomorrow’s cutting-edge robotics breakthroughs.”

"KUKA is proud to support the College of Computing at Georgia Tech in their continued pursuit of advanced robotic solutions," noted Leroy Rodgers II, president of KUKA Robotics Corporation. "KUKA's products are an excellent platform for innovation, and we expect the College of Computing’s faculty and students will lead the industry for years to come."

Dr. Christensen brings to the College of Computing an impeccable pedigree in robotics research and innovation. As the founding chairman of the European Robotics Research Network, Dr. Christensen will work with existing faculty to further enrich the robotics curriculum within the Interactive and Intelligent Computing (IIC) division at the College of Computing. With a focus on personal and everyday robotics, as well as the future of automation, the College of Computing robotics program will offer both undergraduate and doctoral programs tailored to best enable students to understand and drive the future role of robotics in society and industry.

"I am very excited about joining the College of Computing at Georgia Tech as its KUKA Chair of Robotics,” said Dr. Christensen. “My mission will be to strengthen the College of Computing’s already impressive robotics program and make it the leading robotics effort in the world in terms of human-centered robotics and intelligent machines.”

About the College of Computing at Georgia Tech
The College of Computing at Georgia Tech is a national leader in the creation of real-world computing breakthroughs that drive social and scientific progress. With its graduate program ranked 11th nationally by U.S. News and World Report, the College’s unconventional approach to education is pioneering the new era of computing by expanding the horizons of traditional computer science students through interdisciplinary collaboration and a focus on human centered solutions. For more information about the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, its academic divisions and research centers, please visit www.cc.gatech.edu.

About KUKA Robotics
KUKA Robotics Corporation, with its parent company KUKA Roboter GmbH, Augsburg, Germany, is one of the world's leading manufacturers of industrial robots, with an annual production volume approaching 10,000 units, and an installed base of over 60,000 units.  The company’s 5 and 6 axis robots range from 3kg to 570kg payloads, and 635mm to 3700mm reach, all controlled from a common PC based controller platform. KUKA robots are utilized in a diverse range of industries including the appliance, automotive, aerospace, consumer goods, logistics, food, pharmaceutical, medical, foundry and plastics industries. KUKA robots are found in a multitude of applications including: material handling, machine loading, assembly, packaging, palletizing, welding, bending, joining, and surface finishing. For more information contact KUKA Robotics at 866-873-5852 or visit their website at www.kukarobotics.com.

Contact:
For College of Computing at Georgia Tech
Stefany Wilson
404.894.7253
stefany@cc.gatech.edu
www.cc.gatech.edu

For KUKA Robotics Corporation
Kevin Kozuszek                                 
Marketing Manager              
248.819.0230 (voice)                       
866.329.5852 (fax)                           
kevinkozuszek@kukarobotics.com

February 23, 2006 - College of Computing Assistant Professor Subhash Khot has been awarded a 2006 Sloan Research Fellowship by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. These awards are intended to enhance the careers of the very best young faculty members in specified fields of science. Khot's fellowship is one of 116 awarded annually in seven fields: computer science, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, mathematics, neuroscience, economics, chemistry, and physics. Khot will receive a $45,000 grant over the next two years to support his research.

"Bioinformatics and computational biology are predicted to represent in this century a revolution surpassing the one brought about by computers in the last one," says Apsotolico, a pioneer of string processing. This year’s RECOMB topic revolved around two landmark events that are forever changing the way biology and medicine are pursued: the transition from cells to macromolecules as the main subject of biology; and the emergence of computing as a fundamental tool in conquering the daunting amounts of data produced since advanced sequencing techniques began unveiling genome sequences and related compounds of biological interest. 
 
RECOMB ‘06 boasted a scientific program in line with its tradition of excellence. Over 700 participants enjoyed a conference program which included 40 paper presentations selected by an international program committee of 38 experts–all past chairs and steering committee members who also developed an extraordinary roster of seven distinguished keynote speakers:

Anne-Claude Gavin - EMBL Heidelberg, Germany
David Haussler - University of California, Santa Cruz
Ajay K. Royyuru - IBM, T.J. Watson Research Center
David Sankoff - University of Ottawa, Canada
Michael S. Waterman - University of Southern California
Carl Zimmer - U.S. bestselling science writer
Roman A. Zubarev - Uppsala University, Sweden

In addition, two poster sessions on 200 displays showcased some of the best recent and on-going research in the field. The RECOMB conference series was founded in 1997 to provide a scientific forum for theoretical advances in computational biology and their applications in molecular biology and medicine. The conferences attracts research contributions in all areas of computational molecular biology, such as genomics, molecular sequence analysis, recognition of genes and regulatory elements, molecular evolution, protein structure, drug design, and computational proteomics.

Concettina Guerra, CoC Interactive and Intelligent Computing professor was honored to chair the special tenth anniversary of what is considered the flagship conference in computational biology. "The overwhelming success of this year's RECOMB was made possible by the contribution of many people, groups, and institutions," says Guerra. The College of Computing at Georgia Tech was among the prestigious list of international sponsors which included the National Science Foundation (NSF),the Department of Energy, IBM, the Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute, the Internaitonal Society for Computational Biology (ISCB), and Associazione Italiana per il Calcolo Automatico (AICA).

For more information on the 2006 RECOMB click here.

“I have spent my career trying to raise national awareness of information security issues through my various corporate and public policy positions,” said Schmidt. “By joining the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, one of our nation's most progressive and innovative academic environments for computing, I can now provide my vision and insight to those research and educational initiatives that will drive the future development of cyber security solutions for the everyday computer user.”

Schmidt's distinguished career as an information security advocate includes leadership positions with both public and private sector organizations. He has served on the President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board, was an augmented member of the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology and held executive positions with the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA), the Information Technology Information Sharing and Analysis Center (IT-ISAC), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Information Security Privacy Advisory Board (ISPAB). Schmidt also served as vice president and chief security strategist for eBay and chief security officer for Microsoft Corporation, forming and directing the computer giant's Trustworthy Computer Security Strategies Group.

“The College of Computing continuously seeks out industry experts and visionaries such as Howard Schmidt to take our faculty and students to greater heights in computing research,” said Richard A. DeMillo, dean of the College of Computing at Georgia Tech. “We are thrilled to be able to tap into Howard's expertise and apply it to the College of Computing's academic and research programs surrounding cyber security.”

GTISC, a National Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education, believes that research and education form the basis for developing effective solutions to safeguard personal digital information against current cyber security threats such as phishing, spoofing and identity. GTISC addresses these threats using an innovative and unique approach of “usable security” – the integration of usability and security research with the goal of empowering everyday users to better protect themselves and take charge of their online security and privacy.

About the College of Computing at Georgia Tech
The College of Computing at Georgia Tech is a national leader in the research and creation of real-world computing breakthroughs that drive social and scientific progress. With its graduate program ranked 12 th nationally by U.S. News and World Report, the College's unconventional approach to education is pioneering the new era of computing by expanding the horizons of traditional computer science students through interdisciplinary collaboration and a focus on human centered solutions. For more information about the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, its academic divisions and research centers, please visit www.cc.gatech.edu.

About Georgia Tech Information Security Center (GTISC)
The Georgia Tech Information Security Center, a National Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education, is an interdisciplinary center involving faculty from the College of Computing, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs and the School of Public Policy.

The four-year contract will support research in Game AI. This funding is part of a $25 million project on Generalized Integrated Learning Architectures (GILA), led by Lockheed Martin and involving several leading universities.

The 2005-2006 Undergraduate Awards included:

• Outstanding Freshman - Jeffrey David Starker II
• Outstanding Sophomore - Joshua Isaac Silver
• Outstanding Junior - Kathy Pham
• Outstanding Undergraduate - Robert Ian Fitzpatrick
• Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Assistant - Blake Patrick O’Hare
• Outstanding Undergraduate Research Assistant - Andrew Russell Guillory
• The Dave & Carrie Armento Scholarship - Joseph Chester Hardy
  Established to award an African-American computer science major who is a Georgia resident.
• The Bierne M. Prager Scholarship - James Richard Bailey
  Established to award an undergraduate student from Shelby County, Tennessee.

*Fifty-nine CoC undergraduate students qualify to graduate with honors this spring.

The 2005-2006 Graduate Awards included:

• Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant - Ryan Riegel
• Outstanding Graduate Research Assistant - Xiaotong Zhuang
• The Donald V. Jackson Fellowship - Mitchell Halpin
  This Fellowship supports the master’s program and is awarded to a well-rounded computer science student who best embodies values of academic excellence and leadership.
• The Marshall D. Williamson Fellowship - Summer Adams
  This Fellowship supports the master’s program and is awarded to a well-rounded student who best embodies values of academic excellence and leadership.

The 2005-2006 Research Awards included:

• Outstanding Junior Faculty Research - Jun (Jim) Xu
• Outstanding Senior Faculty Research Award - Dana Randall and Gregory Abowd
• The Raytheon Faculty Fellowship - Subhash Khot
  This Fellowship is an annual $20,000 seed grant designed to foster and encourage collaborative activities among CoC faculty members and to further promote a sense of community within the college.

The 2005-2006 Faculty Awards included:

• William A. “Gus” Baird Faculty Teaching Award - Charles Isbell
  This award is to honor a faculty member who is recognized by his or her peers for excellence in teaching.

• The Peter A. Freeman Faculty Award – Richard Fujimoto
  This award is presented annually to a member of the faculty who has demonstrated the entrepreneurial spirit for which the founding Dean, Peter A. Freeman, was known.

• The Dean’s Award – Mark Guzdial, Charles Isbell, and Tom Pilsch
  This award was given for their dedication and implementation of the Threads™ Program, CoC’s revolutionary approach to undergraduate education.

• Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Advisor Award – Mostafa Ammar
  This award is presented by the Georgia Institute of Technology to recognize the achievements of a faculty member’s doctoral students who completed all degree requirements from January 1, 2001, to December 31, 2005.

The 2005-2006 Staff Awards included:

• Outstanding Support and Service - LerVerne Davis (Accountant III), Ylonda Moore (Administrative Coordinator), and Becky Wilson (Academic Advisor I).

The 2005-2006 Corporate Awards included:

The College of Computing also recognized this year’s generous supporters which include:

The 2005-2006 Industrial Partner’s Association

AFLAC
Armedia, LLC
Auto Trader
Care Centric
Cisco Systems
Cox Interactive Media
Federated Department Stores, Inc.
Google
Harris Corporation
Intel Corporation
Internet Security Systems
Lockheed Martin
LSI Logic
Manheim Interactive
Mercury
Microsoft
Orasi
Patient Care Technologies, Inc.
Pixar
SAIC
SPI Dynamics
TCS America
Telcordia Technologies

The purpose of dorkbot-atl is to give artists, programmers, and engineers an opportunity for informal peer reviews; establish a forum for presenting new art work, technology, software, and hardware; help establish relationships; and foster collaborations between people with various backgrounds and interests.

“Dorkbot also gives us all a chance to see the cool things that our neighbors are working on,” says Freeman. “We are totally neutral with respect to style and aesthetics, so all that's required is an interest in using electricity creatively. Dorkbot is also a more casual academic forum as opposed to the more conventional versions--no PowerPoint slides or academic affiliation is necessary, yet lots of open discussion is encouraged.”

Dorkbot started in New York in 2000 by Douglas Irving Repetto, and has since spread to over 40 cities worldwide. Artists using sound, image, movement, etc.; designers; engineers; students; and anyone else interested in the creation of electronic art are invited to attend these monthly meetings held in Georgia Tech's Couch Building.

More Information:
Dorkbot Atlanta

More than 5,600 teams representing 1,733 universities from 84 countries on 6 continents participated in regional contests held last fall. Georgia Tech was one of the top 83 teams to qualify for positions at the 2006 ACM-ICPC World Finals championships. Charles, Chris, and James will be challenged to solve eight or more highly complex, real-world programming problems -- a semester's worth of curriculum -- under a grueling five-hour deadline. Programmers must tackle problems such as determining the best travel routes to minimize traffic and ensure cost-effectiveness, or developing a network strategy to determine the optimal placement of cell phone service towers to cover as many customers as possible. The team solving the most problems correctly in the least amount of time will emerge as ICPC champions, earning scholarships as well as awards from IBM.

IBM's sponsorship of the ACM-ICPC is an important component of the company's many academic initiatives, designed to stimulate open-source programming skills to develop a more competitive IT workforce capable of driving global innovation and economic growth. Contest participation has skyrocketed seven-fold since IBM began its sponsorship of the World Finals in 1997.

"This event offers collegiate programmers the opportunity to become familiar with Java, Linux, Eclipse and other open computing platforms being adopted by industries around the world," said Doug Heintzman, a Director of Strategy at IBM Software Group, and Sponsorship Executive of the ICPC. "Open source and open standards are driving the next great innovations in the industry, and this Contest challenges students who will be responsible for that innovation for decades to come."

As part of IBM's continuing commitment to IT education, the company provides academic institutions with free technology and software, as well as consulting on how to keep curricula current with the ever-changing industry.

"The ICPC World Finals is a wonderful platform for generating awareness of computing and problem-solving in our high tech world," said Dr. Bill Poucher, ICPC Executive Director and Baylor University Professor. "Through IBM's sponsorship and generous support, students have an opportunity to investigate and experience new technologies in the world of programming, resulting in the emergence of stronger, more gifted superstars. The World Finals helps us to shine the spotlight on these future IT leaders." The ICPC has been headquartered at Baylor's main campus in Waco, Texas, since 1989.

In 2006, 22 North American teams, including 17 from the U.S., will compete in the World Finals, along with 3 teams from Africa/Middle East, 7 from Latin America, 22 from Europe and Russia, and 29 from the Asia/South Pacific region. CoC students from Georgia Tech were also among the April 2005 ACM-ICPC World Finals which took place in Shanghai, China.

The 2006 ACM-ICPC World Finals, sponsored by IBM, is being held at the Hilton Palacio del Rio in San Antonio, Texas. For more information, visit the contest Web site.

For a complete schedule of regional contests worldwide, click here.

About the Georgia Tech ACM Student Chapter

Founded in 1947, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) promotes and increases knowledge of science, design, development, construction, languages and applications of modern computing. The ACM is the society for computing professionals. The Georgia Tech Student Chapter (GTACM) is the primary student organization for computer science majors. Activities include organized corporate and faculty presentations and other events, which benefit both undergraduate and graduate students. GTACM also provides an avenue for students to develop corporate leadership skills.

About ACM

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a major force in advancing the skills of information technology professionals and students. ACM serves its global membership of 75,000 by delivering cutting edge technical information and transferring ideas from theory to practice. ACM hosts the computing industry's leading Portal to Computing Literature. With its journals and magazines, special interest groups, conferences, workshops, electronic forums and Career Resource Centre, ACM is a primary resource to the information technology field. For more information, see http://www.acm.org/.

ATLANTA, February 1, 2006 – The College of Computing at Georgia Tech (CoC), Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and UT-Battelle today announced a wide-ranging collaborative agreement to share facilities, staff and scientific resources aimed at significantly increasing the United States' capability to carry out large-scale research efforts reliant on advanced supercomputing technology. This unique, public-private collaboration will position the Southeastern United States as a national destination for high-performance computing research and development.

"The College of Computing at Georgia Tech was created to make it easier to partner with leading research centers and academic institutions and to elevate computer science research and education on a national and global scale" said Richard A. DeMillo, Dean of the College of Computing at Georgia Tech. "We firmly believe that this partnership with ORNL and UT-Battelle will create a one-of-a-kind environment for high-performance computing research and help reinvigorate U.S. capabilities in supercomputing"

As part of the agreement, Dr. Thomas Zacharia , Associate Laboratory Director for ORNL's Computing and Computational Sciences Directorate, will be appointed as a Professor in Georgia Tech's College of Computing, a national leader in education and research that creates real-world computing breakthroughs to drive social and scientific progress. Subsequent joint appointments of faculty and staff, as well as an ongoing distribution of research students and computing resources, will follow in the coming months. In addition, with support from UT-Battelle, the non-profit partnership between the University of Tennessee and Battelle charged with managing ORNL operations, CoC's Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) Division will open a campus at ORNL dedicated to advanced computational science and engineering research and graduate education.

"This agreement represents a milestone for Oak Ridge National Laboratory," said Director Jeff Wadsworth. "This creative partnership will bring closer together the extraordinary computational capabilities of both Georgia Tech and ORNL. Together, the partnership will represent one of the world's greatest resources for high-performance computing."

"The CoC-ORNL-UT-Battelle partnership will further the development of various scientific breakthroughs that are heavily-dependant on access to the highest levels of computational resources in the nation. For example, Jeffrey Skolnick, Ph.D., a renowned systems biologist at Georgia Tech, is leading a research team in integrating mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology with advanced, high-performance computing and engineering in order to harness the vast information growing out of the sequencing of the human genome and apply it to the detection and prevention of diseases through accelerated drug design and medicine. Additionally, researchers in the School of Physics at Georgia Tech are employing high-level, computer-based, nanoscale simulations to discover new technologies that can be used to store massive amounts of information in a compact space. These two projects, among others, highlight the partnership's ability to leverage advanced supercomputing resources to foster the development of new technologies with broad impacts on daily life.

About the College of Computing at Georgia Tech
The College of Computing at Georgia Tech is a national leader in the research and creation of real-world computing breakthroughs that drive social and scientific progress. With one of the largest and most highly ranked graduate programs in the nation, the College's unconventional approach to education is pioneering the new era of computing by expanding the horizons of traditional computer science students through interdisciplinary collaboration and a focus on human centered solutions. For more information about the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, its academic divisions and research centers, please visit www.cc.gatech.edu .
 

About ORNL
Oak Ridge National Laboratory is the Department of Energy's largest multi-purpose laboratory. With 4,100 employees, ORNL has research capabilities in energy, high-performance computing, advanced materials, biological sciences, neutron science, and national security. ORNL is home to the National Leadership Computing Facility, where researchers are building the world's most powerful open scientific computer. Later this year ORNL will celebrate the opening of the $1.4 billion Spallation Neutron Source, which will provide the world's foremost facility for materials research.
 

About UT-Battelle
A not-for-profit company, known as UT-Battelle, has been established for the sole purpose of managing and operating the Oak Ridge National Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy. Formed as a 50-50 limited liability partnership between the University of Tennessee and Battelle , UT -Battelle is the legal entity responsible for leading ORNL as the Laboratory enters the 21st Century.

In addition to bringing RoboCup to Georgia Tech, Tucker Balch was instrumental in establishing the College of Computing's unprecedented Robotics Doctoral Program. CoC has further solidified its position as a national academic leader in robotics with the recent appointment of international expert Dr. Henrik Christensen as KUKA Chair of Robotics. Christensen’s position is endowed by a $1.5 million grant from KUKA Robotics, the North American subsidiary of KUKA Roboter GmbH and a global leader in robot manufacturing.

KUKA and Lockheed Martin are U.S Open sponsors of RoboCup, an international project designed to promote research in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, computational perception and related fields. The goal is to foster AI and intelligent robotics research by providing a set of standard problems where a wide range of technologies, including perception, planning, cooperation, and action must be integrated and examined.

2006 KUKA RoboCup Schedule:
April 20 – venue opens for the teams at 12 noon
April 21 - competition begins 8:30AM - 6PM
April 22 – round-robin competitions and quarter finals from 8:30AM – 5PM
April 23 – semi-finals and finals 8:30AM – Noon; finals 1PM – 4PM

For more details about this year's RoboCup including participants and updated schedule, click here.

About KUKA Robotics
KUKA Robotics Corporation, with its parent company KUKA Roboter GmbH, Augsburg, Germany, is one of the world's leading manufacturers of industrial robots, with an annual production volume approaching 10,000 units, and an installed base of over 60,000 units.  The company’s 5 and 6 axis robots range from 3kg to 570kg payloads, and 635mm to 3700mm reach, all controlled from a common PC based controller platform. KUKA robots are utilized in a diverse range of industries including the appliance, automotive, aerospace, consumer goods, logistics, food, pharmaceutical, medical, foundry and plastics industries. KUKA robots are found in a multitude of applications including: material handling, machine loading, assembly, packaging, palletizing, welding, bending, joining, and surface finishing.

ATLANTA (February 13, 2006) -- Georgia Tech presents the second annual Living Game Worlds Symposium on Thursday, February 16 featuring digital media experts from industry and academia including a key note address by Will Wright, original designer of the two best-selling computer games SimCity and The Sims. Living Game Worlds 2006 focuses on digital media including interactive design, games, digital art, mobile technologies and more. The theme of this year’s symposium is “Design Processes and the Future of Expressive Computing.”

“At Georgia Tech we teach digital design at the graduate and undergraduate level and are preparing our students to be innovators in the digital revolution,” says Janet Murray, professor and director of the graduate Program in Digital Media in Tech’s School of Literature, Communication and Culture. “We are pleased to bring together some of the leaders in industry and academia to discuss the challenges facing the field.”

“Georgia Tech is at the cutting edge of innovation in multimedia, gaming and interactive technologies,” says Elizabeth Mynatt, associate professor in the College of Computing and director of the GVU Center at Georgia Tech. “The Living Game Worlds symposium offers a multidisciplinary look at these converging technologies.”

Georgia Tech’s Digital Media Graduate Program in the School of Literature, Communication and Culture and the GVU Center in the College of Computing at Georgia Tech have organized Living Game Worlds 2006 as a follow up to last year’s successful inaugural event initiated by Georgia Tech’s Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts and the School of Literature, Communication and Culture celebrating the tenth anniversary of digital media degree programs at Georgia Tech.

Living Game Worlds 2006 also includes a keynote by three-time Emmy winner Dale Herigstad, who has more than a decade of experience in interactive television and broadband environments.  Panel discussions will feature experts from industry and academia discussing issues in digital media including design process, interactive design, games, digital art, mixed reality and convergence. The day closes with demos and exhibits.  The detailed agenda is available online at http://gameworlds.gatech.edu/.

Participants include:
* Will Wright, co-founder of Maxis and the original designer of the two best-selling computer games SimCity and The Sims. In 2005 he received the Ivan Allen Jr. Prize for Progress and Service from Georgia Tech’s Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.
* Dale Herigstad, creative director of Schematic and three time Emmy winner, has 25 years experience as a graphic designer in television and over a decade of experience in interactive television and broadband environments.
* Christopher Klaus, founder and CEO of Kaneva Inc., a digital entertainment marketplace where people can watch, play, create and self-publish films and games. Klaus is also founder and chief security advisor of Internet Security Systems (ISS) headquartered in Atlanta.
* Raph Koster, chief creative officer at Sony Online Entertainment, builds massively multi-player online worlds, including Star Wars Galaxies, an online version of the Star Wars universe.
* Karen Lennon is president/CEO, Beyond Z Interactive Media, a leading iTV development company. With over 15 years experience in new media, marketing and management, Lennon launched her Emmy Award winning iTV company in 2000.
* Michael Mateas, assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Literature, Communication and Culture and College of Computing, recently won the Grand Jury Prize for Façade at the Slamdance Guerilla Gamemaker Competition at the independent Slamdance 2006 Film Festival.
* Rick Sanchez, vice president for content for GameTap, Turner Broadcasting's first-of-its-kind broadband games and entertainment network, which launched to consumers last October.
* And more…

About the Digital Media Graduate Program
The Georgia Tech Digital Media Graduate Program in the School of Literature, Communication and Culture (LCC) in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at Georgia Tech provides both the theoretical and the practical foundation for careers as digital media researchers and designers in academia and industry. The advent of a new medium of human communication and representation is a significant event in human social and cultural history, and introduces the possibility of new genres of artistic expression as well as new forms of information and knowledge transmission. The study of these new forms—from the point of view of the creators and the analysts—is an emerging field, one that requires a convergence of the methodologies of several traditional disciplines, and one that is also defining its own methodologies of research and practice. idt.gatech.edu

About the GVU Center
The GVU (Graphics, Visualization and Usability) Center is a university-wide, interdisciplinary research center that spans the Georgia Tech campus and includes many outside collaborators. Its faculty and students are drawn from disciplines in science, engineering, the humanities and design. The Center enables collaborative research that is often difficult to achieve in traditional academic and industrial settings. The unique combinations of research interests and expertise are the catalyst for significant insights into the rapidly evolving landscape of people and computation. The GVU Center conducts research in crucial areas of human experiences with computing including health care, education, work and home life, and entertainment. The Center consistently leads the forefront of research in fields such as human-computer interaction, ubiquitous computing, mixed and augmented reality, animation and graphics, wearable computing, information visualization, educational technologies, new media and communications, intelligent systems and robotics. www.gvu.gatech.edu

"With Façade we really wanted to open up a whole new genre of interactive entertainment experience. Traditionally games have focused on physical movement - running, jumping, shooting - in fantasy or science fiction environments. In contrast, Façade focuses on social interaction with human characters. Games are the cinema of the 21st century, and are capable of commenting on the full range of human experience. But fundamental artificial intelligence and design research are necessary to enable games to move beyond action/adventure scenarios. Façade takes a big step in this direction.” Façade is shaped as a visit to a quarreling couple, where the player finds herself involved in the breakdown of their marriage. Whether and how their marriage ends, and how they feel about you, depends on how you interact with them. Advance artificial intelligence techniques are used to control the autonomous characters, to manage the dynamic plot arc, and to understand the player’s natural language conversation with the characters.

Façade is available for free download, currently only for PCs, but with a Mac port coming soon. Mateas is now working with Blair MacIntyre within Georgia Tech’s GVU Center to have Façade ported into an augmented reality experience in which viewers can physically walk through Trip and Grace’s apartment and carry on a conversation with the couple. The computer animated characters are superimposed on the real world, using an augmented reality headset. "We’re trying to get as close as we can to the Star Trek Holodeck", says Mateas.

Mateas directs the Experimental Game Lab (EGL) at Georgia Tech, where he and other faculty push the limits of game design and technology. Within the EGL, Mateas continues to develop advanced AI for interactive entertainment, including AI techniques for interactive story, advanced autonomous characters, and for games which dynamically change and morph depending on how the player plays them. Besides entertainment applications, such technologies have huge implications for future education and training simulations. "Imagine historical simulations where you can talk to famous people from the past, organizational simulations for management training that include office politics and face-to-face people skills, healthcare simulations that allow doctors to practice bedside manner. Façade was only the first step.”

About Slamdance

Started in 1995 by a group of upstart filmmakers, Slamdance Film Festival is a year-round organization dedicated to emerging artists and their vision. Slamdance has established a unique reputation for premiering independent films by first-time directors working with limited budgets. At the same time, the Festival has stayed true to its roots by being organized and programmed by active filmmakers. In 2004, Slamdance launched a teleplay competition in conjunction with fox21, a Games Competition, and the Slamdance Media Group; a company comprised of distribution and talent-management units.

The event was held in Washington, DC, on May 17-18, 2006 and jointly organized by NSF's Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences and Directorate of Engineering. The goal of the workshop was to help NSF launch a new strategic program called "The Science of Science Policy," which includes research on innovation as a major component.

Ashok Goel gave a talk titled "Exploring Design Innovation: The AI Method and Some Results, while Nancy Nersessian gave a talk titled "Interdisciplinarity on the Benchtop: Model-Based Reasoning in Bio-Science and Engineering Research Laboratories."

For more information about Ashok Goel's research, click here.

For more information about Nancy Nersessian's research, click here.

For more information about the WSC Conference, click here.

Over the past 5 years, WebChallenge has awarded over $100,000 in scholarships to students from across the state. SAP, HP, Microsoft and BellSouth were among last year’s sponsors of WebChallenge 2005, which enabled 63 high school teams from 37 schools and 19 counties to learn Web programming, graphic design and Web marketing by creating a Web site for a nonprofit called the Children Restoration Project.

WebChallenge is an annual community service event put on by the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) Foundation. This year, student teams from high schools across Georgia competed for scholarships by designing and implementing an interactive community Web site for their school or a school organization. Fifteen impressive Web sites were submitted to the competition and judged by Atlanta's business and business media communities in the categories of Best Graphic Design, Best Site Navigation, Best Interactive Features and Best Concept.

WebChallenge is an excellent opportunity for helping the teenagers of today grow and expand their capabilities to be the leaders of tomorrow. The event has grown from an outreach program in the metro Atlanta area to a statewide program that is one of the largest high school Web design contests in the country.

For more information about WebChallenge 2006, click here.

JUDGES' AWARDS

First Place: Steven Dalton

"Validation of PFTK Equation in Large TCP Transfers"
Advisor: George Riley

Second Place: Arwa Tybekhan
"Object Location of the Visually Impaired"
Advisors: Julie Kientz, Shwetak Patel, and Gregory Abowd

Third Place: Sashmit Bhaduri
"Using Genetic Algorithms to Optimize Generalized Correlation Branch Predictors"
Advisor: Gabriel Loh

"Lone Sorcerer: An American Sign Language Driven Quest"
Advisors: Helene Brashear, Harley Hamilton, and Thad Starner

Second Place: Arwa Tybekhan
"Object Location of the Visually Impaired"
Advisors: Julie Kientz, Shwetak Patel, and Gregory Abowd

Third Place: Richard Bailey and Sebastian Becerra
"Prototyping Location-Based Services"
Advisor: Keith Edwards

ATLANTA, April 21, 2006 – The College of Computing at Georgia Tech, a national leader in the research and creation of real-world computing breakthroughs that drive social and scientific progress, today announced that it has been selected to host the prestigious RoboCup 2007, the most significant robotic competition in the world.  Chosen because of its distinguished robotics program and its appealing location in Atlanta, Georgia Tech’s College of Computing will open its doors to more than 2,000 high school and university students, faculty and staff from around the world for RoboCup 2007 Atlanta July 1-10, 2007.

College of Computing (CoC) Associate Professor Tucker Balch announced the big win for the College of Computing this morning at the kickoff of the 2006 KUKA RoboCup U.S. Open, the top robotics competition in the U.S.  In addition to serving as chair for the 2006 KUKA RoboCup U.S. Open Balch will also chair RoboCup 2007 Atlanta.

“Georgia Tech is emerging as a leader in robotics,” said Balch. “We are very pleased to host some of the world’s foremost robot researchers on our campus. This is a great opportunity to share with Atlanta the latest advances in robotics as well as to showcase our city and campus to researchers world-wide.”

Past host cities for the international tournament pitting custom-built robots and their designers against their peers from around the world in a series of competitions include Paris, Lisbon, Osaka, Japan and Seattle. Lockheed Martin, a sponsor of the 2006 KUKA RoboCup U.S. Open, also today announced plans to sponsor RoboCup 2007 Atlanta.

This year’s 2006 KUKA RoboCup U.S. Open at the College of Computing at Georgia Tech runs from April 20-23. The public is invited to attend as teams from the United States, Germany, Mexico and Canada put their robots to work competing in realistic search-and-rescue demonstrations, as well as four-legged and humanoid soccer games.

2006 KUKA RoboCup Schedule:
April 20 – venue opens for the teams at 12 noon
April 21 – competition begins 8:30AM - 6PM
April 22 – round-robin competitions and quarter finals from 8:30AM – 5PM
April 23 – semi-finals and finals 8:30AM – Noon; finals 1PM – 4PM

About the RoboCup
RoboCup is an international research and education initiative. Its goal is to foster artificial intelligence and robotics research by providing a standard problem where a wide range of technologies can be examined and integrated. The concept of soccer-playing robots was first introduced in 1993. Following a two-year feasibility study, in August 1995, an announcement was made on the introduction of the first international conferences and soccer games. In July 1997, the first official conference and games were held in Nagoya, Japan. Followed by Paris, Stockholm, Melbourne, Seattle and Fukuoka/Busan, the annual events attracted many participants and spectators. This year, the 10th anniversary of RoboCup, the competition and symposium is being held in Bremen, Germany.

For more details about this year's RoboCup including participants and updated schedule, visit http://www.robocup-us.org/. To learn more about RoboCup 2006 Bremen, Germany visit http://www.robocup2006.org/.

About the College of Computing at Georgia Tech
The College of Computing at Georgia Tech is a national leader in the creation of real-world computing breakthroughs that drive social and scientific progress. With its graduate program ranked 11th nationally by U.S. News and World Report, the College’s unconventional approach to education is pioneering the new era of computing by expanding the horizons of traditional computer science students through interdisciplinary collaboration and a focus on human centered solutions. For more information about the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, its academic divisions and research centers, please visit www.cc.gatech.edu.

About KUKA Robotics
KUKA Robotics Corporation, with its parent company KUKA Roboter GmbH, Augsburg, Germany, is one of the world's leading manufacturers of industrial robots, with an annual production volume approaching 10,000 units, and an installed base of over 60,000 units.  The company’s 5 and 6 axis robots range from 3kg to 570kg payloads, and 635mm to 3700mm reach, all controlled from a common PC based controller platform. KUKA robots are utilized in a diverse range of industries including the appliance, automotive, aerospace, consumer goods, logistics, food, pharmaceutical, medical, foundry and plastics industries. KUKA robots are found in a multitude of applications including: material handling, machine loading, assembly, packaging, palletizing, welding, bending, joining, and surface finishing. For more information contact KUKA Robotics at 866-873-5852 or visit their website at www.kukarobotics.com.

For more information contact:
Stefany Wilson
404.894.7253
stefany@cc.gatech.edu
www.cc.gatech.edu

O'Hara says he is interested in distributed computing systems that sense and effect the real world. His current research involves systems of mobile robots and sensor networks which "falls at the intersection of intelligent systems and robotics research and software systems research." O'Hara works with Assistant Professor Tucker Balch and Professor Karsten Schwan who is also director of the Center for Experimental Research in Computer Systems (CERCS).

The Intel Corporation is one of the key technology companies in the nation and has maintained a strong relationship with the College of Computing at Georgia Tech and CERCS research center. Collaborations were further strengthened with this Ph.D. student fellowship award, as well as the curriculum and equipment grants and research awards CERCS research faculty have received for multi-core instruction this year.

"The awards are not only indications of the College's increasingly strong collaboration with Intel Corporation," says Schwan, "but they also demonstrate the fact that Georgia Tech is one of the largest suppliers of technical talent."

O'Hara's fellowship is renewable for up to two years pending a review by the Intel Foundation.

Nersessian is also recognized for her penetrating cognitive-historical analysis of the transition from classical to modern physics in the late 19th and early 20th century, a period during which Dutch physicists such as Lorentz, Zeeman, Van der Waals and Kamerlingh Onnes—all of them Nobel laureates—played a formidable role.

The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and sciences was established in 1808 and presently comprises a total of 200 active ordinary members, as well as approximately 250 emeritus members, 70 corresponding members and 140 foreign members. Among the latter, are such renowned scientists as computer scientist Fredrick Brooks (North Carolina), physiologist Colin Blakemore (Oxford), astronomer Martin Rees (Cambridge), anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (Paris), psychologist George Miller (Princeton), psycholinguist Eve Clark (Stanford) and philosopher of science Bas van Fraassen (Princeton).

For more information about the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, click here. (English translation tab is at top-right)

The new collaboration will help advance the company’s goal of “education through simulation,” a concept it believes will transform education and training by helping students better visualize the operation of complex systems. As part of its intended collaboration with Georgia Tech, GSE wants to advance its understanding of cognitive factors involved in decision-making processes, and develop new visualization tools and diagnostic techniques. The company expects to work with Georgia Tech’s College of Computing, the Strategic Energy Institute, the National Electric Energy Testing Research and Applications Center (NEETRAC) and the Global Learning Center.

“As today’s technical staff retires, the electric power generation industry faces a critical human resources issue of how to provide the skilled personnel needed to operate and maintain increasingly complex facilities,” said Hal Paris, senior vice president of GSE. “The industry also needs personnel who can become productive quickly, without a long training period. We think that education through simulation offers a real opportunity address these issues.”

John Moran, the company’s chief executive officer, said GSE sees the collaboration as a win-win opportunity that benefits both organizations. “What impressed me at Georgia Tech is the outstanding level of innovation and creativity,” Moran said. “Georgia Tech thinks differently about simulation and its applications. That has enormous implications for companies like ours, and creates a force multiplier for both of our organizations.”

Beyond collaboration in the development of new technology and approaches to education and training, the company also wants to attract Georgia Tech students to the industry sectors it serves by providing internships and cooperative education opportunities at its simulation training centers currently underway or planned. At a recent ceremony, company representatives were welcomed by four Georgia Tech officials: Wayne Hodges, vice provost in the Enterprise Innovation Institute; Jilda Garton, associate vice provost and president of the Georgia Tech Research Corporation; Thom McLean, director of technology services in the College of Computing, and Roger Webb, interim director of the Strategic Energy Institute.

“This project involves an array of activities across campus from research to academics, and from training to the development of Georgia Tech students in co-op programs,” said Hodges. “Georgia Tech helps enterprises be more innovative in solving problems using science and technology.  We are particularly interested in connecting companies to Georgia Tech resources so we can work together to create new opportunities and new products.” The collaboration will complement what the College of Computing is already doing to transform interdisciplinary computer science education, McLean explained.

“GSE is a world leader in simulation and the company has decades of experience applying that technology to meet the training and education needs of large-scale industrial facilities,” he said. “We look forward to helping GSE Systems transform the way people are prepared to manage and operate the world’s industrial infrastructure. This collaboration offers our students an opportunity to understand real-world issues, develop an international perspective, and to play a role in creating the next generation of simulation, training and worker assistance technology.” McLean also announced that GSE will become the newest member of the College’s Industrial Partner Association.

Roger Webb, interim director of the Strategic Energy Institute, noted that the energy industry must address significant human resource needs in the years ahead.  “One of the major challenges in the energy business is developing the next generation of workers,” he said. “That goes beyond existing infrastructure and energy supply issues.”

GSE Systems is expanding into the Middle East, and recently won a contract from the Emirates Simulation Academy, LLC. to develop a simulation training center in the United Arab Emirates. The facility will include real-time, high fidelity simulators for a gas turbine power plant, a desalination plant, a combined cycle plant, a petroleum refinery and an oil platform. A similar concept is being finalized with the University of Strathclyde for a simulation training and diagnostic center in the United Kingdom.

GSE Systems is a real-time simulation company with more than three decades of experience, more than 250 applications and 100 customers in more than 25 countries. GSE’s software, hardware and integrated solutions provide applications to the energy, process, manufacturing and government sectors worldwide.  The company is headquartered in Columbia, MD.

ATLANTA (June 13, 2006) – The College of Computing and College of Engineering at Georgia Tech today announced the establishment of the Robotics and Intelligent Machines center (RIM@Georgia Tech), a new interdisciplinary research center that will draw on the strengths and knowledge of robotics experts from both colleges. According to robotics industry associations in North America and Japan, the global robotics market is expected to significantly expand over the next five years, including gains in both the service and personal robotics fields. Leveraging the strengths of the College of Computing and the College of Engineering, and with support from the Georgia Tech Research Institute and the Office of Research, RIM@Georgia Tech will make a significant and immediate impact on growth and innovation within this burgeoning industry.

“RIM@Georgia Tech will serve as the flagship for Georgia Tech’s robotics efforts, coordinating the university’s capabilities in this field under one roof and facilitating the transfer of research results to the industry,” said Dr. Henrik Christensen, KUKA Chair of Robotics and distinguished professor in the College of Computing, who will direct the new research center. “This new center allows Georgia Tech to maximize its established relationships with industry leaders and its strengths in interactive and intelligent computing, control, and mechanical engineering.”

With a focus on personal and everyday robotics, as well as the future of automation, faculty involved with RIM@Georgia Tech will develop both undergraduate and doctoral degree programs tailored to best enable students to understand and drive the future role of robotics in society and industry.

“The College of Computing identified robotics as one of our critical areas for educational growth and further research development,” says Richard A. DeMillo, John P. Imlay, Jr. Dean of the College of Computing. “With Henrik’s leadership and the establishment of RIM@Georgia Tech, we’re well on our way to achieving eminence as a true leader in this growing field.”

Currently, Georgia Tech boasts 31 faculty members involved in robotics research, 15 robotics-related laboratories and approximately 44 courses in robotics. The center is expected to grow significantly over the next few years.

“Georgia Tech has a strong capacity and a rich history in the field of robotics, and we’ve just scratched the surface in this high-growth market,” said Dr. Charles L. Liotta, vice provost for research and dean of graduate studies at Georgia Tech. “Through shared resources and a growing synergy among Georgia Tech faculty in this field, the possibilities for breakthroughs in robotics are limitless.”

Under the direction of Dr. Christensen, a global leader in robotics research and innovation, RIM@Georgia Tech will be positioned as a national leader in the research and development of tomorrow’s cutting-edge robotics breakthroughs. As one of the center’s first projects, researchers from RIM@Georgia Tech will enter the 2007 DARPA Grand Challenge, a United States government-sponsored competition that will feature autonomous ground vehicles executing simulated military supply missions safely and effectively in a mock urban area.The 2007 Grand Challenge is part of the annual robotics Grand Challenge series that began in 2004 and is sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the U.S. Department of Defense.

“Academic and research excellence is the focus of this new center; but developing technologies that can be adopted by industry and applied to the real-world will be a top priority,” said Dr. Don Giddens, dean of the College of Engineering at Georgia Tech. “RIM@Georgia Tech will follow the Institute’s model of bringing technology from the lab to the market.”

About the College of Computing at Georgia Tech
The College of Computing at Georgia Tech is a national leader in the creation of real-world computing breakthroughs that drive social and scientific progress. With its graduate program ranked 11th nationally by U.S. News and World Report, the College’s unconventional approach to education is defining the new face of computing by expanding the horizons of traditional computer science students through interdisciplinary collaboration and a focus on human centered solutions. For more information about the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, its academic divisions and research centers, please visit www.cc.gatech.edu.

About the College of Engineering at Georgia Tech
The College of Engineering at Georgia Tech is the largest engineering program in the U.S. and ranked 4th among the country’s best graduate programs by U.S. News and World Report. A respected leader in interdisciplinary research and education, the College of Engineering grants the highest number of engineering degrees in the nation across nine fields of study. For more information about the programs in the College of Engineering, please visit www.coe.gatech.edu.

For more information, contact:

Stefany Wilson
College of Computing at Georgia Tech
404.894.7253
stefany@cc.gatech.edu
www.cc.gatech.edu

The National Science Foundation's (NSF) Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) and Future Internet Design (FIND) initiatives have exhorted the networking research community to develop new Internet protocols and architectures that provide better performance, security and manageability than the current infrastructure offers. In the spirit of GENI's goals, VINI offers network researchers a platform to test future Internet protocols and architectures in a realistic setting that also gives researchers the ability to control network conditions.

"VINI allows network researchers to do things like tweak router configurations and inject link and router failures," says Feamster. "These types of disruptive operations are necessary for evaluating new network architectures, but they cannot be performed on production networks." In other words, VINI offers network researchers the first opportunity to design and run experiments in an environment that looks and feels like the real Internet. VINI currently allows researchers to establish virtual networks with software routers and virtual links between these routers on the PlanetLab testbed, a network of machines distributed across hundreds of sites around the world.

Collaborating with researchers from Princeton University, Feamster has used VINI to recreate the routing environment of the Abilene network-the U.S. part of "Internet2," in a virtual environment running on PlanetLab. The VINI project will ultimately offer network researchers dedicated hardware, upstream connectivity to ISPs and the ability to test the performance of new network protocols and architectures with real network traffic. Feamster and the other VINI researchers: Jennifer Rexford, Larry Peterson, Andy Bavier and Mark Huang, are in the process of opening the infrastructure to the research community.

A paper describing the VINI design and implementation was recently accepted for the proceedings at this year's ACM SIGCOMM conference, the premier annual conference in computer networking. "In VINI Veritas: Realistic and Controlled Network Experimentation" is Feamster's second paper accepted by SIGCOMM 2006, and the preliminary version can be viewed by clicking here.

For more information about ACM's SIGCOMM 2006 Conference, click here.

IPDPS celebrated its 20th year and is considered the premier academic conference in the areas of parallel and distributed computing. Not only did David serve as a program vice-chair for the Applications Track, he also chairs the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' (IEEE) Technical Committee on Parallel Processing, which sponsors IPDPS. This year's symposium had over 550 attendees and included 125 peer-reviewed papers, four keynotes and over 20 workshops. Being highly regarded by the professional community as the annual meeting for top research results in the field, IPDPS 2006 had strong international participation with approximately equal attendance from the U.S., Europe and Asia.

For more information about IPDPS 2006, click here.

“One of the fastest-growing and most damaging information security breaches involves the loss or theft of personal information over the Internet, and the fraudulent uses of that infromation by unauthorized individuals or groups,” said Dr. Mustaque Ahamad, director of GTISC. “At the Identity Management Summit, GTISC assmembled leaders from the corporate and academic worlds to raise awareness about current and future issues affecting online identity management and discuss ways to better protect the personal information of consumer and enterprise Internet users. We wish to thank the speakers for participating in the Summit and sharing their expertise with our audience.”

More than 200 corporate executives, industry leaders and technologists from across the country attended the Identity Management Summit, keynoted by Howard A. Schmidt, a visiting professor at GTISC and former Special Advisor to the White House for Cyberspace Security. Schmidt’s keynote address focused on starting a national dialogue on the next generation of identity management in order to better protect businesses and consumers from the loss or theft of personal information over the Internet.

“I have spent the majority of my career working with the government and corporate sectors to find a balanced approach to sharing the responsibility of online security between business and government,” said Schmidt. “The corporate, government and academic leaders of the information security industry must band together and arm all Internet users with the necessary tools to protect their online identity. Otherwise, the trust that users have in the online experience will erode.”

Following Schmidt’s address, representatives from Authis, Bank of America, Equifax, Georgia Tech College of Computing, RSA Security and Siemens participated in a panel to educate the audience on the state of identity management. Moderated by Dr. Paul Judge, chief technology officer from CipherTrust, the panelists debated existing problems and shortcomings of current identity management systems and discussed future deployments, solutions and technologies designed to safeguard online identification information from vulnerabilities and attacks.

“Raising awareness of the challenges and opportunities presented by online identity management is a key first step in confronting the problem and finding solutions,” said Judge. “We applaud GTISC and the other organizations represented here today on their continued commitment to ensuring the safety and security of the online experience.”

For more information about the Identity Management Summit and GTISC, click here. To watch a pre-recorded Web cast of the event, click here.
 
About Georgia Tech Information Security Center (GTISC)
The Georgia Tech Information Security Center, a National Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education, is an interdisciplinary center involving faculty from the College of Computing, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs and the School of Public Policy.

For more information, contact:
Brendan Streich
GCI Group
404-870-6796
bstreich@gcigroup.com

CHI 2006 is one of the most prestigious conferences in the area of Human Computer Interaction, and brings together international researchers and practitioners interested in designing computer technologies that are meaningful and easy for people to use. The student design competition is a major component of the conference and an opportunity for students to show how they would take a problem like this year's brief on fitness and wellbeing, and then produce a computer solution that helps people live a healthier lifestyle.

Utilizing a user-centered design process, Chetty, Grimes and Harmon created and evaluated a system called FotoFit to encourage college students to develop and maintain healthy habits. FotoFit leverages the medium of photography to provide student users with a visual overview of their diet and exercise routines. Using their cameraphone, students take pictures of the foods they eat and the activites they perform to then reflect on this information with a PC visualization component. For example, they can track their activities at the gym with equipment that sends SMS workout summaries to their cellphones. The FotoFit project was originally done as part of College of Computing Associate Professor Gregory Abowd’s CS 6750 class, and was then submitted to the CHI student design competition.

Chetty, Grimes and Harmon came in second out of the 48 submissions that were reviewed by a panel of experts from three continents. "This recognition speaks volumes about their human-centered design," says Beki Grinter, College of Computing associate professor and student advisor to this project. "It's an outstanding accomplishment in a very high profile setting."

For more information about the CHI 2006 conference, click here.

Craig Tovey, College of Computing professor within the Computing Science and Systems (CSS) division, along with Postdoctoral Fellow Sunil Nakrani recently had their research on the honeybee algorithm for web host server allocation featured in George Szpiro's book The Secret Life of Numbers: 50 Easy Pieces on How Mathematicians Work and Think. "We learn about natural systems and we learn from natural systems," says Tovey, "and this research has some of both."
 
To view the chapter of Szpiro's book featuring Craig Tovey and Sunil Nakrani's research, click here.

Dr. Menon will spearhead the Technical Advisory Board to further expand the company’s technology leadership position in the IPTV middleware applications and video server space. “The industry is seeing a rapidly growing demand for MPEG-4-based Triple Play IPTV services from global Telecom Service Providers and Cable Operators,” said Menon. “I look forward to continuing to drive the vision for Kasenna’s technology development to build future generations of advanced video entertainment applications that will offer broadband carriers revolutionary and innovative ways to generate revenue.”

“The Broadband Service Provider market is experiencing a dramatic shift toward the delivery of advanced television and video entertainment services across all global regions,” said Mark Gray, chairman and chief executive officer of Kasenna. “I’m very pleased that Kasenna has assembled such a strong Board of Directors. With Satish heading up our Technical Advisory Board, Kasenna is poised to continue delivering the leading-edge IPTV applications, content and services that have made us a valued partner to major service providers across the globe.”

As one of the industry's highly regarded technologists, Satish Menon has a track record of technical innovation and a long history with broadband media technologies. He pioneered IPTV and VOD server and distribution technologies and holds three patents with several pending. In January 2000, Menon engineered the spin-off of SGI's Broadband Media Division as a separate venture-funded software company. In his role as CTO at Kasenna, he oversaw the technology evolution of the company's ubiquitous video delivery platform and Kasenna’s PortalTV IPTV solution.

Prior to the formation of Kasenna, Menon was the Director of Engineering of SGI's Software Technology Group. He is a co-founder of Kasenna and a former board member of the Internet Streaming Media Alliance. Satish Menon earned his doctorate in computer science from the College of Computing at Georgia Tech. His appointment to Kasenna’s Board of Directors follow a successful year of major growth and customer wins, and a recently completed funding round lead by Intel Capital.

For more information about Kasenna, click here.

Their recent work titled "Understanding the Network-Level Behavior of Spammers," is a preliminary study that aims to better understand the techniques and patterns that spammers use to send unwanted and fraudulent email traffic to users. "One of the surprising findings," says Feamster "was that spammers actually exploit the insecurity of the Internet routing infrastructure to send spam untraceably." For instance, the two researchers observed nefarious parties "hijacking" routes to Internet destinations for brief periods of time in an attempt to frustrate auditing and evade blacklisting. They also observed that the vast majority of spam is originating from botnets.

Based on these observations, Feamster and Ramachandran are now working on systems to help Internet Service Providers build better spam filters and detect spamming botnets using passive network monitoring techniques. Their paper was one of approximately 30 out of over 300 submissions accepted for this year's ACM SIGCOMM which is the premier international computing networking conference. While their research will also be presented at the North American Network Operator's Group (NANOG) meeting, Nick Feamster had one other paper accepted to SIGCOMM 2006, quite an accomplishment considering the 10% acceptance rate.
 
For the preliminary version of "Understanding the Network-Level Behavior of Spammers," click here.

For information about ACM's SIGCOMM 2006, click here.

College of Computing Associate Professor Amy Bruckman served as moderator and one of the panelist focused on the unavoidable fact that, as in the “real world,” there are people online who want to hurt kids. She explored how much risk is acceptable for children of different ages and other issues pertaining to online environments for children. Bruckman founded both MediaMOO (a text-based virtual reality environment or "MUD" designed to be a professional community for media researchers) and MOOSE Crossing (a MUD designed to be a constructionist learning environment for kids).

The fact is, wherever groups of people gather, whether on the Internet or elsewhere in society, norms for appropriate behavior come into play. Unfortunately, not everyone plays by the same rules. What may be an exercise of free speech to one group or individual could be disruptive or hurtful to another. For groups that communicate online, a range of technical and social mechanisms are available to help create a climate that will facilitate the understanding of their mission. For example, the “risk tolerant vs. risk averse” trade-off is where in some environments it may be acceptable to allow a degree of inappropriate behavior and simply respond when users report it, while in others, particularly those that cater to children, inappropriate behavior must not be tolerated at all. Another trade-off is “prevention vs. management” in which strategies for preventing problems or reducing their frequency may be as important as methods of dealing with them once they occur.

Emphasizing audience participation, Bruckman and the panel presented scenarios based on real-life online behavior problems and asked the audience for their input on how to handle the situations. They discussed how designers of online communication systems decide what kind of conduct is acceptable, and how they help ensure that standard is met. Finally, Bruckman and the panel explored the means by which these expectations are communicated to members of the online community as well as the implications of corporate control of content for ideals of free expression.

The panel Bruckman moderated and participated in was composed of experts from media theory, computer-supported collaborative learning, computer-supported cooperative work and online entertainment to explore current issues in this complex research area. In addition to providing a forum for the latest work by researchers and practitioners in HCI, the many plenary and social events at CHI 2006 presented opportunities to network with members of the HCI community and other interested parties who coalesce with the industry. Not only did the conference offer a broad perspective on the complete human-computer interaction landscape, it also assisted its attendees in bringing new ideas back to their own work and community.

For information about Amy Bruckman's research, click here.

For more information about ACM SIGCHI, click here.

"Designing Multithreaded Algorithms for Breadth-First Search and st-connectivity on the Cray MTA-2," D.A. Bader and K. Madduri

"Parallel Algorithms for Evaluating Centrality Indices in Real-world Networks," D.A. Bader and K. Madduri.

"ExactMP: An Efficient Parallel Exact Solver for Phylogenetic Tree Reconstruction Using Maximum Parsimony," D.A. Bader, V. Chandu, and M. Yan

The ExactMP paper by Bader, Chandu, and Yan, designs and implements an exact solver for the problem of maximum parsimony in computing evolutionary histories and important computational biology application. ExactMP can solve moderate sized instances exactly using combinatorial optimization techniques on symmetric multiprocessor and multicore systems with large main memories. This implementation is the first parallel solver for this problem and outperforms the widely-used commercial solver. The other two papers by Bader and Madduri design and implement parallel algorithms for large-scale graph theoretic problems. For instance, the two researchers identify key vertices using the betweenness centrality metric on real-world graphs, from small-world networks, patent databases, and citation networks. The results include the first parallel algorithms designed for several important metrics.

For more information about the International Conference on Parallel Processing (ICPP), click here.

The Georgia Tech Ambassadors' Dean Griffin Day Superlative Awards:

Bill Leahy - "Most Georgia Tech Spirit"

David Smith - "Most Likely to Win a Nobel Prize"

The Georgia Tech Freshman Activities Board

David Smith - "Best Freshman Professor"

The Student Government Association

Bob Waters - "Faculty of the Year"

The National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics who are pursuing research-based master's and doctoral degrees.

"These prestigious awards are a testimony to the outstanding talent of our students and a positive reflection on our interdisciplinary computing programs," said CoC Dean Rich DeMillo. "Every such award we receive frees up resources to recruit and fund more outstanding students from across the country.”

The NSF fellowships also help CoC’s strategic mission, demonstrating the College’s ability to recruit the most talented graduate students in the nation and prepare them for careers as university, government and industry leaders. DeMillo attributes the success of receiving so many national graduate fellowships to a combination of top students and faculty, as well as the graduate education leadership at the College.

"These fellowships are the most esteemed in the nation, and receiving this many in a single year is a strong indication of how the College of Computing is increasing its recognition and reputation at the national level," said DeMillo. "These applicants are some of the best in the nation, and that they elected to come to the College of Computing for their graduate studies speaks volumes about the research opportunities that we offer here at Tech."

“GTISC is committed to raising awareness and educating consumers and enterprises alike to the growing concerns of identity theft and identity fraud,” said Mustaque Ahamad, Director of GTISC. “The Identity Management Summit is an important forum for leading executives and experts across all areas of the information security spectrum to come together and examine the concerns and possible solutions for this escalating security issue. We wish to thank the speakers from Authis, Bank of America, CipherTrust, Equifax, Georgia Tech College of Computing, RSA Security and Siemens for participating in the Summit and sharing their expertise with us.”

Howard Schmidt, former special advisor to President George W. Bush on Cyberspace Security and former chief security officer for Microsoft and eBay, will deliver the Summit’s keynote address. Schmidt will discuss the best ways to empower the everyday user of the Internet to protect his or her identity.

In addition, the Summit’s executive panel will examine the technology and policy challenges associated with managing access to digital information in a secure and usable manner. The following industry leaders will participate in the panel discussion, moderated by Dr. Paul Judge, chief technology officer at CipherTrust:
• Jeff Schmidt, chief executive officer of Authis
• Richard W. Sam Phillips, senior vice president of corporate information security for Bank of America
• Rob Webb, chief technology officer for Equifax
• Richard J. Lipton, professor at the Georgia Tech College of Computing
• Dr. Burt Kaliski, vice-president of research at RSA Security and chief scientist of RSA Labs
• Chris Meaney, vice president of secure networks, Siemens

The Identity Management Summit is part of GTISC’s bi-annual security summit series. In addition to raising security awareness within the technology industry, the summit series enables GTISC researchers to define and develop new research efforts for security challenges that are prevalent in today’s technology-driven environment. For more information about the GTISC Identity Management Summit and its participants, please visit http://gtisc.gatech.edu.

About GTISC
The Georgia Tech Information Security Center, a National Security Agency (NSA) Center of Excellence in Information Assurance Education, is an interdisciplinary center involving faculty from Computing, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, and the School of Public Policy.

For more information, contact:
Brendan Streich
GCI Group
404-870-6796
bstreich@gcigroup.com

Modern networking is no longer limited to routhing support, but rather has significant computational needs due to in-flight packet processing. Network processors are specialized in that they are embedded in the network and perform very high-speed processing at extremely high-line speeds. Compilers play a critical role in achieving this process by generating code for the network processors. Santosh Pande's project will investigate several optimizations to generate highly optimized code for network processors. The general goal is to investigate how one can improve the effectiveness of embedded processing by cleverly utilizing the context of embedding.

Santosh Pande has done extensive work in embedded systems and will be the General Chair of ACM's 2007 SIGPLAN/SIGBED Symposium on Languages, Compilers and Tools for Embedded Systems (LCTES) to be held at in San Diego, CA.

Example Archived Article Index:

The biannual conferences on Design Computing and Cognition are the premier international forums for presentation and discussion of cutting-edge research on design cognition, artificial intelligence and machine learning in design, and human-computer interaction in virtual design environments.

The College of Computing had a major presence at the second International Conference on Design Computing and Cognition recently held in the Netherlands. Graduate student Patrick Yaner from the College's Interactive and Intelligent Computing (IIC) division presented the paper "From form to function: From SBF to DSSBF," coauthored by Ashok Goel who was also the conference's vice-chair. Assistant Professor Ellen Do helped organize a workshop this year on "Style in Design," and was a coauthor of a conference paper titled "The Designosaur and the Furniture Factory."

For more information about the second annual conference, click here.

Many organizations need to store sensitive information, such as customer records or private documents, and make this information available over the network. For this reason, Web applications have become widely deployed in enterprise systems and on the Internet, and people use these applications daily when reading the news, paying bills, and shopping online. As the availability of these services grows however, companies are witnessing an increase in the number and sophistication of attacks that target them.

Orso's work combines static and dynamic program analysis techniques to identify, stop, and report these attacks against Web applications. "It's hard to find companies glad to tell you that they are being attacked," says Orso in the article, but with the help of his research, companies hopefully won't need to.

Read Atlanta Business Chronicle’s recent article about the rise of SQL injection attacks by clicking here.

For more information about Alex Orso, click here

• CERCS Research Scientist Ada Gavrilovska received funding from Intel Corporation to support her research on application-specific processing on IXA routers.
• College of Computing Associate Professor Santosh Pande received funding from Intel Corporation to support his research on new compilation methods for the micro-cores used in machines like the IXA routers.
• Professor and CERCS Director Karsten Schwan, and CERCS Research Scientists Ada Gavrilovska and Matt Wolf received an award from Cisco Corporation's University Research Program to support their proposal tiled “High Performance Dynamic Communications."
• Professors Karsten Schwan and Calton Pu, along with Associate Professors David Bader, Santosh Pande and Irfan Essa will receive an IBM SUR award to support their proposal titled "Optimizing Scientific Libraries for IBM Cell" for two Cell blades.

Finally, CERCS celebrated College of Computing Ph.D. student Zhongtang Cai for his "Best Paper Award" at last week's 2006 High-Performance Distributed Computing (HPDC) conference in Paris, France. Cai’s research is on new bandwidth-sensitive methods for dynamic traffic division and scheduling across multiple overlay paths.

For more information about CERCS, click here.

DOSA allows design-time exploration and automatic run-time optimizations using continuous performance optimizations (CPO) so that application programmers and compiler writers are relieved from the challenging task of optimizing the computation in order to achieve high performance. As an illustration of the DOSA framework, one complex, full application is optimized for IBM Cell. The innovative performance optimization techniques for the memory hierarchy use new techniques for reducing I/O complexity, data layout, data remapping, and in-memory processing, while being supported by DOSA--the semi-automatic design framework and dynamic run-time system. DOSA allows rapid, high-level performance estimation and detailed low-level simulation by incorporating high-level performance models into the model-integrated computing framework. The run-time system dynamically improves application performance using the component library, the models, and the run-time optimizer.

In addition, Bader, who works within the College of Computing's Computational Science and Engineeering (CSE) division, recently attended the "Challenges in Biomedicine" workshop sponsored by the Computing Research Association (CRA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).He joined researchers and practitioners from the high performance computing and biomedical communities to addresses the challenges and opportunities of collaboration and cooperation.

REDMOND, Wash. — July 12, 2006 — In a move designed to boost enrollment and retention in college computer science classes, Microsoft Corp. today announced the creation of the Institute for Personal Robots in Education (IPRE) in partnership with the College of Computing at Georgia Tech and Bryn Mawr College. The institute is designed to reinvigorate computer science curriculum by delivering robotics technology tailored for teaching purposes, scientifically evaluated for its effectiveness in live teaching situations. The resulting materials will be made available widely to the academic community.

Under the alliance, Microsoft will provide the College of Computing at Georgia Tech with $1 million (U.S.) paid over three years to develop — as part of the IPRE — practical new ways to bring robotics technology into the computer science curriculum. Matching Microsoft’s support, an additional $1 million for the institute will be provided by the College of Computing at Georgia Tech and Bryn Mawr College.

"We want to use the power of robotics to capture the imagination of tomorrow’s computer scientists," said Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer at Microsoft. "By introducing exciting new technologies into the computer-science curriculum, we believe that we’ll greatly increase its appeal - especially to students who may not have considered majoring in this field."

Today’s announcement comes less than a month after Microsoft released a community technology preview (CTP) of its new Microsoft® Robotics Studio (http://msdn.microsoft.com/robotics ), a Windows®-based software environment offering a common development platform that makes it easier for innovators to create robotic applications for a wide variety of platforms. The Institute for Personal Robots in Education will use the Microsoft Robotics Studio as a core technology.

Robotics: The Excitement and the Challenge
Robotics is showing up in increasingly varied walks of life, from industrial manufacturing and home appliances to healthcare for the elderly, toys and entertainment — even in toxic and dangerous search-and-rescue scenarios. Yet many computer science students’ studies in robotics are hampered by devices that are difficult to use or not rugged enough; devices that are suitable for classroom use are too often prohibitively expensive. To more fully realize the potential of robotics in computer science, classroom robots need to be made more accessible, affordable and easy to use for both students and professors.

"The time is right to transform computer science education, and creativity and contextualization are the key drivers," said Richard A. DeMillo, dean of the College of Computing at Georgia Tech. "We are committed to expanding the horizons of our students by incorporating cutting-edge and engaging courses - such as robotics - as core components of the curriculum. This effort, led by associate professor Tucker Balch, serves as yet another unconventional approach to education at the College of Computing at Georgia Tech."

Georgia Tech and Bryn Mawr College were among eight leading U.S. schools with strong track records in educational robotics invited by Microsoft to participate in a request for proposals for the partnership. Although all the candidates were strong contenders, Georgia Tech and Bryn Mawr stood out for their combined excellence in robotics and curriculum innovation. A tenet of their proposal is that every student should have his or her own personal robot. These small, mobile robots - to be made available at the university bookstore shrink-wrapped with a textbook - will be inexpensive and dependable, and will take full advantage of the student’s desktop computer for developing, debugging and running programs that control the robot.

Robotics for Today’s Computer Science Classroom
The College of Computing at Georgia Tech’s curriculum development plan also includes use of a new version of Pyro, a leading educational robotics software platform, integrated with the new Microsoft Robotics Studio. This approach is expected to significantly reduce the cost of learning to program robots and make robotics more accessible to students because it has been adapted to both simulation platforms and real mobile robots.

"Bryn Mawr’s involvement in this partnership introduces the ideas and problems in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics to a very different set of students from the traditional engineering types that have worked on those problems over the past 50 years," said Deepak Kumar, chair of the department of Computing at Bryn Mawr. "As a result, I think we will see some very different and amazing solutions to these kinds of problems."

The Institute for Personal Robots in Education will begin developing its technology and education immediately, with educational programs beginning in January 2007. More information about the institute can be found at http://www.roboteducation.org .

About the College of Computing at Georgia Tech
The College of Computing at Georgia Tech is a national leader in the creation of real-world computing breakthroughs that drive social and scientific progress. With its graduate program ranked 11th nationally by U.S. News and World Report, the College’s unconventional approach to education is defining the new face of computing by expanding the horizons of traditional computer science students through interdisciplinary collaboration and a focus on human-centered solutions. For more information about the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, its academic divisions and research centers, please visit www.cc.gatech.edu.

About Bryn Mawr
One of the oldest and most selective women’s colleges in the United States, Bryn Mawr College was the nation’s first school to offer women the opportunity to earn a Ph.D. and remains a leader in developing female scientists. The College ranks among the top 10 of colleges and universities in the country, and first among women’s colleges, in the percentage of women undergraduates who go on to receive Ph.D.’s in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields. www.brynmawr.edu.

About Microsoft Research
Founded in 1991, Microsoft Research is dedicated to conducting both basic and applied research in computer science and software engineering. Its goals are to enhance the user experience on computing devices, reduce the cost of writing and maintaining software, and invent novel computing technologies. Researchers focus on more than 55 areas of computing and collaborate with leading academic, government and industry researchers to advance the state of the art in such areas as graphics, speech recognition, user-interface research, natural language processing, programming tools and methodologies, operating systems and networking, and the mathematical sciences. Microsoft Research employs more than 700 people in five labs located in Redmond, Wash.; Silicon Valley, Calif.; Cambridge, England; Beijing; and Bangalore, India. Microsoft Research collaborates openly with colleges and universities worldwide to enhance the teaching and learning experience, inspire technological innovation, and broadly advance the field of computer science. More information can be found at http://www.research.microsoft.com.

About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

For more information, contact:
Stefany Wilson
College of Computing at Georgia Tech
404.894.7253
stefany@cc.gatech.edu
www.cc.gatech.edu

An NSF-sponsored workshop co-organized by College of Computing Associate Professor David Bader, Allan Snavely (UC San Diego), and Gwen Jacobs (Montana State) will be held August 29-30, 2006 in Arlington, Virginia to identify key challenges in the biological sciences which may lead to early breakthroughs on petascale supercomputers. The objectives of this workshop are to examine the opportunities for progress in the biological sciences that could be enabled by petascale computational capability, and to determine the steps necessary to ensure the community is prepared to take advantage of such resources.

Unique challenges face the biological sciences community to make efficient use of national cyberinfrastructure. For example, traditional uses of high-performance computing (HPC) systems in physics and engineering involve problems that often have well defined and regular structures. In contrast, many problems in biology are irregular in structure, are significantly more challenging for software engineers to parallelize, and often involve integer-based abstract data structures.

The first goal of the workshop is to increase the dialogue between computational biologists and computer scientists to examine the performance of existing algorithms, identify critical/bottleneck sections, scalability, and discuss how and why these codes will perform differently on various architectures. The second goal of the workshop is to identify some early collaborations and pilot studies whereby biologists and computer scientists can work together on problems relevant to petascale deployment.

The workshop’s outcome will be greater insight into the factors affecting the performance of strategic codes to model genomes, proteins, networks, organs, organisms and populations, and interactions between them and their environments. Biologists are using supercomputers to explore scientific problems of national strategic interest impacting health and well-being by understanding how we age, seeking cures for diseases, understanding the genomes of human and all animal and plant species and their evolutionary histories, developing agricultural products, understanding the impact of human activities on biodiversity, and the like.

Bader’s help with this interdisciplinary workshop will facilitate an unprecedented exploration of these problems at greater scale and accuracy. Collaborations between biologists and computer scientists thus have the potential to improve U.S. economic competitiveness, national and world health and well being, and keep the U.S. pre-eminent in this important domain of science.

For more information about Associate Professor David Bader, click here.

The permanent of a matrix is currently a well-studied combinatorial problem with applications in many fields, as it corresponds to the number of perfect matchings of a bipartite graph. For example in physics, computing the permanent is central to the study of the Dimer and Ising Models, although the exact computation of the permanent is intractable. Mathematicians began studying the permanent about two centuries ago, partly because of its superficial similarity to the determinant, which is a much easier problem.

Vigoda's breakthrough discovery is a randomized algorithm which approximates the permanent to within an arbitrarily close factor in time polynomial in the size of the input. Therefore, with the use of randomness, arbitrarily good approximations can still be obtained. Vigoda’s paper also introduces techniques that have already found several important computing, physics, and mathematical applications. The award was presented at the International Symposium on Mathematical Programming this month in Rio de Janeiro.

For more information about the Fulkerson Prize, click here.

To view Eric Vigoda’s award-winning paper, click here. 

As computing becomes more common and valuable, non-CS professionals in many disciplines are teaching themselves to program; but what do these professionals really know about computer science? If people begin to use their programs, should we be concerned with the quality of what these non-CS professionals produce, especially when we don’t know if or how they test their programs? How could we effectively and efficiently teach these professionals about computer science and design without sending them to formal computer science classes? These are the questions that Guzdial and Dorn are addressing in their award-winning grant from the National Science Foundation.

Guzdial and Dorn work within the College’s Interactive and Intelligent Computing (IIC) division, and recently completed a survey of graphics professionals who program but have no formal CS training. Interestingly, these professionals write programs dozens of lines long to control tools like Adobe Photoshop and GIMP. While Guzdial and Dorn found that the professionals' knowledge of computer science was quite sophisticated in that they all use complex, object-based dynamic data structures, their design process was only sophisticated in some ways. For example, they were very careful in testing their programs, yet rarely wrote program code or comments expecting that anyone else would ever read them, even though they all reported borrowing from others' code frequently.
 
The next steps in Guzdial and Dorn’s new project will be to devise some techniques for teaching these non-CS-programmers about CS and design in the context of their daily work. The two researchers will then test these techniques and compare the resultant learning to that of students in formal CS classes. This comparison will show how close to classroom learning they can get by supporting “on-the-side learning” in the professionals' context. When asked about receiving the award, Mark Guzdial said, “This is my first fully funded NSF grant since 2003, so it’s pretty exciting!”
 
Read a recent interview with a journalist-programmer by clicking here.

Guzdial will receive more than $400,000 over the next three years from the NSF Division of Undergraduate Education in the Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement Program. The proposal supports his efforts to expand and disseminate the innovative Media Computation undergraduate curriculum that Guzdial developed at the College of Computing in 2003, and has since become the benchmark for computer science programs across the country.

“Using Media Computation to Attract and Retain Students in Computing” explicitly funds: workshops for faculty at other institutions to teach Guzdial’s approach; support of the developing community of users (e.g., supporting improvement of the software environment, disseminating curriculum ideas, etc.); and improving evaluation by supporting other institutions in adopting College of Computing evaluation techniques and instruments; and then creating a Web repository of results so that schools considering Media Computation can find reports on use at comparable schools.

The NSF award is effective August 1, 2006 through July 31, 2009. For additional information about Mark Guzdial’s Computational Media curriculum, click here.

Schmidt’s distinguished career as an information security advocate includes leadership positions with both public and private sector organizations. He has served on the President’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Board, was an augmented member of the President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology and held executive positions with the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA), the Information Technology Information Sharing and Analysis Center (IT-ISAC), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Information Security Privacy Advisory Board (ISPAB).

Schmidt also served as vice president and chief security strategist for eBay and chief security officer for Microsoft Corporation, forming and directing the computer giant’s Trustworthy Computer Security Strategies Group. “The College of Computing continuously seeks out industry experts and visionaries such as Howard Schmidt to take our faculty and students to greater heights in computing research,” said Richard A. DeMillo, dean of the College of Computing at Georgia Tech. “We congratulate him on this honor and are thrilled to be able to tap into Howard’s expertise and apply it to the College of Computing’s academic and research programs surrounding cyber security.”

Schmidt was also recently elected president of the 2006 Information Systems Security Association’s (ISSA) International Board of Directors. The election was completed and the ballots were certified on June 15.

For more information about Howard A. Schmidt, click here.

For more information about the ISSA election, click here.

The TOP500 list started in 1993 to provide a reliable basis for tracking and detecting trends in high-performance computing. This closely watched survey is compiled by a group of German and American academics who determine the best performance on the Linpack benchmark which is used as the measure for ranking the computer systems because it is widely used and performance numbers are available for almost all relevant systems.

To view Georgia Tech’s ranking, click here,
For more information about the TOP500 list, click here.

Goodman is a professor of computing and international affairs jointly at the College of Computing and the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Tech. He also serves as Co-Director of both the Georgia Tech Information Security Center (GTISC) and the Center for International Strategy, Technology, and Policy (CISTP). The two-week seminar hosted Goodman's "Cyber Security in Africa" session on June 19. CNN covered the session and aired an interview with Goodman on June 24.

For more information about the Senior Leadership Seminar, click here.
For more information about Professor Sy Goodman, click here.

Regents' Professor Janet Kolodner is a mentor for both the ICLS doctoral consortium and the young faculty workshop where she is giving a presentation called “Scaling Up Curriculum to Have An Impact.” Kolodner is also a presenter in a plenary panel discussion, titled “Moving forward: The learning Sciences and the Future of Education,” along other advisory board members of the recently-released Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences, edited by Keith Sawyer.

Additionally, Janet Kolodner and recent Ph.D. graduate Jakita Owensby will receive one of only three awards given for “Most Usable Paper” by the ICLS’ Virtual Design Consortium. Owensby submitted the paper “Case Application Suite: Scaffolding Use of Expert Cases in Middle-school Project-based Inquiry Classrooms," which was originally published and presented at ICLS 2004.

Andrea Forte, a fourth-year Ph.D. student from the College of Computing working toward a degree in human-centered computing with a focus on learning sciences, is a presenter at this year's ICLS doctoral consortium. Forte will present her thesis work titled “Science Online: Exploring Writing as Social Practice in Online Knowledge Building Communities.”

The following College of Computing LST students, post-docs and faculty are also presenting a variety of papers and posters at the conference:

• “From Mechanical to Meaningful Classroom Questions” by Elizabeth S. Charles, Janet L. Kolodner, Sabina Karkin, Christopher W. Kramer.
• “Messy Learning Environments: Busy Hands and Less Engaged Minds” by Christina M. Gardner, Tamara L. Clegg, Oriana J. Williams, Janet L. Kolodner
• “Design-Based Science Learning: Important Challenges and How Technology Can Make A Difference.” by Swaroop Vattam and Janet L. Kolodner
• “From Wikipedia to the Classroom: Exploring Online Publication and Learning” by Andrea Forte and Amy Bruckman
• “Visualizing Discussion By the Use of the Conversation Chain Model” by Sabina Karkin, Elizabeth S. Charles, Janet L. Kolodner
• “Promoting Learning in Informal Learning Environments” by Tamara L. Clegg, Christina M. Gardner, Oriana J. Williams, Janet L. Kolodner

For information about the 2006 International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS), click here.

To view Jakita Owensby and Janet Kolodner’s online summary, click here.

Arkin will address the ethical dimensions of robotic weaponry and involve the generation of "an artificial conscience" for an intelligent autonomous robotic agent. By applying limits and constraints on a robot’s actions as required by the bounds of existing ethical decision-making protocols (e.g., the Geneva Convention) rules of engagement, and other ethical and military requirements, Arkin’s study will provide a fundamental contribution toward the deployment of intelligent robotic weaponry.

“Given the far-reaching consequences and ethical aspects of this technology,” says Arkin, “the military can judiciously determine the most effective and appropriate usage an intelligent autonomous robotic agent.”

The net effect of Arkin’s research will be: to produce robots that can perhaps act more humanely than humans do under highly stressful conditions, as evidenced by acts such as those committed at Abu Ghraib; to provide warnings in the field to military decision makers about the potential ethical consequences of battlefield and tactical actions regarding the use of this technology; and to ensure that accountability for the use of these systems is engineered into them from the onset.

Arkin has conducted research into intelligent autonomous systems for twenty years, focusing heavily on military applications. He is also recognized as a leader in the robot ethics community, and holds several significant positions of responsibility in relevant professional societies.

For more information about Regents’ Professor Ron Arkin, click here.

The paper provides an algorithm for inferring hidden state from sensorimotor experience when the environment takes the form of a POMDP with deterministic transition and observation functions. Such environments can appear to be arbitrarily complex and non-deterministic on the surface, but are actually deterministic with respect to the unobserved underly- ing state. The paper shows that there always exists a finite history-based representation that fully captures the unobserved world state, allowing for perfect prediction of action effects.

Holmes is in his fourth year as a Ph.D. student within the College's Interactive and Intelligent Computing (IIC) division. He received his BS degrees in Physics and Computer Science, with a minor in Math. The 2006 ICML was held June 25-29 in Pittsburgh, PA.

To view Holmes' and Isbell's award-winning paper, click here.

The four CSS accepted papers demonstrate the strong research in middleware systems being conducted at the College of Computing at Georgia Tech. Middleware is used in a wide variety of enterprise information systems, and solving the challenges in deploying efficient, robust middleware is key to the development of next generation enterprise systems. Three out of the four papers had industrial co-authors, showing how CSS researchers are actively working to solve real problems faced by enterprises. Congratulations to the following CSS faculty and students: Professor Karsten Schwan, Associate Professor Ling Liu, Assistant Professor Brian Cooper, Research Scientist Greg Eisenhauer, and Ph.D. students Zhontang Cai, Vibhore Kumar, Seung Jun, and Mudhakar Srivatsa.

Title: A Middleware System for Protecting Against Application Level Denial of Service Attacks
Authors: Mudhakar Srivatsa (Georgia Tech), Arun Iyengar (IBM TJ Watson),Jian Yin (IBM TJ Watson) and Ling Liu (Georgia Tech)
Summary: Denial of Service (DoS) attacks are one of the primary threats facing online services. This work presents a novel solution to an increasingly frequent attack: application-level DoS attacks. By monitoring and controlling the amount of resources used in servicing requests, the middleware can protect against a wide range of DoS attacks (including previously unseen attacks) while remaining transparent to the client.

Title: Utility-Driven Proactive Management of Availability in Enterprise-Scale Information Flows
Authors: Zhongtang Cai (Georgia Tech), Vibhore Kumar (Georgia Tech), Brian F. Cooper (Georgia Tech), Greg Eisenhauer (Georgia Tech), Karsten Schwan (Georgia Tech) and Robert E. Strom (IBM TJ Watson)
Summary: Information flows underpin many vital computing systems used by enterprises to manage their day-to-day operations. These information flows must be made resilient to failures, but at an affordable cost. This work examines how to ensure high availability of critical information flows, while allowing the enterprise to tune the tradeoff between overhead during normal operation and cost of recovery according to their business needs.

Title: Low-Overhead Message Tracking for Distributed Messaging
Authors: Seung Jun (Georgia Tech) and Mark Astley (IBM TJ Watson)
Summary: Messaging middleware is both critical and extremely complex to deploy and maintain. Efficient message tracking has become instrumental in testing and run-time monitoring, as enterprise applications rely increasingly on commodity messaging middleware. The paper presents a message tracking system, using Bloom filters, that achieves low overhead with respect to latency, memory, and storage.

Title: Trading Off Resources Between Overlapping Overlays
Author: Brian F. Cooper (Georgia Tech)
Summary: Enterprises who want to get the most of their infrastructure investment often use the same hardware to support multiple services. However, safeguards are needed to ensure that one service does not steal all of the infrastructure resources, especially if other services are higher priority. This work examines how overlapping distributed information services (often implemented using network overlays) can be made to play nicely with each other and respect the business's objectives and priorities.

For more information about the 2006 Middleware Conference, click here.

Antón is known as a leading authority on Internet technology and privacy issues. She is founder and director of ThePrivacyPlace.org, a research group of students and faculty at Georgia Tech and NC State, and co-founder and co-director of the NC State Electronic Commerce Studio. She has received many awards for her work, including a National Science Foundation Career Award, a Women of Influence Award from CSO magazine, a Computing Research Association Digital Government Fellow and DARPA Defense Science Study Group selection. She received her Ph.D. in computer science from Georgia Tech in 1997 and joined the NC State faculty in 1998, becoming the first Latin-American woman faculty member in the College of Engineering.

The symposium will be held September 21-23 at Ford Research and Innovation Center in Dearborn, Michigan. The topics covered will be nanotechnology-biology interface, intelligent software systems and machines, supply chain management, and personal mobility.

To read more about NAE's Frontiers of Engineering, click here.

This year’s theme was "Computing at the Center of Transformation," and opened with a plenary session focusing on meeting the technical challenges of the future, featuring: Craig Mundie, Chief Technical Officer for Microsoft; Dan Mote, President of the University of Maryland; Lucy Sanders, CEO of the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT); and Richard Russell, Associate Director of the Office of Science and Technology. Richard Newton, dean of the College of Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley served as moderator.

As in years past, the conference brought over 350 academics from 175 leading institutions here and abroad, while sessions focused on research and advances in areas such as security, human-computer interaction, robotics, gaming, bioinformatics, eScience, digital inclusion, software engineering, and technologies for education. As a national leader in the creation of real-world computing breakthroughs that drive social and scientific progress, the following College of Computing attendees were honored to make their contributions to this year’s Summit:

--Tucker Balch, associate professor and director of the Institute for Robotics Research
--Aaron Bobick, professor and chair of the College’s Interactive & Intelligent Computing (IIC) division 
--Keith Edwards, associate professor and ubiquitous computing expert
--Richard Fujimoto, professor and chair of the Computational Science & Engineering (CSE) division
--Mary Jean Harrold, NSF ADVANCE professor of computing
--Mary Alice Isele, director of development
--Elizabeth Mynatt, associate professor & director of the Graphics Visualization, & Usability (GVU) Center
--Stefany Wilson, director of communications

For more information on the 2006 Microsoft Research Faculty Summit, click here.
To view the live plenary session, click here.

Yael Kalai wrote Attacks on the Fiat-Shamir Paradigm and Program Obfuscation which was then nominated for consideration by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) national contest. An honorable mention was awarded to Nick Feamster for Proactive Techniques for Correct and Provable Internet Routing. All five Spowls theses are remarkable, and the College of Computing authors are congratulated on their achievements.

To read Yael Kalai’s thesis, click here.
To read Nick Feamster’s thesis, click here.

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Symantec, a global leader in information security and availability, recently agreed to sponsor a College of Computing team through a $50,000 gift in next year’s usable security “Tiger Team” competition. Company representatives will be involved in the judging process and mentoring selected teams. Symantec will also be joining the industrial affiliate programs of both GTISC and the GVU Center.

For more information about Tiger Team, click here.

KSI focuses on how elementary and middle school students learn Science through cooking and the computer software to support this environment. KSI research is supported through NASA’s Space Telescope Science Institute and the College of Computing at Georgia Tech. In the context of designing and building a variety of hovercraft, middle school participants learn the essentials of engineering design and the physics that keep hovercraft aloft and moving. Cutting-edge experimental educational software is used to aid Hovercraft's design and physics learning, and is also supported by the College of Computing at Georgia Tech.

CEISMC ‘s summer camp started June 19 and will end on July 28. For more information about CEISMC, click here.

U.S. patent 7028027 titled Associating documents with classifications and ranking documents based on classification weights develops search engine ranking algorithms that deliver relevant documents based on the regions that the users belong to (region is a concept that is similar to country but is more refined), as well as algorithms for identifying the regions of web documents.

U.S. patent 6990628 titled Method and apparatus for measuring similarity among electronic documents describes algorithms for measuring the similarity among web documents by utilizing the textual contents, hyperlink structures, and click-through patterns.

To read an article related to this technology’s development, click here.

According to Martin Glinz, RE'06 Program Chair, the conference has a tradition of giving an award for the most influential paper published in the conference ten years ago.  This year's award is given for the most influential paper of ICRE 1996, which was held April 15-18, 1996 in Colorado Springs, CO.
 
Antón’s paper, entitled "Goal-Based Requirements Analysis", was one of two selected by the RE'06 Program Board to be recognized with this special award.
 
Such an award is significant in that it speaks to both the overall quality of the work, as well as its impact to the field over time.
 
The awards ceremony will be held on Thursday, September 14 in Minneapolis, MN. For more information about RE’06, click here.

CSE Associate Professor David Bader is leading the project titled, “Optimizing Computational Science Applications on Sun Multithreaded Processors.” Bader aims to design, implement, and optimize computational science applications for the Sun Fire T2000 Server using the multicore Sun UltraSPARC T1 processor that supports 32 simultaneous processing threads. Bader’s prior work demonstrates good symmetric multiprocessor performance for applications in computational biology and national security, and this Sun AEG explores the extension of these applications to Sun’s multicore processor.

Each Sun Fire T2000 Server contains an 8-core 1.0GHz UltraSPARC T1 processor, 16GB of DDR2 memory, and runs Solaris 10. Sun describes the UltraSPARC T1 processor with CoolThreads technology as “the highest throughput and most eco-responsible processor ever created. Drawing about as much power as a light bulb, its unprecedented 32 simultaneous processing threads gives the best performance per watt of any processor available.”

For more information about Associate Professor David Bader, click here.

For information about Sun Microsystems, click here.

More than 10 esteemed universities to add XNA Game Studio Express and Xbox 360 game development into their curricula starting this fall.

ATLANTA (Aug. 14, 2006) — In the 30 years of video game development, the art of making console games has been reserved for those with big projects, big budgets and the backing of big game labels. Now Microsoft Corp. is bringing this art to the masses with a revolutionary new set of tools, called XNA Game Studio Express, based on the XNA™ platform. XNA Game Studio Express will democratize game development by delivering the necessary tools to hobbyists, students, indie developers and studios alike to help them bring their creative game ideas to life while nurturing game development talent, collaboration and sharing that will benefit the entire industry.

During his keynote presentation today at Gamefest 2006, a Microsoft® game developer event hosted by Microsoft in Seattle, Chris Satchell, general manager of the Game Developer Group at Microsoft, announced details of the new technology, which will be broadly available this holiday season. XNA Game Studio Express will be available for free to anyone with a Windows® XP-based PC and will provide them with Microsoft’s next-generation platform for game development. By joining a “creators club” for an annual subscription fee of $99 (U.S.), users will be able to build, test and share their games on Xbox 360™ and access a wealth of materials to help speed the game development progress. This represents the first significant opportunity for novice developers to make a console game without a significant investment in resources.

During his keynote, Satchell talked about academic institutions that are lining up to include XNA Game Studio Express in their course offerings. Also showcased was the work of key XNA supporters Autodesk Inc. and GarageGames. Through the Microsoft XNA relationship with Autodesk, the leading provider of 3-D authoring software, game developers and enthusiasts can now more easily incorporate content into XNA Game Studio Express via Autodesk’s FBX file exchange format. Joining Satchell on stage was Mark Frohnmayer, president of GarageGames, who showcased ports of its next-generation Torque tools and technology over to the XNA Game Studio Express platform.

XNA Game Studio Express Opens Up Game Creation to the World
By providing an integrated, seamless development environment based on Visual Studio® Express and .NET that simplifies the integration and use of game content, XNA Game Studio Express makes game development easier to accomplish for smaller projects, strongly increasing the chance for great game ideas to make it out of the concept stage and into the hands of gamers everywhere.

The XNA Game Studio Express beta will be available Aug. 30, 2006, as a free download on Windows XP, for development on the Windows XP platform. XNA Game Studio Express will give anyone with a Windows XP-based PC access to a unified development tool that liberates the creation of great Xbox 360 and Windows XP-compatible games, providing a new alternative to the existing multithousand-dollar development kits that many console games require. The final version of XNA Game Studio Express will be available this holiday season.

“XNA Game Studio Express will ignite innovation and accelerate prototyping, forever changing the way games are developed,” Satchell said. “By unlocking retail Xbox 360 consoles for community-created games, we are ushering in a new era of cross-platform games based on the XNA platform. We are looking forward to the day when all the resulting talent-sharing and creativity transforms into a thriving community of user-created games on Xbox 360.”
Not only will XNA Game Studio Express turn the community into creators, but a second XNA toolset geared toward game development professionals is scheduled to be available in spring 2007, fundamentally changing the way commercial games are developed.

The Beginning of the Game Developer Revolution
From students at colleges, universities and high schools of the future to the proverbial “guys in the garage,” Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express will liberate anyone with a great game idea to create titles for Xbox 360 and Windows XP simultaneously. More than 10 universities and their game development schools — including University of Southern California, Georgia Tech College of Computing and Southern Methodist University Guildhall — have already pledged to integrate console game development and XNA Game Studio Express into their curricula for the first time, and Xbox 360 will be the only console at the center of all coursework.

“Great game ideas are incubating in the minds of students everywhere,” said Michael Zyda, director for Gamepipe Labs at the University of Southern California. “With XNA Game Studio Express, Microsoft is investing in these next-generation innovators, creating the canvas for dreamers to express their powerful game ideas. In incorporating XNA Game Studio Express and Xbox 360 consoles into our Gamepipe program, USC will be able to better provide game studios and publishers around the world with a newfound wellspring of talent and opportunity. It’s ingenious.”
In addition, GarageGames, technology provider and developer of one of the most successful Xbox Live® Arcade titles, “Marble Blast Ultra,” has migrated both its Torque Shader Engine and new Torque Game Builder 2-D visual game designer over to the XNA Game Studio Express platform.

“The GarageGames mission has always been to provide top-tier technology, tools and community to independent and aspiring game developers,” said Josh Williams, CEO of GarageGames. “We are excited that Microsoft is demonstrating leadership by taking the revolutionary step of opening up game development for Xbox 360 to hobbyists and students. In aligning our tools and technology with XNA Game Studio Express, we’re helping even more individuals with the creativity and drive to make video games bring them to life on both Windows XP and Xbox 360.”

Gamefest 2006
Microsoft leads the industry in helping game developers make amazing games for Xbox® and Windows. Today and tomorrow, Gamefest 2006 will feature nearly 100 sessions for game developers, producers and publishers to grow their skills, introduce them to new development techniques and deliver powerful tools to build the best games possible.

About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential. For more information, click here.

In today’s flat world, home networking is increasingly adopted by the young and old alike. However, the networking protocols, technologies, and tools that are being used were created in the 1970's for skilled network administrators. This tension between the usability of networking and the users’ needs shows up in the marketplace in that home networking products are the most returned items at "big box" consumer electronics stores.

At the College of Computing, Edwards, Yang, and Shehan are looking at how to rethink networking technology from a human-centered perspective, making it easy to install, deploy, manage, troubleshoot, and use. “The Cisco award will be supporting our research to develop new technologies that make it easier for unskilled home users to adopt and use complex networking technologies,” says Edwards. “Wider deployment of these technologies will open the doors to new applications of ubiquitous computing.”

The Cisco University Research Program Award for Human-Centered Home Networking totals $75,000. For additional information, click here.

DSD-Crasher is a bug finding tool that follows a three-step approach to program analysis:
(D) Captures the program’s intended execution behavior with dynamic invariant detection.           
(S) Statically analyzes the program within the restricted input domain to explore many paths.
(D) Automatically generates test cases that focus on verifying the results of the static analysis.

Therefore, DSD-Crasher's confirmed results are never false positives as opposed to the high false positive rate inherent in conservative static analysis. Smaragdakis and Csallner say their three-step approach yields benefits compared to past two-step combinations in the literature. "In our evaluation with third-party applications, we demonstrate higher precision over tools that lack a dynamic step and higher efficiency over tools that lack a static step."

ISSTA'06 is a premier conference in software testing and software analysis, and included over 150 attendees and 100 submissions this year. To view CSS' distinguished paper, click here.

• "Fast Incremental Square Root Information Smoothing" by Michael Kaess, Ananth Ranganathan and Frank Dellaert.
• "Improving Activity Discovery with Automatic Neighborhood Estimation" by David Minnen, Thad Starner, Irfan Essa and Charles Isbell.
• "Loopy SAM" by Ananth Ranganathan, Michael Kaess and Frank Dellaert.
• "Transfer Learning in Real-Time Strategy Games Using Hybrid CBR/RL" by Manu Sharma, Michael Holmes, Juan Carlos Santamaria, Arya Irani, Charles Isbell and Ashwin Ram.
• "Interpretation of Design Drawings by Analogy" by Patrick Yaner and Ashok Goel.
• "Managing Domain Knowledge & Multiple Models with Boosting" by P. Zeng and Charles Isbell.
• "Towards Runtime Behavior Adaptation for Embodied Characters" by P. Zang, Manish Mehta, Michael Mateas and Ashwin Ram.

In addition, IIC Associate Professor Ashwin Ram will give an invited talk on AI and industry at the upcoming IJCAI ‘07.

For more information about the 2007 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, click here.