Research Seminar in Databases and Datamining

B669: Topics in Database and Information Systems
Spring 2006/7

Faculty Involved: Dennis Groth, Ed Robertson (convenor), Dirk Van Gucht, Cathy Wyss, and Melanie Wu.
Meeting: 16:00-18:00 Monday, Lindley Hall 019.

Seminar Goal & Objectives

The goal of this seminar is exposure to and involvement in database research at IU and elsewhere.

Weekly Schedule

Date Presenter Topic/Readings
Jan. 8 Sriram Mohan
all 		XML security
organizational session
Jan. 15 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day  
Jan 22 George Fletcher On the Data Mapping Problem
Jan. 29
Eigenmann 921 		 David Penniman
Univ. of Buffalo 		Medical Informatics
Feb. 2
15:00, LH102 		Lucian Popa
IBM Almaden 		Schema Mappings
School of Informatics Colloquim
Feb. 5
Psych 101 		Mathias Scheutz  
Feb. 12
16:00, Psych 101
17:00, Informatics 232 		 
Tom Mitchell
Jeremy Engle   		 
Machine Learning
Schema Matching with ABSURDIST and AFDs
Feb. 19 Pablo Santa Cruz   Extending CLIO Schema Mapping to Support FISQL/FIRA Transformations
Feb. 26 Heather Roinestad   Scalability Issues in the GiveALink Project
Mar. 5 Mathias Niepert   Combining Statistical Language Processing and Defeasible Reasoning for Collaborative and Dynamic Ontology Learning (CoSLaPDRCoDOL)
Mar. 12 Spring Break  
Mar. 19 Sofia Brenes   A Trie Structure for A(k)-Partitions
Mar. 26    
Apr. 2 Doug Hofstadter I am a Strange Loop
16:00-17:00, Psych 101
Apr. 9 Jeremy Engle   Heuristic Data Mining for Approximate Functional Dependencies
Apr. 16 Nithya Vijayakumar   Provenance Tracking and Missing Stream Prediction in Stream Processing Systems
Apr. 23

Class Enrollment and Authorization

The minimal background is B461, B561, or the equivalent. Advanced course work, such as, B661 is typically expected. Students already doing research in databases, datamining, and related areas are encouraged to attend. Other students are welcome but are expected to be ready to engage in a research project. Hopefully they will have a project, or at least a general area, already in mind.

Any of the listed faculty can authorize admission to the course.

Students who want to take a course in databases rather than to engage in general database research should take either of the other B669 sections. Those sections will also feature research that is directed at the topic of the course.

B669 is also the weekly database seminar. Anyone who wants to attend and participate is always welcome.

Class Responsibilities

Since this is a research seminar, the central goal is of course research. For students already working on their dissertations, this is typically continuation of that work. For students just entering the PhD program, this is likely to be some initial exploration of an area. For the occasional MS student who is ready to participate in research, this is likely to be participating in an ongoing project or experiment. In each case, we will all benefit by learning about other's work and by getting feedback on our own work.

Each student will give at least two presentations: one early and one later in the semester. A student who already has an active research projects might only report on that project, while a student just beginning research should give a presentation early in the term on a research area, begin work on a topic in that area, and give a presentation on their accomplishments at the end of the term.