Spring 2009
The Honors Seminar is listed as H498 in both the Computer Science Department and the School of Informatics. George Springer, who is in the Computer Science Department, is the instructor for the seminar. Faculty members in the Computer Science Department and the School of Informatics are engaged in research projects that are investigating very interesting problems that will profoundly influence computing in the future. Most undergraduate students do not have an opportunity to hear about this fascinating work in their normal coursework. The goal of this seminar is to give our honors students an opportunity to hear about these research projects, presented by a different professor each week in a way that is easily understood. In some instances, students interested in a project were able to join the project and take an active part in the research.
The seminar meets each Monday evening from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. in LH 101. It is open to all undergraduate students in informatics and computer science with overall GPAs at least 3.3, whether they do or do not enroll in the course. Juniors and seniors with GPA at least 3.3 may enroll in the seminar for one credit-hour each semester or to audit the course so that their record will show that they attended the seminar. Sophomores may enroll to take or audit the seminar with permission of the instructor or a CS or INFO academic advisor.
Each week a different professor lectures about his/her research during the first hour. After a short break for 1refreshments, the second hour is devoted to an informal discussion of the research topic or any other questions that come up. To earn the grade for this course, the student must select one of the speakers he/she heard in the seminar and write a report of approximately ten pages about the goals of that speaker's project, what has been accomplished on the project to date, and what the plans are for the future. Attendance and participation in the discussions will also influence the grade.
The speakers change from semester to semester so one my take the seminar several times to get a broader view of the research being done at IU. The speakers are mostly from Computer Science and Informatics, but some have come from such fields as cognitive science, psychology, library science, law, chemistry, biology, and physics. The speakers for the Fall Semester of 2008 are listed here along with their research interests. About two weeks before their lectures, the title of the lecture and a brief abstract will be added each week.
January 12, 2009: Geoffrey Fox, Chairperson of Informatics, Professor of Computer Science and Physics, and Director of the Community Grids Laboratory
Research Interests: Applying computer science to defense and ice-sheet science and chemical informatics.
Title:Times they are a-changin', Clouds and Multicore challenge Computer Science.
Abstract: New opportunities (applications) coming from the data deluge (stemming from the web, instruments, sensors, satellites ..) match to new technologies coming from oldish (IBM, Intel, Microsoft) and newish (Amazon, Google) companies. What does this mean for research and education in computer science? Is academia still relevant as this innovation is industry driven? What does it mean for students -- are higher degrees still relevant? How do we juggle fads and fundamental skills? How fast should CS undergraduate education change? How should research change when funding cycles are longer than pace of technology change? What is research and what is development? What is all this chatter about interdisciplinary work? We will discuss these questions and might venture a few off the record answers.
January 26, 2009: Matthew Hahn Assistant Professor of Informatics.
Research Interests: Computational and evolutionary genomics.
Title: Gene gain and loss in mammals.
Abstract: In order to analyze the terabytes of data generated by genome sequencing efforts, researchers have made computational methods a basic part of their research toolbox. But this glut of data doesn't just allow us to do old tasks millions of times, but to answer new questions that were never even considered in the pre-genomic era.
In this talk I will try to ask and answer one such new question. Previous analyses of DNA substitutions have provided evidence for a slower rate of molecular evolution in primates relative to rodents, and an even greater “hominoid slowdown” in humans and chimpanzees relative to other primates. We find that gene duplications show an opposite pattern--an accelerated rate of change in the primates. This rate is almost three times as high in humans compared to rodents, and may be due to both mutation and natural selection. We further find that a number of individual gene families show significant expansions or contractions in both the human and macaque lineages, including brain-related families that have more than doubled in size in humans. Our results imply a high rate of gene gain and loss in the primates, which may help to explain why humans and chimpanzees show such great morphological and behavioral differences even though they are highly similar at the nucleotide level when comparing orthologous sequences.
February 2, 2009: Steven Myers Assistant Professor of Informatics, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Research Affiliate of Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research
Research Interests: cryptography, systems security.
Title: Cryptography, Complexity Theory, and Pseudo-Randomness.
Abstract: In this talk, some of the major ideas of modern Cryptography will be introduced: pseudorandomness and public-key cryptography, how they came to be and how they relate to the modern field of computational complexity. We shall see that modern cryptography is premised on the notion that P ≠ NP, an unproven assumption, the clargest outstanding problem in computer science and one which literally has a 1 million dollar bounty on its head. Further, it is unlikely that even if P ≠ NP, that this will imply cryptography exists, and even stronger assumptions need to be made. Still, we will show that it is believed that cryptography exists and we will discuss some of the assumptions which it is based upon in practice
February 9, 2009: Kent Dybvig Professor of Computer Science.
Research Interests: Programming Languages.
February 16, 2009: Randall Beer Professor of Computer Science, Informatics, and Cognitive Science.
Research Interests: Evolutionary robotics, computational neuroscience, and theoretical biology.
February 23, 2009: Howard Rosenbaum Associate Dean of School of Library Associate Professor of Information Science.
Research Interests: Electronic commerce, information architecture, computer-mediated communication.
March 2, 2009: Andrew Hanson Professor and chair of the Computer Science Dept.
Research Interests: Scientific visualization, computer graphics.
March 9, 2009: Beth Plale Associate Professor of Computer Science.
Research Interests: Data intensive computations, high performance computing, distributed and parallel computing.
March 23, 2009: Eli Blevis Associate Professor of Informatics.
Research Interests: Human-computer interaction design, more specifically, sustainable interaction design.
March 30, 2009: Chris Raphael Director of Music Informatics Program, Associate Professor of Informatics, Associate Professor of Cognitive Science, Adjunct Associate Professor of Music Theory.
Research Interests: Oboist, Developing a system for automatic musical accompaniment.
April 6, 2009: Esfan Haghverdi Director of Undergraduate Studies, Associate Professor of Informatics.
Research Interests: Mathematical logic, category theory, theoretical computer science.
April 13, 2009: Michael Jones Assistant Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences.
Research Interests: Cognitive science: computational models of memory and language; dynamics of artificial knowledge and language acquisition; artificial intelligence; swarm intelligence.
April 20, 2009: Christine Ogan Professor Emeritus of Journalism and Informatics.
Research Interests: Communication and national development, women in media management.
April 27, 2009: Arun Chauhan Assistant Professor of Computer Science.
Research Interests: Compilers, high-level programming systems, parallel and high-performance computing, grid computing.