The Honors Seminar

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 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. Sophomores may enroll with permission of the one of the instructors. Each week a different professor lectures about his/her research during the first hour. The second hour is devoted to an informal discussion of the research topic or any other questions that come up. This in a great way to get to know the faculty members more personally. 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 that speaker's project, what has been accomplished on the project to date, and what their 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 entire Spring Semester 2007 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. The speakers for the Fall semester will be added later.

January 8, 2007: Geoffrey C. Fox, Professor of Informatics, Computer Science, and Physics, and Distinguished Scientist and Director of the Community Grids Lab.

Research Interests: Geoffrey Fox's current projects include developing the Online Knowledge Center for the Department of Defense High Performance Computing and Modernization Program, which is creating a peer-to-peer system to allow users to more easily access and update information on the department's high performance computers. Fox focuses on Grid Technology to build electronic communities linking resources and people. This will involve universities, industry and government. Examples include the support of distance education and distributed scientific research.

Title: Cyberinfrastructure across the Globe

Abstract: We discuss the role of Cyberinfrastructure (also called e-infrastructure and implemented by Grid technology) in a variety of global activities. These include the linking of researchers and data world wide in many fields; new generations of digital libraries and tools like Google Scholar; study of ice-sheets at the poles and the dramatic impact of Global warming; the study of earthquakes across the Pacific ocean; the linking of apparel manufacturers in Asia to designers in different continents and the command and control system for the Department of Defense. We discuss these applications and their associated technology.

January 22, 2007: Eli Blevis, Assistant Professor of Informatics

Research Interests: Eli Blevis' primary arena of teaching and research is Human-Computer Interaction Design (HCI/d), by which is meant the now established confluence of HCI and design. He has a special interest in design theory and sustainability-centered interaction design. Prior to this point in his career, (i) Dr. Blevis has designed and managed the interactivity, algorithmic specification, and construction of production software in industry as a director level executive at Secura Insurance Companies and Unext, as a principal of Eastlake Technologies, and as a consultant to clients such as Accenture, Hallmark Cards, Equity Office Products, US Cellular, and others, (ii) he has designed and managed the interactivity, algorithmic specification, and construction of learning software and learning authorware at a major "Artificial Intelligence" lab -- specifically the Institute for Learning Sciences at Northwestern University, (iii) he has taught design, especially the design of systems which integrate software, at a professionally-oriented design school -- specifically the Institute of Design in Chicago, formerly known as the "New Bauhaus", and (iv) he has spent a great deal of his private life pursuing his interests in music and photography at a level no less passionate than any professional. His career is unified by the common theme of design -- that is, a passion for being designerly, for understanding the role of design in the world, as a creative endeavor as well as a pervasive social construct with potential for sometimes well-advised, sometimes ill-advised, always well-intended, and oftentimes unanticipated effects on the collective human condition.

Title: Notions of Design, with an Emphasis on Sustainability-Centered Interaction Design

Abstract: Everyone is a designer -- no one purposefully sets out to create accidents. Nonetheless, conceptions of what design is about, what design is, and what designs are can vary quite a lot from one individual to another, from one discipline to another. In the computer sciences, Herbert Simon's pronouncement that "everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones[1]" is the pervasive notion that serves to underscore a conceptualization of design as a problem-solving activity. More recently, the nascent convergence of design and human-computer interaction (HCI) has created more widespread understanding of the need for an additional conceptualization of design as a problem-setting activity. There are many other important ways to conceptualize design, each with implications for how design with the materials of technologies can be more effectively applied and interpreted. In this talk, I will enumerate, compare, and contrast these various conceptualizations, appealing as often as possible to illustrative examples.

I will emphasize a particular conceptualization of design which concerns the relation between sustainability and interaction design. For a perspective of sustainability, I define design as an act of choosing among or informing choices of future ways of being, a definition which is inspired by several important design authors -- principally by Tony Fry's notion of defuturing in his book "A New Design Philosophy: An Introduction to Defuturing[2]" and as well by Willis' notion of ontological designing[3], which itself owes to Winograd & Flores' "Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design[4]" as well as to Heidegger's essay "The Question concerning technology[5]". Alexander's recent work on structure- preserving transformations[6] is also an inspiration. This definition of design from the perspective of sustainability serves as a lens through which design values, design methods, and designs themselves may be evaluated, especially in the context of interaction design.

References: [1] Simon, H. (1996). The Sciences of the Artificial (3rd ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. P.111.

[2] Fry, T. (1999). A New Design Philosophy: An Introduction to Defuturing. New South Wales, Australia: NSWU Press.

[3] Willis, A.M. (2006). Ontological designing. Design Philosophy Papers. #02/2006.

[4] Winograd, T. & Flores, F. (1986). Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design. New York: Addison-Wesley, Inc.

[5] Heidegger, M. (1954). The Question concerning technology. In William Lovitt, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Harper Torchbooks, [1954] 1977. 3-35.

[6] Alexander, C. (2002). The Nature of Order. Volume II. The Center for Environmental Structure. Berkeley, CA.

January 29, 2007: Haixu Tang: Assistant Professor of Informatics, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Affiliated researcher at Center for Genomics and Bioinformatics (CGB)

Research Interests: Dr. Haixu Tang is an assistant professor of Informatics and adjunct assistant professor of computer science. He got his Ph.D in Molecular Biology and bioinformatics in 1998 from Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He was a postDoc associate in the University of Southern California (1999-2001), and a project scientist in the University of California, San Diego (2001-2004), before he joined the Indiana University at 2004. His primary interest is in Bioinformatics, particularly in the algorithmic problems from proteomics, glycomics and comparative genomics. He is an affiliated faculty at the Center for Genomics and Bioinformatics (CGB), and an executive member of the National Center for Glycomics and Glycoproteomics (NCGG) at IU.

Title: Puzzles, algorithms and the human genome project

Abstract: Computer science and informatics have become important components of modern biological research. On the other hand, biology keeps posing challenging computational problems to computer scientists. The human genome project is a perfect example that how computer theory and information technology played an essential role in a worldwide collabrative research project. As a consequence of these applications, bioinformatics arises as a new multidisciplinary area that bridges the two historically distant disciplines. Bioinformatics is an area full of fun and challenges, and has attracted the attention of many young talented scientist. In this talk, I will use a few examples to illustrate the interesting problems we may encounter in bioinformatics.

February 5, 2007: David S. Wise Professor of Computer Science

Research Interests: David S. Wise is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The ACM Fellows Program was established by its Council in 1993 to recognize and honor outstanding ACM members for their achievements in computer science and information technology and for their significant contributions to the mission of the ACM. He has served ACM as Vice President, and now serves on ACM's Council, its Audit Committee, and co-chairs its History Committee. His research interests lie in the fields of algorithms for multiprocessing and functional programming languages, which have also taken him into hardware design. A co-discoverer of lazy evaluation, he has lately been studying a block-recursive paradigm for matrix programming that delivers excellent locality and performance on distributed processors. His work in storage management includes a hard RAM that reference-counts itself in real time, in order to support multiprocessing.

Title: Locality, Locality, Locality: Some lessons from the Arcee Project

Abstract: The talk is a collection of some interesting perspectives on things you already know about, like data structures and algorithms, that are accessible to a sophomore/junior in computer science. The small bits of code are all in C (or Java or C++, if you prefer.)

These perspectives derive from the NSF-funded Arcee Project that is developing a paradigm to develop high-performance matrix algorithms, similarly accessible on currently available architectures. (Unfortunately, these architectures are "not what your grandfather's Fortran" anticipated.)

I'll present some novel indexing for arrays, some useful representations of integers, some new perspectives on recursion and locality, and some lessons on how to plot results. Of course, the results that I'll use come from the Arcee project---and show how our high-level recursions run faster than Intel's and AMD's hand-written libraries.

Arcee, or RC, stands for "recursive control."

February 12, 2007: Fred H. Cate Distinguished Professor of Law, Director of the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research, and Adjunct Professor of Informatics

Research Interests: Information privacy, information security, and national security law and policy issues. He speaks frequently about these issues before industry, professional, and government groups and testifies regularly before Congress. He is a senior policy advisor to the Center for Information Policy Leadership, a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Technical and Privacy Dimensions of Information for Terrorism Prevention and Other National Goals, a member of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Academic Advisory Board , an advisor to the Chinese, Taiwanese, and Korean Academies of Social Science, and a reporter for the American Law Institute's project on Principles of the Law on Government Access to and Use of Personal Digital Information. Previously Professor Cate served as counsel to the Department of Defense Technology and Privacy Advisory Committee, reporter for the third report of the Markle Task Force on National Security in the Information Age, and a member of the Federal Trade Commission's Advisory Committee on Online Access and Security. He directed the Electronic Information Privacy and Commerce Study for the Brookings Institution, and chaired the International Telecommunication Union's High-Level Experts on Electronic Signatures and Certification Authorities.

Title: Privacy: What is it? Is it Dead? Did the Government Kill It?

Abstract: Almost everyone today -- especially in the computer science community -- is talking about privacy, usually to lament its loss. Yet we have little understanding of what privacy is or, frankly, why it matters, which makes it difficult to talk very meaningfully about whether it is diminishing and, if so, why. This session focuses on these broad questions by considering a number of specific examples, primarily drawn from the government's use of personal data. For example, our two most common definitions of privacy are "the right to be let alone" and "the right to control information about oneself." Is either of these relevant in a world of Facebook, Myspace, and Youtube? Is privacy invaded when the government checks your id before boarding a plane? Is privacy diminished when a computer analyzes large volumes of data to look for patterns warranting further investigation? Does it matter who owns the computer or the data?

February 19, 2007: Sangmi Lee Pallickara, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Distributed Data Everywhere (DDE) Lab, and Beth Plale, Associate Professor of Computer Science and Informatics, and Director of the DDE Lab.

Pallickara's Research Interests: Large-scale data management in science gateways, trust and privacy in distributed and ubiquitous computing, and collaboration in distributed systems that incorporate ubiquitous devices

Plale's Research Interests: large-scale data management, specifically stream mining and event processing, distributed metadata and integration, provenance, grid and service-oriented architectures, and petascale databases.

Title: Petabytes of Data and Cyberinfrastructure

Abstract: The explosive growth of data, within the scientific community, has unleashed several issues related to the processing of this data. In this talk, we outline issues involved in a cyberinfrastructure for collection, retrieval, and analysis of petabytes of data. Ongoing research within the DDE lab (http://www.cs.indiana.edu/dde) addresses these issues.

Next-generation weather forecast modeling will entail meteorologists dealing with an increasing amount of data, much of which would be no more than 10 minutes old in a binary format and really big. We are creating personalized views for scientists into this broad data-space. These scientists can share their binders with others, and can import binders from other scientists. Our catalog, called myLEAD, retains and organizes the data products that a meteorologist uses during massive computational experiments. MyLEAD supports metadata generation, and the collection, storage, retrieval and provenance of data. Additionally, an agent actively interacts with computational experiments - while they are executing - to organize, record and store information on a scientist's behalf in real-time.

This cyberinfrastructure is being ported to be used in the Data and Search Institute (DSI), a new institute in the School of Informatics. Prof. Beth Plale, Director of DSI will talk about DSI, its goals for research and education and the challenges of building general cyberinfrastructure. Prof. Plale will also talk about opportunities for research in the DSI.

February 26,2007: Olaf Sporns, Associate Professor of Psychology.

Research Interests: Computational and cognitive neuroscience, functional integration and binding in the cortex, neural models of perception and action, network structure and dynamics, applications of information theory to the brain, embodied cognitive science, and robotics.

Title: Computational Approaches to Brain Connectivity, Dynamics and Embodiment

Abstract: The relationship between structure and function is of central importance for all biological systems, and it remains a particularly important challenge for our understanding of neural systems. My talk will be about emerging links between aspects of brain structure (connectivity) and brain function (dynamics and embodiment). In recent years, many studies have demonstrated that brain networks can be characterized by specific attributes such as reciprocal pathways, short path lengths, high clustering, an abundance of specific motifs, and highly economical wiring volume or length. How do these structural attributes relate to functional characteristics of brain networks, to their dynamic patterns, to their processing power, robustness, or capacity to support flexible behavior in embodied systems? I will review a series of computational approaches ranging from graph theory to robotics that attempt to identify how complex brain networks are organized, how they process and integrate information, and how brain, body and environment dynamically interact.

References:

[1] Lungarella, M., and Sporns, O. (2006) Mapping information flow in sensorimotor networks. PLoS Computational Biology 2, 1301-1312.

[2] Sporns, O., Tononi, G., and Kötter, R. (2005) The human connectome: A structural description of the human brain. PLoS Computational Biology 1, 245-251.

[3] Sporns, O., and Kötter, R. (2004) Motifs in brain networks. PLoS Biology 2, 1910-1918.

[4] Sporns, O., Chialvo, D., Kaiser, M., and Hilgetag, C.C. (2004) Organization, development and function of complex brain networks. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8, 418-425.

[5] Sporns, O., and Zwi, J. (2004) The small world of the cerebral cortex. Neuroinformatics 2, 145-162.

March 5, 2007: David Leake, Professor of Computer Science, Member of the IU Cognitive Science faculty, and Affiliate Member of the IU School of Informatics faculty.

Research Interests: Artificial intelligence and cognitive science, especially case-based reasoning, goal-driven learning, introspective reasoning, intelligent information search, and memory organization. David Leake is also the editor of AI Magazine.

Title: Making Computers Learn from Experiences

Abstract: Machine learning enables computers to improve their performance over time. A promising method for this learning is case-based reasoning (CBR), in which computer systems remember prior problems and adapt their solutions to new needs. CBR approaches are now widely used, for purposes ranging from aiding people in complex tasks to performing autonomous problem-solving. This talk sketches the human inspiration for CBR, shows how this is translated into the basis for artificial intelligence technology, and examines the benefits and issues for this reasoning process. It illustrates this discussion with case studies of systems to highlight current challenges and opportunities.

March 19, 2007: Steven Myers, Assistant Professor of Informatics, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Computer Science, and Research Affiliate, Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research

Research Interests: Cryptography, systems security, complexity theory, probabilistic combinatorics, and randomized algorithms.

Title: Cryptography, Complexity Theory, and Pseudo-Randomness.

Abstract: In this talk, some of the major ideas of modern cryptography will be introduced: pseudorandomness & 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\neqNP, an unproven assumption, the largest 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\neqNP, 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.

March 26, 2007: Christopher Raphael, Associate Professor of Informatics, Associate Professor of Cognitive Science, and Adjunct Associate Professor of Music Theory.

Research Interests: Automatic Musical Accompaniment Project, Oboist.

Title: Music Plus One

Abstract: I discuss my ongoing work in creating a computer system that plays the role of a sensitive musical accompanist in a non-improvisatory composition for soloist and accompaniment.

An accompanist must synthesize a number of different sources of information. First of all, the accompanist must perform a real-time analysis of the soloist's acoustic signal enabling the accompanist to "hear" the soloist. The accompaniment must also understand the basic template for musical performance that is described in the musical score, (notes, rhythms, etc.) thereby allowing the system to "sight-read" (perform with no training) credibly. However, the accompanist must also be able to improve over successive rehearsals, much as live musicians do; thus the accompanist must be capable of learning from training data.

I present a probabilistic model --- a Bayesian Belief Network --- that represents these disparate knowledge sources in a coherent framework. Nodes in the network represent observable variables, such as estimated note onset times, and unobservable variables, such as local tempo and rhythmic stress. The connectivity of the graph expresses various conditional independence assumptions which are key in making the computations feasible in real-time.

In a series of rehearsals the model is trained from both solo and accompaniment data to represent a rhythmic interpretation for a specific piece of music. During live performance, the accompanist "listens" to the soloist by using a hidden Markov model and makes principled real-time decisions that incorporate all currently available information. I will provide a live demonstration of my system on several examples.

This work is documented in some detail at Christopher Raphael's Music Plus One.

Research Interests: Catharine M. Wyss received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Indiana University (IU) in 2002. Since that time, she has held the position of Joint Assistant Professor of Informatics and Computer Science at IU in Bloomington. Before coming to IU, Dr. Wyss studied at the University of Edinburgh, Cambridge University, and McGill University. Her main research interests span areas of data integration, database query languages, and data mining.

Title: Language Features for Database Integration

Abstract: It is generally agreed that one of the most urgent technical problems facing our society in the 21st century is the overwhelming sea of raw data generated on a daily basis. Within this seemingly bottomless pit of data lies important information, which must be extracted and stored, and which can signifcantly improve our quality of life -- yielding everything from advance warning of bad weather or national threats to improved medical care and individually relevant retail advice. With the proliferation of data, acute problems of data integration have arisen, since data can be stored in numerous distinct (often incompatible) ways. Even if the underlying data model is the same, the actual structures employed may be dramatically different. In the relational data model, this leads to schema discrepancies, where data in one relation may be metadata (structural elements) in another. Thus, successful data integration in the relational data model presupposes successful metadata integration. Recently, relational languages for metadata integration have been developed at Indiana University, namely, Federated Interoperable SQL (FISQL) and Federated Interoperable Relational Algebra (FIRA). These are equivalent languages following the same canonical paradigms as SQL and RA. This talk will focus on describing the path to discovery of FISQL/FIRA as a vehicle for presenting ideas on the research and academic processes.

April 9, 2007: Dennis Gannon, Professor of Computer Science Director of the IU Extreme! Computing Group

Research Interests: Dr. Gannon's research interests include programming systems and tools, distributed computing, computer networks, parallel programming, computational science, problem solving environments and performance analysis of Grid and MPP systems. He led the DARPA HPC++ project and more recently he has been one of the architects of the Department of Energy SciDAC Common Component Architecture (CCA) project. This work has led to a framework for building component-based scientific applications called the Common Component Architecture. He was a partner in the NSF Computational Cosmology Grand Challenge project and currently the LEAD ITR project and the NCSA Alliance where he is helping to lead an effort to design Grid "Portals" which are desktop frameworks for Grid access. He was a co-founder the Java Grande Forum. He is the co-chair of the Global Grid Forum working groups on Grid Computing Environments and he is on the steering committee of the GGF. He is the Science Director for the Indiana Pervasive Technology Labs and the past Chair of the Department of Computer Science at Indiana University.

Title: Science Gateways and TeraGrid

Abstract: This talk will look at the way we can use web technology to make it possible for communities of scientists to exploit the power of supercomputers. The TeraGrid is the nations largest collection of supercomputers that are tied together by a single software fabric known as a "Grid". (IUs BigRed is part of TeraGrid). The Science Gateways program in TeraGrid encourages groups to buid special science portals that allow users to logon and see their familiar scientific applications and data sets transparently hosted on remote supercomputers.

April 16, 2007: Randall Beer, Professor of Computer Science, Informatics, and Cognitive Science.

Research Interests: Embodied, situated, and dynamical approaches to behavior and cognition, evolutionary robotics, computational neuroscience, and theoretical biology.

Title: Adaptive Behavior in Natural and Artificial Agents

Abstract: At some level, the challenges faced by all agents operating in the real world exhibit important similarities. This suggests that the roboticist interested in the construction and control of versatile and robust autonomous robots and the biologist seeking to understand the neural mechanisms of animal behavior might have much to learn from one another. This talk will survey a variety of projects at this interface between biology and robotics. First, I will describe simulated insect modeled on work on the neural basis of insect behavior. Second, I will present a series of legged robots whose design and control are based on the principles of insect walking, one of which can negotiate irregular, slatted and compliant surfaces using a variety of local leg reflexes and a distributed gait controller based on coordination mechanisms that have been described in the stick insect. Third, I will describe the use of evolutionary algorithms to construct dynamical neural circuits for controlling the behavior of model agents. Behaviors that have been evolved so far include chemotaxis, walking, sequential decision-making, learning, and a variety of visually-guided behaviors. Finally, I will briefly discuss attempts to mathematically analyze the operation of some of these evolved circuits.

April 23, 2007: Howard Rosenbaum, Associate Professor of Library and Information Science, Adjunct Associate Professor of Informatics and Director of the Master of Information Science Program in SLIS.

Research Interests: Social informatics, electronic business, and community networking. Recently, Dr. Rosenbaum has published a book "Information Technologies in Human Contexts: Learning from Organizational and Social Informatics" with Steve Sawyer and the late Rob Kling and others. He has led seminars on ebusiness at Napier University in Edinburgh, Scotland, the University of Bath, and the University of Greenwich, in the UK.

Rosenbaum has presented his work at the Association for Information Systems, the American Society for Information Science, the Association of Internet Researchers, HCI International, and other organizations. He is a Fellow the Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics at Indiana University and in the Center for Digital Commerce at Syracuse University. Rosenbaum teaches classes on electronic business, information architecture for the web, intellectual freedom, and information organizations, and offers continuing education workshops for information professionals in XML, CSS, and web page design. He has been recognized often for excellence in teaching and for the innovative use of technology in education. He received the Frederic Bachman Lieber Memorial Award for Teaching Excellence, Indiana University in 2005, a state-wide MIRA Award for Technological Innovation in Education from Techpoint in 2003, the Indiana Partnership for Statewide Education Award for Innovation in Teaching with Technology in 2002, and was named one of the first SBC Fellows at Indiana University in 2000.

Title: Technology and Unintended Consequences: A Social Informatics View

Abstract: Your cell phone has GPS and allows you to let your friends know how to find you. It also allows the government to track your movements. You post party pictures on your Myspace page and trash a faculty member on your blog. A potential employer googles you and finds them (or worse, you remove the pages and the employer finds them using the Wayback machine). Your new camcorder has remarkable zoom capabilities -- 20X optical and 700X digital. Someone used that same camera to tape you using your credit card to purchase your camera and your name and numbers were remarkably clear.

What do these examples tell us about the social uses of technology? In this talk we will make use of a social informatics perspective to explore the unintended consequences of technology implementation and use and other insights into the roles of technology in society.