Seminars
** Extended Deadline **
Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Cambridge, UK
EMBO Workshop on Current Challenges and Problems in Phylogenetics (3 September to 7 September 2007) in association with the Newton Institute programme entitled Phylogenetics (3 September to 21 December 2007)
Sponsored by: European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO)
Principal Organiser: Professor Vincent Moulton (University of East Anglia)
Organisers: Dr Brent Emerson (University of East Anglia), Professor Daniel Huson (Tuebingen University) and Professor Mike Steel (University of Canterbury)
Theme of Workshop: Phylogenetic trees and networks are central to modern molecular evolutionary biology, with applications ranging from the origin of viruses (e.g. HIV, influenza) to modelling plant and animal radiations. As biologists attempt to reconstruct larger slices of the ‘tree of life’ using increasingly complex data, and incorporating more accurate models of molecular evolution, mathematics (and its sister fields, statistics and computer science) is increasingly being seen as an essential tool.
This workshop will showcase some of the recent achievements, challenges and new problems that arise in using mathematical approaches to understand molecular evolution. Topics covered will include: phylogenomics, molecular epidemiology, genetic biodiversity and phylogeography, processes of reticulate evolution (such as horizontal gene transfer), haplotype mapping by perfect phylogeny, population genetics in phylogeny, and metagenomics.
In addition this workshop will launch (and set the agenda for) a 4-month workshop of collaboration and research at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences in a program on Phylogenetics, which will bring mathematicians and biologists together to develop new approaches in molecular phylogenetics.
Invited Speakers: J Felsenstein (Washington), O Gascuel (LIRMM), J Hein (Oxford), J Kim (Pennsylvania), W Martin (Heinrich-Heine), A Mooers (Simon Fraser), L Pachter (UC Berkeley), A Rodrigo (Auckland), A von Haeseler (Duesseldorf) and T Warnow (Texas).
Location and Cost: The workshop will take place at the Newton Institute and accommodation for participants will be provided in a single study bedroom with shared bathroom at Wolfson Court. The workshop package, costing 450GBP, includes accommodation, breakfast and dinner from dinner on Sunday 2 September to breakfast on Saturday 8 September 2007, and lunch and refreshments during the days that lectures take place. Participants who wish to attend but do not require the workshop package will be charged a registration fee of 90GBP. Self-supporting participants are very welcome to apply.
Further Information and Application Forms are available from the WWW at:
<http://www.newton.cam.ac.uk/programmes/PLG/plgw01.html>
** Closing Date for the receipt of applications is 30 June 2007 **
************************************************************
Tracey Andrew
Programme and Visitor Officer
Isaac Newton Institute
20 Clarkson Road
Cambridge
CB3 0EH
UK
Tel: + 44 1223 335984
Fax: + 44 1223 330508
http://www.newton.cam.ac.uk/
UTCS Colloquium/EDGE Seminar
Michel Raynal /IRISA-CNRS-INRIA-University, Rennes, France
Wednesday, June 6, 2007 11:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. - ACES 3.408
Host: Prof. Vijay Garg
"The Notion of a Timed Register and its Application to IndulgentSynchronization"
Talk Abstract:
A new type of shared object, called "timed register", is proposed and used for the design of indulgent timing-based algorithms. A timed register generalizes the notion of an atomic register as follows: if a process invokes two consecutive operations on the same timed register which are a read followed by a write, then the write operation is executed only if it is invoked at most d time units after the read operation, where d is defined as part of the read operation. In this context, a timing-based algorithm is an algorithm whose correctness relies on the existence of a bound Delta such that any pair of consecutive constrained read and write operations issued by the same process on the same timed register are separated by at most Delta time units. An indulgent algorithm is an algorithm that always guarantees the safety properties, and ensures the liveness property as soon as the timing assumptions are satisfied. The usefulness of this new type of shared object is demonstrated by presenting simple and elegant indulgent timing-based algorithms that solve the mutual exclusion, L-exclusion, adaptive renaming, test&set, and consensus problems. Interestingly, timed registers are universal objects in systems with process crashes and transient timing failures (i.e., they allow building any concurrent object with a sequential specification).
Speaker Bio:
Michel Raynal (http://www.irisa.fr/michel.raynal/)has been a professor of computer science since 1981. At IRISA (CNRS-INRIA-University joint computing research laboratory located in Rennes), he founded a research group on Distributed Algorithms in 1983. His research interests include distributed algorithms, distributed computing systems, networks and dependability. His main interest lies in the fundamental principles that underly the design and the construction of distributed computing systems. He has been Principal Investigator of a number of research grants in these areas, and has been invited by many universities all over the world to give lectures on distributed algorithms and distributed computing. His h-index is 31. Professor Michel Raynal belongs to the editorial board of several international journals (including JPDC and IEEE TPDS). He has published more than 100 papers in journals, has served in program committees for more than 70 international conferences, chaired the program committee of more than 15 international conferences. Michel Raynal received the IEEE ICDCS best paper Award three times in a row: 1999, 2000 and 2001. He chairedthe steering committee leading the DISC symposium series in 2002-2004, and is a member of the steering committees of the following conferences: ACM PODC (ACM Symposium on the Principles of Distributed Computing), SIROCCO (Colloquium on Structural Information and Communication Complexity), and ICDCN (Int'l Conference on Distributed Computing and Networks).
Department of Computer Sciences - Colloquium
Speaker Name/Affiliation: Greg Hamerly/Baylor University
Friday, May 4, 2007, 10:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m., ACES 6.304
Host: Inderjit Dhillon
"PG-means: learning the number of clusters in data"
Talk Abstract:
We present a novel algorithm called PG-means which is able to learn the number of clusters in a classical Gaussian mixture model. Our method is robust and efficient; it uses statistical hypothesis tests on one-dimensional projections of the data and model to determine if the examples are well represented by the model. In so doing, we are applying a statistical test for the entire model at once, not just on a per-cluster basis. We show that our method works well in difficult cases such as non-Gaussian data, overlapping clusters, eccentric clusters, high dimension, and many true clusters. Further, our new method provides a much more stable estimate of the number of clusters than existing methods. This was joint work with Yu Feng,
presented at NIPS 06.
Speaker Bio:
Greg Hamerly is an assistant professor of computer science at Baylor University. His research is in machine learning, particularly in unsupervised learning algorithms and their applications. He is a primary contributor to the SimPoint project, which uses unsupervised learning for efficient computer processor simulation.
UTCS Colloquium/AI
Nicholas Roy/Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Monday, April 30, 2007, 11:00 a.m, ACES 2.302
Host: Ben Kuipers
"Planning in Uncertain Worlds: Exploration and Information Gathering"
Talk Abstract:
Decision making in uncertain and incomplete models is an essential capability of robots operating in natural, dynamic domains. Separating model learning and planning into two distinct processes simplifies both problems, but prevents the planner from deliberately learning more to improve its own performance. In my group we have developed two approaches for planning in the information space of models; these algorithms allow a robot to generate plans that are robust to model errors while planning to learn more about the world. I will present results of our work in the domains of robot navigation and human-robot dialogue management.
Speaker Bio:
Nicholas Roy is the Boeing Assistant Professor in the Department of Aeronautics & Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his Ph. D. in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh in 2003. He is a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT. His research interests include autonomous systems, mobile robotics, human-computer interaction, decision-making under uncertainty and machine learning.
UTCS Colloquium/AI
Gregory Dudek/ McGill University
Friday, April 27, 2007 at 11:00a.m.
TAY 3.128 - East Wall (chalkboard)
Host: Peter Stone
"Vision-Based Behavior Control for Underwater Robotics"
Talk Abstract:
This talk discusses an ongoing research effort regarding the development of autonomous underwater vehicles, with particular emphasis on vision-based sensing. We have been developing an underwater vehicle for several applications, notably the environmental assessment of coral reefs habitats. Semi- autonomous behavior underwater is especially challenging since it combined 6 degree of freedom mobility, restricted communications, hard real-time constraints and unstructured environments. I will describe the system design of a small underwater and amphibious robot that uses computer vision as its principal sensing modality, and some of the ongoing challenges we have encountered. This includes an outline and discussion of how to accomplish operator control of the vehicle using a vision- based human-robot interface. The exploits a combination of a symbol-recognition system with a gestural inference and a special- purpose visual language. We also make use of Markov Random Fields for color correction (and, we hope, for scene reconstruction) I will comment on the use of physical feedback for behavior control and the development of a vision-based user interface. This
is join work with doctoral candidates Philippe Giguere and Junaed Sattar, as well as Anqi Xu and out colleagues at York University led by Michael Jenkin.
Speaker Bio:
Gregory Dudek is a Professor with the School of Computer Science, and an Associate member of the Department of Electrical Engineering at McGill University. He is the Director of McGill's Research Center for Intelligent Machines, a 20 year old inter-faculty research facility. In 2002 he was named a William Dawson Scholar (an honorary chair). He directs the McGill Mobile Robotics Laboratory.
He has recently been on the organizing and/or program committees of Robotics: Systems and Science, the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Systems (IROS), the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), Computer and Robot Vision, IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics (ICM2005) and International Conference on Hands-on Intelligent Mechatronics and Automation (HIMA2005) among other bodies. He is president of CIPPRS, the Canadian Information Processing and Pattern Recognition Society,
an ICPR national affiliate.
He was on leave in 2000-2001 as Visiting Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science at Stanford University and at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). He obtained his PhD in computer science (computational vision) from the University of Toronto, his MSc in computer science (systems) at the University of Toronto and his BSc in computer science and physics at Queen's University.
He has published over 150 research papers on subjects including visual object description and recognition, robotic navigation and map construction, distributed system design and biological perception. This includes a book entitled "Computational Principles of Mobile Robotics" co-authored with Michael Jenkin and published by Cambridge University Press. He has chaired and been otherwise involved in numerous national and international conferences and professional activities concerned with Robotics, Machine Sensing and Computer Vision. He research interests include perception for mobile robotics, navigation and position estimation, environment and shape modelling, computational vision and collaborative filtering.
UTCS Colloquium/AI
Michael L. Littman/Rutgers University
Friday, April 20, 2007 11:00 - Noon - ACES 6.304
Host: Peter Stone
"Advancing the Theory and Practice of Model-based Reinforcement Learning"
Talk Abstract:
Reinforcement learners seek to minimize sample complexity, the amount of experience needed to achieve adequate behavior, and computational complexity, the amount of computation needed per experience. Focusing on these two issues, we have been developing theoretically motivated algorithms that exhibit practical advantages over existing learning algorithms. I will present some of my lab's more recent theoretical accomplishments as well as some video footage of robots learning.
Speaker Bio:
Michael L. Littman directs the Rutgers Laboratory for Real-Life Reinforcement Learning (RL3) and his research in machine learning examines algorithms for decision making under uncertainty. After earning his Ph.D. from Brown University in 1996, Littman worked as an assistant professor at Duke University, a member of technical staff in AT&T's AI Principles Research Department, and is now an associate professor of computer science at Rutgers. Both Duke and Rutgers awarded him teaching awards and his research has been recognized with three best-paper awards on the topics of computer crossword solving, complexity analysis of planning, and efficient reinforcement learning. He served on the executive council of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, and is an advisory board member of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research and an action editor of the Journal of Machine Learning Research.
Speaking of Biology
Physiology & Behavior/Ecology, Evolution, & Behavior Dissertation Defense
Haruka Wada
"Stress and development: Ontogeny and cost/benefit of corticosterone secretion in an altricial bird."
Friday, April 20 - 12:00 p.m. - PHR 4.114
Host: Dr. David Crews
Speaking of Biology
Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship Program
Denis Wirtz, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering & Institute for NanoBio Technology, Johns Hopkins University
"Cell Microrheology in Health and Disease."
Friday, April 20 - 1:00 p.m. - ACE 2.402
Host: Muhammad Zaman
Speaking of Biology
Cognition and Perception
Bas Rokers
Imaging Research Center & Center for Perceptual Systems, UT-Austin
"Neural computation of motion through depth is robust to binocular anticorrelation."
Friday, April 20 - 3:00 p.m. - SEA 3.250
Speaking of Biology
Texas Neuroscience Review Mini-Symposium and Debut
Dr. Michael Domjan
The Imaging Research Center, UT-Austin
"Magnetic Resonance Imaging: A new methodology for the neurosciences."
&
Dr. Alex Huk
Section of Neurobiology, UT-Austin
"Neural basis of human perception and cognition: insights from neuroimaging."
3:00 p.m. - PHR 2.108
Host: Texas Neuroscience Review
A reception will be held in conjunction with the College of Natural Sciences Undergraduate Research Forum following the seminar, where the publication of the first issue of Texas Neuroscience Review will be announced.
Speaking of Biology
Section of Integrative Biology
Dr. Sam Sweet
"Comparative spatial ecology of small varanid lizards in northern Australia."
Thursday, April 19 - 2:00 p.m. - PHR 4.114
Host: Dr. Eric Pianka
Speaking of Biology
2007 Annual Burdette Lecture
Steven McKnight, Ph.D.
Professor, University of Texas Southwestern Medical School at Dallas
"Title TBA."
Thursday, April 19 - 2:30 p.m. - Texas Union Theatre
Speaking of Biology
Biomedical Engineering
Dr. Edward H. Shortliffe
Dean of the Faculty, University of Arizona College of Medicine, Phoenix
"Biomedical Informatics: Defining the Science and Enhancing Decisions."
Thursday, April 19 - 3:30 p.m. - ACE 2.302
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology
Susan Rosenberg, Ph.D.
Cullen Professor of Molecular Genetics, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX
"Genome Instability, Spontaneous DNA Breakage, and Regulation of Evolvability."
Wednesday, April 18 - 4:00 p.m. - ESB 223
Host: Makkuni Jayaram
Department of Computer Sciences - Colloquium
Jay Wylie/HP Labs
Wednesday, April 18, 2007 at 2:00p.m. - ACES 6.304
Host: Lorenzo Alvisi
"Determining fault tolerance of XOR-based erasure codes efficiently"
Talk Abstract:
XOR-based erasure codes have had a tremendous impact on networked systems in the recent past. For example, LDPC codes, digital fountain codes, and rateless erasure codes have all been deployed in P2P systems and streaming multicast systems. The impact of such codes on clustered storage systems has not yet been felt. Replication and RAID continue to dominate clustered storage systems. We believe that a clear understanding of XOR-based erasure codes applicable to clustered storage systems, rather than networked systems, will facilitate their adoption in clustered storage systems.
Towards this end, we propose a new fault tolerance metric for XOR-based erasure codes: the minimal erasures list (MEL). A minimal erasure is a set of erasures that leads to irrecoverable data loss and in which every erasure is necessary and sufficient for this to be so. The MEL is the enumeration of all minimal erasures. The MEL completely describes the fault tolerance of an XOR-based erasure code at and beyond its Hamming distance; it is therefore a useful metric for comparing the fault tolerance of such codes. We also propose an algorithm that efficiently determines the MEL of an erasure code. We use the proposed algorithm to identify the most fault tolerant XOR-based erasure code for all possible systematic erasure codes with up to seven data symbols and up to seven parity symbols. These codes are directly applicable in clustered storage systems today.
Speaker Bio:
Jay J. Wylie is a Research Scientist in the Storage Systems Department at Hewlett-Packard Labs. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 2005 and 2000 respectively. He received his B.A.Sc. in Systems Design Engineering from the University of Waterloo in 1998. Jay's interests are distributed systems, storage systems, erasure codes, (Byzantine) fault-tolerance, and dependability. Jay can be reached by email at jay.wylie@hp.com
Department of Computer Sciences/Center for Computational Biology & Bioinformatics - Colloquium
There is a sign up schedule for this event: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/department/webevent/utcs/events/cgi/list_events.cgi
Alexandros Stamatakis
Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne School of Comp & Communication Sciences
Tuesday, April 17, 2007, 2:00 p.m. - 3:30 p.m., TAY 3.128 (East Wall)
Host: Tandy Warnow
"Faster Algorithms for Support Value Computation & Emerging Parallel Architectures for Phylogeny Reconstruction"
Talk Abstract:
Despite the impressive progress that has been achieved with the new generation of Maximum Likelihood (ML) search algorithms, the computation of support values based on non-parametric bootstrapping (BS) still represents a major computational challenge.
Initially, I will discuss why the Randomized Estimated Log Likelihood (RELL) method is probably very hard to apply to large real-world datasets. Thereafter, I will present new heuristics to accelerate the BS procedure in RAxML (Randomized Axelerated Maximum Likelihood). In comparison to the standard BS procedure these heuristics yield run time improvements between factor 7 on datasets with 500 sequences up to factor 14 on 1,700 sequences. At the same time the support values obtained by the new BS heuristics show correlation coefficients ranging between 0.94 and 0.96 compared to those obtained via the standard method. In absolute numbers this means that 100 bootstrap replicates on single-gene datasets up to 2,000 taxa can be conducted within less than 24 hours on a single - reasonably fast - processor.
In the second part of my talk I will outline how the computation of large multi-gene datasets with ML can efficiently be parallelized on hardware platforms with very distinct architectures such as the IBM Cell and the IBM BlueGene. The parallelization on BlueGene scales well up to 512 processors on the largest dataset analyzed under ML to date, which consists of 270 sequences and 500,000 base pairs.
I will conclude with an overview of current work on related projects.
Related papers (PDF) and software (open source code for Mac/Linux) available at: icwww.epfl.ch/~stamata
Department of Computer Sciences - Faculty Candidate
Kristen LeFevre, University of Wisconsin-Madison
April 17, 2007 - 11:00 a.m. - ACES 2.302
Host: Don Batory
"Anonymization Techniques for Published Data"
Many organizations publish and distribute non-aggregate personal data for purposes including medical, demographic, and public health research. For legal and ethical reasons, it is important that these organizations take steps to protect the identities of individuals, as well as their sensitive personal information. At the same time, concern for privacy must be balanced with the need to provide useful, high-quality data.
In this talk, I will first give a brief overview of the anonymity problem in data publishing. Then I will describe a new multidimensional generalization approach (also commonly called "recoding") and greedy algorithmic framework.
The contributions of this work span two key dimensions: First, there are a seemingly infinite number of ways to measure data quality. I will take a very direct evaluation approach, based on a target workload of queries and data mining tasks, and I will describe some ways to directly incorporate knowledge of a workload into the anonymization process. Second, as more and more personal information is collected, it is important to develop algorithms that are both efficient and scalable. In the latter part of the talk, I will describe techniques for incorporating scalability into our algorithmic framework.
Speaking of Biology
UT M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Science Park-DNA Repair Group Series
Dr. Masaaki Moriya
SUNY, Stonybrook, NY
"DNA repair and mutagenesis of ROS-generated lesions."
Tuesday, April 17 - 11:30 a.m. - Videoconferenced to Harrison Auditorium, Pickle Conference
Center, Science Park, Smithville, TX
For directions to the Science Park, go to: http://sciencepark.mdanderson.org/about/location/
Speaking of Biology
Biochemistry Division Seminar
David E. Draper, Ph.D.
Vernon E. Krieble Professor of Chemistry, Johns Hopkins University
"Getting the Charge Out of RNA: How Ions Help RNA Fold."
Tuesday, April 17 - 2:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210 - Refreshments will be served at 1:45 p.m.
Hosts: Robin Gutell, Ph.D. & Rick Russell, Ph.D.
Speaking of Biology
Department of Computer Sciences
Alexandros Stamatakis
School of Comp & Communication Sciences, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne
"Faster Algorithms for Support Value Computation & Emerging Parallel
Architectures for Phylogeny Reconstruction."
Tuesday, April 17 - 2:00 p.m. - TAY 3.128
Host: Tandy Warnow
There is a sign up schedule for this event at
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/department/webevent/utcs/events/cgi/list_events.cgi
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology
Dr. David Stein
Section of Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology, UT-Austin
"The Drosophila Embryonic Dorsal-Ventral Axis - Naturally Sweetened, with a Hint of Sulfate."
Tuesday, April 17 - 4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210 - Refreshments will be served at 3:30.
Speaking of Biology
Population Biology
Samraat Pawar
Section of Integrative Biology, UT-Austin
"Webs in an ever-changing world: environmental fluctuations and population interaction networks."
Monday, April 16 - 12:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Speaking of Biology
Center for Perceptual Systems
Emo Todorov, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Cognitive Science, University of California San Diego
"Optimality of Activity Sensing."
Reception with Refreshments at 11:30 AM
Monday, April 16 - 12:00 p.m. - SEA 4.244 - Reception with refreshments at 11:30 a.m.
Host: Dana H. Ballard
Speaking of Biology
Section of Neurobiology
Catharine Rankin, Ph.D.
University of British Columbia
"A Genetic Dissection of Memory in C. elegans."
Monday, April 16 - 4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Dr. Harold Zakon
Speaking of Biology
UT Anthropological Society
Dr. Thad Q. Bartlett
Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, UT-San Antonio
"The Sex Life of Andromeda: A Case Study in So-Called Gibbon Monogamy."
Monday, April 16 - 5:00 p.m. - EPS 1.128
Speaking of Biology
Section of Neurobiology Recruitment Seminar
Nicholas Priebe, Ph.D.
University of California, San Francisco
"Chalk Talk."
Friday, April 13 - 12:00 p.m. - NMS 1.120
Speaking of Biology
Physiology & Behavior
Dr. Sergey Nuzhdin
University of California-Davis
"Flies Socializing: Contributions To The Maintenance Of Genetic Variation In Behaviors."
Friday, April 13 - 12:00 p.m. - PHR 4.114
Host: Dr. David Crews
Speaking of Biology
Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship Program
Carolyn Bayer, IGERT Trainee, Department of Biomedical Engineering
"Synthesis and Characterization of a Hydrogel-Conductive Polymer Composite."
Advisors: Nicholas Peppas and Lynn Loo
&
Eric Spivey, IGERT Trainee, Department of Biomedical Engineering
"Functionalization of Multi-Photon Crosslinked Protein Microstructures."
Advisors: Jason Shear and Andy Dunn
Friday, April 13 - 1:00 p.m. - ACE 2.402
Speaking of Biology
Biochemistry Division Seminar
Christopher K. Mathews, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus, Biochemistry & Biophysics Department, Oregon State University
"Maintaining Precursor Pools for Mitochondrial DNA Replication."
Friday, April 13 - 1:30 p.m. - WEL 2.122
Host: Dean R. Appling, Ph.D
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology
Dr. David Johnson
UT M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Smithville, TX & Adjunct Assoc. Prof.,
Section of Molec. Genetics & Microbiology, UT-Austin
"Research in Progress."
Friday, April 13 0 3:30 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Liz Wyckoff
Department of Computer Sciences - Faculty Candidate
Edmund Nightingale, University of Michigan
April 12, 2007 - 11:00a.m. - ACES 2.302
Host: Emmett Witchel
"Improving the Performance of Highly Reliable Software Systems"
Commodity operating systems still retain the design principles developed when processor cycles were scarce and RAM was precious. These out-dated principles have led to performance/functionality trade-offs that are no longer needed or required; I have found that, far from impeding performance, features such as safety, consistency and energy-efficiency can often be added while improving performance over existing systems.
I will describe my work developing Speculator, which provides facilities within the operating system kernel to track and propagate causal dependencies. Using Speculator, I will show that distributed and local file systems can provide strong consistency and safety guarantees without the poor performance these guarantees usually entail.
Speaking of Biology
Section of Integrative Biology
Dr. Sergey Nuzhdin
University of California-Davis
"Genetic variation and evolution of transcriptional networks."
Thursday, April 12 - 2:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Dr. Johann Hofmann
Speaking of Biology
Section of Neurobiology Recruitment Seminar
Nicholas Priebe, Ph.D.
University of California, San Francisco
"The role of local circuitry and spike threshold in cortical processing."
Thursday, April 12 - 4:00 p.m. - ACES 2.402
Speaking of Biology
UT M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Science Park-Hogg Seminar Series
Leland Chung, Ph.D.
Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA
"The surprising role of a house keeping gene, beta 2 microglobulin, in cancer growth and metastasis."
Wednesday, April 11 - 11:00 a.m. - Harrison Auditorium, Pickle Conference Center, Science
Park, Smithville, TX
For directions to the Science Park, go to: http://sciencepark.mdanderson.org/about/location/
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology
Jimmy Ballard, PhD
Associate Professor, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, OK
"Elucidating the Cardiotoxic Activity of Clostridium difficile Toxin B."
Wednesday, April 11 - 4:00 p.m. - ESB 223
Speaking of Biology
Marine Science Institute-Schweppe Speaker
Dr. Graham Young
University of Washington
"Environmental and endocrine regulation of the ovary: salmonid and freshwater eel models."
Tuesday, April 10 - 3:45 p.m. - Visitors Center Auditorium at the Marine Science Institute,
Port Aransas, TX
For directions to the Marine Science Institute, go to: http://msi40.utmsi.utexas.edu/institute/maps.htm
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology
Dr. Sarah Hake
Department of Plant & Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley
"MicroRNA Regulation of Inflorescence Development in Maize."
Tuesday, April 10 - 4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210 - Refreshments will be served at 3:30.
Host: Enamel Huq
Department of Computer Sciences - Faculty Candidate
Adrien Treuille, University of Washington
Tuesday, April 10, 2007, 11:00 a.m. - Noon - ACES 2.302
Host: Okan Arikan
"New Approaches to Modeling and Control of Complex Dynamics"
Talk Abstract:Complex phenomena such as animal morphology, human motion, and large fluid systems challenge even our most sophisticated simulation and control techniques. My overarching research goal has been to develop fundamentally new methods to approach such high-dimensional and nonlinear problems. This talk presents my work solving these problems across a wide range of phenomena, including a new model-reduction approach to fluids that is orders-of-magnitude faster than standard simulation methods and enables interactive high-resolution fluid simulation for the first time. Another example is a continuum approach to crowd dynamics which efficiently reproduces empirical aspects of large crowd behavior that would be difficult or impossible to achieve with traditional agent models. The talk will also cover work on several other phenomena including human animation, and protein folding. Such new algorithmic approaches advance
not only our ability to simulate and control complex systems but also our understanding of the systems themselves.
Speaking of Biology
Population Biology
Rob Plowes
Section of Integrative Biology, UT-Austin
"Invasives at Their Limit: Fire Ants in Texas."
Monday, April 9 - 12:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Dr. Larry Gilbert
Center for Perceptual Systems
Robert Jacobs, Ph.D.
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester
"Near-Optimal Decision-Making in Dynamic Environments."
Monday, April 9 - 12:00 p.m. - SEA 4.244 - Reception with refreshments at 11:30 a.m.
Speaking of Biology
Center for Nonlinear Dynamics
Dr. Richard Aldrich
Chair, Section of Neurobiology, UT-Austin
"Biophysics of ion channels - the molecular units of bioelectric signaling."
Monday, April 9 - 1:00 p.m. - RLM 11.204
Speaking of Biology
Plant Biology Graduate Program
Dr. Rowan Sage
University of Toronto
"The Evolution of C4 Photosynthesis."
Monday, April 9 - 4:00 p.m. - BUR 136 - Refreshments will be served at 3:30 p.m. in BIO 214 before the seminar.
Host: Debra Hansen
Speaking of Biology
Section of Neurobiology
Mary Kennedy, Ph.D.
California Institute of Technology
"A new look at mechanisms of synaptic plasticity."
Monday, April 9 - 4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Dr. Kristen Harris
Department of Computer Sciences - Faculty Candidate
Speaker Name: Lek-Heng Lim, Stanford University
April 5, 2007, 11:00 a.m., ACES 2.302
Host: Inderjit Dhillon
"Ten Ways to Decompose a Tensor and Their Applications in Data Mining"
Talk Abstract:
In scientific and statistical computing, one often reduces the problem at hand -- be it a problem involving differential equations or nonlinear optimization or parameter estimation-- to a simpler problem (or a sequence of these) that requiresnothing more than linear algebra. In fact, the solution of linear systems alone accounts for more than 70% of all supercomputing time in the world.
However, with the use of increasingly sophisticated sensor devices, experimental methodologies, and mathematical models, we now see a new generation of problems in scientific and statistical computing that cannot be reduced to standard problems in numerical linear algebra. It is thus pertinent to enlarge the arsenal of computational tools available at our disposal. Among the various plausible extensions to numerical linear algebra, one will find the capability of dealing with multilinearity to be among the most natural, desirable, and powerful -- if we could do tensor computations (numerical multilinear algebra) as effectively as matrix computations (numerical linear algebra), then we would be able to address many of the new problems arising in modern scientific and statistical computing.
It is not coincidental that "the decompositional approach to matrix computations" has been named one of the Top 10 Algorithms of the 20th Century. If numerical linear algebra is the foundation of scientific computing, then matrix decompositions may be considered to be the foundation of numerical linear algebra. So the development of numerical multilinear algebra ought to begin with a few basic tensor decompositions.
In this talk, we will present ten decompositions of tensors and discuss their properties and applications. Our list will include the tensorial generalizations of LU/LDU decomposition, QR/complete orthogonal factorization, eigenvalue decomposition (EVD), singular value decomposition (SVD), nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF), Kronecker product decomposition, and more. We will discuss the similarities and differences of these decompositions with their matrix counterparts, as well as the various challenges in numerical multilinear algebra, of which these tensor decompositions form a cornerstone.
To every tensor decomposition, there is an associated approximation problem. We will see how these may be applied to multilinear statistical models that generalize vector space models, independent component analysis, graphical models/Bayesian networks, and model reduction. We will illustrate these with selected applications in bioinformatics, computer vision, signal processing, spectroscopy, and sensor locations.
Department of Biomedical Engineering Seminar Series 2006-2007
C. Mauli Agrawal, Ph.D.
Dean, College of Engineering, Professor and Director, Institute for Bioengineering and Translational Research, Peter Flawn Professor The University of Texas at San Antonio
April 5, 2007 - 3:30 p.m. - ACE 2.302
"Surface Modification of Biomaterials for Cardiovascular Applications"
Different strategies related to surface modification of biomaterials for cardiovascular applications will be discussed. This will include the use of gas-plasma treatment of polymeric materials to elicit angiogenesis in tissue engineering applications. Our studies show that gas-plasma treatment of polylactic acid induces endothelial cells to up-regulate VEG-F production. This knowledge is being used to designed scaffolds for regenerating vascularized tissue. In a separate part of the talk the use of self-assembled monolayers for drug-delivery applications will be presented. This approach has implications for drug-eluting cardiovascular stents as well as for orthopedic and dental implants.
Support for the seminar series is provided by our Industrial Affiliates.
Department of Biomedical Engineering
http://www.bme.utexas.edu
The Austin Forum (www.austinforum.org)
When: Wednesday, April 4, 2007 @ 6:30 p.m.
Where: J.J. Pickle Research Campus-Research Office Complex (Jackson School of Geosciences & Texas Advanced Computing Center's new building), Seminar Room 1.603
The Texas Advanced Computer Center (TACC) and The Austin Forum invite you to a participatory talk by Dr. Charles Jackson, a leading research scientist at The University of Texas at Austin's Institute for Geophysics (UTIG). Dr. Jackson will present some of the little-known inner-workings of climate model development, including what can and cannot be predicted about the Earth's future climate. Are predictions of future global warming and its consequences accurate?
The mission of The Austin Forum is to promote awareness of issues and opportunities in our community and to enrich lives. The Forum invites distinguished professionals and leaders to speak on topics related to science and technology and how they impact society.
Learn more about The Austin Forum's upcoming events at: www.austinforum.org
**This event is free and open to the public; complimentary food and drink will be provided prior to the talk @ 6:00 p.m.
For more detailed information, please contact:
Rebeka Villarreal Martinez
Development & External Relations
Texas Advanced Computing Center
Direct: 512-232-7794
Fax: 512-475-944
Scientific Software Day
Where:
The University of Texas at Austin
J.J. Pickle Research Campus, Research Office Complex (ROC, Bldg. 196)
Seminar Room (Room 1.603), 10100 Burnet Road, Austin, TX 78758
When:
Monday, April 2, 2007 - 9:00am - 4:00pm (CDT)
The Bureau of Economic Geology (BEG) and the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) invite you to participate in Scientific Software Day - a day designed to provide practical introductions to several software packages relevant to the research and science communities.
Speakers from the University and Austin area companies will showcase software (mostly open-source) that is of general use to scientific researchers. Presentations covering several topics are planned, including:
* linear algebra software (Petsc, Flame);
* workflow (Madagascar, MyCluster); and
* programming languages and environments (Eclipse, DataRush, LabView, Scientific Python, GridChem).
There are two slots available for additional talks. If you would like to participate as a presenter, send email, by Monday, March 19th, to softwareday@tacc.utexas.edu. Requests will be reviewed and selections made by the event organizers.
Attendance is free, but registration is required. Please register at http://www.tacc.utexas.edu/softwareday/.
Email any questions you may have to softwareday@tacc.utexas.edu.
Organizers:
Victor Eijkhout
Texas Advanced Computing Center
Phone: 512.471.5809
Sergey Fomel
Bureau of Economic Geology
Phone: 512.475.9573
Please see the following URL for directions to Pickle Research Campus and the Research Office Complex: http://www.tacc.utexas.edu/general/visitor/.
Victor Eijkhout,
512 471 5809 (w)
Texas Advanced Computing Center,
The University of Texas at Austin
UTCS Colloquia
Brent Waters, SRI International
Monday, April 2, 2007, 11:00a.m. - 12:00p.m., ACES 6.304
Host: Vitaly Shmatikov
"Attribute-Based Encryption: A Cryptosystem for Expressive Access Control on Encrypted Data"
Talk Abstract:
Several distributed file and information systems require complex access-control mechanisms, where access decisions depend upon attributes of the protected data and access policies assigned to users. Traditionally, such access-control mechanisms have been enforced by a server that acts as a trusted reference monitor; the monitor will only allow a user to view data if his access policy allows it. While the use of trusted servers allows for a relatively straightforward solution, there is a large downside to this approach --- both the servers and their storage must be trusted and remain uncompromised. A natural solution to this problem is to encrypt stored data. However, traditional public-key encryption methods require that data be encrypted to one particular user's public key and are unsuitable for expressing more complex access control policies.
In this talk, I will present recent work on a new cryptographic primitive, called Attribute-Based Encryption (ABE), that was created to address this issue. Attribute-Based Encryption allows for expressive access policies over encrypted data. In an ABE system encrypted data is annotated with descriptive attributes and users' private keys are ascribed access formulas over these attributes. For example, if Carol is assigned to read and process systems-seminar messages during the year 2007, she would be ascribed the private key with the access formula "Subj:Systems-Seminar" AND "Year:2007".
I will focus this talk on the challenges of creating ABE systems that are both secure and efficient. In particular, an ABE system must be secure against an attacker that collects several private keys from different colluding users. We also want to avoid designs that are prohibitively expensive; for example, a solution should not include a separate public key/private for every possible access control policy that might ever be used. In addition, I will talk about recent efforts in implementing Attribute-Based Encryption and making it available as a tool to be used by researchers in systems security.
UTCS Colloquium - Artificial Intelligence
Renata Vieira, UNISINOS, Sao Leopoldo, Brazil
Friday, March 30, 2007 2:00 p.m. - ACES 2.402
Host: Raymond Mooney
"Have I mentioned it?"
Talk Abstract:
Coreference resolution is a well known NLP task, relevant for the more general task of information extraction, among others. A related problem is the problem of identifying if a referring expression is introducing a new entity in the text or if it follows previously mentioned ones. Definite descriptions are a type of referring expressions which are highly ambiguous between these two roles. In fact they sometimes lie in between these two, when mentioning a new entity whose interpretation is anchored in given ones. When developing a classifier that distinguishes between these many roles of definite descriptions we face not only the old AI problem of grasping common sense and world knowledge but also the problem of unbalanced data. In this talk I will present some experiments dealing with these problems and I will mention some NLP tasks that the classifier is useful for.
Speaker Bio:
Renata Vieira is Professor in the Computer Science Department at Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos, Sao Leopoldo, Brazil. She received her PhD from the University of Edinburgh in 1998. Her research interests cover issues in computational linguistics, artificial intelligence, including natural language understanding, discourse processing, agent communication, knowledge representation, ontologies and the semantic web.
UTCS Colloquium/ICES/CS Seminar
Anthony R. Ingraffea, Cornell University
March 30, 2007, 11:00a.m. - 12:00p.m., ACE 6.304
Host: Keshav Pingali
"Multi-Scale Computational Simulation of Fatigue Cracking Processes in Aluminum Alloys"
Talk Abstract:
We are developing physics-based models for simulating nucleation and propagation of fatigue cracks in aluminum alloys. Our models are part of a DARPA-funded, broad-team project on structural integrity prognosis. The salient features of our approach are:
A. The use of statistically representative, realistic microstructures as a starting point for our simulations. Using unique microstructure builder tools, we assemble three-dimensional digital material representations from actual microstructural observations. These contain realistic morphologies, textures, particle distributions, etc. Constituents are assigned statistically representative distributions of properties such as yield strengths and toughnesses.
B. The use of polycrystal plasticity models to accurately compute stress and strain fields in polycrystals using the finite element method. In polycrystalline metals, the grain structure and phenomena occurring on the grain scale, such as interactions between grains and particles and crystallographic slip, strongly influence the fatigue behavior of the materials. Statistically realistic 3D microstructures are directly simulated in order to investigate the effect of elasto-plastic response within the microstructure on the fatigue behavior.
C. The use of an explicit geometric representational approach in a multi-scale methodology. At each length scale, fatigue crack precursors, such as grain boundary or particle decohesion, are represented geometrically in the finite element model, and allowed to evolve through changes in the underlying geometric and mesh models. The need for concomitant quantitative experimental data on microstructural damage nucleation (particle fracture, debonding, etc) becomes apparent.
I will report on progress in development, verification, and validation of our simulation models, and show example simulations
UTCS Colloquium/ICES/CS Seminar
Johannes Gehrke, Cornell University
March 30, 2007, 10:00a.m. - 11:00a.m., ACES 2.402
Host: Keshav Pingali
"Scaling Computer Games to Epic Proportions"
Talk Abstract:
An important aspect of computer games is the artificial intelligence (AI) of non-player characters. To create interesting AI in games today, developers and players can either create complex, dynamic behavior for a very small number of characters, or they can create simple behavior for a large number of characters, but neither the game engines nor the style of AI programming permits complex behavior that scales to a very large number of non-player characters.
I will show how we can take techniques that currently enable database systems to scale to petabytes and apply them to scale computer games and simulations. I will describe a highly expressive scripting language SGL (for Scalable Gaming Language) for customizing behavior for individual non-player characters. The use of sophisticated query processing and indexing techniques allows us to efficiently execute a large number of SGL scripts, thus providing a framework for games with a truly epic number of non-player characters. I will conclude with an outlook how our techniques can be used to also achieve significant scalability in large-scale simulations.
This talk describes joint work with Alan Demers (Cornell), Christoph Koch (Saarland University), Rajmohan Rajagopalan (Cornell), and Walker White (Cornell).
Speaking of Biology
UT M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Science Park-Departmental Seminar Series
Linda Hendershot, Ph.D.
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN
"The unfolded protein response in tumor cells and the effects on chemosensitivity."
Friday, March 30 - 11:00 a.m. - Harrison Auditorium, Pickle Conference Center, Science
Park, Smithville, TX
For directions to the Science Park, go to: http://sciencepark.mdanderson.org/about/location/
Speaking of Biology
Ecolunch
Krushnamegh Kunte
Ecology, Evolution, & Behavior Graduate Program
"Removal of dominant species increases diversity in nectar-feeding butterfly communities."
Friday, March 30 - 12:00 p.m. - BIO 214
Speaking of Biology
McCraw Kinesiology Departmental Lecture Series
Lisa Griffin, Ph.D.
Department of Kinesiology and Health Education, UT-Austin
"Neural Adaptations to Fatigue and Training: Applications to Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation."
Friday, March 30 - 12:00 p.m. - BEL 962 - Refreshments will be provided at 11:45.
Speaking of Biology
Physiology & Behavior
David Haig
Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University
"Prader-Willi syndrome and the evolution of human childhood."
Friday, March 30 - 12:00 p.m. - PHR 4.114
Host: Dr. David Crews
Speaking of Biology
Biochemistry Division Seminar
Lizbeth Hedstrom, Ph.D.
Markey Professor of Biochemistry and Chemistry, Brandeis University
"IMP Dehydrogenase and the dynamics of drug selectivity."
Friday, March 30 - 1:30 p.m. - WEL 2.122
Host: Kevin N. Dalby, Ph.D.
Speaking of Biology
Cognition and Perception
Swathi Kiran
Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders
"The role of exemplar typicality within categories on recovery from brain damage."
Friday, March 30 - 3:00 p.m. - SEA 3.250
UTCS Colloquium/ACT Special Seminar
Anna Lysyanskaya/Brown University
Friday, March 30, 2007 - 11:00 a.m. - ACES 3.408
Host: Adam Klivans
"Compact Ecash and Applications"
Talk Abstract:
The main idea of electronic cash is that, even though the same party (a Bank) is responsible for giving out electronic coins, and for later accepting them for deposit, the withdrawal and the spending protocols are designed in such a way that it is impossible to identify when a particular coin was spent. I.e., the withdrawal
protocol does not reveal any information to the Bank that would later enable it to trace how a coin was spent. Since a coin is represented by data, and it is easy to duplicate data, an electronic cash scheme requires a mechanism that prevents a user from spending the same coin twice (double-spending), for example by identifying double-spenders and tracing all transactions that they have carried out.
In this talk, I will first present a scheme that allows a user to withdraw a wallet with W coins, such that the space required to store these coins, and the complexity of the withdrawal protocol, are proportional to logW, rather than to W. We achieve this without compromising the anonymity and unlinkability properties usually required of electronic cash schemes. We give a scheme that allows us to efficiently trace all coins that were spent by a double-spender. The security of our construction relies on a mix of cryptographic assumptions about groups with bilinear maps, and is in the random oracle model.
I will then show how to use the same methodology to achieve balance between accountability and privacy in other applications. In particular, we consider a setting where the amount of anonymous transactions with a particular merchant may be limited (e.g., so as to prevent money laundering). Finally, I will show that this methodology solves the problem of uncloneable group identification.
Based on joint papers with Jan Camenisch, Susan Hohenberger, Markulf Kohlweiss, and Mira Meyerovich.
Department of Computer Sciences - Faculty Candidate
Hovav Shacham, Weizmann Institute of Science
Thursday, March 29, 2007 11:00 a.m. - Noon - ACES 2.302
Host: Vitaly Shmatikov
"Buffer Overflows and Group Signatures: Recent Results in Security and Cryptography"
Talk Abstract:
We analyze the effectiveness of two techniques intended to make it harder for attackers to exploit vulnerable programs: W-xor-X and ASLR. W-xor-X marks all writable locations in a process' address space nonexecutable. ASLR randomizes the locations of the stack, heap, and executable code in an address space. Intel recently added hardware to its processors (the "XD bit") to ease W-xor-X implementation. Microsoft Windows Vista ships with W-xor-X and ASLR. Linux (via the PaX project) and OpenBSD also include support for both.
We find that both measures are less effective than previously thought, on the x86 at least. A new way of organizing exploits allows the attacker to perform arbitrary computation using only code already present in the attacked process' address space, so code injection is unnecessary. Exploits organized in the new way chain together dozens of short instruction sequences, each just two or three instructions long. Because of the properties of the x86 instruction set, these sequences might not have been intentionally compiled into the binary; we find them by means of static analysis. Furthermore, the effective entropy of PaX ASLR can be searched by brute force. The attack takes just a few minutes to mount over the network.
Group signatures are a variant of digital signatures that provides anonymity for signers. Any member of a group can sign messages, but the resulting signature keeps the identity of the signer secret. In some systems there is a third party that can undo the signature anonymity (trace) using a special trapdoor. New applications for group signatures include the trusted computing initiative (TCPA) and vehicle safety ad-hoc networks (DSRC). In each case, group signatures provide privacy guarantees for tamper-resistant embedded devices.
We describe a short group signature scheme. Signatures in our scheme are approximately the size of a standard RSA signature with the same security. The mathematical setting for our scheme is certain elliptic curves featuring an efficiently computable bilinear map, a setting that has proved fruitful in recent years. We also consider two choices for handling revocation in our scheme.
School of Biological Sciences - Distinguisted Lecturer
Dr. David Haig, Lorene Morrow Kelly Distinguished Lecturer
March 29 in ACES 2.302, 4:00pm, with a reception to follow.
To ask to be present at dinner on either evening, please contact the host, Mike Ryan, at mryan@mail.utexas.edu or 471-5078.
Below is some background on Dr. Haig:
David Haig, is an Australian evolutionary biologist and geneticist, associate professor in Harvard Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. He is interested in intragenomic conflict, genomic imprinting and parent-offspring conflict, and wrote the book Genomic Imprinting and Kinship.
David Haig, Professor of Biology, Botanical Museum 42B
phone: (617) 496 5125, fax: (617) 495 5667, dhaig@oeb.harvard.edu
HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES
Genes in conflict:
David Haig looks at internal genetic warfare
By William J. Cromie, Gazette Staff
Most people think of genes as molecules that make you more or less fit for survival. In healthy people, genomes are seen as well-functioning machines where all the parts work together for a common good.
That's not necessarily so, believes David Haig, a newly tenured professor in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. "I'm interested in situations where genes in an individual have different fitnesses and can come into conflict with each other," he says.
He's not talking about genes with different functions battling for a top spot in your genome, but identical genes with different "attitudes."
All genes except those that determine sex come in pairs, one inherited from your mother and one from your father. In most cases, the result of such pairing never changes, there is no conflict. If you receive a gene for blue eyes from your mom and one for brown eyes from your dad, you wind up with brown eyes. If you inherit a gene for blue eyes from your dad and one for brown eyes from your mom, you still wind up with brown eyes.
But in genes that interest Haig, parental origin makes a difference. The gene does one thing if it comes in an egg cell and another if it comes in a sperm cell. What maximizes the fitness of the one is different from what maximizes the fitness of the other.
Haig cites the example of pregnancy. Nutrients are transferred to the fetus through the placenta, and the more food it receives, the healthier the baby will be. But that comes with a cost to the mother. The more nutrients she supplies, the less energy she has to devote to other offspring, and the more vulnerable she becomes to disease. Therefore, the genes that a fetus receives from its mother are most interested in mom's survival and reproduction in the future.
Genes from the father, however, take a different view. They demand the most from the mother during a pregnancy and are less interested in her future reproduction. There's even evidence that paternal genes are particularly active in the growth of the placenta, which would increase the amount of nourishment the fetus receives but increase the cost to the maternal genes. Therein lies the conflict.
Born to be a biologist
Naomi Pierce, Hessel Professor of Biology and Curator of Lepidoptera, remembers the first time she met Haig. "I was struck by his remarkable combination of unreserved affability and academic brilliance," she says. "He can explain phenomena ranging from crocodilian sex determination to genomic imprinting in the most lucid and engaging manner. He is particularly well known for his evolutionary explication of the latter - situations where a gene has a different pattern of expression depending on whether it is inherited from an individual's mother or father. His work has been important in explaining how this can lead to unusual aspects of mammalian development, including a number of human diseases."
These diseases include various forms of childhood cancer and a rare malady that produces dramatic overgrowth of a fetus. Many of these genes are involved in cell growth, and cancers are, basically, the uncontrolled growth and progression of cells.
Although born to be a biologist, Haig, now 44, didn't start out to work on such theoretical questions. His first interests were birds and plants. He was born in Canberra, the busy capital of Australia, which was more like a quiet country town then. Flocks of parrots used to fly in to drink at the family fishpond, and that got him interested in bird watching at the age of 7. His mother taught high school biology, and she added fuel to his interest in birds and plants.
Haig did undergraduate work at Macquarie University in Sydney, and entered graduate school with the idea of getting a Ph.D. in plant ecology. As he got into his studies, however, he became interested in theoretical questions.
"As an undergraduate, I read a number of great papers on evolutionary biology written by Robert Trivers, who was then at Harvard," Haig recalls. "My interest in genomic imprinting started with these papers. Trivers is now at Rutgers University, and since coming to America, we're gotten to be good friends."
For his Ph.D., earned in 1989, Haig did a theoretical thesis on the life cycles of vascular plants. He then went to Oxford University for two years of postdoctoral work. Afterwards, Pierce nominated him for the Harvard Society of Fellows.
Haig arrived at Harvard in 1992, and describes the fellowship as "a wonderful three years." He was appointed a tenured professor last year.
"David is a person of enormous integrity who is deeply thoughtful about ethical, political, and religious views of all kinds," comments Pierce. "Not only is he one of the most original evolutionary theoreticians of his generation, but he is genuinely kind and generous to everyone around him. Besides, he is fun to relax and have a drink with, and he tells marvelous stories."
Clerking couldn't hold him
Haig's road from undergraduate to tenured professor was not as straight as it is for most people. After earning his bachelor of science degree, he decided to take time out "to learn about other things in life." After working as a dishwasher, he landed a position as clerk for the New South Wales State Government.
"I had a rubber stamp and it cost people money for me to stamp their legal documents," he explained. "I learned a lot about the world, life, and people during the three years I took off. But, after a couple years of stamping documents, I decided that academia was a better place to be. It's not as carefree as the life of a clerk, but it's more intellectually stimulating."
Now that he has reached a peak in academia, Haig says he "would like to get back to plants. Genomic imprinting occurs in them, too," he points out. "There is also a lot of loose ends in my thesis work, fascinating things about plant life cycles that I'd like get back to."
College of Pharmacy/Toxicology - Faculty Candidate
Yu-an Cao, Ph.D., Research Associate
Neonatal and Developmental Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine
Thursday, March 29, 11:00am in PHR 4.114
Host: Dr. Shawn Bratton
"Stem cell stress response regulated by heme oxygenase-1"
Next week's Toxicology seminar will be given by a Pharmacology & Toxicology faculty candidate. Dr. Yu-an Cao, Research Associate in the Neonatal and Developmental Medicine Division at Stanford University School of Medicine, will be speaking on "Stem cell stress response regulated by heme oxygenase-1" The seminar will be in PHR 4.114 at 11:00 on Thursday, March 29.
The seminar will be televised to Science Park for those of you not being able to make it to Austin for the talk.
Speaking of Biology
Pharmacology & Toxicology faculty candidate
Dr. Yu-an Cao
Research Associate, Neonatal and Developmental Medicine Division,
Stanford University School of Medicine
"Stem cell stress response regulated by heme oxygenase-1."
Thursday, March 29 - 11:00 a.m. - PHR 4.114
Speaking of Biology
Spring 2007 Lorene Morrow Kelly Distinguished Lecture co-sponsored by the
School of Biological Sciences and the Section of Integrative Biology
Dr. David Haig
Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University
"Genomic imprinting and social behavior."
Thursday, March 29 - 4:00 p.m. - ACES 2.302 - Reception to follow in O's courtyard.
Host: Dr. Mike Ryan
Speaking of Biology
Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology
Julian I. Schroeder, Ph.D.
Professor in Plant Sciences, University of California, San Diego
"Guard Cell and Ion Channel Signaling; CO2, Abscisic Acid and Calcium Specificity Transduction."
Thursday, March 29 - 4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Speaking of Biology
Section of Neurobiology Recruitment Seminar
Rene Renteria, Ph.D.
University of California, San Francisco
"Chalk Talk."
Wednesday, March 28 - 11:00 a.m. - NMS 1.120
Speaking of Biology
Geological Sciences Dissertation Defense
Dennis Ruez
"Effects of climate change on mammalian fauna composition and structure during the advent of North American continental glaciation in the Pliocene."
Wednesday, March 28 - 2:00 p.m. - GEO 6.208
Speaking of Biology
Marine Science Institute-Schweppe Speaker
Dr. Ed Malkiel
Johns Hopkins University
"Holographic Views of the Plankton World."
Wednesday, March 28 - 3:45 p.m. - Visitors Center Auditorium at the Marine Science Institute,
Port Aransas, TX
For directions to the Marine Science Institute, go to: http://msi40.utmsi.utexas.edu/institute/maps.htm
Speaking of Biology
Waggoner Center for Alcohol Addiction & Research/Section of Neurobiology
Recruitment Seminar
Veronica Alvarez, Ph.D.
Research Fellow in Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School
"Chalk Talk."
Tuesday, March 27 - 12:00 p.m. - NMS 1.120
Host Adron Harris, Ph.D.
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology
Dr. William Bement
Department of Zoology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
"Control of Wound Repair and Cell Division by RHO GTPase Activity Zones."
Tuesday, March 27 - 4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210 - Refreshments will be served at 3:30.
Speaking of Biology
Section of Neurobiology Recruitment Seminar
Rene Renteria, Ph.D.
University of California, San Francisco
"Building receptive fields: The mGluR6 KO mouse reveals a novel response of the retinal OFF pathway."
Tuesday, March 27 - 4:00 p.m. - ACE 2.402
Speaking of Biology
UT M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Science Park-Departmental Seminar Series
David Barnes, Ph.D.
Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory, Salisbury Cove, Maine
"In vitro culture of freshwater and marine fish models: Tools for cell and molecular biology."
Monday, March 26 - 11:00 a.m. - Harrison Auditorium, Pickle Conference Center, Science Park, Smithville, TX
For directions to the Science Park, go to: http://sciencepark.mdanderson.org/about/location/
Speaking of Biology
Population Biology
Edward LeBrun
Postdoctoral Fellow, Section of Integrative Biology, UT-Austin
"Dynamic expansion of recently introduced populations of fire ant parasitoids (Diptera: Phoridae)."
Monday, March 26 - 12:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Dr. Larry Gilbert
Speaking of Biology
Center for Perceptual Systems
Chen Yu, Ph.D.
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University
"Multimodal Statistical Learning: Linking Words to World."
Monday, March 26 - 12:00 p.m. - SEA 4.244 - Reception with refreshments at 11:30 a.m.
Speaking of Biology
Center for Nonlinear Dynamics
William H. Press, Ph.D.
Section of Integrative Biology & Institute for Computational and Engineering Sciences, UT-Austin
"Entropy Distances, Polygraphic Models, and Clustering of Genomic Sequences."
Monday, March 26 - 1:00 p.m. - RLM 11.204
Speaking of Biology
Biochemistry Division Seminar
Roger Goody, Ph.D.
Director of the Max-Planck Instutute of Molecular Physiology, Dortmund, Germany
"The structural and mechanistic basis for the regulation of intracellular vesicular transport by Rab GTPases."
Monday, March 26 - 1:30 p.m. - WEL 2.122
Host: Kenneth A. Johnson, Ph.D.
Speaking of Biology
Waggoner Center for Alcohol Addiction & Research/Section of Neurobiology
Recruitment Seminar
Veronica Alvarez, Ph.D.
Research Fellow in Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School
"Regulation of synaptic structure and function by the Tuberous Sclerosis Complex pathway."
Monday, March 26 - 4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host Adron Harris, Ph.D.
UTCS Colloquium/Architecture
Tom Puzak, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
Monday, March 26, 2007 3:30 p.m. - ACES 2.402
Host: Yale Patt
"An Analysis of the Effects of Miss Clustering on the Cost of a Cache Miss"
Talk Abstract:
A new technique, called Pipeline Spectroscopy, is described that allows pipeline delays to be monitored and analyzed in detail. We use this technique to measure the cost of each cache miss. The cost of a miss is displayed (graphed) as a histogram, which represents a precise readout showing a detailed visualization of the cost of each cache miss throughout all levels of the memory hierarchy. We call the graphs 'spectrograms' because they reveal certain signature characteristics of the processor's memory hierarchy, the pipeline, and the miss pattern itself. Cache miss spectrograms are produced by analyzing misses according to the miss cluster size, and comparing instruction sequences and execution times that occurred near the miss cluster in a 'finite cache' simulation run to the same set of instructions and execution times in an 'infinite cache' run, then calculating the difference in run times. We show that in a memory hierarchy with N cache levels (L1, L2, ..., LN, and memory) and a miss cluster of size C, there are (C+N) choose C possible clusters of miss penalties. This represent all possible sums from all possible combinations of the miss latencies from each level of the memory hierarchy (L2, L3, ... Memory) for a given cluster size. Additionally, a theory is presented that describes the shape of a spectrogram, and we use this theory to predict the shape of spectrograms for larger miss clusters. Detailed analysis of a spectrograph leads to much greater insight in pipeline dynamics, including effects due to prefetching, and miss queueing delays.
Speaker Bio:
Thomas R. Puzak received a B. S. in Mathematics and M. S. in Computer Science from the University of Pittsburgh and a Ph. D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Massachusetts. Since joining IBM he has spent over thirty years working in IBM Research. While at IBM he received Technical Achievement, Outstanding Contribution, and Innovation Awards, served as Chairman of the Computer Architecture Special Interest Group at the T. J. Watson Research Center and holds more than 30 patents, on processor and memory design.
The Computer Architecture Seminar Series is sponsored jointly by the Departments of Computer Science and Electrical & Computer Engineering and is supported by a grant from AMD.
CPS Seminar
Chen Yu, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Dept of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Cognitive Science Program and Department of Computer Science, Indiana University
March 26, 12:00, SEA 4.244
Reception with Refreshments at 11:30 AM
Host: Dana H. Ballard
"Multimodal Statistical Learning: Linking Words to World"
UTCS Colloquium/Programming Languages Seminar
Martin Burtscher, Cornell University
March 26, 2007, 12:15p.m. - 1:15p.m., TAY 3.128 - East wall (chalkboard)
Host: Keshav Pingali
"Multicore and Other New Approaches to Reduce the Data Access Latency"
Talk Abstract:
High-end microprocessors are poorly utilized because they often have to wait for data to be delivered. This talk presents several novel hardware and software ideas that alleviate this inefficiency by reducing the time it takes to access the data.
First, we briefly discuss two latency-hiding techniques, load-value prediction and source code scheduling.
Second, we present an innovative multicore approach called Future Execution to lower the access latency. Future Execution pairs up cores and transparently and continuously converts the running program threads into helper threads that are streamed into the alternate cores.
Third, we introduce a high-speed lossless compression algorithm to decrease the data size in real time. We conclude the talk with an outlook into the future.
ICES/CS Seminar
Rajit Manohar, Cornell University
Friday, March 23, 2007 3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. - ACE 6.304
Host: Keshav Pingali
"Reconfigurable Asynchronous Logic"
Talk Abstract:
We present the design of an asynchronous FPGA (AFPGA) architecture and its measured performance over a wide range of temperatures and operating voltages. The AFPGA is implemented as a configurable dataflow architecture, and attains a performance that significantly exceeds the performance of commercial FPGAs as well as any reported result in the literature without any increase in its energy per operation. We also discuss some issues that arise in the synthesis of high-level designs to the AFPGA architecture.
Speaking of Biology
Physiology & Behavior
Dr. Arthur Arnold, UCLA
"Sex chromosome dosage compensation is not for the birds."
Friday, March 23 - 12:00 p.m. - PHR 4.114
Host: Dr. David Crews
Speaking of Biology
Jean Andrews Visiting Professor in International Nutrition:
Henry J. Thompson, Ph.D.
Director, Cancer Prevention Laboratory, Colorado State University
"Plant Foods and Health in a Global Context."
Friday, March 23 - 2:00 p.m. - GEA 105
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology Research in Progress
Makkuni Jayaram, PhD, Professor, Section of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, UT-Austin
"The yeast Plasmid: an impostor chromosome?"
Friday, March 23 - 3:30 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Liz Wyckoff
Speaking of Biology
Section of Integrative Biology & Section of Neurobiology Faculty Recruit
Anthony Leonardo
Harvard University
"Chalk Talk."
Thursday, March 22 - 11:00 a.m. - MBB 1.210
Speaking of Biology
Toxicology faculty candidate
Dr. Jiyong Liang, Postdoctoral Fellow, UT MD Anderson Cancer Center
"Autophagy at the crossroad of cancer cell death and survival."
Thursday, March 22 - 11:00 a.m. - PHR 4.114
Speaking of Biology
Section of Integrative Biology
Dr. Arthur Arnold, UCLA
"Sex chromosomes and sexual differentiation."
Thursday, March 22 - 2:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Dr. David Crews
EDGE Student Scholar Seminar
Brian Smith, EDGE Center - Electrical and Computer Engineering
March 22, 2007, 2:00p.m. - 3:00p.m., ACES 2.402
Host: Sriram Vishwanath
"Capacity of Erasure Networks"
Talk Abstract:
In this talk, we study the capacity of several novel models of erasure networks. An erasure channel is a communication model in which every input symbol is either 1) correctly and identically received at the output or 2) appears at the output as an "error" symbol, giving us no information about which choice of symbol was intended. Specifically, if a valid symbol is recieved, then there is no ambiguity about which symbol was transmitted. A memoryless erasure network is one in which defining characteristic is that each channel between any two nodes is an independent erasure channel. The various models that we explore differ in the absence or presence of interference at either the transmitters, the receivers, or both; and in the availability of feedback at the transmitters. We show several mathematicaly interesting capacity results for such kinds of networks.
Speaking of Biology
Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior Dissertation Defense
Anna Himler
"Evolutionary Ecology and Natural History of Fungus-Growing Ants:
Host-switching, Divergence and Asexuality."
Wednesday, March 21 - 10:00 a.m. - GEA 125
Speaking of Biology
Section of Neurobiology Recruitment Seminar
Stephan Brenowitz, Ph.D., Harvard Medical School
"Chalk talk."
Wednesday, March 21 - 12:00 p.m. - NMS 1.120
Speaking of Biology
Jean Andrews Visiting Professor in International Nutrition:
Henry J. Thompson, Ph.D., Director, Cancer Prevention Laboratory, Colorado State University
"Caloric balance, energy sensing and cancer risk."
Wednesday, March 21 - 3:00 p.m. - PHR 4.114
Please reserve a seat for this talk by contacting Kathy McWilliams
(kathymcw@mail.utexas.edu)
Host: Dr. Steve Hursting
Speaking of Biology
Section of Integrative Biology & Section of Neurobiology Faculty Recruit
Anthony Leonardo, Harvard University
"Complex dynamics and simple population codes in a retinal target tracking circuit."
Wednesday, March 21 - 3:00 p.m. - ACE 2.302
Speaking of Biology
Behavioral Neuroscience-Faculty Recruit
Marle Monfils
"Targeted Disruption of Fear Memory Reconsolidation."
Wednesday, March 21 - 3:00 p.m. - SEA 4.244
Speaking of Biology
UT M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Science Park-Faculty Seminar Series
Mark Bedford, Ph.D. , UT MD Anderson Cancer Center Science Park - Research Division
"Using proteomic approaches to understand proein methylation."
Wednesday, March 21 - 3:30 p.m. - Harrison Auditorium, Pickle Conference Center, Science Park,
Smithville, TX
For directions to the Science Park, go to: http://sciencepark.mdanderson.org/about/location/
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology
Dr. Timothy Murphy
Professor of Medicine and Microbiology, Chief, Infectious Diseases,
University at Buffalo - State University of New York
"Pathogenesis of Haemophilus influenzae Infection, an Exclusively Human Pathogen."
Wednesday, March 21 - 4:00 p.m. - ESB 223 - Refreshments served.
Host: Erin Murphy
Speaking of Biology
Jean Andrews Centennial Visiting Professorship in Tropical and Economic Botany.
Dr. Will McClatchey, University of Hawaii - Manoa
"Using Traditional Knowledge of Plants as a Measure of Local Biodiversity."
Wednesday, March 21 - 7:00 p.m. - Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, 4801 La Crosse Avenue,
Austin, Texas 78739
(Visitor Reception at 6:00 p.m.)
For directions please go to: http://www.wildflower.org/?nd=directions
Speaking of Biology
Wellness Symposium continues
Tuesday, March 20 - 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. - Thompson Conference Center
For more information and to register, please go to:
http://www.utsystem.edu/hea/wellness/
Host: Dr. Joseph McCormick, Dean of the UT School of Public Health, Regional Campus at Brownsville
Speaking of Biology
UT M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Science Park-DNA Repair Group Series
Dr. Paul Wilson, Dr. Zac Purcell, Dr. Karin Scarpinato
Young Investigator Showcase:
1) "DNA double strand break repair capacity after low dose Ionizing radiation."
2) "Yeast DNA polymerase epsilon in DNA replication."
3) "PMS2 elevation in prostate cancer."
Tuesday, March 20 - 11:30 a.m. - Harrison Auditorium, Pickle Conference Center, Science Park, Smithville, TX
For directions to the Science Park, go to:
http://sciencepark.mdanderson.org/about/location/
Speaking of Biology
Jean Andrews Centennial Visiting Professorship in Tropical and Economic Botany.
Dr. Will McClatchey, University of Hawaii - Manoa
"Ethnobotanical Basis of Plant Classification Systems in Polynesia."
Tuesday, March 20 - 12:00 p.m. - BIO 214
Speaking of Biology
Imaging Research Center - Seminars in Surface Based Morphometry
David Salat, Ph.D.
"Neuroimaging Studies of Aging and Dementia with SBM and Diffusion Tensor Imaging."
Tuesday, March 20 - 3:30 p.m. - SEA 2.108
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology
Dr. Ray Keller, Department of Biology, University of Virginia
"The Patterning, Cell Motility, And Biomechanics Of Several Strategies Of Amphibian Gastrulation."
Tuesday, March 20 - 4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210 - Refreshments will be served at 3:30.
Host: Ryan Gray
Speaking of Biology
Section of Neurobiology Recruitment Seminar
Stephan Brenowitz, Ph.D., Harvard Medical School
"Retrograde modulation of synaptic transmission by endocannabinoids."
Tuesday, March 20 - 4:00 p.m. - ACE 2.402
Speaking of Biology
Physics Pizza Seminar
Ernst-Ludwig Florin, UT-Austin
"Biophysics Research at the Center For Nonlinear Dynamics!"
Tuesday, March 20 - 5:00 p.m. - RLM 7.104
Department of Computer Sciences - Faculty Candidate
Swarat Chaudhuri - University of Pennsylvania
Tuesday, March 20, 2007 11:00 a.m. - Noon
ACES 2.302
Host: Jayadev Misra
"Context-Sensitive Software Model Checking"
Talk Abstract:
Software model checking, an algorithmic, specification-driven approach to software analysis, has emerged as an active area of research in the last few years, producing a number of successful tools. While work in this area builds on the 25-year-old literature on model checking of finite-state systems, it has to grapple with several additional issues. A crucial one is that control flow of procedural programs depends on "contexts" defined by the call stack, so that any reasonably precise software model checker needs to analyze pushdown models of programs rather than finite-state ones.
In this talk, I address two main components of such "context-sensitive" model checking: requirement specification and algorithmic analysis. The first ---and main---story starts with the observation that temporal specification logics like the mu-calculus, while mainstays of traditional model checking, cannot specify "context-sensitive" program requirements such as: "A file is read before control leaves the current procedural context." The difficulty is that the mu-calculus is only as expressive as tree automata, and thus cannot reason about the nesting of contexts. A way to overcome this issue, I demonstrate, is to view a program as a generator not of a computation tree, but of a graph called a "nested" tree. Temporal logics interpreted on this new structure are now defined, and the model checking problem is re-phrased as: "Does the nested tree generated by a program satisfy a property?" Not only does this tweak let us state many new requirements, but it does so without changing the complexity of model-checking. There are other positives: for example, a fixpoint calculus on nested trees that we define allows symbolic model-checking and modular specifications, and has an automata-theoretic characterization similar to that for the mu-calculus.
Next I address the reachability problem for pushdown automata, an algorithmic problem central to software model checking that also shows up in contexts such as slicing, alias analysis, shape analysis, and type-based flow analysis. In a recent result, I have used a form of preprocessing to improve the thirty-something-years old cubic solution to this problem, also answering the question of whether its many applications suffer from an intrinsic "cubic bottleneck". I briefly sketch the technique, as well as suggest how the core idea of the algorithm may find general use in heuristic design for software analysis.
ICES SEMINAR
Tuesday, March 20, 2007 - 3:30 to 5:00 p.m. - ACES 6.304
Dr. Daniel S. Katz
Center of Computation and Technology, Louisiana State University
Host: Robert van de Geijn
Data-Oriented Distributed Computing for Science
Abstract:
As is becoming commonly known, there is an explosion happening in the amount of scientific data that is publicly available. One challenge is how to make productive use of this data. This talk will discuss some parallel and distributed computing projects, centered around virtual astronomy, but also including ocean/coastal modeling. It will look at some specific projects from the past, including Montage, Grist, OurOcean, and SCOOP, and will discuss the distributed computing, Grid, and Web-service technologies that have successfully been used in these projects.
Contact: Robert van de Geijn, rvdg@cs.utexas.edu
Professor, Department of Computer Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin
(512) 471-9720 - http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/rvdg
Speaking of Biology
Imaging Research Center - Seminars in Surface Based Morphometry
"Introduction to SBM and the use of Freesurfer."
Monday, March 19 - 9:00 a.m. - 3rd floor Alamo Room, MCC building, Pickle Campus West
Speaking of Biology
Wellness Symposium
Keynote Speaker at 11:30 a.m.:
Darwin R. Labarthe, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D.
Director, Division for Heart Disease & Stroke Prevention, National Ctr for Chronic Disease Prevention & Health Promotion, CDC
Monday, March 19 - 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. - Thompson Conference Center
For more information and to register, please go to: http://www.utsystem.edu/hea/wellness/
Host: Dr. Joseph McCormick, Dean of the UT School of Public Health, Regional Campus at Brownsville
Speaking of Biology
Section of Integrative Biology (Neuroethology faculty recruit)
Kim Hoke, Postdoc, Section of Integrative Biology, UT-Austin
"Brain networks mediating reproductive decision making."
Monday, March 19 - 10:00 a.m. - ACE 2.302
Speaking of Biology
Population Biology
Alex Wild, University of Arizona
"Can 18th and 21st century science get along? The fate of taxonomy in the genomic era
(as revealed by Linepithema ants)."
Monday, March 19 - 12:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Dr. Ulrich Mueller
Speaking of Biology
Center for Perceptual Systems
Robert H. Wurtz, Ph.D.
Laboratory of Sensorimotor Research, National Eye Institute, National Institutes of Health
"Corollary Discharge and Perceptual Stability."
Monday, March 19 - 12:00 p.m. - SEA 4.244 - Reception with refreshments at 11:30 a.m.
Speaking of Biology
Jean Andrews Centennial Visiting Professorship in Tropical and Economic Botany.
Dr. Will McClatchey
University of Hawaii - Manoa
"Impacts of Climate Change on Atoll Cultures of the Central Pacific."
Monday, March 19 - 4:00 p.m. - GRG 102
Speaking of Biology
Section of Neurobiology
Karl Kandler, Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh
"Developmental reorganization of inhibitory sound localization circuits."
Monday, March 19 - 4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Dr. Nace Golding
UTCS Colloquium/Architecture
Dan Sorin, Duke University
Monday, March 19, 2007 3:30 p.m. - ACES 2.402
Host: Steve Keckler
"Comprehensive Detection of Errors in Multithreaded Memory Systems"
Talk Abstract:
Multithreaded architectures, including multicore processors and multithreaded uniprocessors, are becoming ubiquitous. Our goal is to detect all possible errors in the memory systems of these machines, without resorting to large amounts of expensive and power-hungry redundancy. Because correct operation of the memory system is defined by the memory consistency model, we can detect errors by checking if the observed memory system behavior deviates from the specified consistency model. We have designed a framework for dynamic verification of memory consistency (DVMC), and this framework applies to all existing commercial consistency models. Our DVMC framework consists of mechanisms to dynamically verify three invariants that we have proven to be equivalent to memory consistency. We have developed an implementation of the framework for the SPARCv9 architecture, and we have experimentally evaluated its performance using full-system simulation of commercial workloads.
Speaker Bio:
Daniel J. Sorin is an assistant professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and of Computer Science at Duke University. His research interests include dependable computer architecture and system design. He received a PhD and MS in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Wisconsin, and he received a BSE in electrical engineering from Duke University. He is the recipient of an NSF Career Award and a Warren Faculty Scholarship at Duke.
Speaking of Biology
UT M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Science Park-Departmental Seminar Series
David Brown, Ph.D.
Asuragen, Inc., Austin, Texas
"Micro RNAs."
Fri., March 16 - 9:00 a.m. - Harrison Auditorium, Pickle Conf. Center, Science Park, Smithville, TX
For directions to the Science Park, go to:
http://sciencepark.mdanderson.org/about/location/
Speaking of Biology
Marine Science Institute
Dr. Lee Fuiman
Director, Marine Science Institute
"Underwater Behavior of Antarctica Seals."
Thurs., March 15 - 7:00 p.m. - Visitors Center Auditorium at the Marine Sci. Inst., Port Aransas, TX
For directions to the Marine Science Institute, go to:
http://msi40.utmsi.utexas.edu/institute/maps.htm
Department of Computer Sciences - Artificial Intelligence
Dr. Rong Jin, Computer Science and Engineering Dept., Michigan State University
Wednesday, March 14, 2007, 11:00 a.m. - Noon - ACES 6.304
Host: Prof. Joydeep Ghosh
"Generalized Maximum Margin Clustering and Unsupervised Kernel"
Talk Abstract:
Maximum margin clustering extends the theory of support vector machine to unsupervised learning, and has shown promising performance in recent studies. However, it has three major problems that question its application of real-world applications: (1) it is computationally expensive and difficult to scale to large-scale datasets; (2) it requires data preprocessing to ensure the clustering boundary to pass through the origins, which makes it unsuitable for clustering unbalanced dataset; and (3) its performance is sensitive to the choice of kernel functions. In this paper, we propose the "Generalized Maximum Margin Clustering" framework that addresses the above three problems simultaneously.
The new framework generalizes the maximum margin clustering algorithm in that (1) it allows any clustering boundaries including those not passing through the origins; (2) it significantly improves the computational efficiency by reducing the number of parameters; and (3) it automatically determines the appropriate kernel matrix without any labeled data. Our empirical studies demonstrate the efficiency and the effectiveness of the generalized maximum margin clustering algorithm. Furthermore, in this talk, I will show the theoretical connection among the spectral clustering, the maximum margin clustering and the generalized maximum margin clustering.
Speaker Bio:
Dr. Rong Jin is an Assistant Prof. of the Computer Science and Engineering Dept. of Michigan State University since 2003. He is working in the areas of statistical machine learning and its application to information retrieval. Dr. Jin holds a B.A. in Engineering from Tianjin University, an M.S. in Physics from Beijing University, and an M.S.and Ph.D. from School of Computer Science of Carnegie Mellon University.
Department of Computer Sciences - Artificial Intelligence
Hermann Helbig/University of Hagen, Germany
March 9, 2007 - 11:00 a.m. - ACE 6.304
Host: Bruce Porter
"Multilayered Extended Semantic Networks as a Knowledge Representation Paradigm and Interlingua for Meaning Representation"
The talk gives an overview of Multilayered Extended Semantic Networks (abbreviated MultiNet), which is one of the most comprehensively described knowledge representation paradigms used as a semantic interlingua in large-scale NLP applications and for linguistic investigations into the semantics and pragmatics of natural language.
As with other semantic networks, concepts are represented in MultiNet by nodes, and relations between concepts are represented as arcs between these nodes. Additionally to that, every node is classified according to a predefined conceptual ontology forming a hierarchy of sorts, and the nodes are embedded in a multidimensional space of layer attributes and their values.
MultiNet provides a set of about 150 standardized relations and functions which are described in a very concise way including an axiomatic apparatus, where the axioms are classified according to predefined types. The representational means of MultiNet claim to fulfill the criteria of universality, homogeneity, and cognitive adequacy. In the talk, it is also shown, how MultiNet can be used for the semantic representation of different semantic phenomena.
To overcome the quantitative barrier in building large knowledge bases and semantically oriented computational lexica, MultiNet is associated with a set of tools including a semantic interpreter NatLink for automatically translating natural language expressions into MultiNet networks, a workbench LIA for the computer lexicographer, and a workbench MWR for the knowledge engineer for managing and graphically manipulating semantic networks.
The applications of MultiNet as a semantic interlingua range from natural language interfaces to the Internet and to dedicated databases, over question-answering systems, to systems for automatic knowledge acquisition.
Speaker Bio:
Hermann Helbig is Professor at the University of Hagen, Germany, and head of the chair Intelligent Information and Communication Systems. He received his Dr.rer.nat. (PhD) in 1976 in Automatic Symbolic Formula Manipulation and his Dr.rer.nat.habil. (Habilitation) in 1986 in Knowledge Representation. His experiences in AI research cover a period of more than 30 years. His main contributions lie in the fields of question answering (question answering system FAS-80), natural language interfaces to data bases (NLI-AIDOS), word-class controlled functional analysis (WCFA), knowledge representation (MultiNet paradigm), and computational lexicography (semantically based computational lexicon HaGenLex). He is author of several monographs in AI, his last book relevant to the talk is "Knowledge Representation and the Semantics of Natural Language."
His research interests cover issues in Natural Language Processing, Computational Lexicography, Knowledge Representation and Management, Semantics of NL, and Electronic Distance Teaching in AI.
Speaking of Biology
Hydrology Brown Bag Seminar
Mary Poteet
School of Biological Sciences, UT-Austin
"The Barton Springs Salamander."
Friday, March 9 - 12:00 p.m. - GEO 3.222
Speaking of Biology
Physiology & Behavior
Di Wu
College of Pharmacy, UT-Austin
"Age-related in sex steroids and receptors in female rats."
Friday, March 9 - 12:00 p.m. - PHR 4.114
Host: Dr. David Crews
Speaking of Biology
Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship Program
Stuart Foster, Ph.D.
Professor and Associate Chair, Department of Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto
"Micro-Ultrasound in the Land of Bioresearch."
Friday, March 9 - 1:00 p.m. - ACE 2.402
Host: Stas Emelianov
Speaking of Biology
Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center Nature Nights: An Evening of Fun Family Learning
John Young
Texas Parks & Wildlife
"Wildcats of Texas."
Friday, March 9 - 6:00-9:00 p.m. - Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, 4801 La Crosse
Avenue, Austin, Texas 78739
For more information please go to: http://www.wildflower.org/?nd=nature
Computer Sciences Seminar
Sunay Tripathi, Sun Microsystems (FoCS)
Thursday, March 8, 2007 - 2:00 p.m. - ACES 2.402
Host: Greg Lavender
"Virtualizable Architecture for High Performance Network Stack"
Talk Abstract:
The Networking stack in Solaris 10 uses a new architecture for doing network processing where the NIC is controlled by the network and the transport layers creating a per CPU vertical perimeter. The network stack is able to schedule the receive-side packet processing by dynamically controlling the rate of packet arrival from individual receive rings on the NIC. The architecture minimizes context switches and allows processing of packets without losing CPU affinity or contending for any locks.
The network processing for a connection is performed from a vertical perimeter, which is implemented by a serialization queue and consists of one or more threads bound to a CPU for better locality.
There is, at most, one queuing, and a packet once picked up for processing is processed all the way to the socket layer on the inbound case, and all the way to the NIC on the outbound case without needing to contend for additional locks or switch context.
The stack also provides the building blocks for network virtualization and resource control by creating virtual stacks around any service (HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, NFS, etc.), protocol (TCP, UDP, SCTP, etc.), or Virtual machines like Containers or Xen.
Each virtual stack can be assigned its own priority and band-width on a shared NIC without causing any performance degradation. The architecture dynamically manages priority and bandwidth resources, and can provide better defense against denial-of-service attacks directed at a particular service or virtual machine by isolating the impact just to that entity. The virtual stacks are separated by means of H/W classification engine such that traffic for one stack does not impact other virtual stacks.
Speaker Bio:
Sunay Tripathi is a Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems, where he works on the Solaris Core Operating Systems team.
Department of Computer Sciences - Colloquium
Greg Lavender, University of Texas-Austin
Thursday, March 8, 2007 - 5:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. - ACES 6.304
Host: GRACS
"GRACS Development Talk: Startups"
Many graduate students have expressed interest in learning more about using their graduate degree in industry and specifically what it is like to start a company. Toward this end, GRACS is hosting a talk by Professor Greg Lavender on his experiences in industry.
Professor Lavender worked at an industry R&D lab and then started his own company, which he later morphed into a second one. Then he sold that company to a larger company, and finally helped this larger company get acquired by Sun Microsystems.
UTCS Colloquium/EDGE Distinguished Speaker Lecture Series
Sriram Vishwanath, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
March 8, 2007 - 2:00p.m. - 3:00p.m. - ACES 2.402
Host: EDGE Center
"Fundamental Limits of Wireless Networks"
Talk Abstract:
As the demand for ?anytime-anywhere? connectivity grows in our society, knowing the limits on the performance of these systems is invaluable. Capacity of wireless networks is an extensively studied yet elusive problem that lies at the intersection of many distinct fields of research. The principle issue is that any one field lacks all the appropriate tools needed to tackle this problem in its entirety. This talk will elaborate on the progress made on different fronts of this problem, with the ultimate goal of building a compelling theory that captures all aspects of the capacity of these networks. Specifically, we will discuss work done by members of the LINC group in this talk. Topics will include: Cognitive Radio and Interference Networks, Resource Allocation in Multiple Antenna Systems and Capacity of Erasure Networks.
Speaking of Biology
Behavioral Neuroscience Talk-Faculty Recruit
Donna Maney
Department of Psychology, Emory University
"Hormones and Love Songs: Integration of Endocrine and Auditory Responses to Courtship Signals."
Thursday, March 8 - 12:00 p.m. - SEA 4.244
Speaking of Biology
Center for Learning and Memory-Faculty Recruit
Joseph Manns
Center for Memory and Brain, Boston University
"Chalk Talk."
Thursday, March 8 - 12:00 p.m. - NMS 1.120
Host: Dr. Daniel Johnston
Speaking of Biology
Section of Integrative Biology
Richard Mack
Washington State University
"Invasive Species."
Thursday, March 8 - 2:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Dr. Don Levin
Department of Computer Sciences - Artificial Intelligence
Mark Steedman, University of Edinburgh
Wednesday, March 7, 2007 - 11:00 a.m. - Noon - ACES 2.402
Host: Jason Baldridge
"The Computational Problem of Natural Language Acquisition"
The talk reviews work-in-progress on language acquisition in children and robots using combinatory categorial grammar (CCG), building on work by Siskind, Villavicencio, and Zettlemoyer, among others.
CCG is a theory of grammar in which all language-specific grammatical information resides in the lexicon. A small universal set of strictly type-driven, non-structure dependent, syntactic rules (based on Curry's combinators B, S, and T) then "projects" lexical items into sentence-meaning pairs. The task that faces the child in the earliest stages of language acquisition can therefore be seen as learning a lexicon on the basis of exposure to (probably ambiguous, possibly somewhat noisy) sentence-meaning pairs, given this universal combinatory "projection principle", and a mapping from semantic types to the set of all universally available lexical syntactic types.
The talk argues that a very simple statistical model allows children to arrive at a target lexicon without navigation of subset principles, or attention to any attendant notion of trigger other than the notion "reasonably short sentence in a reasonably understandable situation". The model explains the pattern of errors that have been found in elicitation experiments. The linguistic notion of "parameter" appears to be redundant to this process.
The talk goes on to consider some more general implications of the theory, including its application to the phenomenon of "syntactic bootstrapping," touching on the question of the prelinguistic origin of the combinatory projection principle itself.
Speaker Bio:
Mark Steedman is Professor in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. He received his PhD from the University of Edinburgh in 1973. He came to Edinburgh in 1998 from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was Professor in the Department of Computer and Information Science. He is a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and a Fellow of the British Academy.
His research interests cover issues in computational linguistics, artificial intelligence, computer science, and cognitive science, and their applications in practical systems, including syntax and semantics of natural language, wide-coverage parsing, comprehension of natural language by humans and by machine, and the role of intonation in spoken language generation and analysis. Some of his research concerns the analysis of music by humans and machines. He has acted as advisor for twenty-four PhDs.
The Austin Forum (www.austinforum.org)
When: Wednesday, March 7, 2007 @ 6:30 p.m.
Where: J.J. Pickle Research Campus - Research Office Complex (Jackson School of Geosciences & Texas Advanced Computing Center's new building) Seminar Room 1.603
The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) and the Austin Forum invite you to attend a participatory talk by Dr. Cynthia Schneider and Mr. Timothy Pope entitled "Technology in the Classroom: Tradition versus Innovation". As leaders in mathematics education in Texas, Schneider and Pope will discuss how to use technology in the mathematics classroom. What does technology look like when it aids the learning of specific content? Why and when might technology interfere with learning content? Is technology the answer to the rising costs of education?
If you plan to attend, please take the following survey in advance:
1. Go to: http://survey.keypress.com/web/surveyTakeForm.php?id=263
2. Login in as a student with the following: Username: AustinForum;
Password: austin.
3. Click on "Surveys".
4. Click on the pencil icon on the row titled "Austin Forum Survey."
5. Take survey and click "Submit" when done.
The mission of The Austin Forum is to promote awareness of issues and opportunities in our community and to enrich lives. The Forum invites distinguished professionals and leaders to speak on topics related to science and technology and how they impact society.
Learn more about the Austin Forum's upcoming events at: www.austinforum.org.
** This event is free and open to the public; complimentary food and drink will be provided prior to the talk @ 6:00 p.m. **
Speaking of Biology
Forum for Artificial Intelligence
Mark Steedman
Professor, University of Edinburgh
"The Computational Problem of Natural Language Acquisition."
Wednesday, March 7 - 11:00 a.m. - ACE 2.402
Speaking of Biology
UT M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Science Park-Hogg Seminar Series
John Petrini, Ph.D.
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center New York, NY
"Genetic analysis of chromosome break metabolism: Suppression of
malignancy and sensitivity to DNA damage."
Wednesday, March 7 - 11:00 a.m. - Harrison Auditorium, Pickle Conference Center, Science
Park, Smithville, TX
For directions to the Science Park, go to:
http://sciencepark.mdanderson.org/about/location/
Speaking of Biology
Center for Learning and Memory-Faculty Recruit
Joseph Manns
Center for Memory and Brain, Boston University
"The hippocampus and memory for items and context."
Wednesday, March 7 - 3:00 p.m. - SEA 4.244
Host: Dr. Daniel Johnston
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology
Jeannine Brady, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Oral Biology, College of Dentistry, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL
"Streptococcal surprises: an emerging story of protein secretion."
Wednesday, March 7 - 4:00 p.m. - ESB 223 - Refreshments served.
Host: Dr. George Georgiou
Department of Computer Sciences - Faculty Candidate
Aaron Bradley, Stanford University
Tuesday, March 6, 2007 - 11:00 a.m. - Noon - ACES 2.302
"Analyzing Properties of Systems"
As the complexity of and the dependence on engineered systems rises, correctness becomes ever more important. Verification aims to prove or to disprove that a system's implementation meets its specification. A specification asserts a set of properties that should hold on all executions of the system. Two areas of research are fundamental to verification: invariant generation and decision procedures. In this talk, I describe progress in both.
I first present a strategy for letting properties guide an invariant generation procedure, a form of static analysis. I then exhibit two instances of the strategy. The first augments generation of affine inequality invariants to be property-directed. For the second instance, I introduce a procedure for generating clausal invariants of finite-state systems such as hardware circuits and show how to make it property-directed.
Arrays are ubiquitous data structures in software and in hardware specifications. I present a decision procedure for a fragment of a theory of arrays that allows some quantification. Besides being expressive, this fragment is interesting because it lies on the edge of decidability: natural and simple extensions produce undecidable fragments.
Finally, I briefly discuss my work with Zohar Manna on developing a new undergraduate course at Stanford. Our course and accompanying forthcoming text, both entitled "The Calculus of Computation", cover first-order logic; decision procedures; and software specification, verification, and analysis.
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology
Dr. Mary Ellen Lane
Rice University
"Growth and Patterning of the Vertebrate Forebrain."
Tuesday, March 6 - 4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210 - Refreshments will be served at 3:30.
Host: Dr. John Wallingford
Department of Computer Sciences - Colloquium/Architecture
Hillery Hunter/ IBM T. J. Watson Research Center
March 5, 2007 3:30 p.m. - ACES 2.402
Host: Lizy John
"IBM eDRAM: What?s all the Fuss?"
As the "nano" era of microelectronics approaches, technologists have begun to predict the "end of scaling" for six-transistor SRAM. Though easily 50% of modern microprocessor silicon area is occupied by caches, a particularly long-standing debate has surrounded one dense storage alternative: embedded DRAM. This talk will shed light on the technology causes of the infamous memory wall, provide a tutorial on the technology behind eDRAM, and look at the architectural fundamentals of latency, density, and availability pertaining to use of SRAM replacements in future systems.
Speaker Bio:
Hillery Hunter is a Research Staff Member in the Exploratory Systems Architecture Department of IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY. Her current research focuses on next-generation cache design, leveraging advances in storage cells, arrays, and microarchitecture. She is interested in cross-disciplinary research, spanning circuits, microarchitecture, and compilers to achieve new solutions to traditional problems. She received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2004.
The Computer Architecture Seminar Series is sponsored jointly by the Departments of Computer Science and Electrical & Computer Engineering and is supported by a grant from AMD.
Speaking of Biology
Imaging Research Center- Recruit Seminar
Neculai Archip, Ph.D.
Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital
"Medical Image Analysis for Image Guided Therapy."
Monday, March 5 - 11:00 a.m. - SEA 2.224
Host: Dr. Michael Domjan
Speaking of Biology
Population Biology
Nelson Guda
Environmental Science Institute, UT-Austin
"National Ecological Observatory Network."
Monday, March 5 - 12:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Speaking of Biology
Center for Perceptual Systems
Josef Rauschecker, Ph.D.
Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Georgetown University Medical Center
"Parallel Processing Streams in Primate Auditory Cortex."
Monday, March 5 - 12:00 p.m. - SEA 4.244
Speaking of Biology
Center for Nonlinear Dynamics
Mark A Kirkpatrick
Section of Integrative Biology, UT-Austin
"Models of evolutionary dynamics in space and time."
Monday, March 5 - 1:00 p.m. - RLM 11.204
Speaking of Biology
Section of Neurobiology
Cynthia Moss, Ph.D.
University of Maryland
"Active sensing for 3-D spatial tracking by echolocation in bats."
Monday, March 5 - 4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Dr. George Pollak
Speaking of Biology
Explore UT
"The Biggest Open House in Texas."
Featuring over 35 events by members of the School of Biological Sciences
Saturday, March 3 - 11 a.m to 5 p.m. - All Over Campus at UT-Austin
For more information, including maps and schedules of the events, go to:
http://www.utexas.edu/events/exploreut/
Speaking of Biology
Saturday, March 3 - 11th Annual Neuroscience Symposium
Speakers:
Dr. Russell Fernald, Biology, Stanford University
"Social regulation of the brain: Status, size and sex."
Dr. Nace Golding, Section of Neurobiology, UT-Austin
"Life in the fast brain: Electrophysiological specializations for precise temporal coding in auditory neurons."
Dr. Christine Duvauchelle, Pharmacology and Toxicology, UT-Austin
"Experience-dependent effects of cocaine-induced learning on prefrontal and accumbens dopamine responses."
Graduate Students that will be spotlighted:
Mark Harnett, Tomoko Hattori, Jacqueline Maffucci, Vita Vock, Marty Woodlee
Location: Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, 4801 La Crosse Avenue, Austin, Texas 78739
For more information, please email neuroscience@clm.utexas.edu or go to
www.clm.utexas.edu/INS/INS2007.html
Speaking of Biology
UT M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Science Park-Departmental Seminar Series
Mark Coles, Ph.D.
University of York, York, UK
"Imaging Lymphoid Organ Development."
Friday, March 2 - 11:00 a.m. - Harrison Auditorium, Pickle Conference Center, Science Park, Smithville, TX
For directions to the Science Park, go to:
http://sciencepark.mdanderson.org/about/location/
Speaking of Biology
Ecolunch
Samraat Pawar
Ecology, Evolution, & Behavior Graduate Program
"Conservation biogeography and area prioritization in the Indo-Burma and Eastern Himalaya."
Friday, March 2 - 12:00 p.m. - BIO 214
Speaking of Biology
Physiology & Behavior
Martine Maan
Postdoctoral Fellow, Section of Integrative Biology, UT-Austin
"Poison Frog Diversity: poison or passion?"
Friday, March 2 - 12:00 p.m. - PHR 4.114
Host: Dr. David Crews
Speaking of Biology
Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship Program
Samuel Achilefu, Ph.D.
Associate Professor & Director, Optical Radiology Lab, Department of Radiology, Washington University School of Medicine
"Optical Imaging of Tumors in Small Animals."
Friday, March 2 - 1:00 p.m. - ACE 2.402
Host: Andy Dunn
Speaking of Biology
Biochemistry Division Seminar
William B. Whitman, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Microbiology, University of Georgia
"New ways to make amino acids - lessons in prokaryotic diversity from the methanoarchaeon Methanococcus."
Friday, March 2 - 1:30 p.m. - WEL 2.122
Host: David E. Graham, Ph.D.
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology-Research in Progress
Dr. Marvin Whiteley
Assistant Professor, Section of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, UT-Austin
"Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans: Life story of a dumpster diver."
Friday, March 2 - 3:30 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Liz Wyckoff
Department of Computer Sciences - Colloquium
Saurabh Bagchi, ECE, Purdue University
Friday, March 2, 2007 3:00 p.m. - 4:15 p.m. - ACES 2.402
Host: Lorenzo Alvisi
"Failure Prediction in Cycle Sharing Distributed Systems"
Talk Abstract:
Although difficult, prediction is nevertheless important for a class of distributed systems where resources are shared between multiple applications submitted by different users. The system model is that of computational hosts contributed by different individuals for the common good of running applications. There are several widely publicized projects that have this model, such as SETI@home, BOINC, and Climateprediction.net. In this model, the contributor often has requirements for running her application (the host process) without significant impact from the remote users? applications (the guest processes). Therefore, guest processes can be killed if there is significant resource contention. In addition, guest processes can fail due to natural causes hardware or software failure on the machine. We will consider these two classes of failures and try to predict their occurrences and characteristics.
For the first class of failures, we collect data on machine usage from student computer laboratories at Purdue. We observe the impact of guest processes on the host process which we characterize using a semi-Markov process model. Our contributions are in the design of a suitable model and using domain specific characteristics to optimize the runtime computation for machine reliability based on the model. For the second class of failures, we concentrate on software failures. We collect machine state information and use that for predicting near-term failures by using an artificial neural network. Our contributions are in identifying the state variables that are most indicative of failures, identifying the key parameters (such as amount of state) that impact the accuracy of prediction, and developing a scheme for refining the neural network based on runtime observations.
We implement the prediction techniques in a cycle sharing system called iShare and use the predictions in a proactive scheduler that can migrate applications from failure-prone machines. We evaluate the accuracy of the prediction for different kinds of jobs, different amounts of lookahead and historical information, and show that the proactive scheduler is able to reduce the number of guest jobs that fail due to resource unavailability.
Speaker Bio:
Saurabh Bagchi is an Assistant Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN. He is a faculty fellow of the Cyber Center and has a courtesy appointment in the Department of Computer Science. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1998 and 2001. At Purdue he leads the Dependable Computing Systems Lab where he and a set of wildly enthusiastic students try to make and break distributed systems for the good of the world. His papers can be found at www.ece.purdue.edu/~dcsl.
Department of Computer Sciences - Faculty Candidate
Michael J. Freedman, New York University and Stanford University
Thursday, March 1, 2007 - 11:00 a.m. - Noon - ACES 2.302
"Democratizing Content Distribution"
Talk Abstract:
In order to reach their large audiences, today's Internet publishers primarily use content distribution networks (CDNs) to deliver content. Yet the architectures of the prevalent commercial systems are tightly bound to centralized control, static deployments, and trusted infrastructure, thus inherently limiting their scope to ensure cost recovery.
This talk describes a number of techniques (and the resulting systems) that realize highly-scalable cooperative content distribution. I show how to build a fully self-organizing CDN that efficiently delivers content using unreliable nodes, describe how to transparently dispatch clients to nearby servers, and touch on how to securely incentivize resource sharing.
These ideas have been implemented, deployed, and tested in production systems currently serving several terabytes of data to more than a million people every day. The view of the Internet gained from deploying these systems answered long-standing questions about network configuration, while providing important insights that helped evolve our systems' designs.
Department of Biomedical Engineering Seminar Series 2006-2007
"When is Light Actually the Best Solution for Nasty Health Problems? (with emerging examples)"
R. Rox Anderson, M.D. - Professor, Harvard Medical School
March 1, 2007 - 3:30 p.m. - ACE 2.302
The answers to this question are mainly - (1) when highly selective, physical or chemical change is the goal, on a microscopic, nanoscopic or molecular scale; (2) when we need to image near the surface of tissues; and (3) when only a "smart" microsurgical tool will do. Photomedicine is rapidly growing and still in its infancy, because so many medical problems fit these scenarios. In the first scenario, light is a "magic bullet" - photons traverse tissue without effect until an absorption event occurs, then launch biochemical reactions or cause heat, motion and/or re-emission at exactly the sites of absorption. In laser surgeries, selectivity for tissue "targets" is achieved either by absorption contrast, e.g. from hemoglobin, melanin, lipid, pigments and dyes, or, by precise beam aiming. Laser treatments are popular - about 1 million per month - for good reasons. Non-invasive laser targeting of fat will be discussed as an emerging example. Light activated drugs are the most versatile and powerful concept in photomedicine - but ironically, only a few examples have been developed. Three emerging examples of "photodynamic therapy" illustrate its diversity - a cure for severe acne, sutureless tissue repair, and light-activated treatment of drug-resistant local infections. The second scenario above, uses imaging and/or spectroscopy for screening (Does this person have disease?), diagnosis (What is this disease?), spatial guidance (Where is the margin of a known tumor? Where is the tip of my needle? What am I about to cut?), early response verification (Is the chemotherapy cocktail actually working for this patient?), disease progression (Is my glaucoma under control?), or important information (What is my glucose level right now?). Of these, screening and diagnosis are generally the most difficult. An emerging example of intra-operative cancer imaging will be discussed. The third scenario above, is extremely powerful in concept but not one example has actually emerged into medical practice. It is likely that optics integrated into "smart" medical tools will emerge and abound - but when, how, and for what? Robotic lasers, which deliver a preset pattern of exposures, are now experiencing a heyday for skin treatment. True robots, which deliver treatment based on a set of rules rather than a preset treatment per se, do not yet exist in medicine. Laser microbeam robots may soon become the first example.
Support for the seminar series is provided by our Industrial Affiliates.
Department of Biomedical Engineering - http://www.bme.utexas.edu
Speaking of Biology
Toxicology-Faculty Candidate
Aylin Rizki, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow, Life Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
"Reciprocal Interactions Between Extracellular Matrix Signaling and Maintenance of Genome Stability."
Thursday, March 1 - 11:00 a.m. - PHR 4.114
Host: Dr. Shawn Bratton
Speaking of Biology
Center for Learning and Memory-Faculty Recruit
Alfredo Fontanini
Brandeis University
"Chalk Talk."
Thursday, March 1 - 12:00 p.m. - NMS 1.120
Host: Dr. Daniel Johnston
Speaking of Biology
Distinguished Speaker in Evolutionary Biology-Section of Integrative Biology
Dr. Stuart West
Edinburgh University
"Title TBA."
Thursday, March 1 - 2:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Dr. Ulrich Mueller
Speaking of Biology
Biomedical Engineering
Dr. Rox Anderson
Dept. of Dermatology, Harvard Medical School & Director, Wellman Ctr for Photomedicine, Massachusetts Gen. Hospital
"When Is Light Actually The Best Solution For Nasty Health Problems (With Emerging Examples)?"
Thursday, March 1 - 3:30 p.m. - ACE 2.302
Speaking of Biology
Chemical Engineering-Faculty Recruit
Megan Valentine
Stanford University
"Grabbing, Walking, and Sliding: How Eg5 Motor Proteins Help Cells Divide."
Thursday, March 1 - 3:30 p.m. - CPE 2.218
Speaking of Biology
Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology
Jim Pipas, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Pittsburgh
"Probing Mechanisms of Tumorigenesis with Simian Virus 40."
Thursday, March 1 - 4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Speaking of Biology
Center for Learning and Memory-Faculty Recruit
Alfredo Fontanini
Brandeis University
"Behavioral and Network States: Making Sense of Variability in Sensory Responses."
Wednesday, February 28 - 3:00 p.m. - SEA 4.244
Host: Dr. Daniel Johnston
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology
Matthew Weitzman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, The Salk Institute, University of California, San Diego
"Viruses and the DNA damage machinery."
Wednesday, February 28 - 4:00 p.m. - ESB 223 - Refreshments served.
Host: Tanya Paull
Speaking of Biology
Physics Department Colloquium
Josef Kas
Biophysics, University of Leipzig, Germany & Adjunct Professor, Dept. of
Biomed. Eng., UT-Austin
"Soft Brains, Signal Amplification through Noise, and Taking the Bull by its Horns."
Wednesday, February 28 - 4:15 p.m. - RLM 4.102
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology
Binks Wattenberg, Ph.D.
Department of Medicine, Brown Cancer Center, University of Louisville
"Localization Drives Signaling Function Of Sphingosine-kinase, A Key
Regulator Of The Life/Death Duality Of Sphingolipids."
Tuesday, February 27 - 4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210 - Refreshments will be served at 3:30.
Speaking of Biology
Marine Science Institute - Holt Lab Mini-symposium:
Jeff Kaiser, Research Scientist Associate, UTMSI
"Offshore Mariculture in Texas: Past, Present and Future."
Rick Kline, Graduate Student, UTMSI
"The Effect of Fish and Androgens on the Sexual Inversion of Sevenband Grouper, Epinephelus septemfasciatus."
Aaron Watson, Graduate Student, UTMSI
"Marine Ornamental Culture at The University of Texas Marine Science Institute."
Ken Webb, Graduate Student, UTMSI
"Growth of Juvenile Cobia, Rachycentron canadum, at Three Different Densities In a Recirculating Aquaculture System."
Monday, February 26 - 9:00 a.m. - Visitors Center Auditorium at the Marine Science Institute, Port Aransas, TX
For directions to the Marine Science Institute, go to:
http://msi40.utmsi.utexas.edu/institute/maps.htm
Speaking of Biology
Population Biology
Mark Kirkpatrick
Section of Integrative Biology, UT-Austin
"Inversions, local adaptation, and speciation."
Monday, February 26 - 12:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Speaking of Biology
Center for Nonlinear Dynamics
Josef Kas
Biophysics, University of Leipzig, Germany & Adjunct Professor, Dept. of
Biomed. Eng., UT-Austin
"Passive and Active Single Cell Biomechanics."
Monday, February 26 - 1:00 p.m. - RLM 11.204
Speaking of Biology
Plant Biology Graduate Program and Human Ecology
Dr. Martha Mutschler
Cornell University
"Multidisciplinary study of acylsugar-mediated multiple pest resistance in tomato."
Monday, February 26 - 4:00 p.m. - BUR 136 - Refreshments will be served at 3:30 p.m. in Bio 214 before the seminar.
Host: Dr. Bob Jansen
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology-Recruitment Seminar
Dr. Weiming Yuan
Associate Research Scientist, Howard Hughes Medical Institute & Section
of Immunobiology, Yale University School of Medicine
"Modulation of CD1d antigen presentation by herpes simplex virus."
Monday, February 26 - 4:00 pm in ESB 223
Department of Computer Sciences Colloquium
Jose Martinez, Cornell University
Monday, February 26, 2006 - 3:30 p.m. - 4:45 p.m. - ACES 2.402
"Core Fusion: Accommodating Software Diversity in Chip Multiprocessors"
Talk Abstract:
Chip multiprocessors (CMPs) hold the prospect of delivering long-term performance growth by integrating more cores on the die with each new technology generation. In the short term, on-chip integration of a few relatively large cores may yield sufficient throughput when running multiprogrammed workloads. However, harnessing the full potential of CMPs in the long term makes a broad adoption of parallel programming inevitable.
We envision a CMP-dominated future where a diverse landscape of software in different stages of parallelization exists at all times. Unfortunately, in this future, the inherent rigidity in current proposals for CMP designs makes it hard to come up with a "universal" CMP that can accommodate this software diversity.
In this talk I will discuss Core Fusion, a CMP architecture where cores can "fuse" into larger cores on demand to execute sequential code very fast, while still retaining the ability to operate independently to run highly parallel code efficiently. Core Fusion builds upon a substrate of fundamentally independent cores and conventional memory coherence/ consistency support, and enables the CMP to dynamically morph into different configurations to adapt to the changing needs of software at run-time. Core Fusion does not require specialized software support, it leverages mature micro-architecture technology, and it can interface with the application through small extensions encapsulated in ordinary parallelization libraries, macros, or directives.
Speaker Bio:
Jose Martinez (Ph.D.'02 Computer Science, UIUC) is assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and graduate field member of computer science at Cornell University. He leads the M3 Architecture Research Group at Cornell, whose interests include multicore architectures, reconfigurable and self-optimizing hardware, and hardware-software interaction. Mart?nez's work has been selected to IEEE Micro Top Picks twice (2003 and 2007). In 2005, he and his students received the Best Paper Award at HPCA-11 for their work on check pointed early load retirement. Mart?nez is also the recipient of a NSF CAREER Award and, more recently, an IBM Faculty Award. His teaching responsibilities at Cornell include computer architecture at both undergraduate and graduate levels. He also organizes the AMD Computer Engineering Lecture Series.
Speaking of Biology
Physiology & Behavior
Matthew Grober
Georgia State University
"Sex changing fish: novel behavioral regulation of ancient genetic pathways."
Friday, February 23 - 12:00 p.m. - PHR 4.114
Host: Dr. David Crews
Speaking of Biology
McCraw Departmental Lecture Series
Stephen Hursting, Ph.D.
Division of Nutritional Sciences, UT-Austin
"Obesity, Energy Balance and Cancer: A Mechanistic Perspective."
Friday, February 23 - 12:00 p.m. - BEL 962
Department of Computer Sciences Colloquium
Praveen Yalagandula, HP Labs
Thursday, February 22, 2007 - 1:00 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. - TAY 3.128
Host: Mike Dahlin
"S^3: A Scalable Sensing Service for Monitoring Large Networked Systems"
Talk Abstract:
Efficient operation of large-scale distributed systems such as enterprise networks, grid systems, and sensor networks is a grand challenge. One of the crucial reasons is the lack of current and accurate knowledge of the global state of the individual components in the system including both network and individual machine attributes. Most commercial network management systems monitor only a subset of system metrics and also at a relatively coarse grain timescales to be able to collect and process the measurements at a central location. This impedes decision making at very fine timescales, which is important for several emerging applications like interactive multi-media services and early-anomaly detection systems. We provide a Scalable Sensing Service (S^3) that the network management subsystem as well as individual applications/services can subscribe to and securely get customized information at very fine timescales suitable for their purposes. For scalable operation, S^3 provides the sensing service in a decentralized manner, eliminates unnecessary duplicate measurements by consolidating sensing requirements of different applications, and provides inference engines to estimate network metrics with high accuracy while avoiding quadratic all-pair measurements load. S^3 can be used for a number of management tasks such as failure or anomalous behavior detection, resource location and placement, and network route setup for optimal performance.
Speaker Bio:
Praveen Yalagandula is a Research Scientist with the Networking Research Group at HP Labs, Palo Alto, CA. He joined HP Labs in August 2005 after finishing his Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin. He received his Masters degree from UT Austin in August 2000 and a Bachelors degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur in May 1998. His research interests are wide-area distributed systems, peer-to-peer systems, web prefetching, and networking
Speaking of Biology
Marine Science Institute
Dr. J. Kevin Craig
Environmental and Earth Sciences, Duke & Marine Lab & Dept. of Zoology, Ctr for
Marine Sci. & Tech., North Carolina State University
"Hypoxia, Fish, and Fisheries: Linking Anthropogenic Environmental Change to Upper Trophic Levels."
Thursday, February 22 - 9:00 a.m. - Visitors Center Auditorium at the Marine Science Institute, Port Aransas, TX
For directions to the Marine Science Institute, go to: http://msi40.utmsi.utexas.edu/institute/maps.htm
Speaking of Biology
Toxicology-Faculty Candidate
Dr. Zhaohui Wu
Research Associate, Pharmacology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
"NEMO, the molecular link between NF-kB activation and genotoxic stress."
Thursday, February 22 - 11:00 a.m. - PHR 4.114
Host: Dr. Shawn Bratton
Speaking of Biology
Section of Integrative Biology
Dr. Matthew Grober
Georgia State University
"An integrative analysis of adult sex change: testing hypotheses at multiple levels of organization."
Thursday, February 22 - 2:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Dr. Walt Wilczynski
Speaking of Biology
Chemical Engineering-Faculty Recruit
Christopher Love
Children's Hospital, Institute for Biomedical Research
"Microtools for Analyzing Individual Lymphocytes."
Thursday, February 22 - 3:30 p.m. - CPE 2.218
Speaking of Biology
Marine Science Institute
Dr. Ken Dunton, Dr. Wayne Gardner, Dr. Tamara Pease, Dr. Dong-Ha Min, and Dr. Jim McClelland
"Special Panel: Ask a Scientist - Climate Change."
Thursday, February 22 - 7:00 p.m. - Visitors Center Auditorium at the Marine Science Institute, Port Aransas, TX
For directions to the Marine Science Institute, go to: http://msi40.utmsi.utexas.edu/institute/maps.htm
Department of Computer Sciences Seminar Series
Markus Pueschel/Carnegie Mellon University
Thursday, February 22, 2007 11:00-Noon - ACES 2.302
Host: Robert van de Geijn
"Can We Teach Computers to Write Fast Libraries?"
Talk Abstract:
As the computing world goes multicore, high performance library development finally becomes a nightmare. Optimal programs, and their underlying algorithms, have to be adapted to take full advantage of the platforms parallelism, memory hierarchy, and available instruction set. To make things worse, the best implementations are often platform-dependent and platforms are constantly evolving, which quickly renders libraries obsolete. As a consequence, developers are forced to permanently re-implement and re-optimize the same functionality and often even revert to assembly coding just as 50 years ago.
A number of research efforts have started to address this problem in a new area called Automatic Performance Tuning with the common goal to rethink the way libraries are created. In this talk we present Spiral (www.spiral.net), a program generation system for linear transforms. Spiral generates highly optimized, platform-tuned implementations of transforms directly from a problem specification. For a user-specified transform, Spiral generates alternative algorithms, optimizes them, compiles them into programs, and intelligently searches for the best match to the computing platform. The main idea behind Spiral is a mathematical, declarative framework to represent algorithms and the use of rewriting systems to generate and optimize algorithms at a high level of abstraction. Optimization includes parallelization for vector architectures, shared and distributed memory platforms, GPUs, and even FPGAs. Experimental results show that the code generated by Spiral competes with, and sometimes outperforms, the best av.
Speaker Bio:
Markus Pschel is an Associate Research Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. He received his Diploma (M.Sc.) in Mathematics and his Doctorate (Ph.D.) in Computer Science, in 1995 and 1998, respectively, both from the University of Karlsruhe, Germany. From 1998-1999 he was a Postdoctoral Researcher at Mathematics and Computer Science, Drexel University. Since 2000 he has been with Carnegie Mellon University. He is an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, and was a Guest Editor of the Journal of Symbolic Computation, the Proceedings of the IEEE, and an Associate Editor for the IEEE Signal Processing Letters. He is a recipient of the Outstanding Research Award of the College of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon. His research interests include computing, algorithms, applied mathematics, and signal processing theory/software/hardware. More information is available at www.ece.cmu.edu/~pueschel.
Speaking of Biology
Waggoner Center for Alcohol and Addiction Research-Post-doctoral Candidate
Feyza Sancar, Ph.D.
Neuroscience Training Program & Department of Physiology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
"Insights into the expression and pharmacology of GABAA receptors: From an epilepsy mutant to determinants of benzodiazepine binding and efficacy."
Wednesday, February 21 - 9:00 a.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Adron Harris, Ph.D.
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology-Recruitment Seminar
Dr. Paul Straight
Postdoctoral Fellow, Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston
"The Chemical Vocabulary of a Microbial Conversation."
Wednesday, February 21 - 4:00 p.m. - ESB 223 - Refreshments served.
Speaking of Biology
Seminars & Discussions on Research Ethics
Dr. William Sage, M.D., J.D.
Vice-Provost for Health Affairs, UT-Austin
"The Loyalties of Biomedical Researchers: Do You Really Know a Conflict of Interest When You See One?"
Wednesday, February 21 - 4:00 p.m. - ACE 2.302
Speaking of Biology
UT M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Science Park-DNA Repair Group Series
Laura J. Niederenhofer
Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry, University of Pittsburgh
"Accelerated aging and cancer in ERCC1-XPF-deficient mouse models."
Tuesday, February 20 - 11:30 a.m. - Videoconferenced to Harrison Auditorium, Pickle Conference Center, Science Park, Smithville, TX
For directions to the Science Park, go to: http://sciencepark.mdanderson.org/about/location/
Speaking of Biology
Center for Learning and Memory-Recruit Seminar
Arianna Maffei
Brandeis University
"Chalk Talk."
Tuesday, February 20 - 12:00 p.m. - NMS 1.120
Host: Dr. Daniel Johnston
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology-Recruitment Seminar (Plant Mol. Bio.)
Takato Imaizumi, Ph.D.
Department of Biochemistry, The Scripps Research Institute
"How Plants Sense The Season: Role Of FKF1 F-box Protein In Day-length Measurement."
Tuesday, February 20 - 2:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210 - Refreshments will be served at 1:30.
Host: Alan Lloyd
Speaking of Biology
Chemical Engineering-Texas Distinguished Faculty Lecture series
Dr. Jeffrey A. Hubbell
Ecole Polytechnique F?d?rale de Lausanne
"Biofunctional Materials for Cellular Targeting and Activation."
Tuesday, February 20 - 3:30 p.m. - CPE 2.218
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology
Dr. Brian Link
Medical College of Wisconsin
"Interkinetic nuclear migration and neurogenesis during retinal development."
Tuesday, February 20 - 4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210 - Refreshments will be served at 3:30.
Host: Dr. Jeff Gross
Speaking of Biology
Marine Science Institute
Dr. Greg Stunz
TAMU-CC, Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies
"Establishing linkages between marine habitats and fisheries productivity."
Monday, February 19 - 9:00 a.m. - Visitors Center Auditorium at the Marine Science Institute, Port Aransas, TX
For directions to the Marine Science Institute, go to: http://msi40.utmsi.utexas.edu/institute/maps.htm
Speaking of Biology
Population Biology
Dr. Steve Windhager
LBJ Wildflower Center
"The Effects of Season of Prescribed Fire on the Herbaceous Layer in a Texas Savanna."
Monday, February 19 - 12:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Dr. Bob Jansen
Speaking of Biology
Center for Nonlinear Dynamics
Dr. Pengyu Ren
Department of Biomedical Engineering, UT-Austin
"Free Energy Simulation of Protein-Ligand Binding."
Monday, February 19 - 1:00 p.m. - RLM 11.204
Speaking of Biology
Biomedical Engineering
Dr. Melody Swartz
Department of Bioengineering, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
"Interstitial flow: roles in tissue morphogenesis, pathogenesis, and tissue engineering."
Monday, February 19 - 3:00 p.m. - CPE 2.216
Speaking of Biology
Center for Learning and Memory-Recruit Seminar
Arianna Maffei
Brandeis University
"Experience-dependent Rewiring of Cortical Networks."
Monday, February 19 - 4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Dr. Daniel Johnston
Speaking of Biology
Social & Personality Talk
Richard Wassersug, Ph.D.
Dalhousie University
"Modern Day Eunuchs: Motivation for and Consequences of Castration in Contemporary Society."
Monday, February 19 - 5:00 p.m. - SEA 3.250
Paolo D'Alberto
Carnegie Mellon University
Monday, February 19, 2007 - Noon - TAY 3.128
Host: Keshav Pingali
"Algorithm Engineering"
Talk Abstract:
I will introduce some of the techniques and optimizations developed/used for two examples: All-Pair Shortest Path (APSP) and Strassen Matrix multiplication (SMM). These techniques improve the performance, the code portability and the code maintainability ( e.g.,; they simplify the code) and they open new opportunities for aggressive compiler optimizations.
I show that these two examples (APSP and SMM) build on top of highly tuned routines such as GotoBLAS and ATLAS enhancing their application range and performance. Also, I will address issues such as algorithm correctness and numerical stability for APSP and SMM.
This work has been developed in collaboration with Prof. Nicolau (UCI).
Speaker Bio:
Currently Post Doctorate Fellow, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University. Affiliated to the SPIRAL project, responsible for the design and implementation of techniques for the SW-HW Partitioning of DFT for low-power and high-performance custom systems.
Ph.D. 2005, Computer Science, University of California Irvine
Dottorato di Ricerca, 2000, Computer Science, University of Bologna
Department of Computer Sciences - Colloquium
Jianer Chen
Texas A & M
Friday, February 16, 2007
11:00a.m.
TTAY 3.128 - South wall (whiteboard)
Host: Vijaya Ramachandran
Talk Title: "Improved Algorithms for Path, Matching, and Packing Problems"
Talk Abstract:
Improved randomized and deterministic algorithms are presented for well-known NP-hard Path, Matching, and Packing problems. Our randomized algorithms are based on the divide-and-conquer technique, and improve previous best algorithms for these problems. For example, for the k-Path problem, our randomized algorithm runs in time $O(4^k k^{2.7}m)$ and space $O(nk\log k + m)$, improving the previous best randomized algorithm for the problem that runs in time $O(5.44^kkm)$ and space $O n (2^k k n + m)$. To achieve improved deterministic algorithms, we study a number of previously proposed derandomization schemes, and show how they can be improved and effectively used to achieve efficient deterministic algorithms. This study results in the following deterministic algorithms: one of time $O(4^{k+o(k)}m)$ for the k-Path problem, one of time $O(2.80^{3k} k n \log^2 n)$ for the 3-D matching problem, and one of time $O(3.2^{3k}n)$ for the 3-Set Packing problem. All these significantly improve previous best deterministic algorithms for the problems.
* This is a joint work with S. Lu, S.-H. Sze, and F. Zhang
Speaker Bio:
Jianer Chen got his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, NYU, and his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Columbia University. Currently he is a professor in computer science at Texas A&M University. His research interests include algorithms and optimization, computer graphics, and computer
Speaking of Biology
Physiology & Behavior
Harold Zakon
Section of Neurobiology, UT-Austin
"Na channel genes and electric fish: gene duplication and evolutionary novelty."
Friday, February 16 - 12:00 p.m. - PHR 4.114
Host: Dr. David Crews
Speaking of Biology
Department of Kinesiology and Health Education
John Papaconstantinou, Ph.D.
Dept. of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, School of Medicine, & Grad. School of
Biomedical Sciences, UT-Medical Branch
"Mechanism of Regulation of Oxidative Stress inAging, Longevity and Age-Associated Diseases."
Friday, February 16 - 12:00 p.m. - BEL 962
Speaking of Biology
Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship Program
Michael Boland, Ph.D.
Wilmer Eye Institute, Johns Hopkins University
"Combining Optic Nerve Imaging and Psychophysical Testing to Model the Structure
Function Relationship in Glaucoma."
Friday, February 16 - 1:00 p.m. - ACE 2.402
Host: Mia Markey
Speaking of Biology
Biochemistry Division
John D. Lipscomb, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Biochemistry, University of Minnesota
"Trapping Activated Oxygen Intermediates in Aromatic Ring Cleaving Dioxygenases."
Friday, February 16 - 1:30 p.m. - WEL 2.122
Host: Dr. Hung-Wen Liu
Speaking of Biology
Cognition & Perception
Brian J. Stankiewicz
Department of Psychology, UT-Austin
"Understanding Human Sequential Decision Making with Uncertainty using Bayesian Modeling."
Friday, February 16 - 3:00 p.m. - SEA 3.250
Department of Computer Sciences - Colloquium
Dr. Mark Johnson
Brown University
February 15, 2007
2:00p.m.
ACES 2.402
Host: Dr. Ray Mooney
Talk Title: "Bayesian Inference of Grammars"
Talk Abstract:
Even though Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) of Probabilistic Context-Free Grammars (PCFGs) is well-understood (the Inside-Outside algorithm can do this efficiently from the terminal strings alone) the inferred grammars are usually linguistically inaccurate. In order to better understand why maximum likelihood finds poor grammars, this talk examines two simple natural language induction problems: morphological segmentation and word segmentation. We identify several problems with the MLE PCFG models of these problems and propose Hierarchical Dirichlet Process (HDP) models to overcome them. In order to test these HDP models we develop MCMC algorithms for Bayesian inference of these models from strings alone. Finally, we discuss to what extent the lessons learnt from these examples can be put into a unified framework and applied to the general problem of grammar induction.
Joint work with Sharon Goldwater and Tom Griffiths.
Speaking of Biology
Marine Science Institute
Dr. Ian Hewson
Department of Ocean Sciences, University of California-Santa Cruz
"From viruses to eddies: The emerging story of marine microbial biogeography."
Thursday, February 15 - 9:00 a.m. - Visitors Center Auditorium at the Marine Science Institute, Port Aransas, TX
For directions to the Marine Science Institute, go to: http://msi40.utmsi.utexas
.edu/institute/maps.htm
Speaking of Biology
Toxicology
Dr. Emmanuel T. Akporiaye
Professor & Interim Chair, Microbiology & Immunobiology, University of Arizona
"Vitamin E analogs as immune modulators for enhancing anti-tumor responses."
Thursday, February 15 - 11:00 a.m. - PHR 4.114
Host: Dr. Kimberly Kline
Speaking of Biology
Section of Integrative Biology
Dr. Hans Van Dyck
University of Louvain
"Changing butterflies in changing landscapes: evolution meets conservation."
Thursday, February 15 - 2:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Dr. Camille Parmesan
Speaking of Biology
Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology-Recruitment Seminar
Sibum Sung, Ph.D.
Research Associate, Dept. of Biochemistry, University of Wisconsin-Madison
"Vernalization: Remembering Winter with an Environmentally Induced Epigenetic Switch."
Thursday, February 15 - 4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Speaking of Biology
Marine Science Institute
Kiersten Madden
UT Marine Science Institute
"Christmas with Seals on Bird Island, South Georgia Island."
Thursday, February 15 - 7:00 p.m. - Visitors Center Auditorium at the Marine Science Institute, Port Aransas, TX
For directions to the Marine Science Institute, go to: http://msi40.utmsi.utexas.edu/institute/maps.htm
Speaking of Biology
Section of Neurobiology-Recruitment Seminar
Jeremy Dittman, M.D./Ph.D.
Harvard Medical School
"Chalk Talk."
Wednesday, February 14 - 12:00 p.m. - NMS 1.120
Speaking of Biology
Microbiology Graduate Program Dissertation Defense
Christopher Parker
"Type IV secretion and conjugation: DNA processing and transport is linked by mobilization protein MobB."
Wednesday, February 14 - 1:00 p.m. - ACE 6.304
Supervisor: Dr. Richard Meyer
Speaking of Biology
Section of Integrative Biology-Recruitment Seminar (Neuroethology)
Carolina Reisenman
Division of Neurobiology, Arizona Research Laboratories, University of Arizona
"Encoding sensory information in the brain: insights from an insect olfactory system."
Wednesday, February 14 - 2:00 p.m. - ACE 2.302
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology-Recruitment Seminar (Vertebrate Dev. Bio.)
Johann Eberhart
"Genetic Hierarchies and Cellular Behaviors During Zebrafish Palatogenesis."
Wednesday, February 14 - 4:00 p.m. - ACE 2.402
Host: Jeff Gross
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology
Dr. Tillman Gerngross
Associate Professor, Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
"The Use of Humanized Yeast to Explore the Glyco-Design Space - A novel Discovery Platform for Biotherapeutics."
Wednesday, February 14 - 4:00 p.m. - ESB 223 - Refreshments served.
Host: George Georgiou
Speaking of Biology
Physics Colloquium
Dr. Rhonda Dzakpasu
Department of Physics, University of Michigan
"Causal Entropy as a Measure of Temporal Relationships and Direction of Information Transfer in Neural Systems."
Wednesday, February 14 - 4:15 p.m. - RLM 11.204
Speaking of Biology
RNA Club
Dr. Brian Cannon
Russell Lab
"Single Molecule Analysis of Cooperativity in Group I RNA and RNA/Protein Complex."
Tuesday, February 13 - 12:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210 - Pizza and refreshments will be provided thanks to the generous support of Ambion.
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology-Recruitment Seminar (Plant Mol. Bio.)
Bin Yu
"Small RNAs in Arabidopsis: Biogenesis and Function."
Tuesday, February 13 - 4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210 - Refreshments will be served at 3:30.
Host: Dr. Stan Roux
Speaking of Biology
Section of Neurobiology-Recruitment Seminar
Jeremy Dittman, M.D./Ph.D.
Harvard Medical School
"From Molecules to Circuits: Synaptic Function in C. elegans."
Tuesday, February 13 - 4:00 p.m. - ACE 2.402
Speaking of Biology
Marine Science Institute
Dr. Eric Saillant
Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences, TAMU, College Station
"Application of molecular-genetic markers to conservation of marine and freshwater fishes."
Monday, February 12 0 9:00 a.m. - Visitors Center Auditorium at the Marine Science Institute, Port Aransas, TX
For directions to the Marine Science Institute, go to: http://msi40.utmsi.utexas.edu/institute/maps.htm
Speaking of Biology
Section of Integrative Biology-Recruitment Seminar (Neuroethology)
Christoph Kleineidam
University of Wuerzburg
"Sensory Ecology of Leaf-cutting Ants."
Monday, February 12 - 12:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology-Recruitment Seminar
Dr. Caroline Kulesza
Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Molecular Biology, Princeton University
"A Stable Intron Encoded by Cytomegalovirus is a Virulence Factor in vivo."
Monday, February 12 - 4:00 p.m. - ESB 223
Speaking of Biology
Section of Neurobiology
Craig Jahr, Ph.D.
Oregon Health & Science University
"Neural-glial interactions in the cerebellar cortex."
Monday, February 12 - 4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Dr. Richard Aldrich
Speaking of Biology
Marine Science Institute
Dr. Edna Granli
Marine Sciences Dept., Kalmar University, Sweden
"Top-down bottom-up control of Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs)."
Monday, February 12 - 4:00 p.m. - Visitors Center Auditorium at the Marine Science Institute, Port Aransas, TX
For directions to the Marine Science Institute, go to: http://msi40.utmsi.utexas.edu/institute/maps.htm
Speaking of Biology
Texas Natural Science Center - In celebration of Darwin Day
Film - "Flock of Dodos: The Evolution-Intelligent Design Circus."
Monday, February 12 - 7:00 p.m. - WEL 2.224
Computer Sciences - Artificial Intelligence Talk
Dr. Rich Caruana, Cornell University
Friday, February 9, 2007, 11:00 a.m. - Noon ACES 2.402
Host: Dr. Ray Mooney
"Which Supervised Learning Method Works Best for What?
An Empirical Comparison of Learning Methods and Metrics++"
Talk Abstract:
Decision trees are intelligible, but do they perform well enough that you should use them? Have SVMs replaced neural nets, or are neural nets still best for regression, and SVMs best for classification? Boosting maximizes margins similar to SVMs, but can boosting compete with SVMs? And if it does compete, is it better to boost weak models, as theory might suggest, or to boost stronger models? Bagging is simpler than boosting -- how well does bagging stack up against boosting? Breiman said Random Forests are better than bagging and as good as boosting. Was he right? And what about old friends like logistic regression, KNN, and naive bayes? Should they be relegated to the history books, or do they still fill important niches?
In this talk we compare the performance of these supervised learning methods on a number of preformaance criteria: Accuracy, F-score, Lift, Precision/Recall Break-Even Point, Area under the ROC, Average Precision, Squared Error, Cross-Entropy, and Probability Calibration. The results show that no one learning method does it all, but some methods can be "repaired" so that they do very well across all performance metrics. In particular, we show how to obtain the best probabilities from max margin methods such as SVMs and boosting via Platt's Method and isotonic regression. We then describe a new ensemble method that combines select models from these ten learning methods to yield much better performance. Although these ensembles perform extremely well, they are too complex for many applications. We'll describe a model compression method we are developing to fix that. Finally, if time permits, we'll discuss how the performance metrics relate to each other, and which of them you probably should (or shouldn't) use.
Speaker Bio:
Rich Caruana is a professor in the Department of Computer Sciences at Cornell University. He obtained his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 1997. Most of his research is in machine learning, data mining, and medical decision making. In machine learning he works on inductive transfer (a.k.a. multitask learning), ensemble learning, model calibration (predicting good probabilities), feature selection, missing values, and artificial neural networks. In general, he likes to work on real problems, and develop new learning methods by abstracting what is required to make machine learning work well on those problems.
Department of Computer Sciences - Seminar Series
Steven F. Barrett, Ph.D., P.E., Electrical and Computer Engineering
Cameron H.G. Wright, Ph.D., P.E., Electrical and Computer Engineering
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Wyoming
Friday, February 9, 2007 10:00 a.m. - Noon - ACES 6.304
Host: Dr. Chandrajit Bajaj
"Biologically Inspired Machine Vision"
Talk Abstract:
The early vision system of insects as well as many higher level organisms exhibit interesting phenomena and features such as analog preprocessing, parallel structure, and sub-pixel resolution. Early vision is defined as the vision processes that occur within the first few cellular synapses beyond the photoreceptor layer. These features allow for the rapid extraction of image primitives: object edges, boundaries, image segmentation, and movement parameters. This analog, parallel approach to vision provides advantages over current digital-based imaging system. The same type of object information can be extracted with a digital-based system; however, extraction usually requires multiple passes of image processing techniques that must be exhaustively applied pixel-by-pixel to an image. We propose a new approach to the challenge of vision sensor development which takes its inspiration from the obvious success of biological vision systems. This project will use a similar evolutionary, system-level development that has resulted in robust, adaptable vision for so many biological organisms. In this biologically-based systems approach, the sensor (the "eye") and the computational subsystem (the "visual cortex") will be developed together. The sensor design and the computational algorithm design will be made to evolve together as a synergistic, mutually optimized pair; we believe this will greatly increase the probability that successful computer vision will be achieved for a wide variety of medical, commercial, and military applications. This project will advance the state of science in several ways. First, greater understanding of biological vision will be a benefit. The preprocessing in retinal neural layers and the final processing in the visual cortex is only partially understood today. By creating analog circuitry that accomplishes some of the preprocessing and computational algorithms that implement the final processing, more complete knowledge of biological vision will be obtained. Second, a more capable and robust computer vision system suitable for intelligent navigation to be achievable for a wide variety of mobile applications such as autonomous wheelchairs and robot movement in hazardous areas is expected. Furthermore, we believe this research will provide the foundation for the development of a vision prosthetic system.
Steven F. Barrett received the BS Electronic Engineering Technology from the University of Nebraska at Omaha in 1979, the M.E.E.E. from the University of Idaho at Moscow in 1986, and the Ph.D. from The University of Texas at Austin in 1993. He was formally an active duty faculty member with the United States Air Force Academy, Colorado and is now an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Wyoming. He is a member of IEEE (senior) and Tau Beta Pi (chief faculty advisor). His research interests include digital and analog image processing, computer-assisted laser surgery, and embedded controller systems. He is a registered Professional Engineer in Wyoming and Colorado. He co-wrote with Dr. Daniel Pack "68HC12 Microprocessor: Theory and Application," Prentice-Hall, 2002, second edition in press for release in early 2007; "Embedded Systems Design and Applications with the 68HC12 and HS12," Prentice-Hall, 2005; and "Microcontroller Fundamentals for Engineers and Scientists," Morgan-Claypool Publishers, 2006. In 2004, Barrett was named "Wyoming Professor of the Year" by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Email: steveb@uwyo.edu
Biologically Inspired Machine Vision
February 9, 2007 - 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. in ACES 6.304
Steven F. Barrett, Ph.D., P.E., Electrical and Computer Engineering
Cameron H.G. Wright, Ph.D., P.E., Electrical and Computer Engineering
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Wyoming
The early vision system of insects as well as many higher level organisms exhibit interesting phenomena and features such as analog preprocessing, parallel structure, and sub-pixel resolution. Early vision is defined as the vision processes that occur within the first few cellular synapses beyond the photoreceptor layer. These features allow for the rapid extraction of image primitives: object edges, boundaries, image segmentation, and movement parameters. This analog, parallel approach to vision provides advantages over current digital-based imaging system. The same type of object information can be extracted with a digital-based system; however, extraction usually requires multiple passes of image processing techniques that must be exhaustively applied pixel-by-pixel to an image. We propose a new approach to the challenge of vision sensor development which takes its inspiration from the obvious success of biological vision systems. This project will use a similar evolutionary, system-level development that has resulted in robust, adaptable vision for so many biological organisms. In this biologically-based systems approach, the sensor (the "eye") and the computational subsystem (the "visual cortex") will be developed together. The sensor design and the computational algorithm design will be made to evolve together as a synergistic, mutually optimized pair; we believe this will greatly increase the probability that successful computer vision will be achieved for a wide variety of medical, commercial, and military applications. This project will advance the state of science in several ways. First, greater understanding of biological vision will be a benefit. The preprocessing in retinal neural layers and the final processing in the visual cortex is only partially understood today. By creating analog circuitry that accomplishes some of the preprocessing and computational algorithms that implement the final processing, more complete knowledge of biological vision will be obtained. Second, a more capable and robust computer vision system suitable for intelligent navigation to be achievable for a wide variety of mobile applications such as autonomous wheelchairs and robot movement in hazardous areas is expected. Furthermore, we believe this research will provide the foundation for the development of a vision prosthetic system.
Steven F. Barrett received the BS Electronic Engineering Technology from the University of Nebraska at Omaha in 1979, the M.E.E.E. from the University of Idaho at Moscow in 1986, and the Ph.D. from The University of Texas at Austin in 1993. He was formally an active duty faculty member with the United States Air Force Academy, Colorado and is now an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Wyoming. He is a member of IEEE (senior) and Tau Beta Pi (chief faculty advisor). His research interests include digital and analog image processing, computer-assisted laser surgery, and embedded controller systems. He is a registered Professional Engineer in Wyoming and Colorado. He co-wrote with Dr. Daniel Pack "68HC12 Microprocessor: Theory and Application," Prentice-Hall, 2002, second edition in press for release in early 2007; "Embedded Systems Design and Applications with the 68HC12 and HS12," Prentice-Hall, 2005; and "Microcontroller Fundamentals for Engineers and Scientists," Morgan-Claypool Publishers, 2006. In 2004, Barrett was named "Wyoming Professor of the Year" by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Email: steveb@uwyo.edu
Department of Biomedical Engineering Seminar Series 2006-2007
"Biomechanics of Engineered Heart Valve Tissues"
Dr. Michael S. Sacks - W.K. Whiteford Professor, Department of Bioengineering, University of Pittsburgh
February 8, 2007 - 3:30 p.m. - ACE 2.302
On the most basic functional level, heart valves are essentially simple-check valves that serve to prevent retrograde blood flow. This seemingly simple function belies the structural complexity, elegant solid-fluid mechanical interaction, and durability necessary for normal valve function. For example, valves are capable of withstanding 30-40 million cycles per year, resulting in a total of ~3 billion cycles insingle lifetime. No valve made from non-living materials has been able to demonstrate comparable functional performance and durability. However, this staggering level of performance can be cut short by aorticvalve disease, the most common form being stenosis resulting from calcification. Currently, the treatment of aortic valve disease is usually complete valve replacement. First performed successfully in 1960, surgical replacement of diseased human heart valves by valve prostheses is now commonplace and enhances survival and quality of life for many patients. However, they continue to have significant clinical problems and there is a profound need for new approaches to valve therapies based on sound scientific and engineering principals.
Tissue engineering represents a spectrum of cross-disciplinary technologies aimed toward the repair, replacement, or enhancement of native valve function. Nonwovens fabricated from bioresorbable synthetic polymers (e.g., polyglycolic acid (PGA)) represent one of the earliest, and to date, most ubiquitous biomaterials used as tissue engineering scaffolds. Their amenability to tissue development, however, belies their intricate microstructure and the concomitant complexity of mechanical interactions occurring between scaffold, cellular, and extracellular matrix constituents in an engineered tissue construct. Mathematical models that simulate the composite mechanical behavior of the scaffold and the developing tissue could potentially facilitate the design of engineered tissues and mechanical conditioning regimens. Such models could thus play a pivotal role in the design and development of an engineered heart valve.
Support for the seminar series is provided by our Industrial Affiliates.
Department of Biomedical Engineering - http://www.bme.utexas.edu
Toxicology PHR 196T Seminar
Thursday, February 8, 2007 PHR 4.114, 11:00 to 12:00
“Inhibition of Retinoic AcidResistant Colon Cancer Ce Growth and Metastasis by Retinol"
Presented by Dr. Miche
Dr. Lane’s research interests include determining the mechanism by which retinol inhibits the growth of retinoic acid (RA) resistant colon cancer cells and examining how retinol is metabolized within these cells. Her lab group is also examining the ability of retinol to inhibit RA-resistant colon cancer cell metastasis and the effects of Acutane (13-cis-RA) on serotinergic neurons.
Host: Dr. John Richburg, Associate Professor Pharmacology & Toxicology College of Division of Pharmacology and Toxicology
This seminar will be televised to Science Park
AUSTIN FORUM SPEAKER SERIES:
SXSW Interactive Festival - Finding Inspiration and Creativity
WHEN:
Wednesday, February 7 at 6:30 p.m. (Complimentary food and drink will be provided from 6:00 - 6:30pm.)
*This event is free to the broader Austin community.
WHAT:
You're invited to attend a participatory talk by Hugh Forrest, event director for the SXSW Interactive Festival, one of the three components of SXSW. Hugh will discuss the unique aspects of SXSW Interactive and how the festival unites the most creative people in web and new media to inspire, create and merge ideas. This year's 14th annual SXSW Interactive Festival will provide practical how-to information and unparalleled career inspiration. An incubator of new, cutting-edge technology, the SXSW Interactive Festival is ground zero for the world's most creative web developers, designers, bloggers, wireless innovators, and new media entrepreneurs. SXSW Interactive is geared to people who have a strong sense of creativity and an even stronger sense of independence. Those who attend the Interactive Festival want to view and listen to what is beyond mainstream definitions of art. The SXSW Interactive Festival 2007 will take place March 9-13 in Austin. Learn more about the complete gamut of SXSW activities at: http://2007.sxsw.com/
WHERE:
Pickle Research Campus (northwest corner of Burnet and Braker), 10100 Burnet Road, Building 196, Jackson School of Geosciences & Texas Advanced Computing Center's building - Seminar Room 1.603
BACKGROUND:
The Austin Forum provides a unique venue for distinguished professionals and community leaders to speak directly to the public in an informal setting that allows for dynamic interaction between speaker and audience. Taking place the first Wednesday of each month, the Austin Forum is a vehicle to educate the Austin community in a way that will enrich their lives by exposing them to new knowledge and ideas. The underlying theme among all Forum topics is science and technology and its impact on both the topic and society. Most important, audience members will gain valuable information about how they, too, can make a difference in these areas. Learn more about the Austin Forum's upcoming events at: www.austinforum.org
Regards,
Faith Singer-Villalobos
Public Relations Coordinator
Development & External Relations
Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC)
Direct - 512.232.5771
faith@tacc.utexas.edu
Department of Computer Sciences - Colloquium
Petros Maniatis/Intel Research
February 5, 2007, 3:30 p.m.-4:30 p.m.
ACES 2.402
Host: Lorenzo Alvisi
Talk Title: "Distributed Systems as Databases: Specification, Execution, Debugging"
Talk Abstract:
Developing, deploying, and monitoring the execution of distributed algorithms is a tough job, whether in the context of routing protocols and group communication, within general-purpose overlays, or deeply within focused distributed applications. In P2, a joint research project at Intel Research Berkeley and UC Berkeley, we start with the premise that it is desirable to trade off some design freedom for a more manageable cycle of design, deployment, and testing. Specifically, we treat distributed systems design, at a high level, as a sequence of asynchronous read-modify-write transformations of global ground state --physical connectivity, available resources, policy constraints, past history -- much like how query processors regard traditional database problems. P2 translates such pseudocode-level system specifications into software dataflow graphs made of small, interlinked, reusable components, which it then executes to "run" the specified system. By managing the level of specification -- at pseudocode level, at dataflow graph level, at traditional programming language level -- a programmer can range from a rough-and-ready rapid prototyping experience to an increasingly tuned distributed application.
In this talk, I will present an overview of the architecture, design, and implementation of P2. I will then focus on the exciting implications of a highly observable run time system for distributed debugging, on-line global invariant checking, and causality tracking. Finally, I will briefly describe promising preliminary results on specifying global optimization and adaptation tasks as P2 queries themselves, as well as our current directions towards automatic parallelization and causally consistent execution.
Speaker Bio:
Petros Maniatis is a Senior Researcher at Intel Research, Berkeley. He holds Masters and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from Stanford University. His research focuses on distributed systems, fault tolerance, and security.
Speaking of Biology
Physiology & Behavior
Harold Zakon
Section of Neurobiology, UT-Austin
"Regulation of electric fish communication signals by steroid andpeptide hormones."
Friday, February 2
12:00 p.m. - PHR 4.114
Host: Dr. David Crews
Speaking of Biology
Cognition & Perception
Chad Marsolek
University of Minnesota
"Antipriming: Priming's Dirty Little Secret."
Friday, February 2
3:00 p.m. - SEA 3.250
Department of Computer Sciences - Colloquium
Grigore Rosu
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
February 1, 2005, 2:00p.m.-3:00p.m.
ACES 2.402
Host: Jayadev Misra
Talk Title: "Monitoring-based Programming and Analysis "
Talk Abstract:
We present a tool-supported formal software development framework in which runtime monitoring is a basic design principle, called monitoring-oriented programming (MOP). In MOP, the developer specifies desired properties using definable formalisms, along with
code to execute when properties are violated or validated. MOP automatically generates monitors from the specified properties and integrates them together with the user-defined code into the original system. When used for detecting errors in concurrent systems, monitoring suffers from the same limited coverage as testing. We also present a predictive runtime analysis technique that significantly increases the analysis coverage of monitoring in the context of bug-detection in multithreaded systems, having at its core an improved happen-before causality sliced using static.
Speaker Bio:
Grigore Rosu is an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). His research interests encompass both theoretical foundations and system development in the areas of formal methods, software engineering and programming languages. Before joining UIUC in 2002, he was a research scientist at NASA Ames. He obtained his Ph.D. at the University of California at San Diego in 2000 and his M.S. at the University of Bucharest, Romania, in 1996. He was offered the NSF CAREER award in 2005 and the Computer Science Department outstanding junior award at UIUC.
Speaking of Biology
Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology-Recruitment Seminar
Sara Sawyer, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
"Tracking the Evolutionary Footprints of Viruses."
Thursday, February 1
4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Speaking of Biology
Marine Science Institute
Dr. Lee Fuiman, Dr. Ed Buskey, Dr. Rick Tinnin, and Sally Morehead
"A Federal Reserve Has Come to Texas."
Thursday, February 1
7:00 p.m. - Visitors Center Auditorium at the Marine Science Institute, Port Aransas, TX
For directions to the Marine Science Institute, go to:
http://msi40.utmsi.utexas.edu/institute/maps.htm
Speaking of Biology
UT M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Science Park-Hogg Seminar Series
Robert D. Wells, Ph.D.
Texas A&M University System Health Science Center, Inst. of Biosciences & Technology, Houston, TX
"DNA Structure, Genomic Rearrangements, and Human Disease."
Wednesday, January 31
11:00 a.m. - Harrison Auditorium, Pickle Conference Center, Science Park, Smithville, TX
For directions to the Science Park, go to:
http://sciencepark.mdanderson.org/about/location/
Speaking of Biology
Center for Nonlinear Dynamics
Katja Taute
UT-Austin
"Microtubule mechanics."
Wednesday, January 31
1:00 p.m. - RLM 11.204
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology-Recruitment Seminar
(Vertebrate Dev. Bio.)
William Brieher
"Molecular Mechanisms Shaping a Dynamic Actin Cytoskeleton."
Wednesday, January 31
4:00 p.m. - NMS 1.120 - Refreshments at 3:30 in NMS 1.106
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology-Recruitment Seminar
Dr. Bumsuk Hahm
Staff Scientist, Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA
"Interplay between Viruses and Dendritic Cells: Immunosuppression caused by measles."
Wednesday, January 31
4:00 p.m. - ESB 223 - Refreshments served.
Speaking of Biology
Center for Learning and Memory-Recruitment Seminar
Mark Mayford
Scripps Research Institute
"Chalk Talk."
Tuesday, January 30
12:00 p.m. - NMS 1.120
Host: Dr. Daniel Johnston
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology-Recruitment Seminar
(Plant Mol. Bio.)
Elizabeth Haswell
"Shaping up and shipping out: Mechanosensitive Ion Channels and Mechanoperception in Plants."
Tuesday, January 30
4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210 - Refreshments will be served at 3:30.
Host: Dr. Karen Browning
Computer Sciences Colloquia
Eric Allen
Research Scientist @ Sun Microsystems
Tuesday, January 30, 2007 - 3:30 p.m. - ACES 2.402
Host: FoCS
"Project Fortress"
Talk Abstract:
Fortress is a new programming language designed for high-performance computing with high programmability. In order to explore breakaway approaches to improving programmability, the Fortress design has not been constrained by legacy language syntax or semantics; all aspects of language design for high-performance computing have been rethought from the ground up. As a result, we are able to support features in Fortress such as transactions, specification of locality, and implicit parallel computation, as integral features built into the core of the language. Other features, such as the Fortress component system and test framework, facilitate program assembly and testing, and enable powerful compiler optimizations across library boundaries. Even the syntax and type system of Fortress are custom-tailored to modern high-performance computing, supporting mathematical notation and static hecking of properties such as physical units and dimensions, statictype checking of multidimensional arrays and matrices, and definitions of domain-specific language syntax in libraries. Moreover, Fortress has been designed with the intent that it be a "growable'' language, gracefully supporting the addition of future language features. In fact, much of the Fortress language itself (even the definition of arrays and other basic types) is encoded in libraries atop a relatively small core language. In this talk, we provide a brief overview of Fortress, and discuss the future of the project.
Speaker Bio:
Eric Allen is a research scientist at Sun Microsystems, where he is a principal investigator of the Fortress project. He is concerned with the design, analysis, and implementation of new language features to increase program robustness and programmer productivity.
Before joining Sun, Eric was an implementor of the NextGen programming language, an extension of the Java^(TM) Programming Language with added experimental features. He was also one of the original programmers on the DrJava project, an open-source IDE designed for interactive, test-driven development, hosted at Rice University. He was the Lead Java Programmer at Cycorp, Inc., and is also author of the book "Bug Patterns in Java", which discusses common bugs and how to avoid them. He has moderated forums for the online magazine JavaWorld, and has written many online articles on effective programming and debugging.
Eric received a BA in Computer Science and Mathematics from Cornell University and an MS and PhD in Computer Science from Rice University.
Speaking of Biology
Population Biology
Dr. Lisette De Senerpont Domis
Netherlands Institute of Ecology
"Climate induced shifts in phenology of algae and zooplankton in freshwater systems."
Monday, January 29
12:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Dr. Mathew Leibold
Speaking of Biology
Department of Anthropology-Promotion Seminar
Deborah Bolnick
Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, UT-Austin
"Correlating Culture, History, and the Genetic Structure of Native American Populations."
Monday, January 29
12:00 p.m. - EPS 1.128
Speaking of Biology
Section of Integrative Biology-Recruitment Seminar (Neuroethology)
Yehuda Ben-Shahar
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of Iowa College of Medicine
"Chemosensory-related DEG/ENaC ion channels in Drosophila."
Monday, January 29
2:00 p.m. - ACES 2.302
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology-Recruitment Seminar
Dr. Jianxin You
Department of Pathology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA
"Papillomavirus Host Cell Interactions Contributing to Viral Persistenceand Cancer."
Monday, January 29
4:00 p.m. - ESB 223
Speaking of Biology
Center for Learning and Memory-Recruitment Seminar
Mark Mayford
Scripps Research Institute
"Genetic Studies of Memory in the Mouse."
Monday, January 29
4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Dr. Daniel Johnston
Speaking of Biology
Clinical Area Psychology
Dr. Andreana Haley
Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Brown University
"Solving the Mysteries of the Aging Brain through Neuroimaging."
Monday, January 29
4:00 p.m. - SEA 4.244
Department of Computer Sciences - Colloquium
Matt Frank
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Monday, January 29, 2007
3:30 p.m.
ACES 2.302
Host: Derek Chiou
Talk Title:"Microarchitectural Support for Automatic Parallelization"
Talk Abstract:
This talk will describe my group's ongoing research on effectivelyand practically parallelizing general purpose programs to small scale parallel systems (on the order of about 8 single-threaded superscalar cores). Our approach to this problem has been "careful" speculative parallelization. Data dependences are learned dynamically,to avoid relying on "brittle" compiler analyses and transformations, but enforced conservatively to avoid the low probabilities inherentin techniques like value speculation. I will describe the compiler techniques we use to find thread boundaries that allow complete control independence of threads, the dynamic slicing technique we use to implement an efficient dynamic dataflow engine, and the dependence prediciton mechanism we use to perform accurate pointer analysis. Together these mechanisms allow us to effectively parallelize general purpose programs without dramatically increasing the number of instructions speculatively fetched or executed.
Speaker Bio:
Matthew Frank is an Assistant Professor of Electrical andComputer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign. His degrees include a B.S. in Computer Science, 1994, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, M.S. in Computer Science, 1997, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Ph.D. in Computer Science, 2003, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research interests include Computer System Architecture and Compilers. He and his students are currently designing PolyFlow, an implicitly parallel architecture that automatically parallelizes programs as they run.
Parking for off-campus visitors: We suggest you park in the San Jacinto parking garage (formerly PG1) at 24th & San Jacinto. Parking validation will be available. Please contact the host for this seminar or stop by the refreshment cart to have your parking validated.
Please contact Gem Naivar at gem@cs.utexas.edu if you need any further information.
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The Computer Architecture Seminar Series is sponsored jointly by the Departments of Computer Science and Electrical and Compuuter Engineering and is supported by a grant from AMD.
Speaking of Biology
Ecolunch Seminar
Krushnamegh Kunte
UT-Austin
"Biogeography and Diversity of Indian Butterflies."
Friday, January 26
12:00 p.m. - PAT 617
Speaking of Biology
McCraw Departmental Lecture Series
Michael Smolensky, Ph.D.
School of Public, University of Texas Health Sciences Center at Houston
"Circadian Rhythms in Human Physiology and Physical Performance."
Friday, January 26
12:00 p.m. - BEL 962 - Refreshments will be provided in the seminar room beginning at 11:45.
Speaking of Biology
Physiology & Behavior
Nicholas Sanderson
UT-Austin
"Nitric Oxide Synthase Regulation by Testosterone."
Friday, January 26
12:00 p.m. - PHR 4.114
Host: Dr. David Crews
Speaking of Biology
Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship Program
Lynn Loo, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor and IGERT Faculty, Department of Chemical Engineering, UT-Austin
"Solution-Processable Organic Conductors and Semiconductors: Viable Materials for Thin-Film Electronics."
Friday, January 26
1:00 p.m. - ACES 2.402
Speaking of Biology
Austin Postdoctoral Association
Mark Harrington, Esq., Amy Tehauno, Esq., and Augustine Huang, Esq.
"A Panel Discussion on Immigrant Petitions."
Thursday, January 25
9:30 a.m. - MBB 1.210
This event is sponsored by the Austin Postdoctoral Association but open to any
UT-Austin student, staff or postdoctoral researcher interested. Although not directly
a biology talk, many international students, staff and researchers may find the information valuable.
Speaking of Biology
Center for Learning and Memory-Recruitment Seminar
Kimberly Raab-Graham
Physiology and Biophysics, UCSF
"Chalk Talk."
Thursday, January 25
12:00 p.m. - NMS 1.120
Host: Dr. Daniel Johnston
Speaking of Biology
Section of Integrative Biology
Dr. Phil Fay
USDA
"Ecosystem responses to CO2, temperature, and rainfall manipulations in grasslands."
Thursday, January 25
2:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Dr. Christine Hawkes
Speaking of Biology
Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology-Recruitment Seminar
Ian J. MacRae, Ph.D.
Post-doctoral Fellow, University of California at Berkeley
"Dissecting Dicer: mechanistic insights into gene silencing by RNAi."
Thursday, January 25
4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Speaking of Biology
Marine Science Institute
Dr. Liz Smith
Research Scientist, Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi
"Why is That Bird There?: An Alternate Approach in Studying Bird Behavior and Habitat Use."
Thursday, January 25
7:00 p.m. - Visitors Center Auditorium at the Marine Science Institute, Port Aransas, TX
For directions to the Marine Science Institute, go to: http://msi40.utmsi.utexas.edu/institute/maps.htm
Speaking of Biology
Center for Learning and Memory-Recruitment Seminar
Kimberly Raab-Graham
Physiology and Biophysics, UCSF
"Lost in Translation: How Neuronal Activity Suppresses Local Synthesis of a Potassium Channel."
Wednesday, January 24
3:00 p.m. - SEA 4.244
Host: Dr. Daniel Johnston
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology-Recruitment Seminar (Vertebr
ate Dev. Bio.)
Jeffrey Amack
"Cilia-Driven Fluid Flow Directs Left-Right Patterning Of The Heart, Gut And Brain."
Wednesday, January 24
4:00 p.m. - NMS 1.120 - Refreshments at 3:30 in NMS 1.106
Host: Dr. John Wallingford
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology-Recruitment Seminar
Dr. Angelika Grundling
Research Associate, Department of Microbiology, University of Chicago
"Envelope assembly in Staphylococcus aureus."
Wednesday, January 24
4:00 p.m. - ESB 223 - Refreshments served.
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology
Cliff Tabin, Ph.D.
Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School
Tuesday, January 23
4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210 - Refreshments will be served at 3:30.
Host: Ian Quigley
"Patterning the vertebrate embryo."
Speaking of Biology
Neurobiology Seminar Series
Dmitri Chklovskii, Ph.D.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Monday, January 22
4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Dr. Kristen Harris
"Wiring of the cortical column: randomness vs. specificity."
Speaking of Biology
Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology-Recruitment Seminar
Diana Chu, Ph.D.
Monday, January 22
2:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Assistant Professor, Department of Biology, San Francisco State University
"Using Proteomics to Uncover Male Fertility Factors in C. elegans."
Speaking of Biology
Center for Nonlinear Dynamics
Dr. Richard Anderson
Monday, January 22
1:00 p.m. - RLM 11.204
Department of Cell Biology, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas
"Lipid rafts: A crossroad between cell biology and physics."
Speaking of Biology
Marine Science Institute
Dr. Johannes Hagstrum
Postdoctoral Fellow, UTMSI
Monday, January 22
"Fate of marine algal toxins in presence of bacteria and mussel or copepod faecal matter." 9:00 a.m. - Visitors Center Auditorium at the Marine Science Institute, Port Aransas, TX For directions to the Marine Science Institute, go to: http://msi40.utmsi.utexas.edu/institute/maps.htm
Computer Sciences Colloquium
Gianfranco Bilardi - University of Padova & IBM Research
December 11, 2006 - 11:00a.m. - ACE 6.304
Host: Keshav Pingali
"How Well Can Physical Machines Approximate the Ideal RAM?"
Talk Abstract:
It is widely agreed that machines based on sequential programming are increasingly inadequate to fully exploit the potential of present and forthcoming technologies. However, a rigorous quantitative assessment of the inherent limitations of the sequential approach does not seem to be available. In this context, we take a look at two interrelated issues:
(a) How well can a physical machine, where information has bounded density and speed, approximate the performance of the ideal Random Access Machine?
(b) How well can the properties of an algorithm that allow for fast execution be encoded in a sequential program, in ways that a machine can automatically exploit?
We will discuss some results shedding light on the above questions, based on novel memory and processor organizations and related algorithm optimization techniques.
Artificial Intelligence Seminar
Sugato Basu, SRI International
Friday, December 8, 2006 - 11:00 a.m. - ACES 2.402
Host: Joydeep Ghosh
Talk Title: "Machine Learning in Web 2.0: Analyzing Dynamic Content- driven Social Networks"
Talk Abstract:
In the last decade, machine learning and data mining techniques have seen widespread successful application to different Internet technologies, including web search, product recommendation, spam detection, spelling correction, and news clustering. However, the web is fast undergoing a paradigm shift, moving from being a mechanism for delivering static web-content in the existing Web 1.0 model to a platform facilitating dynamic collaborative content creation in the emerging Web 2.0 paradigm. This trend is reflected in the growing popularity of new social web-services, for example, tagging (Flickr) compared to photo editing (Ofoto), and blogging (Blogger) compared to
homepage hosting (Geocities).
This talk will outline how this new emphasis on rapid creation and sharing of consumer-generated data (CGM) over large social networks has given rise to dynamic content-driven social networks, and a new set of challenging machine learning problems in this context. Focusing on a project (iLink) that the speaker is currently working on, the talk will discuss research problems like online learning of topic models over streaming text, large-scale topic analysis over social networks, and learning to route messages in a social query model.
Speaker Bio:
Sugato Basu works on machine learning, data mining, information retrieval, statistical pattern recognition and optimization, with applications to analysis of text data and social networks on the web. He did his PhD from UT Austin in 2005, and is now a research scientist at the AI Center in SRI International. For more information: http://www.ai.sri.com/people/basu/.
TACC Austin Forum Speaker Series: Get Connected with Technology!
Contact:
Faith Singer-Villalobos
Direct: 512-232-5771
Email: faith@tacc.utexas.edu
** This event is free to the broader Austin community **
WHAT: You're invited to attend a participatory talk by Leroy Jones, a senior technologist with Dell Inc. and a recipient of national and international awards for his contributions to the personal computer industry.
Mr. Jones spearheaded a grassroots effort to help bridge the "digital divide" in Austin's financially and technologically disadvantaged communities by instituting the Austin Black Family Technology Awareness program. Since the program's launch in 1999, it has touched the lives of thousands of Black youth.
The Austin Black Family Technology Awareness program provides knowledge and education to Austin's disadvantaged families through hands-on technology demonstrations and displays. A key aspect of the program is the Internet Caf? where dozens of Dell computers are connected to the internet courtesy of Grande Communications. This service provides free Internet access to dozens of families throughout the course of the program;
for many, this will be their first experience with technology.
Mr. Jones' motivational talk will center on the impact that this program has made since 1999 and how you can participate! Black Family Technology Awareness Week will kickoff on Sunday, February 12, 2007, at the Millennium Youth Entertainment Complex. The Austin-based program ties into National Black Family Technology Awareness Week (February 12-18), a nationwide program to educate and empower families through technology.
WHEN: Wednesday, December 6th from 6:00 p.m. - 8:15 p.m.
(Complimentary food and drink from Smokey Bones BBQ will be provided from 6:00 - 6:30pm in the Commons Center Atrium.)
WHERE: J.J. Pickle Research Campus (southwest corner of Burnet and Braker) 10100 Burnet Road, Building 137 Commons Center - Li'l Tex Auditorium 1.122
BACKGROUND: The Austin Forum provides a unique venue for distinguished professionals and community leaders to speak directly to the public in an informal setting that allows for dynamic interaction between speaker and audience. Taking place the first Wednesday of each month, the Austin Forum is a vehicle to educate the Austin community in a way that will enrich their lives by exposing them to new knowledge and ideas. The
underlying theme among all Forum topics is science and technology and its impact on both the topic and society. Most important, audience members will gain valuable information about how they, too, can make a difference in these areas. Learn more about the Austin Forum's upcoming events at: www.austinforum.org - Sponsored by the Texas Advanced Computing Center
Computer Sciences Colloquium
Arthur J. Olson - Professor in the Department of Molecular Biology at the Scripps Research Institute
December 5, 2006 - ACES 3.408 at 9:30am
"Novel Computational Approaches to Biomolecular Interaction - from
Viral Drug Resistance to Tangible Molecular Interfaces"
Abstract:
Computational technology has had an enormous impact on the study of biomolecular structure and interactions. This talk will describe two areas of current interest in my laboratory: Very large scale molecular docking studies and human computer interfaces for research and education.
First I will discuss computational molecular docking and its use in the design of HIV inhibitors in the face of evolving drug resistance. A computational co-evolution approach and its implementation on an Internet distributed computing platform will be described. Secondly I will describe and demonstrate the application of two emerging computer technologies, autofabrication and augmented reality in the creation of a novel interface for exploring and computing with physical molecular models.
Brief Bio:
Arthur J. Olson is a Professor in the Department of Molecular Biology at the Scripps Research Institute where he holds the Anderson Research Chair. He is the founder and Director of the Molecular Graphics Laboratory at the Institute. He came to TSRI in 1981 to help establish a structural molecular biology program at the Institute. His group works at the interface between chemistry, biology and computer science to develop and use computer modeling to help predict and understand the nature of molecular interactions in living systems. Software developed in his laboratory is used to visualize proteins and nucleic acids and to help design new drugs and other bioactive molecules, and is used worldwide.
Computer Sciences Colloquium
Doug Terry/Microsoft Research Silicon Valley
Monday, December 4, 2006 - 11:00 am - ACES 2.302
Coffee: 10:45 am
Host: Mike Dahlin
"A Peer-to-peer, Knowledge-driven, State-based Replication Protocol"
Talk Abstract:
This talk presents a novel replicated data protocol that was designed for the WinFS distributed storage system and is being adopted by a variety of Microsoft applications. To meet its scalability demands and support disconnected operation, WinFS selected a weakly-consistent replication model that allows update operations to be performed on any machine without locking. The replication protocol achieves flexibility from peer-to-peer communication, robustness through its knowledge-driven design, and scalability by utilizing a state-based architecture. Peer-to-peer means that the protocol allows pairs of machines to synchronize updates independently, thereby sending updated items through an application-specific overlay network. Knowledge-driven means that sites maintain and exchange summaries of the updates they know, and sites use this information when deciding what items to send during synchronization. State-based means that sites send updated items from their local databases rather than the sequence of operations that produced those items; the protocol does not rely on a write log but instead utilizes a small amount of metadata associated with each database entry. The technical contributions of the protocols design include minimizing replication-specific state and efficiently propagating updates while allowing arbitrary synchronization topologies, detecting conflicting updates, supporting automatic conflict resolution, and guaranteeing eventual convergence.
Speaker Bio:
Doug Terry is a Principal Researcher in the Microsoft Research Silicon Valley lab. His research focuses on the design of distributed systems and addresses issues such as information management, fault-tolerance, and mobility. Prior to joining Microsoft, Doug was the co-founder and CTO of a Silicon Valley start-up company called Cogenia, Chief Scientist of then Computer Science Laboratory at Xerox PARC, and an Adjunct Professor in the Computer Science Division at U. C. Berkeley. Doug has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from U. C. Berkeley, where he was a key developer.
Computer Sciences Colloquium
Matthew Wright, UT Arlington
December 1, 2006 - 12:00p.m.- 1:30 pm - TAY 2.122
Host: Vitaly Shmatikov
"Organizing P2P Anonymity Systems with Salsa"
Talk Abstract:
Highly distributed anonymous communications systems have the promise of better distribution of trust and improved scalability over more centralized approaches. Existing distributed approaches, however, face security and scalability issues. Requiring nodes to have full knowledge of the other nodes in the system, as in Tor and Tarzan, limits scalability and leads to intersection attacks inpeer-to-peer configurations. MorphMix avoids giving nodes complete system knowledge, but new research shows that a collaborating fraction of the peers can control the paths of many users.
To overcome these problems, we propose Salsa, a structured approach to organizing highly distributed anonymous communications systems for scalability and security. Salsa is designed to select nodes to be used in anonymous circuits randomly from the full set of nodes, even though each node has knowledge of only a small subset of the network. It uses a distributed hash table based on hashes of the nodes' IP addresses to organize the nodes into groups. With a virtual tree structure, limited knowledge of other nodes is enough to route node lookups throughout the system. We use redundancy and bounds checking when performing lookups to prevent malicious nodes from returning false information without detection. We show that our scheme prevents attackers from biasing path selection, while incurring moderate overheads, as long as the fraction of malicious nodes is less than 20\%. Additionally, the system prevents attackers from obtaining a snapshot of the entire system until the number of attackers grows too large (e.g. 15\% of 10000 peers, given 256 groups). The number of groups can be used as a tunable parameter in the system, depending on the number of peers, that can be used to balance performance and security.
Computer Sciences Colloquium
Volker Strumpen, IBM Research, Austin
November 30, 2006 - 1:30p.m. - ACES 3.408
Host: Lorenzo Alvisi
" Cache Oblivious Stencil Computations"
Talk Abstract:
A stencil describes the computation of a grid point at time step t 1 as a function of neighboring grid points at time step t. This computational pattern arises frequently in scientific computing,for example in explicit finite-difference methods for solving differential
equations.
In this talk, we discuss a novel algorithm for stencil computations that applies to arbitrary stencils in n-dimensional space. On a machine with an ``ideal cache'' of size Z, for sufficiently large problems, the algorithm computes M grid elements while incurring O(M /Z^{1/n}) cache misses, which matches the lower bound of [Hong and Kung, 1981]. The algorithm is ``cache oblivious:'' it does not contain the cache size Z as a parameter. We also present a cache oblivious multithreaded version for parallel machines, which is capable of amortizing communication latencies.
We applied our algorithms to several applications including LBMHD, a hydrodynamics program from the HPCC suite of DARPA benchmarks. Our cache oblivious sequential version obtains a speedup of 7x with respect to the original code. The performance of our multithreaded version demonstrates that the algorithm relieves the parallel programmer from worrying about data distributions and processor locality. We conclude with a brief discussion of the potential of cache oblivious programs to exploit accelerators, such as FPGA's, with reasonable programming effort.
Joint work with Matteo Frigo.
Speaker Bio:
Volker Strumpen is a Research Staff Member at IBM's Austin Research Laboratory. He received a Diploma in Electrical Engineering from RWTH Aachen and a PhD in Computer Science from ETH Zurich in1995. He served in various academic positions at MIT, Yale
University, and the University of Iowa, where he participated in several research projects including Porch - the portable checkpoint compiler, Cilk - an algorithmic multithreaded programming language, and Raw - a single-chip 16-processor architecture. Earlier, he designed several award-winning systems for large-scale parallel distributed computing in workstation networks and the Internet. Volker helped starting up Akamai Technologies and built the prototype of the routing technology that led to Akamai spin-off Sockeye Networks, which has been acquired by Internap. He also spent some time working on semiconductor technology at Sony.
Computer Sciences Colloquium
Fred B. Schneider, Cornell University
November 29, 2006 - 2:30pm - ACES 6.304
Host: Lorenzo Alvisi
"What Price Insularity? Dialogs about Computer Security Failings"
Abstract:
It is risky for technologists to ignore the non-technical context in which their systems will be deployed, just as it is risky for policy makers to ignore the limits and potential of technology. Yet such insularity is all too common. The results are unfortunate but not surprising. This lecture explores the structure dialogs take to bring about what might be termed "security failings" by revisiting: identity theft, electronic voting, digital right management, and the overall vulnerabilities of today's deployed software.
Bio:
Fred B. Schneider is a professor at Cornell's Computer Science Department and director of the AFRL/Cornell Information Assurance Instutute. Schneider has a B.S. from Cornell, an M.S. and Ph.D. ('78) from SUNY Stony Brook, and a D.Sc. [honoris causa] from the Univ of Newcastle upon Tyne ('03). He is a fellow of AAAS and ACM, and was named Professor-at-Large at University of Tromso (Norway) in 1996.
Schneider is author of the graduate text "On Concurrent Programming", and is co-author (with David Gries) of the undergraduate text "A Logical Approach to Discrete Math". In addition to chairing the National Research Council's study committee on information systems trustworthiness and editing "Trust in Cyberspace", Schneider is co-managing editor of Springer-Verlag's Texts and Monographs in Computer Science, associate editor-in-chief of "IEEE Security and Privacy", and serves on several other journal editorial boards.
A member of industrial technical advisory boards for FAST ASA, CIGITAL, and Fortify, Schneider cochairs Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Academic Advisory Board. Schneider also serves on the NSF CISE Advisory Board and the National Research Council's CSTB. He was founding chief scientist of New York State's Griffiss Institute cybersecurity consortium and currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors and as its Science Advisor.
Artificial Intelligence Series
Charles Ofria
Michigan State University
Wednesday, November 29, 2006 - 2:00p.m. - ACES 2.402
Host: Risto Miikkulainen
"Life in the Machine: The Evolution of Novel Complexity in Digital Organisms"
Talk Abstract:
When Darwin first proposed his theory of evolution by natural selection, he realized that it had a problem explaining the origins of traits of "extreme perfection and complication" such as the vertebrate eye. Over the years, critics of Darwin's theory have latched onto this perceived flaw as proof that Darwinian evolution is impossible. In anticipation of this issue, Darwin described the perfect data needed to understanding this process, but lamented that such data are "scarcely ever possible" to obtain. In this talk, I will discuss research where we use digital organisms (populations of self-replicating and evolving computer programs) to elucidate the process by which new, highly-complex traits arise, drawing inspiration directly from Darwin's wistful thinking and hypotheses. I will also explore some of the implications of this research to other aspects of evolutionary biology and new ways that these evolutionary principles can be applied toward solving computational problems.
Speaker Bio:
Dr. Charles Ofria is an assistant professor at Michigan State University in the Computer Science Department and the Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, and Behavior Program. He has a heavily multidisciplinary background, receiving a PhD from the Computation and Neural Systems department at Caltech under physicist Chris Adami, then doing a postdoc for three years in the Microbial Ecology program at MSU under biologist Richard Lenski. He is now the director of the MSU Digital Evolution Lab, a multidisciplinary group using digital organisms to answer fundamental questions in evolutionary biology and harnessing the results to solve more applied computational problems.
Please see http://devolab.cse.msu.edu/ for more information.
Computer Sciences Colloquia
Brett Fleisch
National Science Foundation
Tuesday, November 28, 2006 - 3:30 p.m. - Coffee: 3:15 p.m. - ACES 2.402
Host: Emmett Witchel
"Securing Operating System Integrity Using Binary Rewriting Techniques at Web Proxies"
Talk Abstract:
Binary rewriting techniques have been developed to allow users to enforce security policies directly on mobile code. However, the performance overheads incurred for improved security, particularly in large organizations with many end-hosts, accentuate the inherent challenges of code rewriting and limit the rate of improvement in these systems. We integrate a binary code rewriter with a web caching proxy and build the security system called PB-JARS, a Proxy-based JAva Rewriting System. PB-JARS compliments existing JVM security mechanisms by placing another line of security defense in the code path code associated with code downloads. It gives system administrators centralized security control at the level of administrative domains at proxy servers. We evaluated PB-JARS using real Java binary traffic models derived from analyzing real web trace records. Our experimental results show that the overhead added by binary rewriting can be significantly amortized by web caching and PB- JARS adds negligible performance impact on proxy servers. The outcome of this research shows that operating system integrity can be significantly improved with ancillary security support that can be provided through perimeter defense mechanisms.
Speaker Bio:
Dr. Brett D. Fleisch joined the National Science Foundations Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) / Computer and Network Systems (CNS) as Program Director in April 2004. Dr. Fleisch served on the faculty of the University of California, Riverside where held a tenure-track position since 1992. At the University of California, Riverside served in the Computer Science and Engineering Department and directed the Distributed Systems lab.
Dr. Fleisch received the Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of California, Los Angeles in July 1989. He received the B.A. degree in Computer Science at the University of Rochester, the M.S. degree in Computer Science at Columbia University in 1981 and 1983, respectively. His research interests span the area of distributed systems, and operating systems and include mobile code security, memory management e.g. distributed shared memory (DSM), fault-tolerance, reliability, peer to peer systems, and highly available systems. Dr. Fleisch is a member of the ACM, IEEE Computer Society, and USENIX. He is serving as publicity co-Chair for ICDCS 2007.
Computer Sciences Colloquia
Dawn Song, Carnegie Mellon University, ECE & CS
Monday, November 27, 2006 - 10:00 a.m. - TAY 3.128
Host: CIAS & Freescale
"Towards Automatic Generation of Vulnerability Signatures"
Talk Abstract:
Content-based filtering using attack signatures is a widely-adopted defense mechansim against worm attacks and other malware attacks. However, so far, the core of this defense mechanism, signature generation, has largely been a manual process, which can be slow, tedious, inaccurate, and have fundamental limitations to scalability and complexity. In this talk, I will present our recent works towards automatic generation of worm signatures.
I will first talk about pattern-extraction based signature generation where we use machine learning techniques to extract distinguishing features of attack packets to create signatures. I will then talk about some of the fundamental limitations of such pattern-extraction based approach in defending against polymorphic attacks and other malicious attacks. Finally, I will introduce our new approach, language-based methods for automatic generation of vulnerability signatures. A vulnerability signature matches all exploits of a given vulnerability, even polymorphic or metamorphic variants. We propose new techniques using data-flow analysis and constraint solving for automatically generating vulnerability signatures. Our experiments show that we can automatically generate a vulnerability signature using a single exploit which is of much higher quality than previous approaches, demonstrating our approach is a promising direction towards automatic generation of worm signatures. Finally, our techniques have wide applicability beyond signature generation, and I will give some example applications including application dialogue replay.
Speaker Bio:
Dawn Song is an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. She obtained her PhD in Computer Science from UC Berkeley. Her research interest lies in security and privacy issues in computer systems and networks. She is the author of more than 35 research papers in areas ranging from software security, networking security, database security, distributed systems security, to applied cryptography. She is the recipient of various awards and grants including the NSF CAREER Award and the IBM Faculty Award. She has served on numerous program committees of prestigious conferences including Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI), ACM Computer and Communication Security (CCS), USENIX Security Symposium, Network and Distributed Systems Security Symposium (NDSS), USENIX Annual Technical Conference, Symposium on Recent Advance in Intrusion Detection (RAID), IEEE Infocom, ACM Sensor Networks and Systems Conference (SenSys).
Architecture Seminar Series
James Hoe
Carnegie Mellon University
Monday, November 20, 2005 - 3:30 p.m. - ACES 2.402
Host: Derek Chiou
Talk Title: "Fingerprinting: An Ingredient in Building Reliable Microprocessors"
Talk Abstract:
Many aspects inherent to continued deep-submicron scaling collude to impair the reliability of future microprocessor implementations. This talk develops the idea of "fingerprinting" as an important ingredient for efficient error detection. A fingerprint is a hashed signature of internal state changes of a digital system. For example when applied at the architectural level, one may compute the fingerprint of the register file and/or cache updates. For the purpose of detecting differences in the mirrored operation of two processors, comparing their fingerprints for agreement is nearly as effective as the daunting alternative of comparing instantaneously all their internal states. We present two applications of fingerprinting. The first employs architectural fingerprinting to support dual-modular-redundant execution in a multi-core processor. Fingerprinting and other techniques combine to enable two mirrored cores to maintain redundant execution and checking without requiring them to be microarchitecturally deterministic or to be in precise locked-step. The second work applies microarchitectural-level fingerprinting to extremely-high-coverage detection of transient failures in the datapath that would normally be masked and gone unnoticed at the architectural level. This capability is central to our approach to preemptively detect the on-set of transistor wear-out failures. This talk presents joint work with Prof Babak Falsafi in the TRUSS project (http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~truss/) at the Computer Architecture Lab at Carnegie Mellon (CALCM).
Speaker Bio:
James C. Hoe is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. His research interests include many aspects of computer architecture and digital hardware design. His current research develops architecture and microarchitecture solutions to improve computer reliability. His is also working on a hardware synthesis tool that compiles formal mathematical specification of linear DSP transforms to hardware implementations. He received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering and computer science from University of California at Berkeley in 1992 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994 and 2000, respectively. For more information, please visit http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~jhoe.
The Computer Architecture Seminar Series is sponsored jointly by the Departments of Computer Science and Electrical & Computer Engineering and is supported by a grant from AMD.
Speaking of Biology
McCraw Departmental Lecture Series-Department of Kinesiology and Health Education
James Flucky, Ph.D.
Department of Kinesiology, Texas AM University
"Regulation of Muscle Protein Synthesis: Effects of Resistance Exercise and/or Simulated Microgravity."
Friday, November 17 - 12:00 p.m. - BEL 962
Refreshments will be provided in the seminar room beginning at 11:45.
Speaking of Biology
Biochemistry Division Seminar
Amnon Kohen, D.Sc.
Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry, University of Iowa
"H-transfer Reactions Catalyzed by Dihydrofolate Reductase and Thymidylate Synthase."
Friday, November 17 - 1:30 p.m. - WEL 2.122
Host: Chris Whitman, Ph.D.
Speaking of Biology
Section of Integrative Biology
Steve Palumbi, Ph.D.
Stanford University
"Adaptation and speciation from genes to genomes: happy trails with sea urchins."
Thursday, November 16 - 2:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Dr. David Hillis
Speaking of Biology
Environmental Science Institute "Hot Science-Cool Talks" Outreach Lecture Series
Dr. Stephen R. Palumbi
Professor of Biological Sciences, Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station
"The History and Future of Whales."
Schedule:
Thursday, November 16
5:45 - 6:45 - Pre-lecture fun (exhibits, refreshments, etc.) outside WEL 2.224
7:00 - 8:00 - Lecture in WEL 2.224
8:00 - 8:30 - Question & Answer Session
For those that cannot attend, the lecture will be broadcast live over the Internet at 7:00 pm. It is recommended that you link to the site 15 minutes early to allow time for downloading the presentation. For more information about the webcast, the lecture, or for directions see: http://www.esi.utexas.edu/outreach/ols/lectures/Palumbi/
Speaking of Biology
UT M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Science Park-CRED Seminar Series
Guo-Min Li, Ph.D.
University of Kentucky College of Medicine, Lexington, KY
"Mechanism of DNA Mismatch Repair."
Wednesday, November 15 - 3:00 p.m. - Harrison Auditorium, Pickle Conference Center, Science Park, Smithville, TX
For directions to the Science Park, go to:
http://sciencepark.mdanderson.org/about/location/
ACT Seminar
Ryan O'Donnell - CMU
Tuesday, November 14, 2006 - 1:00 p.m. - Coffee: 12:45 p.m. - TAY 3.128
Host: Adam Klivans
"Testing Dictators (and hardness of approximating Max-Cut-Gain)"
Talk Abstract:
"Dictator functions" are functions f : {0,1}^n -> {0,1} of the form f (x) = x_i. Given an unknown function f, a "dictator test" involves querying f(x) at an extremely small number of random points x and performing a test on the results. The test should pass with significantly higher probability when f is a dictator function than when f is far from being a dictator function. The main interest in highly query-efficient dictator tests is that they can usually be transformed into hardness-of-approximation results for basic algorithmic problems like Max-3LIN, Min-Vertex Cover, etc. (using PCP technology).
In this talk we will review some known 2-query and 3-query dictator tests. We will then describe a new 2-query dictator test and show how it leads to an optimal new hardness-of-approximation result for the Max-Cut-Gain problem.
This includes joint work with Subhash Khot of Georgia Tech.
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Cell & Developmental Biology
Dr. Jon Scholey - U.C. Davis
"Intraflagellar Transport Motors in C. elegans Neurons."
Tuesday, November 14 - 4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210 - Refreshments will be served at 3:30.
Host: Dr. John Sisson
Computer Sciences Colloquia
Jose Ramon Herrero, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain
Monday, November 13, 2006 - 11:00 a.m. - ACE 6.304
Host: Robert van de Geijn
"A Framework for Efficient Execution of Matrix Computations"
Talk Abstract:
Efficient execution of computationally intensive algorithms requires adapting the code both to the problem and the underlying execution platform. We focus on two important machine resources: processor and memory. In this talk we will present our work on the creation of efficient inner kernels based on a set of simple codes written in a high level language, and letting the compiler do the code optimizations. We then use these kernels in both sparse and dense fields. We will show the process of fine tuning a sparse Cholesky factorization based on a Hypermatrix data structure. We will also present our work on nonlinear data layouts for dense matrix computations.
Speaking of Biology
Population Biology
Timothy Linksvayer, Ph.D.
Arizona State
"Complex genetic basis of social insect phenotypes."
Monday, November 13 - 12:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Dr. Ulrich Mueller
Speaking of Biology
Center for Perceptual Systems
Ed Callaway
Salk Institute
"Cell-Type and Fine-Scale Specificity of Cortical Circuits."
Monday, November 13 - 12:00 p.m. - SEA 4.244 - Reception with refreshments at 11:30 a.m.
Speaking of Biology
Center for Nonlinear Dynamics
Gary T. Mitchum
University of South Florida
Monday, November 13 - 1:00 p.m. - RLM 11.204
"Physics and Fish: A Puzzle Concerning Physical Controls on the Swordfish Catch in the North Pacific."
Speaking of Biology
Plant Biology Graduate Program
Dr. Scott Hodges
University of California, Santa Barbara
"Speciation and Reproduction Isolation in Aquilegia: A new genomic modelsystem."
Monday, November 13 - 4:00 p.m. - WEL 2.304 -
Refreshments will be served at 3:30 p.m. in BIO 214 before the seminar.
Host: Dr. Tom Juenger
Speaking of Biology
Section of Neurobiology
Gary Yellen, Ph.D.
Harvard University
"The moving parts of voltage-gated ion channels."
Monday, November 13 - 4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Dr. Richard Aldrich
Artificial Intelligence Series
Katrin Erk
Department Of Linguistics, University of Texas at Austin
Friday, November 10, 2006 - 11:00 a.m. - ACES 2.402
Host: Raymond Mooney
"Automatic Meaning Analysis of Free Text: Small Steps Towards a Big Goal"
Talk Abstract:
Viewed as a whole, the problem of doing an automatic meaning analysis of free text is huge. But maybe the problem can be carved up in more manageable pieces: Recently several approaches to an automatic predicate-argument structure analysis have been proposed, what has been called a "who does what to whom" analysis. This can be seen as a first building block in a modular meaning analysis (where other, very much necessary, building blocks would include negation and modals). It is an important building block, which focuses on lexical semantics and on the link to semantic taxonomies -- and a building block that has recently become much more accessible, with the availability of manually annotated corpora.
In this talk I first take a closer look at the data for predicate-argument structure, from the viewpoint of a manual annotation effort, where we annotated a German corpus with FrameNet-style information. I then present a system for automatic predicate-argument structure analysis, its architecture and the statistical modeling for its subtasks. Lastly, I discuss a study on cross-lingual semantic analysis -- which opens up the possibility of deriving cross-lingual paraphrases.
Speaker Bio:
Katrin Erk is an assistant professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin. She completed her dissertation on tree description languages at Saarland University in 2002, advised by Gert Smolka. From 2002 to 2006, she held a researcher position in Saarbruecken working with Manfred Pinkal. Her current work includes research on machine learning methods for semantic analysis, the acquisition of lexical information from corpora, manual semantic annotation, the detection of multiword expression, and computational models for word sense.
Speaking of Biology
Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship Program
Gabriel Silva, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Departments of Bioengineering & Ophthalmology &
Neurosciences Program, UC-San Diego
"Imaging and Mapping the Dynamic Structure of Functional Glial Neural Networks."
Friday, November 10 - 1:00 p.m. - ACES 2.402
Host: Christine Schmidt
Speaking of Biology
Biochemistry Division Seminar
Paul Carey, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Biochemistry, Case Western Reserve University
"The molecular basis of drug resistance in antibiotic therapy, a Raman and X-ray crystallographic approach."
Friday, November 10 - 1:30 p.m. - WEL 2.122
Host: Kevin Dalby, Ph.D.
Speaking of Biology
Jean Andrews Visiting Professor in International Nutrition hosted by
Department of Human Ecology-Public Lecture
Patricia C. Wright
Professor, Department Of Anthropology, Stony Brook University
"Madagascar Revitalized: A Case study of Wildlife Conservation and Economic Development."
Friday, November 10 - 2:30 p.m. - GEA 105
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology
Dr. Chet Cooper
Assistant Professor, Youngstown State University, Youngstown, Ohio
"Microbiology Research in Progress."
Friday, November 10 - 3:30 p.m. - MBB 1.210 - Refreshments at 3:00.
Host: Liz Wyckoff
Speaking of Biology
Toxicology
Dr. Kathleen Stringer
Associate Professor, Clinical Pharmacy, University of Colorado
"Cigarette Smoke Extract-Induced Suppression of Caspase-3-like Activity Impairs Neutrophil Function."
Thursday, November 9 - 11:00 a.m. - PHR 4.114
Host: Dr. Carla Van Den Berg
Speaking of Biology
UT M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Science Park-Departmental Seminar Series
Jean Cadet, Ph.D.
DRFMC/SCCIB, Grenoble, France
"UVB and UVA radiation-induced DNA damage in human skin: Formation and repair."
Wednesday, November 8 - 11:00 a.m. - Harrison Auditorium, Pickle Conference Center, Science
Park, Smithville, TX
For directions to the Science Park, go to:
http://sciencepark.mdanderson.org/about/location/
Speaking of Biology
Jean Andrews Visiting Professor in International Nutrition hosted by
Department of Human Ecology-Classroom Lecture
Patricia C. Wright
Professor, Department Of Anthropology, Stony Brook University
"Classroom Lecture for International Nutrition: Social and Environmental
Policies."
Wednesday, November 8 - 1:00 p.m. - ESB 133
**Please contact kathymcw@mail.utexas.edu to reserve a seat for this lecture.**
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology
Dr. Dianne K. Newman
Professor of Geobiology, Div. of Geological & Planetary Sciences &
Division of Biology, Caltech & Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
"Electron transfer in times of stress: new roles for redox-active antibiotics."
Wednesday, November 8 - 4:00 p.m. - ESB 223 - Refreshments served.
Host: George Georgiou
Speaking of Biology
Dean's Scholars Distinguished Lecturer Series.
Dr. Ellen Vitetta
Immunology and Molecular Microbiology Department, UT Southwestern Medical School
"Redesigning Nature's Poisons for Biomedicine and Biodefense."
Wednesday, November 8 - 4:30 p.m. - WEL 2.246
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Cell & Developmental Biology
Dr. William H. Klein
M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
"Gene regulatory network and the development of retinal ganglion cells."
Tuesday, November 7 - 4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210 - Refreshments will be served at 3:30.
Host: Dr. Jeff Gross
Speaking of Biology
Population Biology
Christopher P. Brooks, Ph.D.
Section of Integrative Biology, UT-Austin
"Title TBA."
Monday, November 6 - 12:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Dr. Timothy Keitt
Speaking of Biology
Center for Perceptual Systems
Gerald H. Jacobs, Ph.D.
Department of Psychology, UC-Santa Barbara
"Cone pigments and the evolution of primate color vision."
Monday, November 6 - 12:00 p.m. - SEA 4.244 - Reception with refreshments at 11:30 a.m.
Speaking of Biology
Center for Nonlinear Dynamics
Dr. Stephan Grill
MPI for Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden, Germany
"Single Molecule Studies of Eukaryotic RNA Polymerase II."
Monday, November 6 - 1:00 p.m. - RLM 11.204
Speaking of Biology
Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology Special Seminar
John Diffley, Ph.D.
Director, London Institute of Cancer Research, UK
"Regulation of DNA replication by cyclin of dependent kinases."
Monday, November 6 - 2:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Speaking of Biology
Marine Science Institute
Dr. Xiaohong Gu
Professor of Zooplankton Community Structure, Nanjing Inst. of Geography
& Limnology, Chinese Acad. of Sciences, Nanjing, Jiangsu, P.R. China
"Changes in the Abundance of the Dominant Commercial Fishes in Lake
Taihu: Impacts of Fishing and Environmental Changes."
Monday, November 6 - 4:00 p.m. - Visitors Center Auditorium at the Marine Science Institute,
Port Aransas, TX
For directions to the Marine Science Institute, go to:
http://msi40.utmsi.utexas.edu/institute/maps.htm
Artificial Intelligence Series
Matthew Campbell
UT Austin - Mechanical Engineering
November 3, 2006 - 3:00 p.m. - ACES 2.402
Host: Risto Miikkulainen
"Search Methods for Finding Optimal Graph Topologies"
Talk Abstract:
This research offers a fundamental new view of topology optimization. To date, topological synthesis approaches are simply augmentations of existing stochastic optimization techniques. The generic approach defined here combines aspects of existing optimization techniques, graph theory, mathematical programming, artificial intelligence, and shape and graph grammars. Graph transformation research has existed for nearly 40 years in an esoteric corner of artificial intelligence but only recently has the work been deemed useful in design automation as knowledge and heuristics of a particular problem domain can be encapsulated into rules. In this presentation, various example problems are presented that are in the process of being solved by these newly defined search methods.
Speaker Bio:
Dr. Campbell joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin in 2000, and is currently an Associate Professor in the Manufacturing and Design area. His research focuses on computational methods that aid the engineering designer earlier in the design process than traditional optimization would. To date, he has been awarded $1.57 million in research funding, including the CAREER award for research into a generic graph topology optimization method. This research represents a culmination of past computational synthesis research including the automatic design of sheet metal components, multi-stable MEMS devices, MEMS resonators, function structures, and electro-mechanical configurations. Dr. Campbell is a member of the AAAI, the AIAA, Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society, Pi Tau Sigma Mechanical Engineering Honorary Fraternity, the ASME, the ASEE, and the Design Society and has been acknowledged with best paper awards at conferences sponsored by the latter three.
Thursday, November 2
3:30pm, Avaya Auditorium ACE 2.302
Department of Biomedical Engineering Distinguished Seminar
Dr. Steven Chu, Nobel Laureate, Physics, 1997
Director, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Geballe Professor of Phsyics and Applied Physics, Stanford University
http://128.3.7.51/Publications/Director/index.html
Single Molecule Studies of Complex Systems In Vitro and In Vivo
Open Reception 5:00--6:00pm, ACES Atrium
Hosted by Dr. Orly Alter
Computer Sciences Colloquia
Vijay Menon, Intel
Thursday, November 2, 2006 - 9:30 a.m. - PAI 3.14
Host: Keshav Pingali
"Efficient Software Transactional Memory"
Talk Abstract:
Programmers have traditionally used locks to synchronize concurrentaccess to shared data. Lock-based synchronization, however, has well-known pitfalls including the lack of composability and the possibility of deadlock. Transactional memory provides an alternate concurrency control mechanism that avoids these pitfalls and
significantly eases concurrent programming. Transactional memory language constructs have recently been proposed as extensions to existing languages or included in new concurrent language specifications, opening the door for new optimizations that target the overheads of transactional memory. In this talk, I discuss compiler and runtime optimizations for transactional memory language constructs and present the high- performance software transactional memory system (STM) being developed at Intel's Programming Systems Lab. Our system, which is integrated into a managed runtime environment, efficiently implements nested transactions that support both composition of transactions and partial roll back. Our JIT compiler is the first to optimize the overheads of STM, and we show novel techniques for enabling JIT optimizations on STM operations. We measure the performance of our optimizations on a 16-way SMP running multi-threaded transactional workloads. Our results show that these techniques enable transactional memory's performance to compete with that of well-tuned synchronization. I will conclude with a discussion of ongoing work on supporting extensions such as strong atomicity and open nested
transactions in an STM setting.
Speaker Bio:
Vijay Menon is a research staff member at the Intel Santa Clara labs. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and his PhD from Cornell where he worked with Keshav Pingali on fractal symbolic analysis. He is known for his contributions to software transactional memory and JIT compiling. He will give two talks this Thursday on recent work that has appeared in PLDI and POPL.
You're invited!! Discussion forum Wednesday, November 1, 2006 at 6:00 p.m. -
History of Gaming and Gender Inclusive Game Design
The Austin Forum (www.austinforum.org)
"One of the most prominent and important women in gaming" (GameZone online), Sheri Graner Ray, talks about the history of gaming and gender inclusive game design.
When: Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2006 from 6:00-8:15 pm
Where: J.J. Pickle Research Campus - The Commons Center, Li'l Tex Auditorium (1.122)
** This event is free and open to the public; complimentary food (sponsored by Mangia) and drink will be provided from 6:00-6:30 pm. Presentation to begin at 6:30 pm. **
The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) and the Austin Forum invite you to attend a participatory talk led by Sheri Graner Ray, author of Gender Inclusive Game Design: Expanding the Market and a former senior designer with Sony Online Entertainment. Sheri's interests do not rest with game development and gender inclusion in gaming; she is currently president of her own software company, Sirenia Software, and is an adjunct professor at Austin Community College. Graner Ray is interested in collaborating with academics and gaming industry professionals to start an interdisciplinary gaming degree program in Austin similar to those offered at other Texas universities. The Austin Forum provides a way for people to become informed and participate in discussion of such interesting and diverse topics as the environment, politics, economics, entertainment, philosophy, religion, activism, education and many more. The underlying theme among all Forum topics is science and technology and its impact on society.
Learn more about the Austin Forum's upcoming events at:
www.austinforum.org.
PhD defense talk by Gunjan Gupta
Title: Robust Methods for Locating Multiple Dense
Regions in Complex Datasets
Oct 30, 12:30PM, ACES 6.304
Below is an abstract of the thesis.
PS: I will also be presenting just the nonparametric method and a detailed demo of the Gene DIVER product
at the next BioDM meeting on Nov 3. So there is only a partial overlap between the two talks.
Thanks,
Gunjan
A key application of clustering data obtained from sources such as DNA microarrays, protein mass spectroscopy, and phylogenetic profiles is the detection of functionally related genes. Typically, only a small number of functionally related genes cluster into one or more groups, and the rest need to be pruned. For such situations, this thesis presents several techniques that cluster only a subset of the data.
We first develop a very general parametric approach called Bregman Bubble Clustering that can find multiple dense regions, and can scale to very large datasets. By using a fast iterative relocation based approach combined with a novel concept for improving local search called Pressurization, Bregman Bubble Clustering extends density-based clustering to a much larger set of problems. We also develop a seeding algorithm that can automatically determine the number of clusters, and make the results deterministic.
We then describe a more focussed non-parametric alternative called Automated Hierarchical Density Shaving (Auto-HDS), a framework that consists of a fast, hierarchical, density-based clustering algorithm and an unsupervised model selection strategy. Auto-HDS can automatically select between clusters of different densities, present them in a compact hierarchy, and rank individual clusters using an innovative stability criteria. The Auto-HDS framework also provides a simple yet powerful 2-D visualization of the hierarchy of clusters that is useful for further exploring the dense clusters in high-dimensional datasets. We also developed a robust, memory efficient, platform independent, and open source Java based implementation of Auto-HDS called Gene DIVER (Gene Density Interactive Visual Explorer) that provides interactive clustering capabilities for high-throughput biological datasets.
For problems where finding small dense regions is important, the parametric approach is applicable to a wide variety of scenarios and is scalable to very large datasets. On the other hand, Auto-HDS, the non-parametric approach, provides a powerful visualization, a compact clustering hierarchy, and interactive clustering: properties that are useful for biologists interested in finding and understanding small dense clusters of genes. Together, the two approaches greatly extend the scope of density based clustering in three different dimensions; the diversity of problems that density-based clustering can now be used with, the expanded capability to quickly understand and analyze the clusters in the data, and the scale of the problems that are now within reach of modest computing resources.
ICES/TACC Distinguished Lecture Series on Petascale Simulation
"Towards Forward and Inverse Earthquake Modeling on Petascale Computers"
Speaker: Omar Ghattas, The University of Texas at Austin
Date: Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Time: 3:30 to 5:00 p.m.
Location: ACES 2.302 (Avaya Auditorium)
Live Webcast: http://www.tacc.utexas.edu/petascale
Abstract:
We will discuss the work of the Quake Project on large-scale forward and inverse earthquake modeling. After some initial comments on forward modeling, we will focus on the inverse problem of estimating the earth model from observations of ground motion of past earthquakes. We will discuss such compounding issues as extreme large scale, ill-posedness, discontinuous solutions, multigrid optimization preconditioners, nonlinear convergence difficulties, and multiple local minima, as well as techniques for addressing them on multi-thousand processor terascale supercomputers. We will end with a discussion of some outstanding challenges and the prospects for earthquake inversion to frequencies of engineering interest on petascale-class computers.
Speaker Biography:
Omar Ghattas is the John A. and Katherine G. Jackson Chair in Computational Geosciences; Director of the Center for Computational Geosciences and Optimization in the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences; Professor of Geological Sciences and Mechanical Engineering; Research Professor in the Institute for Geophysics; Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Computer Sciences (by courtesy); and Chief Applications Scientist for the NSF Track 2 supercomputer at the Texas Advanced Computing Center. Prior to September 2005, he was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He received his BS, MS, and PhD from Duke University in 1984, 1986, and 1988, respectively. He has been a visiting professor at the Institute for Computer Applications in Science and Engineering (ICASE) at NASA-Langley Research Center; the Center for Applied Scientific Computing (CASC) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; and the Computer Science Research Institute (CSRI) at Sandia National Laboratories.
His research interests are in forward and inverse modeling, and optimal design and control, of complex systems in the geological, mechanical, and biomedical engineering sciences, with particular emphasis on large-scale simulation on parallel supercomputers. He received the 1998 Allen Newell Medal for Research Excellence, the 2003 Gordon Bell Prize for Special Accomplishment in Supercomputing, and the 2004/2005 CMU College of Engineering Outstanding Research Prize with members of the Quake research project at CMU.
Department of Biomedical Engineering Seminar Series 2006-2007
"Design Strategies for the Nest Generation of Nanophase Materials for
Biomedical Applications"
Dr. Rena Bizios
Department of Biomedical Engineering
The University of Texas at San Antonio
San Antonio, TX 78249-0665
October 26, 2006, 3:30pm, ACE 2.302
The need (1) for biomaterials with properties similar to those of physiological tissues (most of them characterized by surface grain sizes in the nanometer range), and (2) for identification of the optimal conditions that maximize specific functions of cells responsible for neotissue formation has motivated the study of nanostructured materials (that is, materials with grain sizes less than 100 nm in at least one dimension).
Cellular, in vitro models provided the following, supporting evidence. Compared to pure ceramics, nanophase ceramics (specifically, alumina, titania, and hydroxylapatite) as well as polymer/nanophase-ceramic composites (for example, poly(L-lactic) acid) with the aforementioned nanophase ceramics) promoted interactions (i.e., adhesion and subsequent cell functions which are pertinent to new bone tissue formation) of specific cell types (for example, osteoblasts but not fibroblasts) and also exhibited improved mechanical properties; composites of poly (L-lactic) acid. Investigation of the underlying mechanism(s) revealed that the type, amount and conformation of adsorbed proteins (namely, vitronectin, fibronectin, and collagen) mediated subsequent cell (such as osteoblast, fibroblast, and adult mesenchymal stem cell) interactions with nanostructured materials.
Insightful understanding of how nanostructured material surfaces modulate protein/substrate interactions is needed. Pertinent material structure and properties, material synthesis and preparation methodologies, as well as the mechanisms of biomolecular interactions with such substrates must be identified and elucidated in order to design and fabricate the next generation of nanostructured biomaterials. Biomaterials, which reliably and predictably promote specific interactions of biomolecules leading to modulation and/or control of subsequent functions of select mammalian cells, have the potential of novel biotechnological applications and of major clinical impact.
Support for the seminar series is provided by our Industrial Affiliates.
Department of Biomedical Engineering
http://www.bme.utexas.edu
Speaking of Biology
Physiology and Behavior Seminar
Nina Duftner
Section of Integrative Biology, UT-Austin
"The molecular basis of social recognition and its evolution in cichlid fish of Lake Tanganyka."
Friday, October 20 - 12:00 p.m. - PHR 4.114
Host: Dr. Frank Bronson
Speaking of Biology
Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship Program
Stephanie Seidlits, IGERT Trainee, Department of Biomedical Engineering
"'Direct-write' of 3D Biomolecule Structures in Hydrogel Materials."
Advisors: Christine Schmidt and Jason Shear and
Sabia Taqvi, IGERT Trainee, Department of Biomedical Engineering
"Notch Signaling Biomaterials for the Generation of T Cells from Hematopoietic Stem Cells."
Advisors: Krish Roy and Martin Poenie
Friday, October 20 - 1:00 p.m. - ACES 2.402
Speaking of Biology
College of Natural Sciences Residential Hall Study Group
Dr. Debra Murray
Director, Education & Minority Diversity Programs, Human Genome
Sequencing Center, Baylor College of Medicine
"Why is Genomics Important to Your Future?"
Friday, October 20 - 3:00 p.m. - BUR 108
Speaking of Biology
Jean Andrews Visiting Professorship in International Nutrition-through Dept. of Human Ecology
Dr. Thomas T. Struhsaker
Duke University, Dept. of Biological Anthropology and Anatomy
"Conserving Biodiversity and Ecological Services in Africa: A Case Study
from the Udzungwa Mountains of Tanzania."
Friday, October 20 - 3:30 p.m. -GEA 105
Speaking of Biology
Section of Integrative Biology
Jeff Chen, Ph.D.
Section of Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology, UT-Austin
"Title TBA."
Thursday, October 19 - 2:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Speaking of Biology
Department of Biomedical Engineering Seminar Series 2006-2007
Biomedical Engineering
Dr. Luke P. Lee
Director, Biomolecular Nanotechnology Center & Co-Director, Berkeley
Sensor and Actuator Center, UC-Berkeley
"Soft-State BioASICs and nSERS for Quantitative Systems Biology."
Thursday, October 19 - 3:30 p.m. - ACE 2.302
In order to create High-content Integrated Quantitative Molecular Diagnostics (iQMD) on a chip, Biofluidic Application Specific Integrated Circuits (BioASICs) and quantum nanoplasmonic probes are developed. Soft-state BioASICs are created by connecting existing and novel microfluidic circuits for high-content experimental biology in new ways. We are creating a library of these "building blocks" to develop multifunctional biological microprocessors. To build a solid foundation of future high-speed microfluidic bioprocessor for experimental biology and biomarker discovery, we have developed design rules and critical modules of BioASICs such as single cell analysis chip, integrated multiple patch-clamp chip, dynamic cell culture array, on-chip cell lysing device, sample preparation chip, cell separation device, high-density single cell analysis chip, molecular harvesting device,
cell-cell communication array, artificial livers on-a-chip for drug metabolism and toxicity studies in vitro, and integrated nanofluidic surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (nSERS) platforms for label-free
genomics or proteomics.
For nanoscale spectroscopic molecular imaging and photothermal therapeutic applications, nanocrescents are developed. The formation of asymmetric nanophotonic crescent structure is accomplished by the interfacing both bottom-up and top-down methods, which allows to create effective local field enhancement structures, batch nanofabrication, and precise controls of hot spot coupling distance for in-vivo molecular imaging. Gold-based nanocrescents have structures with a sub-10 nm sharp edge, which can enhance local electromagnetic field at the edge area. The advanced nanocrescent SERS probes can be applied for sensitive molecular detection and electron transfers of biomolecules. The iQMD on a chip using functional BioASICs and label-free nSERS will contribute on systems biology and quantitative medicine.
Support for the seminar series is provided by our Industrial Affiliates.
Department of Biomedical Engineering
http://www.bme.utexas.edu
Speaking of Biology
Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology
Laurent Coscoy, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Immunology, Dept. of Molecular & Cell Biology, U. of California, Berkeley
"An unusual form of ubiquitination revealed by a virally-encoded E3-ubiquitin ligase."
Thursday, October 19 - 4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology
Dr. James C. Bardwell
Howard Hughes Medical Investigator, Program in Molecular, Cellular, and
Developmental Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
"Experimental evolution of disulfide catalyst."
Wednesday, October 18 - 4:00 p.m. - ESB 223 - Refreshments served.
Host: Dr. George Georgiou
UT M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Science Park-DNA Repair Group Series
Dr. Betsy Sutherland
Biology Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory
"Endogenous and Radiation-induced DNA Damage Clusters and their Repair."
Tuesday, October 17 - 11:30 a.m. - Harrison Auditorium, Pickle Conference Center, Science
Park, Smithville, TX
For directions to the Science Park, go to:
http://sciencepark.mdanderson.org/about/location/
Speaking of Biology
Chemical Engineering Graduate Seminar Series
Eric V. Shusta
Assistant Professor, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering,
University of Wisconsin-Madison
"Engineering Strategies for Mimicking the Blood-Brain Barrier In Vitro and Overcoming it In Vivo."
Tuesday, October 17 - 3:30 p.m. - CPE 2.218
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Cell & Developmental Biology
Dr. Bruce Riley
Texas A&M University
"The inner ear is not a big truck. It's a series of tubes."
Tuesday, October 17 - 4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210 - Refreshments will be served at 3:30.
Host: Dr. Jeff Gross
Speaking of Biology
Population Biology
Mark Neff, Ph.D.
UC Davis
"Genetics of dogs behavior."
Monday, October 16 - 12:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Dr. Molly Cummings
Speaking of Biology
Plant Biology Graduate Program and the Provost Office
Dr. Linda Walling
University of California, Riverside
"Phloem-feeding whiteflies manipulate host defenses to enhance nymph development on Arabidopsis thaliana."
Monday, October 16 - 4:00 p.m. - WEL 2.304 - Refreshments will be served at 3:30 p.m. in BIO 214
Host: Dr. Mona Mehdy
TACC Seminar
Victor Eijkhout and Jason Kurtz
TACC and ICES
October 13, 2006 - 10:00a.m.
J.J. Pickle Research Campus, Commons Bldg, CMS 1.142
Host: Robert van de Geijn
"Sparse Direct Factorizations Based on Unassembled Hyper-Matrices"
Talk Abstract:
For dynamic Finite Element Method applications, existing sparse direct solvers can be said to solve the wrong problem. They optimize the solution of a single linear system, while the real problem is to solve a series of systems that are derived from gradual h/p refinement of a FEM discretization. We propose a new type of direct sparse solver that is able to reuse the parts of the factorization corresponding to the not refined parts of the domain. Such a solver is eminently suited to the dynamic case, and we will present evidence that even for a single system it is space and time efficient. Furthermore, it integrates in a natural way in the workflow of the dynamic application.
Speaker Bio:
Victor Eijkhout is a research scientist at the Texas Advanced Computing Center.
Jason Kurtz is a graduate student at the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences.
Architecture Series
Doug Carmean
Intel
October 10, 2006 - 3:30p.m. - ACES 2.302
Host: Derek Chiou
"Future CPU Architectures: the Shift from Traditional Models"
Talk Abstract:
While Moore's law is alive and well in silicon scaling technology, it is clear that microprocessors have encountered significant technical issues that will influence the overall direction of the future architectures. This talk discusses the recent history of Intel microprocessors, some of the rational that guided the development of those processors. Further, the talk highlights why the future microprocessor architectures will likely look different from the past.
The traditional microprocessor architecture uses hardware techniques such as out-of-order processing to extract higher performance out of applications that have little or no explicit parallelism. The hardware techniques employed in the past have continued to improve performance, but at the cost of significantly increasing the power consumption of the traditional microprocessors. The power increases have led to not only higher electrical power delivery costs, but higher costs dissipating the power, resulting in high ambient noise, larger enclosure and hotter laps. To avoid a future that requires asbestos based jeans to properly handle laptops, the microprocessor architecture must change to facilitate higher performance without significantly higher power.
It is likely that microprocessor architecture will evolve from the ubiquitous single core, single threaded machine that we know and love, to an architecture that employs more cores and more threads. This shift is apparent in today's market where general purpose processors have included techniques such as Hyper-Threading Technology and Multi-Core processors. This talk will speculate on some potential next steps for that technology and some of the potential implications on software development.
Speaker Bio:
Doug Carmean is a Principal Architect with Intel's Desktop Products Group in Oregon. Doug was one of the key architects, responsible for definition of the Intel Pentium 4 processor. He has been with Intel for 13 years, working on IA-32 processors from the 80486 to the Intel Pentium 4 processor and beyond. Prior to joining Intel, Doug worked at ROSS Technology, Sun Microsystems, Cypress Semiconductor and Lattice Semiconductor. Doug enjoys fast cars and scary, Italian motorcycles.
UTCS Colloquia
Kavita Bala/Professor
Cornell University
Tuesday, October 10, 2006 - 12:30 p.m. - ACES 6.336
Host: Okan Arikan
"Scalable Realistic Rendering of Complex Scenes"
Talk Abstract:
A fundamental challenge in computer graphics is realistically simulating the appearance of complex natural scenes; we want to create virtual environments that accurately represent the real world. Such virtual environments are vital for a wide variety of applications such as engineering design, games and movies, architectural planning, search-and-rescue and surgical training, e-commerce, and cultural heritage and preservation. It is currently too expensive to accurately simulate the interaction of light in complex scenes. Conventional rendering methods remain orders of magnitude too slow for interactive use and often use ad-hoc approximations that are visibly inaccurate.
In this talk I will present my group's research on scalable, perceptually-based rendering and modeling for complex scenes. The key insight is not to simulate what the human eye cannot perceive. Exploiting perception makes these algorithms scalable: computational cost remains low as scene complexity increases, unlike with conventional rendering. I will describe our research on lightcuts for multiscale illumination, cinematic relighting, and feature-based textures and detail synthesis for image-based texturing.
Speaker Bio:
Kavita Bala is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department and Program of Computer Graphics at Cornell University. She specializes in interactive computer graphics, leading several research projects in scalable rendering, interactive global illumination, feature-based graphics, and image-based modeling and texturing. Bala has received the Cornell College of Engineering James and Mary Tien Excellence in Teaching Award, and the Affinito-Stewart award. She has co-authored the graduate-level textbook "Advanced Global Illumination" (A K Peters publisher, currently in its second edition). In 2005, Bala co-chaired the Eurographics Symposium on Rendering (EGSR). Bala received her B.Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT, Bombay), and her S.M. and Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Computer Architecture Seminar Series
Valentina Salapura/Research Staff Member
IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
October 9, 2006 - 3:30p.m. - ACES 2.402
Host: Lizy John
"Optimizing system architecture with a holistic design approach in the Blue Gene Supercomputer"
Talk Abstract:
Technology has been a main performance driver of many system generations, leveraging CMOS scaling to increase clock speed and build increasingly complex microarchitectures. As technology-driven performance gains becomes increasingly harder to achieve from device scaling alone, innovative system architecture must take its place.
We will discuss how technology has matured, and its impact on microprocessor and system architecture. Increasingly, to optimize performance for a system, a holistic approach optimizing across the entire hardware and software stack must be considered to optimize for a range of metrics: performance, power, power/performance, reliability and ease of use.
We will describe how this integrated design approach helped shape the Blue Gene/L supercomputer. Blue Gene was designed from the ground up with a focus on power/performance efficiency and reliability. The ultimate goal was to achieve extreme scalability and high application performance under the power and thermal constraints of existing data centers. To ensure optimal system operation, Blue Gene/L is an integrated solution combining innovative system software, tools, architecture, system design, and packaging at all levels.
Speaker Bio:
Valentina Salapura is a Research Staff Member with the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. Dr. Salapura has been a technical leader for the Blue Gene program since its inception. She has contributed to the architecture and implementation of several generations of Blue Gene Systems focusing on multiprocessor interconnect and synchronization and multithreaded architecture design and evaluation. Before joining IBM, Dr. Salapura was Assistant Professor with the Dept of Computer Engineering at Technische Universit?t Wien. She is the co-author of a submission which is currently a finalist for the 2006 Gordon Bell Award, the author of over 60 papers on processor architecture and high-performance computing, and holds many patents in this area. She received the Ph.D. degree from Technische Universit?t Wien, Vienna, Austria, and MS degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from University of Zagreb, Croatia.
CS Colloquia
Andrew Myers, Associate Professor
Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
October 9, 2006 4:30p.m. ACES 6.304 (ICES)
Host: CIAS & Freescale (aleshire@cs.utexas.edu)
"Making distributed systems secure by construction"
Talk Abstract:
The distributed information systems we use every day are becoming more complex and interconnected. Can we trust them with our information? Many mechanisms are available to ensure information security: for example, encryption, various cryptographic protocols, access control, and replication. Currently there is no good way to check that complex distributed software uses information securely, even if we have the source code. We currently lack both sufficiently expressive ways to specify information security requirements, and sufficiently accurate methods for checking them.
This talk describes a way to build systems that are secure by construction. Programs are annotated with explicit security policies specifying the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information. The compiler automatically
uses a combination of techniques to transform the source code to run securely on the available host machines. The
compiler introduces quorum replication to satisfy both integrity and availability policies. It introduces partitioning, encryption, and one-way hashing to satisfy confidentiality policies. To accommodate the needs of realistic applications, the information security policies are also enriched to support new notions of ownership, declassification, robustness, and erasure. These policies have precise semantics, and the construction process can be shown to enforce policies in terms of these semantics.
Joint work with Lantian Zheng, Steve Chong, Andrei Sabelfeld, and Steve Zdancewic.
Speaker Bio:
Andrew Myers is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 1999.
His research interests include computer security, programming languages, and distributed and persistent objects. His work on computer security has focused on practical, sound, expressive languages and systems for enforcing information security. The Jif programming language makes it possible to write programs which the compiler ensures are secure. The Polyglot extensible compiler framework is now widely used for programming language research.
Andrew is the recipient of an NSF CAREER award, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, a College of Engineering Abraham T. C. Wong '72 Excellence in Teaching Award, a George M. Sprowls award for outstanding Ph.D. thesis from MIT, and a best paper award for a paper in SOSP 2001.
UTCS/ICES Colloquia
William H. Press
Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico
Thursday, October 5, 2006 at 3:30 - 5:00 p.m.
ACES 6.304 (ICES Seminar Room)
Coffee and Refreshments: 3:00 p.m.
Host: J Strother Moore and Robert Jansen
"Discrete Radon Transforms, Exact Inverses, and Unexpected Generalizations"
Talk Abstract:
The familiar Radon transform calculates the projections of an image at various angles. Its inverse, important in computerized tomography, reconstructs the image; this is generally done by discretization of the continuous equations, giving an approximate result. We show that a certain kind of discrete Radon transform has an exact, fast inverse that exactly reproduces the pixel-by-pixel values of the original image. Fourier methods are not used or needed. We also show new generalizations of this transform to operations other than sums along lines, including some that may have novel applications in signal processing.
Speaker Bio:
Bill Press is a Senior Fellow at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in the Statistical Sciences group (Group D-1). His research is on bioinformatics, especially whole genome studies, and statistical methods. Prior to June, 2004, he served for five years as LANL's Deputy Laboratory Director for Science and Technology. Before coming to LANL in 1998, he was for twenty years Professor of Astronomy and Physics at Harvard University, and a member of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
UTCS Colloquia
Fei Xie
Computer Sciences - Portland State University
September 29, 2006 at 11:00 a.m.
ACES 2.402
Host: James C. Browne
"Component-Based Hardware/Software Co-Verification"
Talk Abstract:
Construction of highly trustworthy embedded systems requires extensive verification. Power and performance constraints of embedded systems require that hardware and software modules closely interact and trade-offs between hardware and software be effectively exploited. This demands hardware/software (HW/SW) co-design and, thus, HW/SW co-verification.
Speaker Bio:
Fei Xie is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at Portland State University. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Texas at Austin in 2004. His research interests are primarily in the areas of software engineering, formal methods, and embedded systems. He is particularly interested in development of formal method based techniques and tools for building.
CANCELLED
UTCS Colloquia
Patricia J. Teller
Computer Sciences, University of Texas at El Paso
Thursday, September 21, 2006 at 3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
ACES 3.408
Host: Jim Browne
"Towards the Incorporation of Dynamic Adaptation into Operating Systems"
Talk Abstract:
In the context of the DAiSES (Dynamic Adaptability in Support of Extreme Scale) research project, which is funded by the Department of Energy Office of Science, we are investigating ways to incorporate adaptation into operating systems, either by varying parameter values or policies at runtime. As compared to conventional operating systems with statically defined parameters and policies, such operating systems offer the potential for improved performance. In response to changing workload characteristics or requirements, operating system (OS) adaptation is meant to dynamically customize the OS in an attempt to provide best service, based on predefined criteria, for the active workload. This phase of our research focuses on conventional operating systems, but hopefully this experience will lay the foundation for addressing adaptation in operating systems for extreme scale systems.
Current DAiSES research activities focus on three adaptation targets: disk scheduling, virtual memory management, and file I/O. These initial targets were chosen based on evidence of the potential performance gains that could be achieved by varying associated parameters and policies. To improve performance in any one of these ways, we study the correlation among workload characteristics/requirements, the relevant OS parameter values and/or policies, and achievable performance gains as measured by predefined performance metrics. These relationships, which are challenging to establish, in conjunction with the system state, measured at runtime, dictate the adaptation process.
Thus far, disk scheduling has received most of our attention, and will be a major focus of this talk. It is a target for OS adaptation via policy change, while, for example, virtual memory management is a target for adaptation of OS parameter values. In terms of disk scheduling, we have designed a new disk scheduling strategy that leverages a fair queuing discipline and implements a fair scheduling algorithm that can satisfy different performance requirements for different concurrently executing applications. Because this strategy is fair in terms of allocated disk time, it provides performance isolation among applications and, therefore, predictable disk performance for each application, which facilitates providing quality of service guarantees. Currently, this
strategy is being used to support adaptation of policies.
Architecture Series
Pierfrancesco Foglia
Universita di Pisa
Thursday, September 21, 2006 at 3:30 pm to 4:00 pm
ACES 2.402
Host: Yale Patt
"Way Adaptable D-Nuca Cache"
Talk Abstract:
Power consumption is an increasing pressing problem in the design of high performance CPUs; Leakage or Static power will rapidly become a major source of such dissipation. Different techniques to reduce static power consumption have been developed in the research environment. The Way Adaptable D-Nuca cache represents the results of our activity on applying such techniques to large, wire delay dominated, L2 caches. In a Way Adaptable D-Nuca cache, by exploiting typical features of D-NUCA design, we dynamically activate or deactivate entire ways on the basis of the application working set, thus adapting the size of the powered-on portion of L2 cache to the needs of the running applications. This imply a reduction of L2 cache static power consumption with negligible performance degradation .and also some other little but perhaps surprising effects.
Speaker Bio:
Pierfrancesco Foglia is an Assistant Professor at the Information Engineering Department of the University of Pisa. His research interest lies in Computer Architecture, including Coherence Protocols, Cache memories, and Operating System effects. His other research interests include Computer Networks and Computer Systems Usability. He has developed for Siemens ICN a manager for a network of GSM devices and, in the framework of the EU SPP project, he defined coherence solutions for a cartographic multiprocessor system. He received his MS and Ph.D. from the University of Pisa.
Speaking of Biology
Toxicology
Dr. Igor Ponomarev
Research Associate, Waggoner Center for Alcohol and Addiction Research, UT-Austin
"Combining genetics, genomics and behavior: Studies of mice with altered GABAA receptors."
Thursday, September 21 - 11:00 a.m. - PHR 4.114
Host: Dr. John Richburg
Speaking of Biology
Section of Integrative Biology
Spence Behmer, Ph.D.
Insect Physiology & Behavior, Texas A&M University
"Insect herbivores as model systems for understanding feeding behavior and learning."
Thursday, September 21 - 2:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Dr. Mike Ryan
Speaking of Biology
Biomedical Engineering
Dr. Robert Nerem
Director, Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience, Georgia Institute of Technology
"Seeking a cell source for the endothelialization of vascular implants."
Thursday, September 21 - 3:30 p.m. - ACE 2.302
Speaking of Biology
Behavioral Neuroscience
Jeff Burgdorf, Ph.D.
Northwestern University
"Ultrasonic vocalizations as indices of affective states in rats."
Wednesday, September 20 - 3:00 p.m. - SEA 4.244
Speaking of Biology
UT M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Science Park-Faculty Seminar Series
Paul Wong, Ph.D.
UT MD Anderson Cancer Center, Science Park Research Division
"Oxidative stress links cancer and neurodegeneration: A tale of two models."
Wednesday, September 20, 3:30 p.m.
Harrison Auditorium, Pickle Conference Center,Science Park,Smithville, TX
For directions to the Science Park, go to:
http://sciencepark.mdanderson.org/about/location/
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology
Dr. Garry T. Cole
Professor & Margaret Batts Tobin Endowed Chair, Department of Biology, UT-San Antonio
"Virulence Mechanisms in Coccidioides."
Wednesday, September 20, 4:00 p.m. - ESB 223 - Refreshments served.
Hosts: Paul Szaniszlo and Stan Roux
Biomedical Engineering Seminar
Frances S. Ligler, D.Phil., D.Sc.
U.S. Navy Senior Scientist for Biosensors and Biomaterials
Member, National Academy of Engineering
Center for Bio/Molecular Science & Engineering
Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC
The growth of pathogen nucleic acid sequence information in the public domain invites the direct use of that information for broad-spectrum respiratory pathogen surveillance. Investigators at the NRL have combined methods for microbial nucleic acid enrichment, random nucleic acid amplification, gene resequencing, and automated sequence similarity searching of public gene databases for biosurviellance. NRL, in collaboration with the AF, demonstrated the feasibility of this approach by provided medical biosurveillance for the National Capital Area during the months surrounding the Presidential Inauguration in a 24/7 operation. Subsequent development has refined the technology to provide better than 95% clinical specificity and sensitivity. While the initial microarray detected any of 25 pathogens and near neighbors, a chip capable of detecting 120 microorganisms has now been fabricated. An automated sample processing system has also been designed and component fabrication initiated.
September 19, 2006
3:30 pm
ACE 2.402
Speaking of Biology
Analytical Chemistry/Biochemistry
Dr. Jason Shear
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
"Interfacing with Dynamic Cellular Systems using Biocompatible Microfabrication."
Tuesday, September 19 - 3:30 p.m. - WEL 2.122
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Cell & Developmental Biology
Dr. Marty Shankland
Section of Molecular Cell & Developmental Biology, UT-Austin
"Role of Pax genes in the patterning and morphogenesis of the leech embryo."
Tuesday, September 19 - 4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210 - Refreshments will be served at 3:30.
Speaking of Biology
Population Biology
Sander van Doorn, Ph.D.
Post-doc, Section of Integrative Biology, UT-Austin
"Sexual conflict and the evolution of female preferences for indicators of male quality."
Monday, September 18 - 12:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Dr. Mark Kirkpatrick
Speaking of Biology
Section of Neurobiology Promotion Seminar
Bing Zhang, Ph.D.
Section of Neurobiology, UT-Austin
"Tightening the SNARE complex in vesicle fusion: insights from flies that do not fly."
Monday, September 18 - 4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Dr. Rick Aldrich
Speaking of Biology
Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship Program
Eric Fung, M.D., Ph.D.
Vice President of Clinical Affairs, Ciphergen
"A Novel Proteomics-Based Assay to Aid in Ovarian Cancer Diagnosis."
Friday, September 15 - 1:00 p.m. - ACES 2.402
Host: Jennifer Brodbelt
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology
Dr. Nathaniel Landau
Professor, Infectious Disease Laboratory, The Salk Institute of
Biological Studies, San Diego, CA
"The role of APOBEC cytidine deaminases in antiviral defense."
Friday, September 15 - 2:30 p.m. - MBB 1.210 - Refreshments served.
Host: Dr. Jackie Dudley
Speaking of Biology
Section of Integrative Biology Promotion Seminar
Lauren Meyers, Ph.D.
Section of Integrative Biology, UT-Austin
"Using Networks to Forecast Evolutionary and Epidemiological Dynamics."
Thursday, September 14 - 2:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Speaking of Biology
IPAS - Informal Physical Anthropology Seminars
Carrie Veilleux
"Mammalian Visual Acuity: Putting Primates in Perspective."
Wednesday, September 13 - 12:00 p.m. - EPS 2.102
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology Promotion Seminar
Dr. Arlen Johnson
Associate Professor, Section of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, UT-Austin
"Title TBA."
Wednesday, September 13 - 4:00 p.m. - ESB 223 - Refreshments served.
Speaking of Biology
Section of Molecular Cell & Developmental Biology
Dr. Jill Schumacher
UT M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
"Chromosomal targets of the Aurora B kinase."
Tuesday, September 12 - 4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210 - Refreshments will be served at 3:30.
Host: Dr. Arturo De Lozanne
Speaking of Biology
Population Biology
Jean Gayon, Ph.D.
University of Paris
"Should Biologists Abolish the Word 'Race'? The UNESCO Statements on
Race, 1950-1978."
Monday, September 11 - 12:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Dr. R. Malcolm Brown, Jr.
Speaking of Biology
UT M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Science Park-Departmental Seminar Series
Jean-Claude Zenklusen, Ph.D.
NCI - Center for Cancer Research Bethesda, MD
"GMDI and Rembrandt: Spanning the Molecular Void."
Monday, September 11 - 12:00 p.m.
Harrison Auditorium, Pickle Conference Center, Science Park, Smithville, TX
For directions to the Science Park, go to:
http://sciencepark.mdanderson.org/about/location/
Speaking of Biology
Center for Nonlinear Dynamics
Muhammad H. Zaman
Department of Biomedical Engineering, UT-Austin
"In vivo cellular and molecular dynamics: Insights from simulations and
experiments."
Monday, September 11 - 1:00 p.m. - RLM 11.204
Speaking of Biology
Section of Neurobiology Promotion Seminar
Mendell Rimer, Ph.D.
Section of Neurobiology, UT-Austin
"Neuregulin signaling in neuromuscular synapse formation and
maintenance."
Monday, September 11 - 4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Dr. Rick Aldrich
Speaking of Biology
Imaging Research Center
Ahmad Hariri, Ph.D.
Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh Medical School
"Imaging Genetics: Exploring the Interplay of Genes, Brain & Behavior."
Monday, September 11 - 4:00 p.m. - SEAY 4.244
Host: Michael Domjan, Ph.D.
Dan Wallach
Rice University
Monday, September 11, 2006 at 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.
ACES 6.304
Host: Dr. Mike Dahlin, CIAS & Freescale, Inc.
"Electronic Voting: Risks and Research"
Talk Abstract:
Hanging chads, among other issues with traditional voting systems, have sparked great interest in managing the election process through the use of newer electronic voting systems. While computer scientists, for the most part, have been warning of the perils of such action, vendors have forged ahead with their products, claiming increased security, reliability, and accuracy. Many municipalities have adopted electronic systems and the number of deployed systems is rising. To the limited extent that independent security analyses have been published, the results have raised serious reservations about the quality of these systems to resist attacks. This talk will describe problems we and other researchers have discovered and will consider the limitations of the certification processes that should have guaranteed some quality control. These issues, in turn, give rise to a variety of interesting research problems that span computer science, human factors, and public policy. In this talk, we will consider how both established and open research in software engineering, distributed systems, and cryptography can and should impact the next generation of voting systems.
Speaker Bio:
Dan Wallach is an associate professor in the Department ofComputer Science at Rice University in Houston, Texas and is the associate director of NSF's ACCURATE (A Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable and Transparent Elections). A collaborative project involving six institutions, ACCURATE is investigating software architectures, tamper-resistant hardware, cryptographic protocols and verification systems as applied to electronic voting systems. Wallach earned his bachelor's at the University of California at Berkeley and his PhD at Princeton University. His research involves computer security and the issues of building secure and robust software systems for the Internet. Wallach has testified about voting security issues before government bodies in the U.S., Mexico, and the European Union.
David Fogel
Natural Selection, Inc.
Thursday, September 7, 2006 at 3:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.
ACES 2.302
Risto Miikkulainen
"Behind the Scenes with Blondie24: Evolving Intelligence in Checkers and Chess"
Talk Abstract:
Blondie24 is a self-learning checks program that taught itself to play at the level of human experts. Starting with only rudimentary information about the location, number, and types of checkers pieces on the board, Blondie24 learned to play well enough to be ranked in the top 500 of 120,000 checkers players registered at Microsoft's zone.com. The program uses a simple evolutionary algorithm to optimize neural networks as board evaluators. Any sophisticated features used to interpret the positions of pieces were invented within the neural network. Furthermore, the evolving neural networks were not told whether they won, lost, or drew any specific game; instead, the only feedback they received was a point score associated with an overall result of playing a random number of games. In so doing, the line of research addressed two fundamental issues raised by Arthur Samuel and Allen Newell over three decades ago: Can a computer invent features in checkers and can a computer learn how play without receiving explicit credit assignment? A similar process has also been applied to chess (Blondie25). Starting with an open source program rated about 1800 (Class A), the evolved program has demonstrated grandmaster-level performance. The lecture will provide motivation and technical details for this research, as well as offer materials not found in any technical or book treatments of the development. Attendees will be able to challenge Blondie to a game, if they like.
Speaker Bio:
Dr. David Fogel is chief executive officer of Natural Selection, Inc. in La Jolla, California. Dr. Fogel has over 200 technical publications and 6 books, including Blondie24: Playing at the Edge of AI (Morgan Kaufmann, 2002) and How toSolve It: Modern Heuristics (with Zbigniew Michalewicz, 2nd ed., Springer 2005, translated into Chinese and Polish). Among many leadership roles, Dr. Fogel was the founding editor-in-chief of the IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation (1996-2002), general chairman for the 2002 IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence, and will chair the upcoming 2007 IEEE Symposium Series in Computational Intelligence to be held April 1-5, 2007 in Honolulu, Hawaii. He was elected a Fellow of the IEEE in 1999 and received the 2004 IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Technical Field Award. He was elected president-elect of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society for 2007.
Speaking of Biology
Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship Program
David Schaffer, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering, University of California-Berkeley
"Molecular Engineering of Gene and Stem Cell Therapies"
Friday, September 1 - 1:00 p.m. - ACES 2.402
Host: Muhammad Zaman
UTCS AI Forum
Deb Roy
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Thursday, August 31, 2006 at 3:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.
ACES 2.302
Benjamin Kuipers
"Meaning Machines"
Talk Abstract:
People use words to refer to the world as a means for influencing the beliefs and actions of others. Although many isolated aspects of the structure and use of language have been extensively studied, a unified model of situated language use remains unexplored. Any attempt to explain unconstrained adult language use appears futile due to the overwhelming complexity of the physical, cognitive, and cultural factors at play. A strategy for making progress towards a holistic account of language use is to study simple forms of language (e.g., conversational speech about objects and events in the here-and-now in limited social contexts) and strive for "vertically integrated" computational models. I will present experiments guided by this strategy in building conversational robots and natural language interfaces for video games. An emerging framework suggests a semiotic perspective may be useful for designing systems that process language grounded in social and physical context.
Speaker Bio:
Deb Roy is Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is Director of the Cognitive Machines Group at the MIT Media Laboratory which he founded in 2000. Roy also directs the 10x research program, a lab-wide effort to design new technologies for enhancing human cognitive and physical capabilities. Roy has published numerous peer-reviewed papers in the areas of knowledge
representation, speech and language processing, machine perception, robotics, information retrieval, cognitive
modeling, and human-machine interaction, and has served as guest editor of the journal Artificial Intelligence. He has lectured widely in academia and industry. His work has been featured in various popular press venues including the New York Times, the Globe and Mail, CNN, BBC, and PBS. In 2003 Roy was appointed AT&T Career Development Professor. He holds a B.A.Sc. in Computer Engineering from University of Waterloo, and a Ph.D. in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT.
UTCS AI Forum
Paul Bennett
Carnegie Mellon University
Friday, August 25, 2006 at 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
ACES 6.304
Ray Mooney
"Building Reliable Metaclassifiers for Text Learning"
Talk Abstract:
Appropriately combining information sources is a broad topic that has been researched in many forms. It includes sensor fusion, distributed data-mining, regression combination, classifier combination, and even the basic classification problem. After all, the hypothesis a classifier emits is just a specification of how the information in the basic features should be combined. This talk addresses one subfield of this domain: leveraging locality when combining classifiers for text classification. Classifier combination is useful, in part, as an engineering aid that enables machine learning scientists to understand differences in base classifiers in terms of their local reliability, dependence, and variance -- much as higher-level languages are an abstraction that improves upon assembly language without extending its computational power.
After discussing and introducing improved methods for recalibrating classifiers, we define local reliability, dependence, and variance and discuss the roles they play in classifier combination. Using these insights, we motivate a series of reliability-indicator variables which intuitively abstract the input domain to capture the local context related to a classifier's reliability.
We then present our main methodology, STRIVE. STRIVE employs a metaclassification approach to learn an improved model which varies the combination rule by considering the local reliability of the base classifiers via the indicators. The resulting models empirically outperform state-of-the-art metaclassification approaches that do not use locality. Next, we analyze the contributions of the various reliability indicators to the combination model and suggest informative features to consider when redesigning the base classifiers. Additionally, we show how inductive transfer methods can be extended to increase the amount of labeled training data for learning a combination model by collapsing data traditionally viewed as coming from different learning tasks.
Finally, the combination approaches discussed are broadly applicable to classification problems other than topic
classification, and we emphasize this with experiments that demonstrate STRIVE improves performance of action-item detectors in e-mail -- a task where both the semantics and base classifier performance are significantly different than topic classification.
Speaker Bio:
Paul Bennett is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Language Technologies Institute at Carnegie Mellon University where he serves as Chief Learning Architect on the RADAR project. Paul's primary research interests are in text classification, information retrieval, ensemble methods, and calibration, with wider interests in statistical learning and applications of artificial intelligence in adaptive systems in general. His published work includes research on classifier combination, action-item detection, calibration, inductive transfer, machine
translation, and recommender systems. Paul received his Ph.D. (2006) from the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University.
Speaking of Biology
Marine Science Institute Thesis Defense
Lucia Beatriz Carreon Martinez
"Development of a multiplex PCR assay for identification of sciaenid eggs."
Friday, August 25, 3:45 p.m.
Visitors Center Auditorium at the Marine Science Institute, Port Aransas, TX
For directions to the Marine Science Institute, go to:
http://msi40.utmsi.utexas.edu/institute/maps.htm
Speaking of Biology
Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences
Jay D. Humphrey
Professor, Biomedical Engineering, Texas A&M University
"Theoretical framework for vascular growth and remodeling."
Thursday, August 24, 3:30 p.m. - ACE 6.304
ICES Seminar
Prof. Jay D. Humphrey
Biomedical Engineering - Texas A&M University
Theoretical Framework for Vascular Growth and Remodeling
Thursday, August 24, 2006- 3:30 to 5:00pm - ACES 6.304
Abstract:
Research over the last three decades has revealed a ubiquitous cell-mediated growth and remodeling in arterial development, adaptation, and response to disease/injury, and has demonstrated that these processes are controlled in large part by mechanical stimuli. Although the response of an artery to disease/injury versus perturbed blood pressures, flows, and axial loads may be manifested differently, the basic underlying processes appear to be the same. Arterial adaptation results from changes in cellular activity that include changes in the rates of mitosis (cell division) or apoptosis (programmed cell death), rates of cell migration and differentiation (change of phenotype), hypertrophy and atrophy, and rates of synthesis, degradation, or cross-linking of extracellular matrix. Overall, therefore, what appear to be most important mechanically are the separate rates of turnover of individual constituents and the evolving configurations in which such turnover occurs. The goal of this work is to formulate a theoretical framework to model basic features of the biomechanics of arterial growth and remodeling and to incorporate this theory into finite element codes for purposes of simulation. The framework is motivated by the hypothesis that growth and remodeling occurs via the heightened replacement of previously existing constituents with new constituents that have new ~Qnatural configurations~R but otherwise similar mechanical properties. Towards this end, the stress response of each structurally-dominant constituent is modeled using a constrained mixture approach, within the context of finite elasticity, and the turnover of each constituent can be modeled using explicit kinetics. Given the current lack of sufficient data, competing hypotheses are explored via simulations. Although there is clearly a need to evolve more sophisticated models, it is hoped that the present basic concepts and associated constrained mixture framework will serve to motivate appropriate new experiments and to focus advances in the modeling.
UTCS Oral Proposal
Qiang Zhang/UTCS
Thursday, August 10, 2006 at 3:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. in ACES 3.408
Host: J Moore
"Automating the verification of machine-level programs for operational machines"
Talk Abstract:
We propose an approach to automating the verification of machine-level programs for an arbitrary abstract computing machine provided that the semantics is given formally by an operational semantics (satisfying certain broad constraints). Using the tool described here, a user with a formal operational semantics model of a computing machine (in ACL2) can automatically verify a large class of programs for that machine. The tool is independent of the particular operational semantics. That is, given a machine defined operationally, e.g., the JVM, a piece of machine-level program, e.g., a Java byte-code program, and a specification of this piece of program, we show how to automatically generate an ACL2 book, which states the correctness of the program and includes lemmas that will lead ACL2, automatically, to the proof of the correctness. If the book cannot be processed automatically, the user may still edit it to insert additional lemmas as needed. We automate all but the ``creative'' part of the proof. While we demonstrate our technique for a JVM model, the technique applies generally to any model (within certain broad constraints). We demonstrate it on several simpler operational models.
Speaking of Biology
Botany Dissertation Defense
Stephen Siedo
"No Title Supplied."
Wedneday, August 9, 2:00 p.m. - BIO 114
Committee Chair: Dr. Billie Turner
Speaking of Biology
Cell And Molecular Biology Dissertation Defense
Everett Stone
"The Catalytic Mechanism of Dimethylarginine Dimethylaminohydrolase
(DDAH) from Pseudomonas aeruginosa."
Tuesday, August 8, 9:00 a.m. - PHR 2.114
Committee Chair: Dr. Walter Fast
Speaking of Biology
Biomedical Engineering Dissertation Defense
Je Sung Park
"Polarimetric Analysis of Anisotropic Tissue Using
Polarization-Sensitive Optical Coherence Tomography (PS-OCT)."
Tuesday, August 8, 9:30 a.m. - ENS 637
Committee Chair: Dr. Thomas Milner
Speaking of Biology
Biomedical Engineering Dissertation Defense
Jihoon Kim
"Measurement of Optical Path Length Change in Response to Pulsed Laser
Irradiation Using Phase Sensitive OCT."
Tuesday, August 8 2:00 p.m. - ENS 637
Committee Chair: Dr. Thomas Milner
Speaking of Biology
Marine Science Institute Thesis Defense
Harris Muhlstein
"Comparison of growth rate and efficiency of the Texas Brown tide alga
Aureoumbra lagunensis grown on DON and DIN."
Thursday, July 27 - 10:00 a.m.
Visitors Center Auditorium at the Marine Science Institute, Port Aransas, TX
For directions to the Marine Science Institute, go to:
http://msi40.utmsi.utexas.edu/institute/maps.htm
Speaking of Biology
Wednesday, July 26 - 11:00 a.m. - MBB 1.210
Molecular Biology Dissertation Defense
Seth Cockrum
"Aptamer Selections Against Bacterial Toxins and Cells."
Committee Chair: Dr. Andrew Ellington
Dr. Krishna Kant/Intel Corporation
Wednesday, July 26, 2006 at 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm in TAY 3.128
Mohamed G. Gouda
"Improving BGP Performance Under Large Scale Internet Failures"
Talk Abstract:
Border gateway protocol (BGP) is the default routing protocol between various autonomous systems (AS) in the Internet. In the event of a failure, BGP may repeatedly withdraw some routes and advertise new ones until a stable state is reached. This could take a long time and is often associated with high packet drop rates. Much of the previous work on BGP failures has examined only isolated failures scenarios. In this talk we shall motivate the case for large scale Internet failures and show that BGP performance can degrade substantially in this case. We then consider several improvements to BGP which can be implemented rather easily and do not require any coordination between ASes. It is shown that the BGP convergence delays can be reduced substantially by these techniques. We also consider the question of whether convergence time is the most appropriate performance metric and consider a few other metrics as well.
Speaker Bio:
Dr. Krishna Kant received his Ph.D. in computer science from UT/Dallas in 1981 and spent 1979-81 at UT/Austin. He spent 10 years in academia (last at Penn State University), 6 years in telecom industry (Bellcore), and has been at Intel since 1997. His current research interests include robustness/security in the Internet, utility computing, and wireless in data centers.
Speaking of Biology
Tuesday, July 25 - 3:00 p.m. - ESB 211
Molecular Biology Dissertation Defense
Qian Chen
"Functional Analysis of DdNCENP, a Chromosomal Passenger Protein, in Dictyostelium."
Committee Chair: Dr. Arturo De Lozanne
Speaking of Biology
Friday, July 21 - 10:00 a.m. - ESB 211
Microbiology Dissertation Defense
Nicola Davies
"Iron Acquisition by Shigella dysenteriae and Shigella flexneri."
Committee Chair: Dr. Shelley Payne
Speaking of Biology
Botany Dissertation Defense
Joanna Padolina
"Phylogenetic Reconstruction of Phalaenopsis Using Nuclear and
Chloroplast DNA Sequence Data and Using Phalaenopsis as a Natural System
for Assessing Methods to Reconstruct Hybrid Evolution in Phylogenetic Analyses."
Friday, July 21, 2006 - 2:00 p.m. - BIO 214
Committee Chair: Dr. Randy Linder
Speaking of Biology
Wednesday, July 19 - 2:00 p.m. - NMS 1.120
Microbiology Dissertation Defense
Zhiqi Yin
"Role of the Enhancer in Regulation of Mu Transpososome Assembly."
Committee Chair: Dr. Rasika Harshey
Victor Luchangko/Sun Microsystems
Tuesday, July 11, 2006 at 2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. in ACES 2.402
Host: Vijaya Ramachandran
Talk Title: "Transactions, Now and for the Future"
Abstract:
With the advent of desktop multiprocessors, and even chip multiprocessors, concurrency is increasingly recognized as the next major trend in programming. Unfortunately, the current state of the art in concurrent programming is woefully inadequate: The dominant abstraction for communication--shared memory mediated by locks--is the equivalent of assembly code for concurrent programs: it shields you from the bare machine but does not provide an adequate means for further abstraction. As a result, large concurrent programs are fragile (and almost always incorrect), stifling innovation and threatening reliability. As the world grows increasingly dependent on interconnected computing, we can ill afford such programs.
Transactions--atomic blocks of code--have been proposed as a mechanism for structuring large-scale concurrent programs. They have been used successfully for decades in database systems, and there is renewed interest in providing "lightweight transactions" at other levels of the system: at the language level, and even in hardware. However, there are fundamental challenges, for both semantics and implementation, to making lightweight transactions available and accessible to programmers in general. Our group at Sun (and many others) has been exploring and devising mechanisms for supporting transactions, both at the language level and in hardware. I will talk about the benefits of transactional programming, the challenges in making it feasible, and some work that we are doing to address these challenges.
Speaker Bio:
Victor Luchangco works in the Scalable Synchronization Research Group of Sun Microsystems Laboratories. His research focuses on developing algorithms and mechanisms to support concurrent programming on large-scale distributed systems. He also works with the Programming Languages Research Group on the development of Fortress, a new language for high-productivity scientific computing.
Victor is a theoretician by disposition and training, but he is also interested in practical aspects of computing. In particular, he would like to design mechanisms that people will actually use. In addition, he is interested in exploring how to make proofs for concurrent systems easier, both by changing how people design these systems and by using tools to aid in formal verification.
Victor received an Sc.D. in Computer Science from MIT in 2001.
ICES Seminar:
Prof. George Biros
University of Pennsylvania
"Fast Solvers for Elliptic and Parabolic Problems''
Thursday, May 25, 2006 - 3:30 to 5:00 pm - ACES 6.304
Abstract:
In this talk I will discuss algorithms for the solution of the Poisson (for the exterior and interior problem for a domain with smooth but complex boundary) and heat equations (for an interior problem with smooth, moving boundary).
Analytic solutions are available only for a limited number of cases. Therefore we need to use numerical techniques. The basic goals in designing a numerical method are guaranteed quality (i.e., error bounds) of the solution, linear complexity, and robustness. Surprisingly, a robust, black-box, algorithmically scalable method for the Poisson problem does not exist. The main difficulty is related to provably good mesh generation in complex geometries in three dimensions, and provable design of O(N) solvers for unstructured meshes.
I will review different approaches in solving elliptic and parabolic problems and discuss algorithmic issues for methods based on classical Fredholm integral equation formulation. For the elliptic problem, the main components of the new method are a kernel-independent fast summation method, manifold surface representations, and superalgebraically accurate quadrature methods. For the parabolic problem the main component is the design of appropriate quadratures that combined with spectral basis can deliver spectral accuracy.
This is join work with Lexing Ying of Caltech, Denis Zorin of New York University, and Shravan K. Veerapaneni of the University of Pennsylvania.
UTCS Colloquia:
Emery Berger/University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Friday, May 12, 2006 at 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. in ACES 2.402
Coffee: 10:30 a.m.
Host: Kathryn McKinley
Talk Title: "DieHard: Probabilistic Memory Safety for Unsafe Languages"
Talk Abstract:
Applications written in unsafe languages like C and C are vulnerable to memory errors such as buffer overflows, dangling pointers, and reads of uninitialized data. Such errors can lead to program crashes, security vulnerabilities, and unpredictable behavior. We present DieHard, a runtime system that tolerates these errors while probabilistically maintaining soundness. DieHard uses randomization and replication to achieve probabilistic memory safety by
approximating an infinite-sized heap. DieHard's memory manager randomizes the location of objects in a heap that is at least twice as large as required. This algorithm prevents heap corruption and provides a probabilistic guarantee of avoiding memory errors. For additional safety, DieHard can operate in a replicated mode where multiple replicas of the same application are run simultaneously. By initializing each replica with a different random seed and requiring agreement on output, the replicated version of DieHard increases the likelihood of correct execution because errors are unlikely to have the same effect across all replicas. We present analytical and experimental results that show DieHard's resilience to a wide range of memory errors, including a heap-based buffer overflow in an actual application (the Squid web cache) and a recent dangling pointer error in Mozilla Firefox.
Joint work with Ben Zorn of Microsoft Research.
Speaker Bio:
Emery Berger is an Assistant Professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin in 2002. Berger's research focuses on improving the performance and reliability of modern computer systems. His work spans programming languages, runtime systems, and operating systems, with a particular focus on memory management. Berger is the creator of Hoard, a widely-used scalable memory manager, and is part of a research group singled out by NSF site visitors as the best memory management group in the country. He leads the PLASMA lab at UMass and is a 2004 NSF CAREER Award recipient.
Department of Computer Sciences:
Dr. Ilkka Niemela/Helsinki University of Technology
Friday, May 5, 2006 at 3:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. in ACES 6.304
Host: Dr. Vladimir Lifschitz
Talk Title: "Towards Efficient Boolean Circuit Satisfiability Checking"
Talk Abstract:
Boolean circuits offer a natural, structured, and compact representation of Boolean functions for many application domains such as computer aided verification. We study satisfiability checking methods for Boolean circuits. As a starting point we take the successful Davis-Putnam-Logemann-Loveland (DPLL) procedure for satisfiability checking of propositional formulas in conjunctive normal form and study its generalization to Boolean circuits. We employ a tableau formulation where DPLL propagation rules correspond to tableau deduction rules and splitting corresponds to a tableau cut rule. It turns out that Boolean circuits enable interesting deduction (simplification) rules not typically available in DPLL where the idea is to exploit the structure of the circuit. We also study the relative efficiency of different variations of the cut (splitting) rule obtained by restricting the use of cut in several natural ways. A number of exponential separation results are obtained showing that the more restricted variations cannot polynomially simulate the less restricted ones. The results also apply to DPLL for formulas in conjunctive normal form obtained from Boolean circuits by using Tseitin's translation. Thus DPLL with the considered cut restrictions, such as allowing splitting only on the variables corresponding to the input gates, cannot polynomially simulate DPLL with unrestricted splitting.
(This is joint work with Tommi Junttila and Matti Jarvisalo.)
Speaker Bio:
Ilkka Niemela is professor and head of the Laboratory for Theoretical Computer Science at Helsinki University of Technology since year 2000. He received his doctoral degree in computer science in 1993 from Helsinki University of Technology and has worked in 1993 as an International Fellow at SRI International, in 1995-1996 as a research scientist and acting professor in the Department of Computer Science of the University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany and in 1998-2000 as a senior research fellow of the Academy of Finland.
Dr. Niemela's current research interests include automated reasoning, knowledge representation, computational complexity, computer aided verification, automated testing and product configuration. At Helsinki University of Technology he leads the computational logic group which has developed a number of the state-of-the-art software tools for automated reasoning, such as the Smodels system for answer set programming and BCSat for Boolean circuit satisfiability checking, leading to applications in areas like automated planning, product configuration, and bounded model checking. Dr. Niemela is an author of more than 100 papers, has been a member of the program committee for over 40 international conferences and has given several invited talks and tutorials.
Dr. Niemela is a member of the Executive Committee of the Association for Logic Programming (ALP), Editorial Board Member of Theory and Practice of Logic Programming and Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research as well as a Steering Committee Member of the International Workshops on Nonmonotonic Reasoning and of the International Conferences on Logic Programming and Nonmonotonic Reasoning.
UT Computer Sciences Colloquia:
William G. Griswold/University of California, San Diego
Thursday, May 4, 2006 at 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. in ACES 6.304
Coffee: 10:30 a.m.
Host: Calvin Lin
"Place-Its: A Study of Location-Based Reminders on Mobile Phones"
Talk Abstract:
Mobile phones promise to replace the desktop as the predominant computing-and-communications platform. Yet, simply reproducing desktop application genres -- e-mail, web browsing, and streaming video, to name a few -- in a small form-factor cannot achieve this promise. A new vision for mobile computing is required. A critical yet under-explored element of this vision is the use of personal context.
For example, early studies showed that context-awareness can improve the usefulness of automated reminders, but little is known about how a context-aware reminder application might be used throughout a person's daily life. Mobile phones provide a potentially convenient and truly ubiquitous platform for the detection of personal context such as location, as well as the delivery of reminders. To study people using location-aware reminders throughout their daily lives, we designed Place-Its, a location-based reminder application that runs on mobile phones. This talk describes the design of Place-Its and a two week exploratory user study. The study reveals that location-based reminders are useful, in large part because people use location in nuanced ways.
Other on-going projects relating to mobile phones are briefly discussed.
UTCS Colloquia:
Eric Lowe/Sun Microsystems
May 4, 2006 at 1:30 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. in ACES 6.304
Host: CIAS
"The Internals of DTrace"
Talk Abstract:
Modern operating system advanced topics: DTrace. The kernel internals of the Solaris Dynamic Tracing facility ("DTrace") will be examined. DTrace is more than just a tool -- it is an extensible framework, making it an interesting case study in applied software engineering. In addition, several of the DTrace providers exploit features unique to the hardware architectures on which they run, making their algorithms interesting case studies.
Speaker Bio:
Eric Lowe is a staff engineer in the Solaris Kernel Development group at Sun Microsystems. Eric has worked on virtual memory in Sun engineering for over five years, participating in NUMA optimizations, large page support, and SPARC platform-specific virtual memory handling improvements. Eric is currently co-lead/architect of the completely new Solaris virtual memory system, codenamed "gemsbak".
UTCS Architecture/UT VLSI Seminar Series:
Dileep Bhandarkar/Intel
Wednesday, May 3, 2006 at 2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. in ACES 2.302
Host: David Pan & Co-Sponsored by the UT VLSI Seminar Series (http:// www.cerc.utexas.edu/vlsi-seminar/)
"Multi-Core Microprocessor Chips: Motivation & Challenges"
Talk Abstract:
Advances in semiconductor process technology allow hundreds of millions of transistors to be integrated on a single chip. Intel?s 90 nm technology Montecito chip was the first billion transistor chip featuring dual cores and large cache in 2005. Nanotechnology that continues to drive Moore?s Law provides a doubling of the transistor density every two years. Multi-core chips will become common not only in high-end servers but also in desktop and mobile PCs.
Multi-core processors present several challenges related to on-chip system architecture, power management, reliability, and software scaling. This talk will touch upon some of these challenges and discuss some possible solutions.
Speaker Bio:
Dr. Bhandarkar is an IEEE Fellow, and a Distinguished Alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, where he received his B. Tech in Electrical Engineering in 1970. He also has a M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, and has done graduate work in Business Administration at the University of Dallas.
He is currently Director of the Enterprise Architecture Lab in processors and chipsets. He has been with Intel since 1995 and has managed system architecture and performance analysis activities. Prior to joining Intel, he spent almost 18 years at Digital Equipment Corporation, where he managed processor and system architecture, and performance analysis work related to the VAX, Prism, MIPS, and Alpha architectures. He also worked at Texas Instruments for 4 years in their research labs in a variety of areas including magnetic bubble memories, charge coupled devices, fault tolerant memories, and computer architecture.
Dr. Bhandarkar holds 15 U.S. Patents and has published more than 30 technical papers in various journals and conference proceedings. He is also the author of a book titled Alpha Architecture and Implementations.
ECE Seminar Series:
Dr. Andrew Tomkins, Distinguished Scientist/Yahoo! Research
Wed., May 3, 2006 at 4-5 pm
ACES 2.302/(Avaya Auditorium)
Host: Prof. Joydeep Ghosh/ UT ECE Department
Talk Title: "Routing and growth models for online social networks"
Abstract:
In this talk, I'll discuss some results from a number of large online social networks, including the LiveJournal blog hosting site, the Flickr photo sharing and tagging network, and the Yahoo! MyWeb2.0 social search application. I'll give some intuition about the denizens of these networks, covering demographs, interests, and
locations. Then I'll discuss the small-world phenomenon in the context of online networks, and describe some results extending Kleinberg's work on small worlds to more general metric spaces and to non-uniform population densities. Finally, time permitting I'll close with a discussion of evolution of these networks over time.
Joint work with Ravi Kumar, David Liben-Nowell, Jasmine Novak and Prabhakar Raghavan.
Bio:
Andrew joined Yahoo! Research in 2005 from IBM. His research over the last eight years has focused on measurement, modeling, and analysis of content, communities, and users on the World Wide Web. Prior to
joining Yahoo! Research, he managed the "Information Management Principles" group at IBM's Almaden Research Center, and served as Chief Scientist on the WebFountain project. Andrew received Bachelors degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science from MIT, and a PhD in CS from Carnegie Mellon University.
Speaking of Biology:
Neurobiology Journal Club
Elaine Ellerton & Paul Mathews
"Title TBA."
Friday, April 28 - 12:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Speaking of Biology:
Department of Geography and the Environment
Michael Hill
Bureau of Rural Sciences and Co-operative Research, Canberra, Australia
"Remote Sensing for Model-Data Assimilation: A Key Pathway to Societal
Benefit-A Carbon Cycle Case Study in Australian Tropical Savannas."
Friday, April 28 - 4:00 p.m. - GRG 102
Speaking of Biology:
Modern Developments of Physics Public Lecture Series
Harry Swinney
Professor, Department of Physics, UT-Austin
"Emergence of Spatial Patterns in Physical, Chemical, and Biological Systems."
Friday, April 28 - 7:30 p.m. - Thompson Conference Center 1.110
ACT Seminar:
Dieter van Melkebeek/University of Wisconsin
April 28, 2006 at 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. in TAY 3.128
Coffee: 10:45 a.m.
Host: Anna Gal
"Time Hierarchies for Semantic Models of Computation"
Talk Abstract:
A basic question in computational complexity asks whether somewhat more time allows us to solve strictly more decision problems on a given model of computation. Despite its fundamental nature, the question remains unanswered for many models of interest. Essentially, time hierarchies are known for every syntactic model of computation but open for everything else, where we call a model syntactic if there exists a computable enumeration consisting exactly of the machines in the model.
There has been significant progress in recent years, namely in establishing time hierarchies for non-syntactic models with small advice. In this talk, we survey these results and present a generic theorem that captures and strengthens all of them. We show that for virtually any semantic model of computation and for any rationals 1
<= c < d, there exists a language computable in time n^d with one bit of advice but not in time n^c with one bit of advice, where we call a model semantic if there exists a computable enumeration that contains all machines in the model but may also contain others.
Our result implies the first such hierarchy theorem for randomized machines with zero-sided error, quantum machines with one-or zero- sided error, unambiguous machines, symmetric alternation, Arthur- Merlin games of any signature, etc. Our argument also yields considerably simpler proofs of earlier hierarchy theorems with one bit of advice for randomized or quantum machines with two-sided error.
This is joint work with Konstantin Pervyshev.
EDGE Distinguished Lecture Series:
Sanem Kabadayi, Mobile and Pervasive Computing Group, The University of Texas at Austin
Thursday, April 27, 2006 at 1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. in ACES 2.402
Host: Christine Julien, Director, Mobile and Pervasive Computing Group
"Enabling Declarative Applications in Immersive Sensor Networks"
Talk Abstract:
As sensor networks become increasingly ubiquitous, future scenarios in which multiple mobile applications will leverage sensor network nodes opportunistically and unpredictably will become possible. Such scenarios deviate from existing deployments of sensor networks which are often highly application-specific and generally funnel information to a central collection service for a single purpose. A significant barrier to the widespread development of such flexible sensor network applications lies in the increased complexity of the programming task when compared to existing distributed or even mobile situations. Sensor nodes are severely resource-constrained, in terms of both computational capabilities and battery power, and therefore an application development task must inherently consider low-level design concerns. This complexity, coupled with the increasing demand for applications, highlights the need for programming platforms (i.e., middleware) that simplify application development.
This talk introduces the DAIS (Declarative Applications in Immersive Sensor networks) middleware platform that enables the development of these adaptive ubiquitous computing applications. Our approach focuses on minimizing communication in the sensor network to best ensure the network's lifetime. DAIS localizes data collection and sensor interaction to only the regions of the network required for the applications' immediate data needs. At the programming interface level, this requires exposing some aspects of the physical world to the developer, and DAIS accomplishes this through novel programming abstractions that enable on-demand access to dynamic data sources.
The talk will overview the middleware and provide details of two of its components: the scene communication abstraction and virtual sensors, including both programmatic examples and performance results.
Speaking of Biology:
Integrative Biology
Jeff Achter, Ph.D.
Department of Mathematics, Colorado State University
"Dispersal strategies and response to disturbance."
Thursday, April 27 - 2:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Dr. Timothy Keitt
Speaking of Biology:
Molecular Biology Dissertation Defense
Rong Wang
"Characterizing the Proteome of Mycobacteria and Mammalian Cells."
Thursday, April 27 - 2:00 p.m. - MBB 3.204
Committee Chair: Dr. Edward Marcotte
Speaking of Biology:
Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology
Mark Fortini, Ph.D.
Senior Investigator, Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute
"Intramembrane Proteolysis in Developmental Signaling and Neurodegeneration."
Thursday, April 27 - 4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Speaking of Biology:
American Botanical Council and Wildflower Center Spring Lecture Series
Martin Terry, D.V.M., Ph.D.
President, Cactus Conservation Institute
"Evolving Modern Ethnobotany: Working with Big Government, Big Pharma,
and Native Peoples in South and North America."
Thursday, April 27 - 7:00 p.m. - Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, 4801 La Crosse Avenue,
Austin 78739 - Speaker reception at 6:00.
For directions or more information, go to:
http://www.wildflower.org/?nd=2104
Harvard Professor, Dr. Deborah Prothrow-Stith, To Deliver Keynote At
20th Annual Heman Sweatt Symposium
Symposium Events: Monday, April 24 - Friday, April 28, 2006
Dr. Deborah Prothrow-Stith, a Harvard University professor, will be the featured speaker at the 20th annual Heman Sweatt Symposium on Civil Rights, which will focus on "Health Care Disparities as a Civil Rights Issue."
The symposium, free and open to the public, will feature a week of activities (April 24-28) at The University of Texas at Austin. The keynote address by Prothrow-Stith, professor of public health practice and associate dean for faculty development at Harvard, is at 7 p.m., April 28 at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Auditorium, 2315 Red River St.
"Dr. Prothrow-Stith is a nationally recognized public health leader and is intimately knowledgeable about the range of issues associated with health care disparities, as well as health care issues in general," said Terry Wilson, chairman of the Sweatt Symposium Steering Committee and associate vice president in the Office of Community and School Relations.
"Each year we seek to bring a speaker to the Sweatt Symposium who will enlighten our campus community and the greater Austin community about an important topic," Wilson said. "Dr. Prothrow-Stith continues that tradition. It is our hope that students and others become better informed about critical issues affecting not only their personal health, but the collective health of the community as well."
According to the National Healthcare Disparities Report released in 2004 by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality:
*When compared with Caucasians, minorities are more likely to be diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer and colorectal cancer.
*Patients of lower socioeconomic position are less likely to receive recommended diabetic services and more likely to be hospitalized for diabetes and its complications.
*When hospitalized for acute myocardial infarction, Hispanics are less likely to receive optimal care.
*Many racial and ethnic minorities and people of lower socioeconomic position are more likely to die from HIV.
*Minorities account for a disproportionate share of new AIDS cases.
*African Americans and poorer patients have higher rates of avoidable hospital admissions (hospitalizations for health conditions that, in the presence of comprehensive primary care, rarely require hospitalization).
The symposium is named for Heman Sweatt (1912-1982), who applied for admission to The University of Texas School of Law in 1946, but was denied admission on the basis of race. Sweatt brought legal action against the university. In a landmark case, the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in favor of Sweatt helped pave the way for the admission of African Americans to formerly segregated colleges and universities throughout the United States.
Symposium events include:
Monday, April 24, 6-8 p.m., Bass Lecture Hall Opening Keynote: "Overview of Health Care as a Civil Rights Issue" Speaker: Dr. King Davis, executive director, Hogg Foundation for Mental Health
Tuesday, April 25, 6-8 p.m., Bass Lecture Hall "Access to Health Care: Affordability, Insurance, Location and Availability of Care" Panelists: Professor Ken Apfel, UT Austin, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs; Anne Dunkelberg, assistant director, Center for Public Policy Priorities; Dr. Charles Bell, deputy executive commissioner for health services, Texas Health and Human Services Commission; Shannon Jones, assistant director of public health, Austin/Travis County Health and Human Services Department; Jose Comacho, executive director and general counsel for the Texas Association of Community Health
Wednesday, April 26, 6-8 p.m., Bass Lecture Hall "Environmental and Communication Issues: Community Planning and Health Care Education" Panelists: Dr. Jerome Williams, professor, UT Austin Department of Advertising; Dr. Chiquita Collins, assistant professor, UT Austin Department of Sociology; Dr. Patricia Stout, professor, UT Austin Department of Advertising; Mr. Shannon Jones, assistant director of Public Health, Austin/Travis County Health and Human Services Department
Thursday, April 27, 6-8 p.m., Bass Lecture Hall "Leading Health Care Issues in Minority Communities"
Panelists: Dr. Dorie Gilbert, associate professor, UT Austin School of Social Work; Dr. Dawnovise Fowler, assistant professor, UT Austin School of Social Work; Dr. Mary Lou Adams, associate professor, UT Austin School of Nursing; Dr. John Bartholomew, director, Exercise and Sport Psychology Laboratory, and associate professor, UT Austin Kinesiology and Health Education
Friday, April 28, 7 p.m., LBJ Auditorium Closing keynote: Dr. Deborah Prothrow-Stith, M.D., professor of public health practice and associate dean for faculty development, Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard University
For more information, please contact:
Contact:Terry A. Wilson
Office of Community and School Relations
The University of Texas at Austin
(512) 232-4850
http://www.utexas.edu/events/hemansweatt
Speaking of Biology:
Marine Science Institute-Schweppe Speaker
Dr. Robert C. Rhew
University of California at Berkeley
"One if by land, two if by sea: The 'missing' source of atmospheric methyl halides."
Wed., April 26 - 10:30 a.m. Visitors Center Auditorium at the Marine Science Inst., Port Aransas, TX
For directions to the Marine Science Institute, go to:
http://msi40.utmsi.utexas.edu/institute/maps.htm
Speaking of Biology:
UT M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Science Park-Mike Hogg Distinguished Lecture
James Allison, Ph.D.
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York
"Checkpoint blockade in tumor immunotherapy."
Wednesday, April 26 - 11:00 a.m. - Harrison Auditorium, Pickle Conference Center, Science
Park, Smithville, TX
For directions to the Science Park, go to:
http://sciencepark.mdanderson.org/~LPC/SPdirections.htm
Host: Ellen Richie
Speaking of Biology:
Section of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology
Erica Johnson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Thomas
Jefferson University, Philadelphia, PA
"Spontaneous DNA damage in a SUMO pathway mutant."
Wednsday, April 26 - 4:00 p.m. - ESB 223 - Refreshments served
Host: Dr. Makkuni Jayaram
Speaking of Biology:
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Dr. Anthony Means
Duke University Medical Center
"Physiological Consequences of the CaM Kinase Signaling Cascade."
PHR 3.106 at 12:30
Students in both the Pharmacology seminar course and the Toxicology seminar course are required to attend.
Dr. Means is a distinguished pharmacologist and was recently awarded the ASPET/GlaxoSmithKline 2006 Goodman & Gilman Award in Drug Receptor Pharmacology.
Dr. Means research at Duke focuses on the study of cell signals that regulate cell proliferation, differentiation or function, and how altering these pathways contributes to the onset of cancer. He hopes that improving the understanding of these pathways will provide clues that may be used to develop new drugs to combat the disease. He is the author of over 350 scholarly publications.
He earned his undergraduate and master's degrees from Oklahoma State University and his Ph.D. in Endocrinology from the University of Texas. Dr. Means completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Melbourne in Australia. He then held faculty positions at Vanderbilt University and Baylor College of Medicine before joining the Duke faculty in 1991, where he has served as Chair of the Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology for 15 years.
Speaking of Biology:
Tuesday, April 25 - 10:00 a.m. - ESB 211
Microbiology Dissertation Defense
Rashmi Rajendra
"Murine Mind Bomb1: Its Role in Notch and B-Catenin Signaling During
Embryonic Development."
Committee Chair: Dr. Karen Artzt
Speaking of Biology:
Division of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Dr. Anthony Means
Professor, Pharmacology & Cancer Biology, Duke University
"Physiological Consequences of the CaM Kinase Signaling Cascade."
Tuesday, April 25 - 12:30 p.m. - PHR 3.106 - This seminar will be televised to Science Park.
Host: Dr. Adron Harris
Speaking of Biology:
Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology Spring 2006 Seminar Series
Dr. Richard A. Lang
Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center
"The Genetics of Lens Induction in the Mouse."
Tuesday, April 25 - 4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210 - Refreshments will be served at 3:30
Host: Dr. Jeff Gross
Speaking of Biology:
Monday, April 24 - 12:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Ecology, Evolution, And Behavior Dissertation Defense
Ray Engeszer
"An Analysis of Shoaling Behavior in the Zebrafish, Danio rerio."
Committee Chair: Dr. Mike Ryan
Speaking of Biology:
Center for Nonlinear Dynamics
Dr. Arnd Pralle
Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, UC-Berkeley
"Morphological Gradient in Mitotic Cells Quantified by Fluorescence
Lifetime Imaging."
Monday, April 24, 1:00 p.m. - RLM 11.204
Speaking of Biology:
Cell And Molecular Biology Dissertation Defense
Xianjun Zhu
"Characterization of the Function of Drosophila Pipe Protein During
Dorsal-Ventral Polarity Formation and in the Embryonic Salivary Gland."
Monday, April 24, 2:00 p.m. - ESB 211
Committee Chair: Dr. David Stein
Speaking of Biology:
Neurobiology Seminar Series
Steve Smith, Ph.D.
Oregon Health & Science University
"Modulation of Neocortical Nerve Terminals by Extracellular Calcium."
Monday, April 24, 4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Mark Harnett
Speaking of Biology:
Friday, April 21
NSF Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship Program
Rebecca Willits, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Biomedical Engineering, Saint Louis University
"Engineering Strategies to Control Cell Function."
1:00 p.m. - ACES 2.402
Host: Nicholas Peppas
Speaking of Biology:
Friday, April 21
Physiology and Behavior Seminar
The topic will be discussion of the article:
"Developmental Plasticity and the Origin of Species Differences." by
West-Eberhard
12:00 p.m. - PAT 141SA
Host: David Crews
Speaking of Biology:
Friday, April 21
Neurobiology Journal Club
Chris Spaeth
"Title TBA."
12:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Speaking of Biology:
Friday, April 21
Undergraduate Philosophy Association
Dr. Anya Plutynski
University of Utah
"The Rise and Fall of the Adaptive Landscape: a critical history of the
adaptive landscape metaphor, and discussion of the role of metaphor in science."
11:00 a.m. - WAG 316
Speaking of Biology:
Thursday, April 20
Molecular Biology Dissertation Defense
Alfredo Ghezzi
"Activity-Dependent Transcriptional Modulation of Ion Channel Genes:
A Homeostatic Hypothesis for Drug Tolerance."
10:00 a.m. - ESB 211
Committee Chair: Dr. Nigel Atkinson
Speaking of Biology:
Thursday, April 20
Botany Dissertation Defense
David Nobles
"Cellulose in the Cyanobacteria."
10:00 a.m. - PAI 2.14
Committee Chair: Dr. R. Malcolm Brown, Jr.
Speaking of Biology:
Thursday, April 20
Integrative Biology
Blaine Cole, Ph.D.
College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, University of Houston
"Selection in the life cycle of the western harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex occidentalis."
2:00 p.m. - GEO 2.324
Host: Dr. Larry Gilbert
Speaking of Biology:
Thursday, April 20
Burdette Distinguished Lecture in Molecular Genetics
Patrick O. Brown, M.D., Ph.D.
Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute & Professor of
Biochemistry, Stanford University
"Title TBA."
3:00 p.m. - Texas Union Theatre 2.228
Speaking of Biology:
Wednesday, April 19
Section of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology
Karsten Weis, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Molecular & Cell Biology, University of California-Berkeley
"Regulation of mRNA export and localization in eukaryotic cells."
4:00 p.m. - ESB 223 - Refreshments served
Host: Dr. Arlen Johnson
Speaking of Biology:
Tuesday, April 18
Ecology, Evolution, And Behavior Dissertation Defense
Derrick Zwickl
"Genetic Algorithm Approaches for the Phylogenetic Analysis of Large
Biological Sequence Datasets Under the Maximum Likelihood Criterion."
2:00 p.m. - ESB 211
Committee Chair: Dr. David Hillis
ICES Seminar:
J. Andrew McCammon
Howard Hughes Medical Institute and
the University of California at San Diego
"Integrated Computational Biology: from the Molecule to the Cell"
Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - 3:30 to 5:00 pm
ACES 2.302
That cells are able to survive and function is partly due to specific, noncovalent binding of pairs of molecules -- biomolecular recognition -- within the heavy molecular traffic in and around cells. Timely binding of the correct molecular partners is critical in signal transduction, the expression of genetic information, the assembly of cellular components, and all other cellular activities. Molecular recognition is also central to many disease processes and medical therapies. Continuing advances in computational and structural biology will provide a deeper understanding of how biological activity at the cellular and higher levels emerges from the molecular level. Some early efforts toward this synthesis will be described, with special reference to neuronal activity.
Images and animations related to this work can be found at the website: http://mccammon.ucsd.edu/
Speaking of Biology:
Tuesday, April 18
Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology Spring 2006 Seminar Series
Dr. David Herrin
Section of Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology, UT-Austin
"Extreme Science: Intron Ribozymes from Snow and Ice Chlamydomonas."
4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210 - Refreshments will be served at 3:30
Speaking of Biology:
Tuesday, April 18
Department of Geological Sciences Tech Talk
Gabe Bever
Department of Geological Sciences, UT-Austin
"Variation in the vertebrate skeleton and its paleontological implications."
4:00 p.m. - GEO 2.324
Speaking of Biology:
Monday, April 17
Population Biology Seminar
Molly Cummings, Ph.D.
Section of Integrative Biology, UT-Austin
"Genomic responses during mate choice in swordtails."
12:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Speaking of Biology:
Monday, April 17
Center for Perceptual Systems Seminar Series
Patrick Cavanagh, Ph.D.
Department of Psychology, Harvard University
"Coordinates of Attention."
12:00 p.m. - SEA 4.244 - Reception with refreshments at 11:30
Speaking of Biology:
Monday, April 17
Center for Nonlinear Dynamics
Dr. Clint Dawson
Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences, UT-Austin
"Modeling Coastal Hydrodynamics and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita."
1:00 p.m. - RLM 11.204
Speaking of Biology:
Monday, April 17
Plant Biology Graduate Program
Dr. Lee Dyer
Tulane University
"Are you wondering how hurricane Katrina affected the community ecology of the New Orleans region?"
4:00 p.m. - WEL 2.308 - Refreshments will be served at 3:30 p.m. in BIO
214 before the seminar.
Host: Roxie Steele
Speaking of Biology:
Monday, April 17
Neurobiology Seminar Series
Mark Zoran, Ph.D.
Texas A&M University
"Functional Switches in Neural Cell Communication: Implications for
Development and Plasticity."
4:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Dr. Veronica Martinez
ICES Seminar:
Dr. Harri Hakula
University of Helsinki
"On Eigenvalue Problems of Shells of Revolution"
Thursday, April 20, 2006 - 3:30 to 5:00 pm
ACES 6.304
Abstract:
We consider the eigenvalue problem of thin shells of revolution.We demonstrate through numerical experiments (FEM) that the shell geometry plays an important role also in the eigenvalue problems. For the special case of clamped cylinder we analyze the smallest eigenvalue as a function of the shell thickness t, the asymptotic behavior of the respective eigenfunctions, and how the different displacements components and parts of the energy scale in t. As a consequence, we are able to single out the numerical difficulties of the problem, which, surprisingly for a bending inhibited problem, include the presence of locking.
Joint work with Lorenzo de Beirao Vega and Juhani Pitkaranta.
ICES Seminar:
Dr. Carmen Reyes
CentroGeo, Mexico
"Geo-Cybernetics: a New Avenue of Research"
Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - 2:00 to 3:30 pm
ACES 6.304
Abstract:
The term "Sgeo-cybernetics" was first proposed in 2005 by Reyes et.al.(Cartographica, volume 41, issue 1). In short, the adoption of a cyberneticperspective in societal problems where geographic knowledge and information plays a key role has shown to be a fruitful avenue of research in Geomatics. The need to use geo-spatial knowledge and modeling resources in order to respond to complex problems posed by society requires an approach that is user-centered and demand-driven, building a bridge between science and society. During the last seven years, CentroGeo has advanced on empirical results andmethodological and theoretical frameworks around three concepts: cybercartography, complex solution in geomatics and collective mental maps. The cybernetic essence in the empirical and theoretical development of these three concepts that are intertwined has been one of the key elements in the advancement of this innovative approach. The conclusion is that it is worthwhile to continue exploring theinterrelationship between cybernetics and geomatics expecting to advance on an initial theoretical framework for a comprehensive avenue of research that has been named as geo-cybernetics. (Joint work with Elvia Martinez)
Dr. Reyes is currently the General Director of CentroGeo, a Mexican research institution whose main focus is the application of Geographic Information Sciences to build a bridge between science and society. Dr. Reyes is one of the main authors of the recently published book "Cybercartography, Theory and Practice", Elsevier 2005. http://www.centrogeo.org.mx/
Speaking of Biology:
Neurobiology Seminar Series
Ian Davison, Ph.D.
Duke University Medical Center
"Sparse and selective odorant responses in mammalian olfactory bulb."
Friday, April 14 - 12:00 p.m. - MBB 1.210
Host: Dr. Rick Aldrich
EDGE Distinguished Lecture Series:
Christine Julien, Electrical and Computer
Engineering, Director, Mobile and Pervasive Computing Group
Thursday, April 13, 1:30pm, ACES 2.402
"Ubiquitous Computing Middleware: Application Sessions for Dynamic Environments"
Host: Suzanne Barber, Director, EDGE Center
Abstract:
Building applications for any distributed environment has always been a difficult task. Introducing the demands of mobile and pervasive devices such as dynamic connections and limited resources are further increasing these software engineering burdens. These inherent complexities are coupled with usage trends that are demanding applications be developed and deployed at alarming rates. The expertise required to rapidly build robust applications in these environments is expensive and rare. This talk will discuss the benefits of using middleware solutions to bridge the gap between the applications demanded by consumers and the capabilities of software engineers to produce those applications quickly and correctly.
Middleware solutions in general abstract the complexities of an environment to simplify programming sophisticated applications. The talk will focus on a particular middleware that enables dynamic resource usage by users embedded in a pervasive computing environment. The middleware?s underlying computational model demonstrates how a rigorous formalization of a middleware?s operation can communicate the middleware?s behavior to application developers who employ it. Finally, a set of applications that use the middleware exhibit its potential impact on real-world situations.
The talk will also provide an introduction to the Mobile and Pervasive Computing Group (MPC) within EDGE and give an overview of our current projects and research results.
Speaking of Biology:
Marine Science Institute-Thesis
Terry Palmer
"Initial Effects of Opening Packery Channel on Estuarine Macrofauna in Corpus Christi Bay."
2:00 p.m. - Visitors Center Auditorium at the Marine Science Institute, Port Aransas, TX
For directions to the Marine Science Institute, go to:
http://msi40.utmsi.utexas.edu/institute/maps.htm
Thursday, April 13
Speaking of Biology:
Hispanic Center of Excellence Multicultural Health Research Symposium
Distinguished Pharmacy Faculty Seminar
Robert L. Talbert, Pharm.D.
SmithKline Centennial Professor and Head, Division of Pharmacotherapy,
UT-Austin
"Stroke Prevention in Atrial Fibrillation: A Paradigm for
Interdisciplinary Research."
Tuesday, April 11 - 4:00 p.m. - PHR 3.106
Speaking of Biology:
Hispanic Center of Excellence Multicultural Health Research Symposium
Keynote Scientific Lecture
William E. Evans, Pharm.D.
Director and CEO, St. Jude Children's Hospital
"Pharmacogenomics: Moving Toward Personalized Drug Therapy."
Tuesday, April 11 - 11:00 a.m. - PHR 3.106
IGERT Workshop:
Rasmus Nielsen
April 9-11, 2006
Rasmus Nielsen will be visiting from April 9-11. He works on a variety of topics related to population genetics, comparative genomics, and methods for detecting positive selection from protein coding sequences. For more information, you can view his lab website at: http://www.binf.ku.dk/~rasmus/webpage/ras.html. He will be giving a workshop for graduate students, sponsored by the IGERT program, on using codon models and likelihood ratio tests to detect positive selection in protein coding sequences. He and Ziheng Yang have developed the most commonly used models and methods in this area. His workshop will focus on these topics, and there will be a computer lab where he will demonstrate how to use PAML to implement these models. I'll send around an exact schedule for the workshop when we have one.
His visit will be a short one, but he may have some time for individual meetings. If you have any questions, contact me (alverson@mail.utexas.edu) or Tracy Heath (tracyh@mail.utexas.edu).
Slides of presentation are located at: http://ccbb.biosci.utexas.edu/IGERT/seminars.html
Environmental Science Institute's Outreach Lecture Series:
"Fighting Deadly Diseases: Strategies for Prediction and Containment"
Dr. Lauren A. Meyers, Section of Integrative Biology at UT-Austin
Friday, April 7, 7:00 PM CST
Reception and activities 5:45 pm, come early and see the exhibits!
Welch Hall (WEL), Rm 2.224
DESCRIPTION: Are you concerned about the bird flu? What would happen if a case appeared in the US? Emerging global public health challenges like bird flu and SARS require innovative methods to understand and control the spread of new diseases. Dr. Lauren A. Meyers will discuss how strategies for stopping the spread of deadly diseases can be developed by creating mathematical models of the transmission of diseases, using these models to predict the spread of disease, and assessing control strategies such as quarantine, travel restrictions, and vaccinations. In 2004, Dr. Meyers was named one of the Top 100 Global Innovators under the age of 35 by the MIT Technology Review. For more information, see the website posted below.
FOR TEACHERS: Teachers who sign in at the lectures receive 2 hours professional development for attending, as well as a complimentary CD-ROM of the lecture, which includes lesson plans, TEKS correlations, and more!
SCHEDULE: Friday, April 7
5:45-6:45 pm: Reception outside Welch 2.224, on the UT-Austin campus. Exhibits. Refreshments!
7:00-8:00 pm: "Fighting Deadly Diseases: Strategies for Prediction and Containment"
by Dr. Lauren A. Meyers in Welch 2.224.
8:00-8:15 pm: Question and answer session.
For maps, and more info, including a short video of Dr. Meyers, see:
http://www.esi.utexas.edu/outreach/ols/lectures/Meyers/index.php
For more information about bird flu outbreaks, see: http://www.nature.com/news/infocus/birdflu.html
FREE WEBCAST: For those that cannot attend, the lecture will be broadcast live over the Internet at 7:00 pm CST. Streaming video of the presentation will be available as well as the PowerPoint presentation. We recommend linking to the site 15 minutes early to allow time for downloading the presentation. You will be able to send questions to the speaker in real time. For more information see: http://www.esi.utexas.edu/outreach/ols/lectures/Meyers/index.php
The lecture series is presented by the University of Texas at Austin Environmental Science Institute and the Jackson School of Geosciences, and co-sponsored by ConocoPhillips and the SBC Foundation.
UTCS Architecture/ECE Distinguished Lecture Series:
Arvind/Massachusetts Institute of Technology
"Is Hardware Innovation Over?"
Monday, April 17, 2006 at 3:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. in ACES 2.302
Host: Derek Chiou & Co-Sponsor by the ECE Distinguished Lecture Series (http://www.ece.utexas.edu/faculty/seminar/distinguished_lecture_series.html)
Refreshments: 4:45 p.m. in the ACES Connector Lobby
Talk Abstract:
Does the spread of multicore architectures mean the demise of Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC)? Power constrained, handheld devices may be one of the most important economic drivers for the semiconductor industry in the coming decades. Will the future cell phone functionality be delivered primarily through multi-core processors? Or will it be through reconfigurable FPGAs or a system composed of heterogeneous blocks? We will describe how it is possible to synthesize,quickly and efficiently, large and complex SoC's from a library of microarchitectural IP blocks, including embedded PowerPC models, DSPs and a variety of specialized hardware blocks (radios, MPEG4 decoders, ...). Our project, will provide, among other things, PowerPC 'gateware' for othersto use, and will shed light on how IP blocks should be written to be easily modifiable and reusable.
Speaker Bio:
Arvind is the Johnson Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at MIT where he has been since 1979. In 1992, his group, in collaboration with Motorola, built the Monsoon dataflow machines and its associated software. A dozen of these machines were built and installed at Los Alamos National Labs and other universities, before Monsoon was retired to the Computer Museum in California.
In 2000, Arvind took a two-year leave of absence to start Sandburst, a fabless semiconductor company to produce a chip set for 10G-bit Ethernet routers. In 2003, Arvind co-founded Bluespec Inc., an EDA company to produce a set of tools for high-level synthesis. He currently serves on the board of both Sandburst and Bluespec.
In 2001, Dr. R. S. Nikhil and Arvind published the book "Implicit parallel programming in pH". Arvind's current research interests are synthesis and verification of large digital systems described using Guarded Atomic Actions; and Memory Models and Cache Coherence Protocols for parallelarchitectures and languages.
The Computer Architecture Seminar Series is sponsored jointly by the Departments of Computer Science and Electrical & Computer Engineering and is supported by a grant from AMD.
UT Biomedical Engineering Seminar:
Thursday, April 6, 3:30pm ACE 2.302
Dr. Adam Arkin UC Berkeley
Adversity Diversity and the Dynamicsand Evolution of Cellular Networks:
from Natural to Synthetic Networks
In times of adversity or stress organisms are forced to adapt or evolve to survive. In either case, the population may diversify its response; nongenetically in the former case and by mutation in the latter. Diversification may be shown toasdfasdf be an optimal survival strategy in certain types of environments and with particular sensing capabilities. Here we explore the molecular mechanisms and cellular network designs that adapt an organism to its particular niche and which control population diversity across the different time scales of adaptation and evolution. Using comparative genomics, quantitative measurement, and dynamical modeling, we examine the evolution and dynamics ofbacterial signal transduction with detailed examples from B. subtilis stress response. We also discuss the implications of evolved networks designs for the engineering of synthetic ones by examining progress in the design of a tumor killing bacterium.
Dr. Arkin is Associate Professor of Bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley; Adjunct Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco; Faculty Scientist in the Physical Biosciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; and Director of the Virtual Institute for Microbial Stress and Survival. He is also an assistant investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He received his Ph.D. degree in physical chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He then pursued postdoctoral studies at Stanford University in chemistry with John Ross and in developmental biology with Harley McAdams and Lucy Shapiro.
Host: Dr. Orly Alter
For information about previous seminars, please visit the archives of past seminars.
last update, May 29, 2007
http://ccbb.biosci.utexas.edu/seminars.html
The Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics
The University of Texas at Austin
ACES 3.422
Austin, TX 78712