September 3 
Wednesday 1:30pm
369 Link Hall

Dr. Jin Li

Title: Utility Maximization for P2P Applications and Its Application in Optimizing Multi-party Conferencing

Speaker:  Dr. Jin Li, Microsoft Research 

Abstract:  Peer-to-Peer (P2P) applications are tremendously popular on today's Internet, and applications like file sharing perform well even with thousands or millions of peers. In the first part of the talk, we survey various infrastructure in the internet: the data
center, the CDN, and the end user. We show that P2P is an essential component to support massive data delivery in the Internet, such as IPTV.

In the second part of the talk, we investigate the problem of optimized P2P based multiparty video conference. We study the problem of utility maximization in P2P applications, in which aggregate application-specific utilities are maximized by running distributed algorithms on P2P nodes. Using recent discoveries in optimal tree structure for P2P content delivery, we develop a new formulation for multicast utility maximization problem.
This formulation is unique in the sense that it not only eliminates some mathematical difficulties as compared to previous formulations, but also leads to practical solutions. We develop Primal and Primal-dual distributed algorithms to maximize the aggregate utility. We prove that these algorithms converge to the optimal solution of the utility maximization problem exponentially fast. Furthermore, they can be implemented by utilizing only the end-to-end delay measurement between
P2P nodes. As such, it can be readily deployed on today's Internet. To support this claim, we have implemented the Primal-dual algorithm to design a peer-assisted multi-party conferencing system and evaluated its performance through actual experiments on a small scale test bed, as well as on the Internet. 

Bio: 
Dr. Jin Li is currently a principal researcher managing the communication system subgroup at Microsoft Research Redmond. He has worked in a diversified research field, ranging from audio/image/video compression, virtual environment and graphic compression, audio/video streaming, realtime audio/video conferencing, peer-to-peer content delivery, distributed storage, etc.. He received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Tsinghua University (Beijing, China) in 1994. From 1994 to 1996, he served as a Research Associate at the University of Southern California (USC). From 1996 to 1999, he was a member of the technical staff at the Sharp Laboratories of America (SLA), (Camas, WA), and represented the interests of SLA in the JPEG2000 and MPEG4 standardization efforts. He was a researcher/project leader at Microsoft Research Asia (Beijing, China) from 1999 to 2000.
      Dr. Li has 90+ referred conference and journal papers. Dr. Li is an Area Editor for the Journal of Visual Communication and Image Representation (Academic Press) and Journal of P2P networking applications. He was an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Multimedia. He is a senior member of IEEE. He was the recipient of the 1994 Ph.D. thesis award from
Tsinghua University and the 1998 Young Investigator Award from SPIE Visual Communication and Image Processing.

September 17 
Wednesday 1:30pm
369 Link Hall

Prof. Nader Engheta

Title:  Circuits with Light at the Nanoscale:
           Metananocircuits and Metactronics 

Speaker:  Professor Nader Engheta, Nedwill Ramsey Professor     University of Pennsylvania, Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Abstract:  Imagine circuit elements so small that you could fit many of them in a cell! What could you do with such optical nanocircuits? Would you be able to use them in wireless gadgets at nanoscales, like a “nanoradio”, that may connect our nanoworlds? Could these tiny optical nanocircuits be coupled with biological entities and thus provide nanoscale sensors? The fields of metamaterials and plasmonic optics may provide road maps for such futuristic nanocircuits and wireless nanosystems and sensors. We have been developing and investigating some of the fundamental concepts and key features of metaplasmonic structures, devices, and circuits. These components may be envisioned as a tapestry of nanostructures of sizes much smaller than the wavelengths of light. This field, for which I have coined the term metactronics, addresses metamaterial-inspired optical nanocircuits and systems (N. Engheta, Science, 317, 1698-1702, 2007). . In my group, a variety of ideas for nanocircuit functions, optical antennas and sensors for beam shaping and photonic wireless at the nanoscale, optical nanoscopy, nanospectrometer for molecular spectroscopy, cloaking of particles, nanotagging and barcodes based on these optical circuits are being studied. In this talk, I will give an overview of these studies, present insights into these findings, and forecast future ideas and road maps in these areas.

Bio:  Nader Engheta is the H. Nedwill Ramsey Professor of Electrical and Systems Engineering, and Professor of Bioengineering, at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his B.S. degree in EE from the University of Tehran, and his M.S and Ph.D. degrees in EE from Caltech. Selected as one of the Scientific American Magazine 50 Leaders in Science and Technology in 2006 for developing the concept of optical lumped nanocircuits, he is a Guggenheim Fellow, an IEEE Third Millennium Medalist, IEEE Fellow, Optical Society of America Fellow, and the recipient of the 2008 George H. Heilmeier Award for Excellence in Research from UPenn, the Fulbright Naples Chair Award, NSF Presidential Young Investigator award, the UPS Foundation Distinguished Educator term Chair, and several teaching awards including the Christian F. and Mary R. Lindback Foundation Award and S. Reid Warren, Jr. Award. His current research activities span a broad range of areas including metamaterials and plasmonics, nanooptics and nanophotonics, biologically-inspired sensing and imaging, miniaturized antennas and nanoantennas, physics and reverse-engineering of polarization vision in nature, mathematics of fractional operators, and physics of fields and waves phenomena. He has given numerous keynote, invited, and plenary talks on these topics. He has co-edited the book entitled “Metamaterials: Physics and Engineering Explorations” by Wiley-IEEE Press, 2006.

October 1
Wednesday 1:30pm
369 Link Hall

 Prof. James Llinas        Adjunct Professor

Title: Developing Test and Evaluation Approaches for Information Fusion Processes

Speaker:  Professor James Llinas, Research Professor, Executive Director
Center for Multisource Information Fusion
State University of New York at Buffalo

Abstract:  This talk reviews and summarizes our evolving research project that has specified a formalized approach to the design of a generalized Test and Evaluation (T&E) methodology for Data and Information-Fusion processes. The approach shows that the design of a T&E process for any multi-source or multi-platform fusion-based system involves the design of a separate data fusion process involving association and estimation functions for T&E purposes per se. Our publications to date have developed the theoretical and architectural groundings for this new T&E process, and several case studies have been carried out to show sample implementations of the principles of this new methodology. In addition, some limited-objective parametric experiments have also been carried out that show the application of the new evaluation methodology for typical tactical aircraft problems. In the current talk, we summarize and cumulate the findings of these past works, and show our most recent research efforts related to extending the design and application of this methodology to higher-levels of data fusion capability.

Bio:   Dr. Llinas brings over 35 years of experience in multisource information processing and data fusion technology to his research, teaching, and business development activities. He is an internationally-recognized expert in sensor, data, and information fusion, co-authored the first integrated book on Multisensor Data Fusion, and has lectured internationally for over 30 years on this topic. In addition to the original book, Dr. Llinas is also the co-editor of the "Handbook of Multisensor Data Fusion" published in 2001. Dr. Llinas is a Technical Advisor to the Defense Department's Joint Directors of Laboratories Data Fusion Group, the only US DoD technology oversight group for Data Fusion, a position he has held for 20+ years. He has consulted extensively all over the world and is a recipient of the Joseph Mignona Award (1999), given to one person per year by the Data Fusion Group as signifying lifelong contributions to the field of Data Fusion.  

October 15
Wednesday 1:30pm
369 Link Hall

Dr. Nada Golmie

Title:  Seamless and Secure Mobility: Challenges and Solutions

Speaker:  Dr. Nada Golmie, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

ABSTRACT:  It is evident that future networks will be made up of a combination of network technologies including cellular, wireless, and wired technologies stitched together using billing and roaming mechanisms. While no single networking technology is predominant today, no single technology will prevail in the future either, simply because different technologies satisfy different coverage area, mobility, and data rate requirements. The day is just around the corner where there will be contiguous Wi-Fi coverage in dense metro areas and Wi-Max, 2.5G or 3G in more outlying areas. However, before this vision is realized, several technological barriers must be overcome. This talk explores some of the main challenges and opportunities with seamless mobility. A review of key industry activities and latest research trends on the topic is provided. The talk will also present insights into these findings, and forecast future ideas and road maps in these areas.

Biography

Nada Golmie received her M.S. from Syracuse University and Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Maryland at College Park. Since 1993, she has been a research engineer in the advanced networking technologies division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). She is currently the manager of the high-speed network technologies group. Her research in media access control and protocols for wireless networks led to over 100 papers presented at professional conferences, journals, and contributed to international standard organizations and industry led consortia. She is the author of Coexistence in Wireless Networks: Challenges and System-Level Solutions in the Unlicensed Bands (Cambridge University Press, 2006). 

October 29 
Wednesday 1:30pm
369 Link Hall

Dr. Guna Seetharaman

Title:  Peano Curves and * - Trees for Computations on Large Images

Speaker:  Dr. Guna Seetharaman, Computing Technology Applications Branch, Air force Research Laboratory

Abstract:  There is has been a renewed interest in heterogeneous computing architecture, stimulated in part by the increased availability of graphics engines designed for video games, and high density FPGAs all designed to be fitted on standard desktop PCs. These architectural aspects of these processors differ significantly from that of the main host resulting in a data-reorganization step in a sequential computation designed to exploit the available resources. In addition, the multi-core and multi-threaded operations of the CPUs pose newer challenges. All these dictate a need for representation of large data that captures both locality in data and recursive decomposition of the data domain to suit divide and conquer paradigms. Peano curves -- a family of space filling curves that can be embedded in two and higher-dimensional bounded spaces – offer an attractive set of features. Image data compression and content based image retrieval among others have been tried successfully using a variety of tree-representations. The presentation will highlight the features, and the insights based on case studies.

1Disclaimer: All views expressed in this presentation are that of the author and his collaborators, and do not represent or reflect the policies and priorities of his employer – US Air Force, Department Defense etc.

Short Bio:   Dr. Guna Seetharaman, a member of the Science & Engineering personnel, is a Senior Computing Architectures Engineer, Computing Technology Applications Branch, AFRL, Rome, NY. Dr. Seetharaman spent 20 years as a professor of computer science and engineering, at the Air Force Institute of Technology and University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He was also a CNRS Invited professor at University of Paris XI on multiple tenures between1998-2005. He established and successfully ran the Computer Vision Laboratory, and Intelligent Robotics Laboratory (co-established) at The University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He also participated in the DARPA Grand Challenge as a charter member of Team CajunBot. He led the LiDAR data processing and obstacle detection efforts in Team CajunBot, demonstrated in 2005 and 2007 Grand Challenges. He has published more than 120 peer reviewed articles in: Computer Vision, low-altitude aerial imagery, SIMD-Parallel Computing, VLSI-signal processing, 3D Displays, Nano-Technology, micro-optics, and 3D Video analysis. He co-organized the DOE/ONR/NSF Sponsored Second International Workshop on Foundations of Decision and Information Fusion, in 1996 (Washington DC), and the IEEE Sixth International Workshop on Computer Architecture for Machine Perception, New Orleans, 2003. He guest edited IEEE COMPUTER special issue devoted to Unmanned Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles, Dec 2006. He also guest-edited a special issue of the EURASIP Journal on Embedded Computing in the topics of Intelligent Vehicles. He is an active member of the IEEE, and ACM. He is also a member of Tau Beta Pi, Eta Kappa Nu and Upsilon Pi Epsilon. He is a Paul Harris Fellow of the Rotary International. Dr. Seetharaman’s research interests focus on computational science and engineering, and advanced computing architectures. His efforts cut across high performance computing applications, embedded computing, computer vision, persistent, ubiquitous and net-centric image exploitation, micro-optics, and algorithm optimization.

November 12 Wednesday 1:30pm            369 Link Hall

 Prof. Sadasiva M. Rao

Title: Advanced Electromagnetic Solvers for Interconnect and Package Modeling – New Developments

Speaker:  Sadasiva M. Rao, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama

Abstract: In this work, we present an overview of the full-wave electromagnetic solution methods to obtain the parameters of interest as related to electronic interconnects and packaging industry. The most common parameters of interest are cross talk and signal degradation. Two of the most common solution methods adopted by the industry to tackle the complex signal distribution network associated with modern chip technology are a) the finite element method and b) the moment method. However, our research focuses mainly on the moment method techniques and we highlight the advances made by our research team in this field. The structures considered for analysis may be multi-layer planar structures with several metallic and non-metallic parts including via connections.

About the Speaker
Sadasiva M. Rao received the Bachelors degree in electrical communication engineering from Osmania University in 1974, Masters degree in microwave engineering from Indian Institute of Sciences in 1976, and Ph.D. degree with specialization in electromagnetic theory from University of Mississippi in 1980.

Dr. Rao served as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Rochester Institute of Technology from 1980 to 1985, Senior Scientist at Osmania University from 1985 to 1987, and currently, as a Professor in the Electrical Engineering Department, Auburn University. He also held visiting Professorships at University of Houston, Osmania University, and Indian Institute of Science.

Dr. Rao worked extensively in the area of numerical modeling techniques as applied to Electromagnetic/Acoustic Scattering. He and his team at the University of Mississippi, were the original researchers to develop the planar triangular patch model and to solve the problem of EM scattering by arbitrary shaped conducting bodies. For this work, he received the best paper award for the period 1979 - 1981 from SUMMA Foundation. He published/presented over 125 papers in international journals/conferences. For his contributions in numerical electromagnetic problems, he was awarded the status of Fellow of IEEE. Further, he was recognized as a HIGHLY CITED RESEARCHER by Thomson ISI in 2001.

Dr. Rao's research interests are in the area of numerical methods applied to antennas and scattering.

November 19
Wednesday 1:30pm
369 Link Hall 


 

Prof. Rama Chellappa

Title: Looking for Patterns in Video

Speaker:  Professor Rama Chellappa, Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering and UMIACS, University of Maryland, College Park, MD

Abstract: With the ubiquitous presence of inexpensive video cameras, new challenges to video-based pattern recognition problems are emerging. Video-based pattern recognition problems have applications in homeland security, healthcare, video indexing and anomaly detection. The single most important feature that distinguishes video-based pattern recognition problems from still-image based recognition problems is the dynamical nature of patterns in videos. This creates new intellectual challenges and provides opportunities for novel approaches.
       In this talk, I will first discuss some of the general principles for designing robust video-based pattern recognition systems using statistical methods. I will then discuss the design of statistical parametric classifiers for video-based face recognition and recognition of bee dances using appearance, shape and behavior encoded particle filters. Algorithms for gait-based human identification and human activity recognition using statistical inference on manifolds will then be presented. A method for compensating for the variations in the rate at which patterns evolve is presented with applications to unsupervised clustering of video sequences. Finally, we discuss some theoretical issues and practical problems that remain to be addressed in this area. 

Bio: Professor Chellappa received the M.S.E.E. and Ph.D. Degrees in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, in 1978 and 1981 respectively. Since 1991, he has been a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and an Affiliate Professor of Computer Science at University of Maryland (UMD), College Park. He is also affiliated with the Center for Automation Research (Director) and the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (Permanent member). Recently, he was named a Minta Martin Professor of Engineering. Over the past 27 years, he has published numerous book chapters, peer-reviewed journal and conference papers. He has co-authored and edited many books in visual surveillance, biometrics, MRFs and image processing. His current research interests are in face and gait analysis, 3D modeling from video, surveillance and monitoring, hyper spectral processing, and computer vision. Prof. Chellappa served as the associate editor of four IEEE Transactions and as the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine. Intelligence. He served as a member of the IEEE Signal Processing Society’s Board of Governors and as its Vice President of Awards and Membership. He has received several awards, including an NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award, four IBM Faculty Development Awards, an Excellence in Teaching Award from USC School of Engineering, a Technical Achievement Award from the IEEE Signal Processing Society, two conference paper awards from ICPR 1992 and 2006, and the Outstanding Innovator Award. He also received the Faculty Outstanding Research Award from the College of Engineering and the Meritorious Service Award from the IEEE Signal Processing Society. He received the Meritorious Service Award and has been selected to receive the Technical Achievement Award from the IEEE Computer Society. He was elected as a Distinguished Faculty Research Fellow and as a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher at UMD. He is now serving as a Distinguished Lecturer of IEEE Signal Processing Society and serving a 2-year as the President of IEEE Biometrics Council. He is a Fellow of IEEE and the International Association for Pattern Recognition. He has served as a General and Technical Program Chair/Co-Chair for several IEEE international and national conferences and workshops. He is a Golden Core Member of IEEE Computer Society.

December 3
Wednesday 1:30pm
369 Link Hall

Prof. Jaideep Vaidya

Title:  The Role Mining Problem - A Formal Perspective

Speaker:  Dr. Jaideep Vaidya, Assistant Professor 
Rutgers University

Abstract:   Role based access control is well accepted as the standard best
practice for access control within applications and organizations.
Role engineering, the task of defining roles and associating
permissions to them, is essential to realize the full benefits of the
role-based access control paradigm. The essential question is how to
devise a complete and correct set of roles -- this depends on how you
define goodness/interestingness (when is a role good/interesting?) We
define the role mining problem (RMP) as the problem of discovering an
optimal set of roles from existing user permissions. In addition to
the above basic RMP, we introduce two different variations of the RMP,
called the delta-approx RMP and the Minimal Noise RMP that have
pragmatic implications. Our main contribution is to formally define
RMP, analyze its theoretical bounds, and present heuristic solutions
to find the optimal set of roles based on subset enumeration. We place
this in the framework of matrix decomposition which is applicable to
many other domains including text mining.


Bio: Dr. Jaideep Vaidya is an Assistant Professor at Rutgers University. He
received his Masters and Ph.D. at Purdue University and his Bachelors
degree at the University of Mumbai. His research interests are in Data
Mining, Privacy, Security, and Information Sharing. He has published
over 30 papers in international conferences and archival journals, and
has received two best paper awards from the premier conferences in
data mining and databases. He is also the recipient of a NSF Career
Award and is a member of the ACM, and the IEEE Computer Society.