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May 2012
School of Computing Science Public Events
2pm» Ph.D. THESIS PROPOSAL ORAL EXAMINATION - Usman Raza Alim- Time:
- 2:00pm - 3:00pm
- Description:
- Ph.D. THESIS PROPOSAL ORAL EXAMINATION
Usman Raza Alim
B.S., University of Rochester, Rochester NY, USA, 2001
M.S., Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester NY, USA, 2007
Tuesday, May 8th, 2012 2:00 p.m. TASC1 9204 West
FAST AND ACCURATE SOLUTION OF THE HOMOGENEOUS POISSON EQUATION ON THE
BODY-CENTERED CUBIC LATTICE
The body-centered cubic (BCC) lattice is a sub-lattice of the Cartesian cubic (CC) lattice that, owing to its greater isotropy, leads to more accurate reconstructions of sampled scalar field data as compared to a CC lattice of similar density. The gradient of the scalar field can also be accurately recovered by convolving the point samples with derivative filters before applying the reconstruction algorithm. Discrete convolution operations on the BCC lattice are efficiently implemented in the Fourier domain using the fast Fourier transform (FFT).
In this work, we propose to extend this set of BCC processing tools so as to solve the homogeneous Poisson equation within the unit cube. In particular, we analyze the problem in the Fourier domain to identify the solution operator that needs to be discretized in a manner similar to the gradient operator. In order to apply the discrete convolution, we further propose to seek an efficient way to implement the multidimensional discrete sine transform (MDST) on the BCC lattice.
Ph.D. Thesis Proposal Oral Examining Committee:
Dr. Torsten Moller, Senior Supervisor
Dr. Steve Ruuth, Supervisor
- Description:
- Location: Rm 5380 Surrey Campus
Seminar: "Information and Communications Technology for Ubiquitous-Healthcare"
Prof. M. Jamal Deen FRSC
ECE Department, McMaster University, Hamilton ON L8S 4K1, Canada (jamal@mcmaster.ca)
Over the past century, in most developed and rapidly developing countries, there has been a continual increase in life expectancy primarily due to improvements in public health, nutrition and medicine. However, this is now coupled with aging population demographics and falling birth rates, which when combined, are expected to significantly burden the socio-economic well-being of many of these countries. In fact, never before in human history have we been confronted with such a large aging population, nor have we developed solid, cost-effective solutions for the healthcare and social needs and well-being of the elderly.
In our work, we are using advances in information technology, wireless communication, web-based technologies and autonomics, to develop new, smart and cost-effective solutions for the health wellness of the elderly. Such a solution would enable elderly to lead independent lifestyles in their own homes while being continuously monitored for the early detection of symptoms, so diseases can be treated earlier than in later stages as is currently done; to promote health wellness; as well as to treat chronic illnesses. In particular, through a few examples, we will discuss our ongoing work and the challenges we have uncovered, plus some of the research issues we are pursuing. In particular, we will focus on the critical role of information and communication technologies (ICT) in developing innovative, low-cost and high impacting solutions to the pending elderly demographic crisis.
M. Jamal Deen was born in Georgetown, Guyana, South America. He completed a Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A. His Ph.D. dissertation was on the design and modeling of a new CARS spectrometer for dynamic temperature measurements and combustion optimization in rocket and jet engines, and was sponsored and used by NASA, Cleveland, USA. He is currently Professor and Senior Canada Research Chair in Information Technology at McMaster University. His current research interests are nano-electronics and opto-electronics and their emerging applications to life and environmental sciences. His research record includes more than 440 peer-reviewed articles (about 20% are invited), 1 textbook on “Silicon Photonics – Fundamentals and Devices”, 15 invited book chapters and 6 awarded patents, all of which were used in industry. He has also successfully transferred powerful engineering and circuit models to numerous companies in Canada, USA and Japan.
Dr. Deen was a Fulbright Scholar from 1980 to 1982 and an American Vacuum Society Scholar from 1983 to 1984. He has won the 2002 Callinan Award and the 2011 Electronics and Photonics Division Award from the Electrochemical Society. In addition, he has won the highly prestigious Humboldt Research Award in 2006 and the Eadie Medal from the Royal Society of Canada in 2008, the IEEE Fessenden Medal in 2011, and seven best paper awards. Dr. Deen other honors include being elected a Fellow of The Royal Society of Canada (FRSC) - The Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada – which is the highest honor for academics and scholars in Canada; a Fellow of the American Physical Society (FAPS); a Fellow of the Electrochemical Society (FECS); a Fellow of The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (FIEEE); and an Honorary Doctor of Engineering from the University of Waterloo.
- Time:
- 10:03am - 11:03am
- Description:
- Ph.D. THESIS PROPOSAL ORAL EXAMINATION
Phoung Dao
B.Sc., Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, 2006
M.Sc., Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada, 2009
Friday, May 11, 2012 10:30 a.m. TASC1 9204 West
COMPUTATIONAL METHODS FOR FUNCTIONAL MODULE DISCOVERY FROM PROTEIN INTERACTION NETWORKS
Recent studies have suggested that molecular interaction networks within cells could be decomposed into different subnetworks of molecules that are involved in common biological processes. Such subnetworks are known as pathways, protein complexes or, in general, as functional modules. Many computational methods have also been developed to discover functional modules based on various hypotheses. For example, network motifs are abundant subnetworks in natural networks but not random networks with similar global properties. And subnetwork markers are connected subnetworks from protein interaction networks in which member gene expressions correlate with the labels of the samples.
In this research, I propose novel computational methods for identifying functional modules which utilize confidence scores from protein interactions. Since there are many false positives and false negatives in the current binary protein interaction networks, utilizing confidence scores of these interactions could result in more reliable functional modules. I also suggest more efficient algorithms in terms of running time for discovering subnetwork markers.
Ph.D. Thesis Proposal Oral Examining Committee:
Dr. Martin Ester, Co-Sr. Supervisor
Dr. Cenk Sahinalp, Co- Sr. Supervisor
- Time:
- 2:00pm - 3:00pm
- Description:
- Ph.D. THESIS PROPOSAL ORAL EXAMINATION
Navid Imani
B.Sc., BIHE, Tehran, Iran, 2005
M.Sc., Simon Fraser University, Canada, 2008
Thursday, May 17, 2012 2:00 p.m. TASC1 9204 West
PARAMETERIZED TRACTABILITY AND KERNELIZATION OF NP-HARD PROBLEMS ON UNIT DISK GRAPHS
Parameterized complexity can be regarded as two-dimensional generalization of P vs. NP where while estimating the running time in addition to the overall input size n, the effects of a secondary measurement that captures additional problem-relevant information, is also taken into account. An effective approach in fixed-parameter algorithmics is that before starting a cost-intensive exact algorithm to solve a fixed-parameter tractable problem characterized by a parameter k, a polynomial-time pre-processing phase is executed to shrink the input data of size n to a smaller instance in a process called kernelization. The solution for the original input then can be reconstructed in polynomial time in n using a solution for the shrunk instance.
The parameterized tractability and existence of small kernels have been well-studied for different NP-hard problem in the minor-closed classes of graphs. However, numerous complications remain if the problem is defined on other graph classes. Geometric intersection graphs are some of the common inputs arising from applications that are not minor-closed. We propose frameworks for efficient kernelization of problems on unit disk graphs and other geometric intersection graphs through introducing a few geometrical parameters that capture the structural properties of the underlying graph. Our proposed frameworks can potentially be extended to characterize the obstructions to kernelization of many NP-hard problems on unit disk graphs.
Ph.D. Thesis Proposal Oral Examining Committee:
Dr. Qianping Gu, Senior Supervisor
Dr. Pavol Hell, Supervisor
- Description:
- Last day for graduate students to enroll through self-service (late enrollment deadline)
Last day to drop with no notation on transcript
Last day to drop with 100% refund of tuition and fees
Last day to change from credit to audit grade basis
Last date to opt out or change your coverage in the Graduate Health Plan
Grad tuition and fees (including co-op practicum fees) are due and payable. Every month after this date, a 2% penalty will be calculated and posted to your student account.
- Description:
- CS Research Seminar Guest Lecture May 24, 14:00
Location: TASC 1 Building, Room 9204 West, SFU Burnaby Campus
Opencast Matterhorn: an open source lecture recording system
Prof. Dr. Oliver Vornberger
Dept. of Mathematics & Computer Science
University of Osnabrück visiting
Center for Teaching and Learning Technologies
University of British Columbia
Host: Uwe Glässer
ABSTRACT
Opencast Matterhorn is a lecture recording system, that automates the process of recording, editing and distributing of videos captured in the classroom. It has been developed by 13 American and European universities. The major contributions came from Berkeley (USA), Cambridge (England), Zürich (Switzerland) and Osnabrück (Germany).
With regard to hardware, there has to be a remote controlled camera in the lecture hall, a conventionel PC with a mpeg-2 encoder card, a wireless microphone, and a VGA2USB-converter, attached to a VGA splitter between teacher's laptop and beamer. Installed on one or more servers somewhere in the network is the Matterhorn software, that controls the post processing, which may be individually tailered to the needs of the institution.
The presentation will elaborate on the benefits of lecture recordings from teacher's and student's point of view. It will also show the distribution of videos to web pages with the embedded Matterhorn player as well as to iTunes U.
BIO
Oliver Vornberger, born 1951, studied computer science at the University of Dortmund, got his PH.D from the University of Paderborn and spent a year as a post doc at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1988 he joined the University of Osnabrück, where he became managing director of the computer science institute and founding member of the center for virtual teaching (virtUOS). His interests are in web publishing and E-learning technologies.
CONTACT
Prof. Dr. Oliver Vornberger
Center for Teaching and Learning Technologies
University of British Columbia at Vancouver
231-1961 East Mall, Vancouver, V6T 1Z4, Canada
Email: oliver.vornberger@ubc.ca
Phone: 001-604-8273877
- Time:
- 10:00am - 11:00am
- Description:
- Ph.D. Thesis Seminar
Feng Wang
Master Of Engineering, Tsinghua University, 2005
Bachelor of Engineering, Tsinghua University, 2002
RELIABLE AND ENERGY-EFFICIENT DATA COLLECTION IN WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS
In recent years, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have attracted significant attentions from both academia and industry, and are widely proposed for a broad range of applications, where data collection is often a core service to facilitate sensed data being forwarded to a central base station for further processing. Powered by batteries and using wireless communications, a WSN is more flexible than its wired counterpart. However, wireless losses/collisions may be prevalent when nodes communicate with each other. Moreover, the lifetime of a WSN largely depends on that of individual nodes, which is further constrained by the generally non-replenishable batteries. Energy efficiency thus becomes a critical concern that must be addressed.
In practice, using WSNs for data collection can be broken into three major stages, namely, deployment, message dissemination and data delivery. The deployment stage focuses on best deploying the network in the sensing field. In the message dissemination stage, network setup/management and/or collection command messages are disseminated from the base station to all sensor nodes, where the challenges lie in how to disseminate messages with low transmission costs and latencies in the presence of error-prone wireless communications. The data delivery stage fulfills the main task of data collection. Based on the information indicated by the message dissemination stage, sensed data are gathered at different nodes and delivered to the base station, with application-specified Quality-of-Service requirements to be fulfilled.
In this thesis, we tackle the design issues for each of these stages. For the deployment stage, we propose to use relay nodes for traffic relaying and suggest that the deployment should be aware of the data traffic to be collected by specific applications. We then discuss how to efficiently disseminate message in a low duty-cycle scenario, where nodes alternate between active and dormant states to conserve energy and thus extend the network lifetime. To address the traffic accumulation problem, particularly in the data delivery stage, we take a case study on high-rise structure monitoring application and propose to use elevators to facilitate data collection. Our analysis and experimental results offer systematic solutions toward reliable and energy-efficient data collection by WSNs.
- Time:
- 10:30am - 12:30pm
- Description:
- M.Sc. Thesis DEFENSE
Maryam Hamidirad
BSc. of Computer Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, Iran, 2009
Wednesday, May 30, 2012 10:30 a.m. TASC1 9204 East
ENERGY EFFICIENT VIDEO TRANSMISSION USING COOPERATION OF LTE AND WLAN NETWORKS
Popularity of multimedia services and growing number of their users raise the need to enhance the capabilities of cellular networks as providers of these services. In order to meet the increasing usage of multimedia applications, Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Service (MBMS) is realized as the key feature of the third generation of these networks. However, due to limitations existing in these networks, resource allocation has to be optimized. Base station power saving mechanisms is a key factor in resource allocation. In this thesis, we propose a novel mechanism based on the cooperation of LTE and WLAN networks. This mechanism consists of clustering receivers, selecting headers in each cluster, delivering data to headers via the LTE network and headers relaying data to other receivers via the WLAN network. Simulations show that our approach outperforms the non-cooperative mechanisms by as much as $50\%$ decrease in the power consumption of base station.
M.Sc. Examining Committee:
Dr. Qianping Gu, Senior Supervisor
Dr. Arthur L. Liestman, Supervisor
Dr. Jiangchuan Liu, Examiner
Dr. , Chair
- Time:
- 10:00am - 12:00pm
- Description:
- Ph.D. Thesis DEFENSE
Feng Wang
Master Of Engineering, Tsinghua University, 2005
Bachelor of Engineering, Tsinghua University, 2002
Thursday, May 31st, 2012 10:00 a.m. TASC1 9204 West
RELIABLE AND ENERGY-EFFICIENT DATA COLLECTION IN WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS
In recent years, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have attracted significant attentions from both academia and industry, and are widely proposed for a broad range of applications, where data collection is often a core service to facilitate sensed data being forwarded to a central base station for further processing. Powered by batteries and using wireless communications, a WSN is more flexible than its wired counterpart. However, wireless losses/collisions may be prevalent when nodes communicate with each other. Moreover, the lifetime of a WSN largely depends on that of individual nodes, which is further constrained by the generally non-replenishable batteries. Energy efficiency thus becomes a critical concern that must be addressed.
In practice, using WSNs for data collection can be broken into three major stages, namely, deployment, message dissemination and data delivery. The deployment stage focuses on best deploying the network in the sensing field. In the message dissemination stage, network setup/management and/or collection command messages are disseminated from the base station to all sensor nodes, where the challenges lie in how to disseminate messages with low transmission costs and latencies in the presence of error-prone wireless communications. The data delivery stage fulfills the main task of data collection. Based on the information indicated by the message dissemination stage, sensed data are gathered at different nodes and delivered to the base station, with application-specified Quality-of-Service requirements to be fulfilled.
In this thesis, we tackle the design issues for each of these stages. For the deployment stage, we propose to use relay nodes for traffic relaying and suggest that the deployment should be aware of the data traffic to be collected by specific applications. We then discuss how to efficiently disseminate message in a low duty-cycle scenario, where nodes alternate between active and dormant states to conserve energy and thus extend the network lifetime. To address the traffic accumulation problem, particularly in the data delivery stage, we take a case study on high-rise structure monitoring application and propose to use elevators to facilitate data collection. Our analysis and experimental results offer systematic solutions toward reliable and energy-efficient data collection by WSNs.
Ph.D. Examining Committee:
Dr. Jiangchuan Liu, Senior Supervisor
Dr. Arthur Liestman, Supervisor
Dr. Mohamed Hefeeda, Internal Examiner
Dr. Xue Liu, External Examiner
Dr. Qianping Gu, Chair
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