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July 2007 Conference Roles IBM CAS 2007, AmI 2007, IOT 2008, Pervasive 2008

The summer is a busy time for completing research projects ready for publication in the coming year. Along with completing research projects the summer is also a busy time for reviewing papers for conferences coming up at the end of the year and for planning for events in the coming year.

I am the Program Chair for the IBM CAS Software and Systems Engineering Symposium 2007, Dublin Ireland, October 24. This has been a lot of work with the program committee reviewing and deciding on papers for publication. In addition, I’ve been busy reviewing papers for AmI-07 the European Conference on Ambient Intelligence (AmI-07), Darmstadt, Germany November 7-10. Along with acting as program chair and a program committee member this month I’ve also be busy with planning for future events almost 12 months away.

In 2008 I will be the Late Breaking Results Chair for the Sixth International Conference on Pervasive Computing (Pervasive 2008) on May 19-22 in Sydney, Australia. I will also be a member of the international program committee for Pervasive 2008. Another event of interest is the new Internet of Things International Conference for Industry and Academia on March 26-28 2008 in Zurich Switzerland where I will be on the Scientific Program Committee.

For more details see my [ Call for Papers Feed ]

IOT Logo

July 2007 New Papers [Ross Shannon]

The students in my group have been publishing a number of a new papers of late.

Ross Shannon has had two papers accepted in recent months, one on collecting and reasoning about context data from sensors in the environment and another on visualising communications in ad-hoc networks. “Towards Scatterbox: a Context-Aware Message Forwarding Platform”, to be presented at MRC 07 at Context 07, presents ongoing work from our group in designing reasoning frameworks that can collate and reason about large amounts of context data gleaned from a wide range of sensors in a smart environment. In this case we have designed a system that decides to forward only relevant emails to a user’s mobile device, where their attention should only be drawn to important messages.

The second paper, “Visualising Network Communications to Evaluate a Data Dissemination Method for Ubiquitous Systems” presents a novel visualisation application useful for designers of ubiquitous systems to be presented at Ubiquitous Systems Evaluation 2007 in September. As these systems will generally be designed to use ad-hoc networks of heterogeneous devices, many of which will join and leave the network
constantly, the stability of the data within the network is crucially important. The visualisation depicts an evolving network topology, which draws attention to nodes which have not passed their data to
other nodes in the system, thus making them more at risk of data loss if they leave the network before passing on this information. The visualisation can thus be used as an aid to the designer of the
communication protocol to view the emergent behaviours of their data dissemination algorithm.

July 2007 Panelist – 20th Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training

CSEET 2007 Logo

In early July 2007 I was an invited panelists at the Conference for Software Engineering Education and Training, 2007 (CSEET 2007) on “Preparing Students for Software Engineering Research“.
Along with these panelists:
Dr. Laurie Williams, North Carolina State University, USA
Mr. Austin Hanley, Head of School of Engineering, Athlone Institute of Technology, Ireland
Dr. Brian O’Donovan, IBM, Blanchardstown, Dublin, Ireland
My discussion points were built around the following point from [Shaw 2000] “Software Engineering Education: A Roadmap” that says:
“Preparation for research, of course, is different from preparation for engineering practice. A researcher needs deeper preparation in underlying principles, in problem formulation, and in validation of results as well as a special kind of inquisitiveness and creativity.“
My points included:

Software Engineering Research is about discovering, interpreting, and revising our knowledge of the field
I believe that preparation for research in industry can only be achieved in the scope of postgraduate education
in teaching we should emphasise where current engineering practice fails when teaching it, identify problems as research opportunities
we should rovide opportunities for summer research internships in 2nd and 3rd year undergrads, such as our ODCSSS program in UCD-DCU
we should build awareness of open software engineering research issues faced in academic and industrial research labs
in teaching underlying principles try ideas such as eg. comparative learning (programming, development)
in teaching problem formulation try to weave learning how to describe a problem (not the solution) into course work
in teaching validation of results incorporate experimental methods into courses
to support inquisitiveness provide bottom up support for competitions, clubs, internships, industry prizes
to support creativity provide scope in all course work to step beyond the practice to discover an alternate approach.

The overall moderator Ita Richardson framed the question as:
“Discussions of software engineering education tend to focus on the needs of industry and the preparation of graduates for professional careers. This is understandable, and may even be appropriate, but what about those who hope to go on to do research in software engineering – how well are we catering for them?“

July 2007 Graduate Programme in Visualisation, Graphics and Vision (VGV)

In the first week of July 2007 a group of academics from the three Dublin-based universities – Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin, and Dublin City University led by Prof. Carol O’Sullivan submitted a GREP application for a Graduate Programme in Visualisation, Graphics and Vision (VGV) to IRCSET. This was the culmination, in funding terms, of over 18 months collective effort involving visits to 30 international sites and an in depth local marketing survey. In research and academic terms, this is but one of the first steps to the establishment of an international leading graduate program.

“This graduate research education programme on Visualisation, Graphics and Vision (VGV) will combine the international research track records of leading academics from TCD, UCD and DCU in the highly complementary thematic areas of graphics, animation, vision, image engineering, visualisation and simulation. The program is built around a networked virtual campus, that facilitates leading world-class research, industry engagement, inter-disciplinary collaboration and the development of a student cohort with industrially relevant research skills.”

Now that the grant application has gone in we hope to move onto the development of the recruitment and hiring process for a student intake in Sept/Oct 2007 along with starting our program in the small with the expectation we can ramp up as suitable funds become available.

July 2007 Grant Evaluation FCT Portugal

In late June I was invited by the Foundation for Science and the Technology Portugal (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia) to evaluate a number of grant proposals on a Computer Engineering Panel. This involved the detail review and evaluation of over 15 proposals followed by a two day scientific evaluation panel meeting hosted at the offices of the Science and Technology Foundation – Lisbon.

Overall this was a very rewarding and enlightening experience. Having been involved in remote project evaluations in Ireland, the UK, Australia and Canada this level of involvement and commitment took the oversight process to a new level of rigour. This process is how the SFI in Ireland reviews many of its grant applications and it really is international best practice. The Foundation for Science and the Technology promotes national scientific inquiry and the technological development through financing project at institutions of scientific inquiry. All project funding decisions are made through a public competition and independent evaluations are carried out by panels consisting by foreign scientists, such as the one I was involved with.

The round I was involved with had over 5,000 applications which has kept the hard working staff in the FCT busy for many many months!

June 2007 Expert Panel Visualisation, Graphics and Vision

Mark Billinghurst Prof. Jessica K.Hodgins, CMU Prof. James Crowley, INPG/INRIA

On June 16, 2007 we had an expert panel review our proposed inter-University graduate program in Visualisation, Graphics and Vision. Academics from the three Dublin-based universities – Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin, and Dublin City University presented. Representatives from all three organisations attended and the proposal and its background were presented to the panel under the following headings:

Introduction to Team and panel members.
Vision: research goals, scientific rationale
Context: current Irish system; graduate education and funding environment, esp. current IRCSET calls
Research: overview of current research and graduate education activities of team Infrastructure: facilities, equipment and services available in the three institutions
Best Practice: presentation and discussion by team members on outputs of visits to international centres of excellence
Industry Liaison: planned industry involvement and market research undertaken
Programme: detailed presentation of the contents of the proposed programme, including taught modules, structures and governance

The expert panel provided us detailed feedback in terms of:

Funding
Recruitment/Advertising
Admissions
Courses/Modules
Governance
Evaluation

The panel said they were very impressed with the calibre of the programme team, which consists of high-quality, well-respected researchers with international reputations in the fields of visualisation, graphics and vision. They particularly liked the complementary expertise within the team, the range of ages and experience, and the interdisciplinary and inter-institutional collaborative spirit and enthusiasm that was evident from the presentations and discussions at the meeting. The panel believes that this programme will be novel and ground-breaking, and could serve as an example for future such programs internationally.

Based on this experience, our industrial survey and visits to over 30 institutions internationally we are planning a submission to IRCSET under their up coming call for full GREPs.

Prof. Ming C. Lin, UNC Chapel Hill Prof. Peter Eades, NICTA/Usyd Australia Prof. Philipp Slusallek

June 2007 InfoVis Symposium Dublin

Lero Support

UCD Complex & Adaptive Systems Laboratory
Information Visualisation  Mini-Symposium June 15th 2007

This Information Visualisation symposium saw people from industry and academia from around Ireland come together for a mini-symposium on Information Visualisation. Aaron Quigley chaired the event with support from Lero and with support from IRCSET for our keynote who was attending our VGV GREP expert panel the next day.  
One of our external academic participants said, “I was impressed by the range and quality of the Info Vis PhD/Masters projects here. The projects were pushing the science, and they were clearly well-grounded in industrial reality. I think you have an excellent research environment, and it was a pleasure to be here.“

Another of our partner academics said, “I just wanted to write a quick thank you for the Information Visualisation Day you organised last June. I found it very useful and it was a great opportunity to meet with people doing like-minded things.“

One of our external industry participants said, “The symposium was a very interesting event with many innovative presentations. Such events are also a great opportunity for industry and research to meet and discuss areas of mutual interest. I’d certainly like you to keep both myself and the wider team here in Dublin informed of any future events which may be of interest to us. “

10.00 – 10.05 Welcome – Aaron Quigley
10.05 – 11.00 Keynote – Peter Eades, NICTA Australia Algorithmics for Network Visualization
11.00 – 11.20 Coffee
11.20 – 11.40 Brendan Sheehan – Visualizing Error and Uncertainty
11.40 – 12.00 Aimal Tariq Rextin – Dynamic Upward Planarity Testing of Single Source Digraphs
12.00 – 12.20 Luke O’Malley – Treemaps for Feature Models in Software Evolution
12.20 – 12.40 Martin Harrigan – Minimum-Crossing Embeddings of Trees in k Levels
12.40 – 13.20 Lunch
13.20 – 13.40 Mike Bennett – Colour and Visualisation
13.40 – 14.00 Daren Nestor – Visualisation of Software Product Lines
14.00 – 14.20 Benoit Gaudin, Comparative Visual Analytics
14.20 – 14.40 Ross Shannon – Visualizing Gossiping Algorithms
14.40 Close of Symposium
15.00 – 15.30 Tour of UCD visualisation facilities and tabletop tissue micro array visualisation

June 2007 TMA EMBO Course and Demo

As part of our ODCSSS 2006 we had a student work on a TableTop tissue microarray visualisation. Following on from this we were part of an application to run an EMBO Practical Course on Tissue Microarray Construction and Image Analysis headed by researchers in the UCD School of Biomolecular and Biomedical Science based in the UCD Conway Institute. In this EMBO course I focussed on our Tabletop work over the past few years and how novel human computer interaction could help clinicians and pathologists in-situ with their work. Thanks to Mike Bennett for leading the IVG VisLab tours of our tabletop system allowing the participants to partake in our gesture driven system.

June 2007 China Research Trip

From May 27th until June 4th I took part in an IRCSET funded GREP research visit with my colleague Marie Redmond from Trinity College Dublin to China. IRCSET funded our exploratory grant which supported this trip for the development of a Graduate Programme in Visualisation, Graphics and Vision.

We visited two Universities, Tsinghua in Beijing and Fudan in Shanghai along with Microsoft Research and IBM Research. In addition we attend the two day Asia-Pacific Regional Workshop on Gaming & Graphics in Beijing. This event allowed us to meet a wide range of academics from China, Japan, Korea and Australia. This two-day workshop included Microsoft Research Asia updates along with research and teaching presentations university faculty members. In addition these was one poster session and several moderated and informal group discussions. Our visit to Fudan was hosted by colleagues from UCD and UCD collaborators in the Software School. My school in UCD teaches a joint undergraduate degree program with the Software School in Fudan. This visit helped us focus on their Visualisation, Graphics and Vision research and 4th level plans.
MSRA Group Photo - G&G 07

The overall aim of this visit was document best practice in graduate research education in Chinese Universities and to understand how stronger links with industry and research labs can be developed.

June 2007 SRG students attend Software Engineering Research Summer School

Lipari

As part of the project SPL1 – Visualisation of Software Project Lines, UCD@Lero the Irish Software Engineering Research centre is providing support for Luke O’Malley one of my MSc students to the attend a summer school on software engineering which will take place from July 9th to July 21st on the island of Lipari, Italy. The school is chaired by Prof. Alfredo Ferro form the University of Catania and Prof. Egon Boerger from the University of Pisa. The courses offered will cover a wide range of software engineering topics, including

Domain Engineering, Prof. Dines Bjoerner, Technical University of Denmark, DK.
Feature Modularity in Software Product Lines, Prof Don Batory, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX.
Requirements Engineering, Prof. Florin Spanachi, SAP Research Karlsruhe.
Evolvable Software Products, Prof. Peter Sestoft, Department of Natural Sciences, Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University, DK.
Web Services, Prof. Boualem Benatallah, The University of New South Wales, Australia.
High-Level Modeling Patterns, Prof. Egon Boerger, University of Pisa, Italy.
Principles and challenges of software architecture evolution, Prof. Carlo Ghezzi, Politecnico di Milano, Italy.
Distributed Systems Security, Prof. Dieter Gollmann, Hamburg-Harburg (TUHH),Germany

Luke hopes to gain a better understanding of software engineering and in particular learn more on the topic of software product lines which is directly related to his research. In addition he hopes to engage and discuss with other students at the school about their particular research topics. – Luke O’Malley

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