Category Archives: research

Aug 2007 ODCSSS research internship

[ ODCSSS Feed ]

Over the past 12 weeks we have had 24 students from around the world working on 12 research projects in DCU and 12 projects in UCD. The site involved two directors, myself and Dr. Gabriel Muntean in DCU along with 24 supervisors and dozens of mentors and postgraduate students. The experience for the students was a very good one and the research outcomes are still being distilled into research publication (5+ so far) along with follow on research projects.

ODCSSS is an SFI funded Undergraduate Research Experience and Knowledge Award that we were awarded through a competitive grant process in late 2006. This site lasts for 3 years and the grant supported the intake in 2007 and will do so again in 2008 and 2009. We hope the theme for 2008 will grow out of our experience, projects, students and mentors from 2007. While running this site was a lot of work, the opportunity to see undergraduate students engaging in computer science research is invaluable for them and for the further development of 4th level Ireland.

Friday the 24th of August saw the final research day for the DCU-UCD ODCSSS UREKA research site. This event held at DCU attracted over 60 people and was of great interest to all. Starting with a prize giving ceremony and introductions the day progressed to the main research event which was held as a research poster session. The event finished with a certificate presentation to all 24 students who participated in this years research internship. Other events from this day included a tour and a social event see [ ODCSSS Feed ].

An email from the SFI came out today to announce the calls for other people to apply for a UREKA grant. I’m including it here in case any academic in Ireland would like to talk to us about our experience in developing and running a UREKA site.

From the SFI:
Proposals for the 2008 Undergraduate Research Experience and Knowledge Award (UREKA) are now invited.
Application submission deadline for UREKA Sites and International Exchange Programme is 1pm on Friday, October 26th 2007
Application submission deadline for UREKA Supplements: 1pm on Friday, 25th January 2008

Group Shot

Aug 2007 Session Chair P2P 2007

Having Daniel Cutting as a PhD student brought me into the area of peer to peer computing. Building on my own background in systems research this exposure brought a new found interest in overlay networks and a renewed interest in distributed systems. We published a paper at Peer to Peer 2006 and based on this and conference interactions I was invited onto the program committee for P2P 2007, the Seveth IEEE International Conference on Peer-to-Peer Computing in Galway Ireland. I’m looking forward to this conference as we have recently had two P2P journal papers accepted and two of my new graduate students in the SRG in UCD will be looking into P2P research as part of their Pervasive Computing studies. It’s nice to be involved in an evolving and expanding research area, going from strength to strength, with broader application and research.

Aug 2007 Peer to Peer Journal Papers [Daniel Cutting]

Computer Journal

Along with Daniel Cutting and Bjorn Landfeldt we have recently had two Journal papers accepted. Daniel was my first PhD student who submitted his thesis on Implicit Group Messaging on P2P network in June of 2007.

The first paper “Special interest messaging with SPICE” will be published by The Computer Journal.

“The Computer Journal publishes research papers in a full range of subject areas, as well as regular feature articles and occasional themed issues to enable readers to easily access information outside their direct area of research. The journal provides a complete overview of developments in the field of Computer Science.” This paper presents what we feel is a new and novel form of mass group communication. Will this form of group communication take off? It’s difficult to say but clearly we will break away from just consumer directed information seeking which is limited and is bound to change.

The second paper “SPICE: Scalable P2P Implicit Group Messaging” has been accepted for publication in The Journal of Computer Communication’s Special issue on Foundation of Peer-to-Peer Computing.

“Computer Communications is an peer-reviewed international journal for those involved in designing and building the data communications systems of the future. It provides engineers, researchers, and consultants and systems managers in academia and industry with state-of-the-art papers on practical developments in computer- and tele-communications technology.” This paper shows how a decentralised peer to peer solution can support Implicit Group Messaging in a scaleable and global manner. The work in this paper shows that new and novel forms of group communication can be facilitated by peer to peer networks with little strain in the network. A range of comprehensive and interesting “fairness” measures are presented and are used to show that the approach taken is fair both locally and globally.

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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 ]

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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 Grant Evaluation FCT Portugal

FCT

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 China Research Trip

Gaming and Graphics Workshop Beijing

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 Hdip and ODCSSS Feeds

The School of Computer Science in UCD has been running a very successful and popular H. Dip. in Computer Science for a number of year. As the new course director I have started to revamp this course and improve its industrial relevance starting in 2007. Ongoing developments will solidify our role as the leading conversion course for non-computing majors into computer science in Ireland. I maintain an RSS feed which you can subscribe to in a number of ways: Higher Diploma Computer Science News Feed

The H. Dip. in Computer Science UCD is a conversion course which gives graduates from non-computing disciplines a sound theoretical foundation and practical exposure to Computer Science. In addition, the course may qualify participants to study for an M.Sc. in Computer Science. The course is made up of 10 modules of Computer Science, where a module typically consists of 24 lectures and additional practical sessions.

ODCSSS Poster

June 5th saw 12 students join us in Computer Science and Informatics in UCD for the UREKA (SFI) funded ODCSSS research summer school. In total there are 24 International research undergraduate projects in Ireland for “Technologies for Aiding Human Memory”. ODCSSS 2007 News

ODCSSS the Online Dublin Computer Science Summer School is a paid research internship program for undergraduate students funded in part by the Science Foundation Ireland under their UREKA program. ODCSSS is a four-year collaborative internship program between the School of Computer Science and Informatics at the University College Dublin and the School of Computing at the Dublin City University.

This year we had over 100 applications from around the world. In 2007 we have students coming from Universities in Austria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Slovenia, Spain, Thailand and the USA. The primary goal of this research program is to afford exceptional undergraduate students the opportunity to participate and contribute to exciting yet challenging research projects and to inspire them to go on to undertake research careers.

May 2007 UbiComp 2007 PC

UbiComp 2007 PC

In May of 2007 I attend a two day meeting as a program committee member in Toronto for the 9th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing. This will be held on 16-19 September 2007 in Innsbruck, Austria. It was a great event with many of the leading figures in UbiComp in attendance. In addition I’m glad to say it was a very educational experience as I got to interact with some great people in fruitful discussion. I got to see first hand, yet again, how much time and effort goes into putting together a top class conference program. It reminded me very much of the dedication shown during the Pervasive 2006 PC meeting in Boston in Dec 2005.

May 2007 New Papers and Professional Activities

  • Dobson S., Bailey E., Knox S., Shannon R. and Quigley A., “A First Approach to the Closed-Form Specification and Analysis of an Autonomic Control System”, 12th IEEE International Conference on Engineering of Complex Computer Systems (ICECCS 2007), Auckland, New Zealand, 11-14 July 2007
  • West D., Quigley A. and Kay J., “MEMENTO: A Digital Physical Scrapbook for Memory Sharing”, Journal of Personal and Ubiquitous Computing Special Issue on Memory and sharing of experiences, Pages 313-328, Volume 11, Number 4 / April, 2007