Research Seminars at IIIT-Delhi AY 2011-12
IIIT-Delhi holds a technical seminar (almost) every week during the regular semesters that is open to everyone interested.
Monsoon 2011
Research and Research Careers in CS/IT/ECE by Prof. Pankaj Jalote, Director, IIIT-Delhi
WHERE: CR3
WHEN: 4-5PM, August 11, 2011
ABSTRACT: Most CS/IT/ECE (and other engineering disciplines as well) graduates will end up working for the many software companies in India. This is undoubtedly a very good career for most of the graduates. However, is it the right career for those who are at the top of the class or those who seek technical and technology challenges? This talk is for such graduates, who find the prospects of a "regular" software job not sufficiently satisfying. It discusses what research is, some aspects of a researcher, and the possibilities of a career in research in India - which besides being more challenging, is now getting more rewarding as well.
Innovations in Computing for Global Development at Microsoft Research Indiaby Dr. Ed Cutrell, Head, Technology for Emerging Markets group, Microsoft Research India
WHERE: Conference room, 3rd floor/Library
WHEN: 12-1PM, August 10, 2011
ABSTRACT: The Technology for Emerging Markets (TEM) group at Microsoft Research India seeks to address the needs and aspirations of people in the world's developing communities. Our research targets people who are just beginning to use computing technologies and services as well as those for whom access to computing still remains largely out of reach. Most of our work falls under the rubric of the relatively young field of Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICTD or ICT4D). By combining a variety of backgrounds and training, we are able to engage deeply with some of the complex problems associated with poverty and scarce resources. Our goal is to study, design, build, and evaluate technologies and systems that are useful for people living in underserved rural and urban communities around the world. In this talk, I will give an overview of some of the recent work in the group, including:
1) a prototype pen-based system for rural microfinance
2) a phone broadcast system designed to assist an NGO serving urban sex workers, and
3) a mobile phone-based citizen news system for rural India.
BIOGRAPHY OF THE SPEAKER:
Ed Cutrell manages the Technology for Emerging Markets (TEM) group at Microsoft Research India. Ed has been working in the field of human-computer interaction for more than a decade, studying everything from novel interaction techniques to interfaces for search and information retrieval. His current research focuses on Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D). In this work, he seeks to understand how people in the world's poor and developing communities interact with information technologies and explores new ways for technology to meet their needs and support socio-economic development. He is trained in cognitive neuropsychology, with a PhD from the University of Oregon.
http://research.microsoft.com/~cutrell
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/groups/tem/
Sensors and Sensor Network Applications for Nation and Society by Prof. Prabhat Ranjan, Dhirubhai Ambani Institute for Information and Communication Technology, Gandhinagar (DA-IICT)
WHERE: Conference room, 3rd floor
WHEN: 1:30-2:30PM, August 9, 2011
ABSTRACT:
Development of MEMS sensor, Wireless Communication and Low power miniaturized processors led to the possibility of Wireless Sensor Network(WSN) being used for a broad spectrum of applications. It has been nearly 15 years since we have promised wide spread use of WSN in
real life applications. However very few applications have seen regular deployment on long term basis in the real life scenario. More than 2 years of continuous outdoor deployment have not been reported.
We have been involved in a number of real life WSN projects for last 8 years, which are important to our Nation and Society. These cover wildlife tracking, planetary exploration, nuclear fusion, coral reef monitoring, assistive technology etc. While we try to use as much of common technology as possible in these projects, each one of them demands a set of new problems to be solved. In this talk, we share our experience in working on these systems and the way we have tried to approach these problems. We would also point out various open challenges that these have opened to WSN researchers. To take these projects to long term deployment stage needs a very dedicated effort over next few years and also requires a different approach in the way we work in academic community.
Demo of video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sysEO_G1RVQ&feature=player_embedded
BIOGRAPHY OF THE SPEAKER:
Prof. Prabhat Ranjan is Professor at Dhirubhai Ambani Institute for Information and Communication Technology, Gandhinagar (DA-IICT) since
2002. He was educated in Netarhat School(near Ranchi), IIT Kharagpur and Delhi University. He received his Ph D from University of California, Berkeley where he carried our research on “Nuclear Fusion” at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory during 1983-86. He immediately returned to India after this and carried out research in Nuclear Fusion area at Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Calcutta and Institute for Plasma Research(IPR), Gandhinagar. He played a major role in India's Nuclear Fusion program and was Project Leader of the largest operational Indian Fusion Reactor, ADITYA, at Institute for Plasma Research from 1996-2002.
His current interests include applications of Wireless Sensor Network to Wildlife, Planetary Exploration (Chandrayaan mission), Nuclear Fusion, Healthcare, Agriculture etc. He has received National Science Talent Search Award, IBM Faculty Innovation Grant and HP Innovate 2009 award.
XML Structure and Content Semantic Similarity Detection
(jointly as part of ACM Distinguished Speaker series)by Dr. Sanjay Madria, Missouri University of Science and Technology
WHERE: Class Room 2
WHEN: 3:30 - 4:30PM, August 5, 2011
ABSTRACT:
Integration of XML documents demands consideration of similarities in both structure and content. This talk is about the structure and content semantic similarity detection of two XML documents from heterogeneous data sources. The talk will provide a description of the overall framework of XML integration based on content and structure semantic similarity using keys. This work introduces an approach to detect XML similarity and thus to join XML document versions using a change detection mechanism. In this approach, subtree keys still play an important role in order to avoid unnecessary subtree comparisons within multiple versions of the same document and the results improvement in the XML structure and content similarity comparisons. The main contribution is to provide an approach for evaluating semantic similarity between XML path expressions from two different XML structures. Comparisons with the previous systems shows that this approach has a better performance by a big order of magnitude in terms of detection, false-positive rates and execution time.
BIOGRAPHY OF THE SPEAKER:
Sanjay Kumar Madria received his PhD in Computer Science from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India in 1995. He is an Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science, at the Missouri University of Science and Technology (formerly, University of Missouri-Rolla), USA.
Earlier he was Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science, Purdue University, West Lafayette, USA. He has published more than 150 Journal and conference papers in the areas of mobile computing, sensor networks, security, XML, and databases in general. He co-authored a book entitled "Web Data Management : A Warehouse Approach" published by Springer-verlag. He guest edited WWW Journal, several Data and Knowledge Engineering Sp. Issues on Web data management and Data warehousing. He won best papers awards in 2010 and 2010 in IEEE conferences. He was founding Program Chair for EC&WEB series of conferences and founding workshop chair IEEE International Workshop on P2P Data Management, Security and Trust since 2003. He served as general co-chair of mobile data management (MDM) conference held in 2010. He is serving as PC member of various database conferences such as VLDB, ICDE, MDM, and reviewer for many reputed database journals such as IEEE TKDE, IEEE Computer, ACM Internet Computing, IEEE TMC etc. Dr. Madria has given tutorials on mobile databases and XML Change Management in many international conferences.
He is regular invited panelist in NSF, NSERC (Canada), Hong Kong Research Council and Sweden Council of Research. He was invited keynote speaker and invited speaker in Conferences and workshops. He received UMR faculty excellence award in 2007, 2009, Japanese Society for Promotion of Science invitational fellowship in 2006, and Air Force Research Lab's visiting faculty fellowships from 2008-2011. His research is supported by grants over $3M from NSF, DOE, Army, AFRL, UM research board, and from industry such as Boeing. He is IEEE Senior Member and also a speaker under ACM/IEEE Distinguished Visitor program.