PhD Seminar Schedule Fall ‘04

Date	Speaker	Topic
10/7	Theo	Design by Contract for Aspect Oriented Programming ABSTRACT This talk introduces the ideas behind Aspect Oriented Software Development (AOSD) and the current technologies that support Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP). Current AOP techniques have been criticized for breaking object encapsulation and decreasing modular reasoning of Object-Oriented programs. We present an extension to Design by Contract (DBC) for AOP which provides for the incorporation of assertions inside aspects and their runtime verification. Furthermore, we propose a categorization for aspects that defines an aspect’s intentions as well as the semantics followed for its runtime contract enforcement.
10/14	cookies	socialize
10/21	Donghui Zhang	Spatial Database Query Processing Using Indices ABSTRACT Spatial databases are very important as they have many real-life applications, e.g. Geographical Information Systems, Navigation Systems, Environmental Systems, etc. As spatial objects have special properties, traditional database systems can not handle them efficiently. This talk examines three most widely used queries to be supported by a spatial database system. Namely, the selection query, the aggregation query, and the nearest neighbor query. We talk about how spatial indices like the R-tree and the k-d-B-tree can support the queries efficiently. Moreover, we discuss some of our recent work on improving the R-tree and on computing spatial aggregations.
10/28	cookies	socialize
11/4	Jay Aslam	Evaluating Evaluation Measures: A Framework Based on the Maximum Entropy Method ABSTRACT Dozens of measures have been proposed to assess the quality of a search engine's performance, such as (1) the probability that the top retrieved document is relevant, (2) the fraction of documents on the "first page" of results which are relevant, (3) the overall fraction of relevant documents which are retrieved within a "reasonable" list size, etc. Some of these measures are generally accepted to more "accurately" reflect the "true" performance of a search engine than others. In this talk, we will describe a framework for evaluating the quality of an evaluation measure based on the maximum entropy method. We will both discuss the maximum entropy method in general and describe its application to the problem at hand. The talk will be self-contained; no prior knowledge in Information Retrieval or Information Theory will be assumed.
11/11	Veteran’s day
11/18	cookies	socialize
11/25	Thanksgiving
12/2	John Clements
12/9	Noubir	Secure and Robust Heterogeneous Wireless Networks ABSTRACT The future of wireless networking will be heterogeneous, making use of various air interfaces with a wide variety of capabilities and constraints. It will empower people through a digital environment that is aware of their presence and context and sensitive to their needs. Unfortunately, today's air interfaces merely co-exist and very little has been achieved in making them co-operate to provide robust, secure, and scalable networks. Building secure and robust wireless networks raises several theoretical and practical system problems. Solving such problems requires novel approaches to circumvent the drastic resource limitations in such environments. In this talk I will briefly review some on the main characteristics and desired properties of wireless networks, and then I will address three specific problems that address some of the issues in the wireless networks of the future. These problems are robustness to data link-layer jamming, secure multicasting, and accumulative relaying. Our approach makes use of a deeper understanding of the wireless physical layer therefore providing more efficient solutions than generic networking solutions.
12/16 (Finals)