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 | Newsletter November 1996 Number 1 |
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ContentsWelcomeAppointments Promotions Visitors Departmental Report: Otago CS Marsden Funding Books and Book Series Masters Theses PhD Theses
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I don't have any strong preconceptions of what should go in here, except that as far as possible I'd like the information-gathering process to proceed in Departmental offices and not become yet another chore for the chair. This issue has news on appointments, promotions, visitors, events, books, theses, and a report on the Computer Science department at Otago. Though it happened largely by accident, I like the idea a department or two being singled out in each issue for a more discursive report, although this does involve more effort for contributors.
This Newsletter is an experiment and I welcome your ideas. To avoid making this issue overlong I have not included research report titles, but may put them into the next issue. If you have ideas for other things you'd like to see, do let me know!
Ian H Witten
Waikato University
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Chris Robertson PhD Otago
Lecturer (from December 1995)
databases, with emphasis on the impact of WWW on database technology, the development of temporal databases, and the OS/DB interface.
Tony Plate BSc (Hons) Melbourne, MSc NMSU, PhD Toronto
Lecturer (from October 1996)
Artificial intelligence and neural networks, knowledge representation in neural networks, applications of artificial intelligence and neural network techniques to data-analysis problems.
Paul Martin BSc (Hons), PhD Edin
Lecturer (from January 1996)
Distributed systems and load balancing.
Steve Sherwood SB MIT, PhD Scripps
Post Doctoral Fellow (joint post with Geophysics) (from January 1996)
Meteorology, statistics and machine learning.
Chris Jesshope
Professor (from September 1996)
Parallel computing, high performance applications, parallel computer design and compilers for data-parallel languages.
Steve Jones BSc (Hons) PhD Stirling
Lecturer (from July 1996)
Supporting navigation within the World Wide Web, digital library usage and user interfaces, the application of theories of trust to the design of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) systems.
Mark Utting BSc MSc Waikato, PhD UNSW
Lecturer (from October 1996)
Programming languages, formal methods, interactive proof tools.
Dr Jacky Baltes
Lecturer
Artificial intelligence, in particular planning and machine learning.
Clark Thomborson BS (Hons), MS, PhD Carnegie-Mellon
Professor (from April 1996)
Optimization of memory-bound computations, data compression, combinatorial optimization, statistical computing, special-purpose hardware design, and the status of women in academic computer science.
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John G Cleary MSc PhD Cant
Congratulations to John Cleary who was promoted to Professor at Waikato earlier this year.
Interests: Distributed systems, logic programming, data compression.
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Prof K Østerbye (Until January 1997)
Department of Computer Science, Aalborg University, Denmark
Program understanding through abstraction and documentation.
Akihiko Machizawa (Until 1998)
Prof S Djordjewic-Kajan (February - May 1997)
Department of Computer Science, University of Nis, Yugoslavia
Software metrics, GIS, databases.
Prof H Thimbleby (May - June 1997)
Department of Computer Science, Middlesex University, UK
Human computer interaction, computer-supported cooperative work.
Prof B Mukherjee (July - September 1997)
Department of Computer Science, University of California, Davis, USA
Lightwave networks, network analysis, network security.
Dr Cecile Germain (Eary 1997 - to be confirmed)
University Sud
Computer architecture and compilation.
Bernhard Pfahringer (August 1996 - August 1997)
Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Vienna
Practical applications of the Minimum Description Length Principle in machine learning, genetic algorithms, constraint logic programming, and search and optimization in general.
Dr Yongge Wang (January 1997 - December 1998)
Algorithmic information theory.
Prof Klaus Voss (January - February 1997)
Jena, Germany
Dr Fridrich Sloboda (January - May 1997)
Bratislava
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Staff has been stable through the period. New staff to arrive include Kevin Novins who joined us in August 1995 with a PhD from Cornell, following some postdoctoral work at Grenoble, and whose main interests are in computer graphics and computer vision with a particular emphasis on scientific visualisation, numerical techniques and medical applications. In December 1995 we also welcomed back Chris Robertson, one of our own PhD graduates from his time on the staff of the University of Queensland. Chris has further developed his interest in databases, with emphasis on the impact of WWW on database technology, the development of temporal databases, and the OS/DB interface. We also welcomed the additional support from a third departmental programmer, David Robertson. We welcomed Anthony Robins back at mid year after his year's refresher leave of which a significant part was spent at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, where he appreciated both the computing and library resources available.
The three main research groups (graphics, artificial intelligence, and database/software engineering) have been active throughout the year, and a steady flow of work has been presented at international and national conferences. We congratulated Mark Williams a PhD student on an award for the best student poster at an international conference at Leeds. He followed it with a memorable seminar in our Friday series that will be hard for any student or staff member to match. A regular series of technical reports and memoranda have been produced, as listed on our Web pages.
The Applied Research Centre (the Black Albatross) have continued their excellent work with Alliance Knitting Yarns, and in mid year obtained a major contract with Toyota New Zealand Ltd for the development of a state of the art database system. A steady flow of other work is also received particularly from clients seeking access to the secure Web site the Centre maintains.
With the University's decision to move fully to semesters from 1998, we are having to re-examine our 200 and 300-level courses, to divide our year long papers into suitable modules as already done for first year. This is likely to have some impact on what we offer, and on how that fits with other universities for any transferring students. From many points of view it will be easier to be completely semester based, rather than to continue to operate under the hybrid system we have at present, but we are not finding the transition simple or easy.
B G Cox
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TOOLS NZ Workshop '96
Auckland (Massey) 2-5 December 1996
This workshop is an industrially oriented event to which we are inviting a number of key players in the areas of object technology, tools development and computer based learning. It will include hands on tutorials on Java, C++, Smalltalk, Ada95 and Eiffel as well as a number of keynote addresses by distinguished developers in these fields. The TOOLS NZ Workshop '95 was the first international workshop on object oriented technology held in New Zealand. It provided a forum to bring together industry experts, researchers, analysts, application developers, designers, technology managers and application experts engaged in the application of the object oriented paradigm. Now following its success, TOOLS NZ Workshop '96 is envisioned to foster the creation and transfer of ideas relating to object orientation among academics, industry experts, managers and practitioners. It focuses on methodologies, tools and languages that can facilitate the development of next generation systems, as well as on the demanding issues involved in turning these methodologies into practical tools.
DMTCS'96
Auckland (Auckland & Waikato) 9-13 December 1996
DMTCS'96, the first of a planned series of conferences organised by the Centre for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science, a joint venture involving the Computer Science and Mathematics Departments of the Universities of Auckland and Waikato, will be held at the University of Auckland (City Campus) from 9 to 13 December 1996.
For more information see the conference home page http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/CDMTCS/docs/dmtcs96.html or contact the secretary, Steve Reeves, by email: stever@waikato.ac.nz.
DisVis'97
Auckland (Auckland) 27-31 January 1997
Many fundamental problems in Computer Vision (Image Processing, Image and Pattern Analysis, 3-D Image Understanding) are related to interesting questions in discrete or computational geometry, discrete topology, or number theory. This workshop about theoretical problems will be an opportunity to present problems, to discuss (partial) solutions obtained so far, and to work together in solving the problems presented.
There will be two days (Monday and Tuesday) of presentations and discussions of open problems, and there will be three days for meetings within working groups and for final reports of these working groups. Computers (Unix, Mac) will be available for workshop participants.
ICONIP'97 jointly with ANZIIS'97 and ANNES'97
Dunedin/Queenstown (Otago) 24-28 November, 1997
The Fourth International Conference on Neural Information Processing-The Annual Conference of the Asian Pacific Neural Network Assembly, jointly with The Fifth Australian and New Zealand International Conference on Intelligent Information Processing Systems, and The Third New Zealand International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks and Expert Systems.
Papers due: 30 May 1997
Proposals for tutorials: 30 May 1997
Notification of acceptance: 20 July 1997
Final camera-ready papers due: 20 August 1997
Registration of at least one author of a paper: 20 August 1997
Early registration: 20 August 1997
TFCV'98
(Auckland) 16-20 March 1998
This workshop addresses a subject which has been under active discussion in computer vision for several years. The evaluation and validation of algorithms is of basic importance for the configuration of computer vision applications. In the ideal case certain "data sheets" should allow to qualify algorithmic solutions in a specific context, e.g. defined by image data, goal of image analysis, or software environment ("edge detection is not equal to edge detection"). There is a lack of methodological fundamentals in the field of performance analysis.
The workshop follows typical topics in computer vision. "Compression" could play the role of the "good example" because the evaluation of compression methods is well developed based on comparisons of compression rates, behavior on specific test sequences, and evaluation of image quality after decompression. There are some other fields in computer vision where an extensive literature about evaluation and validation of algorithms is available, e.g. motion analysis, digital geometry, shape reconstruction, or image registration, but still we are quite far away from "final answers" in these fields. The workshop should contribute to methodical fundamentals and to specific proposals concerning topics as test data or testbeds, computer vision libraries, or (formal) context specifications of algorithms.
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The members of the Maths and Information Science Panel were
My advice for next year is to keep trying-it's important for our discipline. The sum of money in the Marsden fund is growing quite significantly, and the demand from some of the top researchers is satiated, so I think that the chance of success can only increase (and in future years, it may start to decrease again).
But the standard is very high. You are competing with a large cohort of mathematicians with very good research records, who have no other sources of research funding-and they are painfully aware that by the very nature of computer science we have opportunities of tapping the PGSF fund, and industry funds, that they cannot aspire to. It is essential that your application is innovative, creative, fundamental, well thought out, carefully substantiated, and meticulously prepared.
I wrote an article several years ago in Canada several years called "how to get a research grant" It has recently been updated by Janice Glasgow, retiring chairperson of the Canadian Computer Science research grants committee. It contains the best general advice I can give on how to prepare research grant applications (though it's tailored to NSERC, not Marsden, that doesn't affect most of the points). You can access it from Janice¹s home page, http://www.qucsi. queensu.ca/~janice.
Ian H Witten
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Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science
Springer-Verlag, Singapore, announces a new Series Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science, produced in cooperation with the Centre for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science of the Universities of Auckland and Waikato, New Zealand. This Series will bring to the research community information about the latest developments on the interface between mathematics and computing, especially in the areas of artificial intelligence, combinatorial optimization, computability and complexity, theoretical computer vision. It will focus on research monographs and proceedings of workshops and conferences, aimed at graduate students and professional researchers, and on textbooks, primarily at the senior undergraduate or beginning graduate level.
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