CS Talks

St. Olaf CS Talk Series, Spring 2004

Upcoming talks in the series

Jonathan Arthur, Project/Program Manager for Software Development Teams, Ingenix Inc.

In recent years, the world of software development has been shaken by sudden changes. For years, programmers have used longstanding methods to produce software systems, based on lengthy cycles of thorough analysis of requirements, followed by comprehensive design planning, before actually building the software, then exhaustively testing the results, all before releasing a software system to a customer. But since 2000, new "agile" software-development methods such as Extreme Programming (XP) have turned the old ways on their head.

How can the new methods be introduced in a large software firm whose success has always relied on older, standard methodologies? Jonathan Arthur is a pioneer on this frontier, leading a software team in a project using an agile programming approach at Ingenix, a major player in the health care information industry. His talk will describe what he does, why he does it, and how he fits it into the long-established practices and steadfast corporate structure of a large firm in a robust sector of industry.

      
           TITLE:  A sea change in software development methods, and
                   how to survive it 
      
           WHO:    Jonathan Arthur, Ingenix Inc.
      
           WHEN:   Tuesday, May 11, 7:00 p.m.
      	     Refreshments following
      
           WHERE:  SC 182
      

Abstract:

Big changes have occurred in the last three years in the software development world. These changes significantly impact the way software is designed, developed and maintained. This discussion will provide a real-world overview of the rapidly shifting universe for software developers and the teams that they work within.

Biographical information:

Jon Arthur is currently a Project Manager for a development team at Ingenix Inc., one of the healthcare industry's largest health information companies, at their Eden Prairie, MN, office. As a Project Manager, Jon oversees consumer software projects "from the cradle to the grave." He also works with data analysis teams finding new ways to manage and analyze data for greater business performance. Jon has been working in the healthcare industry for the past five years, and within the information technology industry for ten years.

Recent talks in the series

Prof. Dave Musicant, Carleton College, on Data Mining

Data mining problems involve searching through masses of data for relationships that are interesting in a "real world" sense. For example, consider analyzing census data, looking for meaningful information among logging information for the Web, or trying to draw strategic conclusions from retail sales databases. There is a lot of data mining activity out in the world these days, since so many organizations are compiling databases of their work. But finding interesting relationships involves lots of hands-on computing directed by humans. Is there an effective way to use computers to help solve data mining problems?

Dave Musicant is the right person to ask that question. A CS prof at Carleton who specializes in Databases and Artificial Intelligence, he will talk about the "support vector machine" learning technique, which offers strong performance in data mining.

      
           TITLE:  Data Mining with Support Vector Machines
      
           WHO:    Dave Musicant, Carleton College
      
           WHEN:   TUESDAY 3/16, 1:30 PM
      	     Refreshments at 1:15
      
           WHERE:  SC 182
      

Abstract

In recent years, massive quantities of business and research data have been collected and stored, partially due to the plummeting cost of data storage. The "support vector machine" is a popular and current machine learning technique that performs quite well in solving data mining problems such as analyzing census data, World Wide Web logs, or retail sales databases. This talk will focus on describing what support vector machines are, how they relate to mathematical programming, and how they find good solutions to the above mentioned problems.

About the speaker

Dave Musicant is an assistant professor of computer science at Carleton College, where he has spent the last four years since receiving his Ph.D. in computer sciences at the University of Wisconsin--Madison. His research is in data mining and machine learning, and he teaches classes at Carleton in areas such as Artificial Intelligence, Data Mining, Database Systems, and Programming Languages. When he is not busy computing, he enjoys biking and playing electric bass.

Rob Rutherford Talks Bioinformatics

"Approximately a third of the human population (~2 billion persons worldwide) harbor viable, but nonreplicating, tubercle bacilli in their lungs. Most active cases of tuberculosis (TB) arise from this vast reservoir and attempts to reduce it with the use of antibiotics have been broadly unsuccessful. Innovative methods to combat this ancient pathogen are sorely needed."

This is what motivates Rob Rutherford to do research in Bioinformatics, an interdisciplinary marriage of Computer Science, Biology. The tools of Bioinformatics, Biostatistics and Biomathematics, applied to the latest discoveries about genomics and the structure of DNA, offer some of our best hope for putting an end to TB.

And Rob does this work here at St. Olaf, using undergraduate researchers including CS students!

Come and hear him speak at the next CS colloquium:

      
           TITLE:  Bioinformatics of Tuberculosis Latency
      
           WHO:    Rob Rutherford, Biology, St. Olaf 
      
           WHEN:   TUESDAY 3/30, 1:30 PM    (RIGHT AFTER BREAK!)
      	     Refreshments at 1:15
      
           WHERE:  SC 182
      

About the speaker:

Rob Rutherford is a member of the St. Olaf biology department, having arrived in 2003. His Ph.D., in genetics, is from the University of Wisconsin - Madison, and his undergraduate degree is from the University of Minnesota - Morris. Between earning his Ph.D. and coming to St. Olaf in 2003, Rob worked for several years as a Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California - San Francisco and as a senior scientist at Incyte Genomics, in Palo Alto. He has also taught at Coe College, in Iowa.

Sunny Kim, Computer Graphics, University of Minnesota

Our April 6 CS speaker is Sunghee (Sunny) Kim, who is completing a Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Minnesota. She is a specialist in computer graphics, with special interests in how to make a surface look three-dimensional by "texture mapping," which involves drawing patterns on surfaces in a graphics image. This should be a fascinating and visually appealing talk.

By all accounts, Sunny is a remarkable teacher, a solid researcher, and a delightful person. We've made this an evening talk rather than an afternoon talk, believing it might make it possible for more students to come to hear her (including those who can't make the regular colloquium time). Sunny's talk and biographical information is appended below. Hope to see you there!

      
           TITLE:  Investigating the Effect of Texture on 3D Shape Perception 
      
           WHO:    Sunny Kim, University of Minnesota
      
           WHEN:   Tuesday, April 6, 7:00 p.m.
      	     Reception following the talk
      
           WHERE:  SC 182
      

Abstract:

One of the key objectives in visualization research is to design and implement algorithms that effectively communicate scientific data so that essential features of the data can be understood intuitively and accurately. As the volume of available information expands, it becomes more difficult to extract meaningful patterns from the data in its raw format. Effective visualization techniques construct a representation of the data that highlights important patterns that may not be readily apparent otherwise.

This talk will discuss the effects of surface texture on the perception of three-dimensional shape. Experimental results will be presented from a series of user studies that seek to identify and explain the characteristics of texture patterns that facilitate shape perception of three-dimensional objects.

Biographical information

Sunny Kim is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota. She will be joining the Department of Computer Science at Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in the Fall 2004 as assistant professor. She received an M.S. in Computer and Information Science from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1999 and a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah in 1996. Her research interests include shape perception, visualization, computer vision, and human computer interaction.

Nathaniel Borenstein visit CANCELLED

We regret that Dr. Nathaniel Borenstein, Distinguished Engineer at IBM, will be unable to deliver the Kleber-Gery and MSCS Colloquium lectures on Tuesday April 27, due to a family emergency.

We hope to reschedule these lectures for a date to be determined in the Fall.

ACE team presentation

The course project from the first offering last Fall of CS 284, Client Server Applications, has taken on a life of its own! The thirteen students in the class formed a single team that built ACE, the Academic Contract Explorer, dedicated to putting the process of negotiating a major or concentration in Mathematics, Statistics, or Computer Science online. Along the way, the team had to do a lot of things that are firsts at St. Olaf:

• Build a system for using standard student and faculty passwords securely, without any programmers seeing them.

• Apply Extreme Programming (XP) software design methodology in a team project for a course.

• Create Java programs that process XML documents, automatically generating GUIs (Graphics User Interfaces) from XML and storing/retrieving XML documents in a database.

• Continue project work after the course leading to undergraduate research publications.

The ACE team is proud to present their work in a special colloquium during Community Time on Thursday April 29. We hope you can all attend, hear about our project, and learn about how to make your own online major/concentration contract!

      
           TITLE:  ACE, the Academic Contract Explorer Project
      
           WHO:    The ACE Team (from CS 284, CSA, Fall 2003)
      
           WHEN:   Thursday, April 29, 11:30 a.m. (DURING COMMUNITY TIME)
      	     Refreshments at 11:15
      
           WHERE:  SC 182
      

Abstract:

The ACE (Academic Contract Explorer) began in the Fall, 2003 initial offering of CS 284, Client-Server Applications (CSA), as the class programming project. The thirteen students in the class used Extreme Programming (XP) software development methods, three computer languages (Java, XML, SQL), and lots of hard work to create a networked team project to assist students and faculty with the online creation and management of contracts for majors and concentrations in Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science. This talk will describe the project and the experiences of the students who created it.

Speakers:

Aubrey Barnard '04, Aaron Etshokin '05, Rylan Gibbens '05, Joel Johnson '06, Ted Johnson '04, Justin Von Stroh '05, Mike Zahniser '04, and Prof. Dick Brown (supervisor).

Other ACE team members:

Matt Bills '04, Mike Bongard '04, Robert Crawford '05, Noah Dove '06, Ari Gronning '05, and Joel Landsteiner '04

Prof. Amelia Taylor, Mathematics, Generating Prime Numbers In Polynomial Time

Our own Amelia Taylor will be delivering a Mathematics Colloquium on how she finds prime numbers efficiently. In fact, she can determine larger and larger primes using an amount of computation that grows as only a polynomial function of the size of the prime---much better than most algorithms, which grow exponentially relative to size of the prime. Is this a CS talk, or a Math talk? Although the subject is Mathematics (or more precisely, "Mathematical Computing"), Prof. Taylor's concern with computational efficiency, plus her role as a teacher of CS, add special interest in this talk for CS folks.

      
           TITLE:  Generating Prime Numbers In Polynomial Time
      
           WHO:    Prof. Amelia Taylor
      
           WHEN:   Tuesday, May 4, 1:30 p.m.
      	     Refreshments at 1:15
      
           WHERE:  SC 182