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The UCI Division of Cal-(IT)² presents another Network Systems Distinguished Speaker:

Roy H. Campbell, Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,

Speaking on

PERVASIVE COMPUTING: GAIA AND ACTIVE SPACES

Friday, November 22, in the McDonnell Douglas Auditorium.

The seminar will begin at 11:00 AM; refreshments will be served at 10:30AM

Abstract: We envision a future where people's living spaces are interactive and programmable. Users move from space to space taking some applications with them, accessing space specific applications, and building new applications interactively as needed. Users interact with offices, homes, cars, malls and airports to request information, benefit from the resources available, and configure the habitat's behavior. Exception for confidentiality restrictions, data and tasks are always accessible and are mapped dynamically to convenient resources present in the current location. Users may extend the habitat with personal devices that seamlessly integrate with the environment. When the physical environment of a user contains hundreds of networked computer devices each of which may be used to support one or more user applications, the notion of personal computing becomes inadequate. Further, when a group of users share such a physical environment, new forms of sharing, cooperation and collaboration are possible. Mobile users may constantly change the computers with which they interact. We believe such user-oriented interactive environments require a new software infrastructure to operate their resources, sense context properties, and assist in the development and execution of applications. We present an experimental middleware infrastructure called Gaia that we have used to prototype the resource management of and provide the user-oriented interfaces for such physical spaces populated with network-enabled computing resources. To limit the scope of our research, we focus on physical spaces used for teaching; classrooms, offices, and lecture rooms. The system described in this paper is derived from a series of experiments starting in 1996. We show how, by applying the concepts of a conventional operating system to middleware, we can manage the resources, devices and distributed objects in a room, building, or physical space, how a distributed extension of the model-view-controller that is use in personal computers simplifies and structures practical applications for these environments, and how, by driving context-sensitivity into its security and data storage mechanisms, the system can help satisfy the requirements for user-centricity and mobility.

Dr. Campbell received his Honors B.S. Degree in Mathematics, with a Minor in Physics from the University of Sussex in 1969 and his M.S. and Ph.D. Degrees in Computer Science from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1972 and 1976, respectively. In 1976 he joined the faculty of the University of Illinois and in 1985 became a Full Professor of Computer Science. During the past twenty-four years he has supervised the completion of thirty-one Ph.D. dissertations and over one hundred M.S. theses. He is the author of over one hundred and seventy research papers on security, programming languages, software engineering, operating systems, distributed systems, and networking. His past research accomplishments include path expressions, various deadline and error recovery mechanisms for asynchronous processes, the Choices object-oriented operating system, the VDP protocols for streaming audio and video used by Vosaic LLC, dynamic TAO, 2K a distributed object operating system, UIUC Sesame, a Java implementation of Sesame security protocols, and the Seraphim active security policies. His current research projects include active spaces, security interoperability, security policies and active security in active networks. He is an active participant in the department's distance learning program. Professor Campbell is director of CARIS, the University of Illinois Center for Advanced Research in Information Security and the NSA designated University of Illinois Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education. He is the principal investigator of a two million, five year NSF ITR project investigating ubiquitous computing.

For further information contact Professor Sharad Mehrotra at sharad@ics.uci.edu

The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology

Announce a Joint Seminar

CHEAP AND EASY STRUCTURAL HEALTH PROGNOSTICATION?

Professor Steven D. Glaser

Associate Professor

Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering

University of California, Berkeley

Wednesday, December 4

3:00 PM

Engineering Gateway 3311

Refreshments will be provided after the seminar

ABSTRACT:

Given that damage begins locally, I propose a Dense-Pak(tm) of sensor agents placed in swarms around key structural points throughout a structure, e.g. a dozen autonomous nodes, each carrying a 3-D accelerometer, distributed around a key beam-column connection. The present paradigm for structural damage prognoses has been global modal analysis, although recent full-scale experiments show that modal analysis is far too insensitive to yield usable information for practical cases. Global modal analysis is doomed for several reasons. Structures of interest are complex systems with a great number of degrees of freedom. Because evolving damage is local, a structure will redistribute internal forces to stiffer members as particular beams, columns, etc. are weakened. I have therefore proposed a new approach to structural health prognosis, based on evaluation of local damage, leveraging ubiquitous, cheap, wireless Motes. I will discuss a few of our past, present, and future test beds.

SPEAKER:

Prof. Glaser's current research interests include geoenvironmental problems as well as nondestructive evaluation of geomaterials. Prof. Glaser is active in the American Society of Civil Engineers as reviewer, editor, and committee member; and he has served on several NSF panels relating to sensors and civil structures. Prof. Glaser's involvement with civil engineering began when he began working as a union construction laborer in the Washington D.C. area. While earning his college degree in philosophy, he became an apprentice operation engineer. As an apprentice and Journeyman, Prof. Glaser worked on many aspects of the Washington D.C Metro project, including assisting with the operation of a tunnel boring machine. He worked as a driller for eight years in the D.C area and Iraq. This practical experience with geotechnical engineering led him to enroll in the civil engineering program at The University of Texas in 1981, where he earned his Ph.D. Prof. Glaser was a research civil engineer in the National Institute of Standards and Technology, from 1991 to 1993, and later an assistant professor at the Colorado School of Mines. Prof. Glaser has been in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Berkeley since 1996. In addition to his construction experience, Prof. Glaser worked as a tunnel constructibility analyst for the Deep Basing program, TRW Defense Group, as well as writing the geotechnical-tunneling section of the Central Texas proposal to the Superconducting Super Collider Laboratory. Prof. Glaser has done extensive work on the interpretation of acoustic emission waveforms from discrete rock fracture. This work allows the real-time analysis of micro-cracking in brittle materials. He was awarded the 1993 Basic Research Award by the U.S. National Committee for Rock Mechanics for this work.

For more information, contact Maria Feng, 824-2162, or Stuart Ross, 824-9602.

The California Institute for Telecommunications and = Information Technology
presents

11:00 a.m. Monday, December 16
McDonnell Douglas Auditorium
Refreshments will be served at 10:30 a.m. =

ABSTRACT: We are observing a confluence of = several different aspects: software components, software as a service, = and an ever-growing space of Internet and Web standards. Over the = past year all major players in the software industry have announced = their support of XML Web Services in one form or another. So, are = services here to displace components? Or objects? This talk = is focused on drawing boundaries that help to understand the key = concepts without obstructing the path towards future development. = Questioning several of the traditionally assumed essential properties = of objects seems to be one key to progress.

SPEAKER: After years of both academic and = entrepreneurial experience, Clemens joined Microsoft Research in = Redmond, Washington in early 1999, where he works on furthering the = principles, technologies, and methods supporting component = software. He is the author of the award-winning book = "Component Software: Beyond Object-Oriented Programming" = (Addison Wesley), now in its second edition. Together with Dave = Messerschmitt of UC Berkeley he wrote "Software Ecosystem: = Understanding an Indispensable Technology and Industry" (MIT = Press, early 2003). Clemens received his Masters in Electrical = Engineering in 1987 from the Aachen Institute of Technology, in = Germany. He received his PhD in Computer Science in 1992 from ETH = Zurich in Switzerland. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the = International Computer Science Institute at UC Berkeley, he received = tenure as associate professor at the Queensland University of = Technology, Australia, where he continues to hold an adjunct = professorship. He is a cofounder of Oberon microsystems, with its = recent spinoff, esmertec inc, both based in Zurich. Clemens' = homepage is at: research.microsoft.com/~cszypers/

Molecular Nanotechnology and Quantum Information Science

"Carbon Nanotube Junctions and Devices"