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The paper "Trajectory-Based Statistical Forwarding for Multihop Infrastructure-to-Vehicle Data Delivery" by CS&E alumnus Jaehoon (Paul) Jeong, Shuo Guo, Yu (Jason) Gu, Tian He, and David H.C. Du. was selected as a spotlighted paper and posted on the website of IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing (TMC), one of leading journals in mobile computing research areas. Works chosen for this distinction are specially selected by the journal's editor-in-chief. The paper proposes Trajectory-based Statistical Forwarding (TSF) scheme, tailored for the multihop data delivery from infrastructure nodes (e.g., Internet access points) to moving vehicles in vehicular ad hoc networks. See the story on the IEEE home page.
Jeong received his Ph.D. from the CS&E department in December 2009, with advisors David Du and Tian He. Jeong is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Software at Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea, working in Cyber-Physical Systems that research the interaction between our physical world and computer systems.
While many CSE alumni are highly successful in academia and industry, Professor Imrich Chlamtac (Ph. D. 1979) is in a class of alumni whose careers have taken off in a dramatic way, making a significant impact on the academic and business worlds at a global level. Chlamtac is the Bruno Kessler Honorary Professor at the University of Trento, Italy, and is the President and founder of the Center for Research and Telecommunication Experimentation for Networked Communities (Create-Net), an independent non-profit international research consortium.
Among some of his major projects, Chlamtac is the principal investigator of BIONETS, a multi-disciplinary project aligned with 13 top European academic and industrial institutions. This project explores the application of biologically inspired approaches to the management of future computing and communication systems. Chlamtac is also the Chair of the Scientific Council at the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social-Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering.
After receiving his doctoral degree in computer science from the University of Minnesota under the guidance of CSE professor emeritus William Franta, Chlamtac made significant contributions to the field. He is known as the inventor of the lighpath concept, which is the basic mechanism for wavelength routing. In the early 1980s, Chlamtac was also the first to introduce fundamental concepts of multihop networking, covering issues such as channel conflict resolution, hidden terminal problems, routing, and broadcasting. IEEE and ACM both honored Chlamtac with the designation of Fellow in 1993 and 1995, respectively.
Chlamtac has held many faculty positions at Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, the University of Massachusetts – Amherst, Boston University, and the Distinguished Chair in Telecommunications Professorship at the University of Texas – Dallas, where he also served as the Associate Provost for Research.
Victor Bahl, Chlamtac’s former Ph.D. advisee at the University of Massachusetts – Amherst, is now a Principal Researcher and founding manager of the Networking Research Group at Microsoft. “Imrich Chlamtac epitomizes academic entrepreneurship. He is an energetic charismatic leader who has created opportunities for young researchers like no other academic I know of,” he said.
Despite his already significant accomplishments, Chlamtac continues to seek answers to major research questions. “Technology is taking us to a world where myriads of heavily networked devices interact with the physical world in multiple ways, and at multiple scales, from the global Internet scale down to micro- and nano-devices,” he said. “A fundamental research challenge is to devise decentralized computing systems, which are capable of operating under changing environments, and yet exhibit the desired behavior and response time, under unpredictable operating constraints.”
Soundbyte, Spring-Summer 2008 (pdf)
When CSE alumnus Mike Rogalski (B.S. 1990) earned his undergraduate degree, the CSE department’s building was brand new and the business world had yet to be rocked by the power of the Internet. Fast forward to the present, Rogalski holds an impressive position as a Senior Executive at Accenture and attributes his undergraduate education to preparing him for the challenges and opportunities ahead.
Rogalski said he became interested in the computing field, because he liked the ability to use technology to solve tough problems. Serving at Accenture as a Senior Executive in the health and life science practice, he uses technology to solve problems for hospital clients and health insurance companies. His large projects include work in portal development and Web 2.0 technologies. Rogalski described his work as, “Leveraging technology to improve the interactions and business processes between consumers and health care organizations.”
Current and former colleagues of Rogalski describe him as a great supporter. Philip McKoy, Director of Product Development in Technology Services at Target Corporation, worked with Rogalski at Accenture in the late-1990s. “I would not be in the position I am in without Mike,” he said. “If he saw that you were good, he took the time to stand up for you and for your career.”
Rogalski’s rise at Accenture started right after graduation in 1990. He said the Institute of Technology’s job placement staff helped him to secure a job after graduation at Andersen Consulting doing systems implementation. Since then, the company was renamed Accenture and Rogalski was promoted to Partner in 2000.
Rogalski said he has many fond memories from the CSE department and the University of Minnesota. He attended a programming language class with CSE professor Jaideep Srivastava and also took courses with CSE professor emeritus Marvin Stein – a founder of the department. Rogalski said that at that time computer science was starting to take off, with exciting technology in development, such as the Internet and client/server, and e-mail.
In addition to technology interests, Rogalski also participated on the University’s Track and Field team. He is still an active supporter of the University’s Track and Field team, as well as CSE department activities. Rogalski serves on CSE’s industry advisory board, the Computer Science Associates. In addition, he plays a crucial role in overall recruiting efforts for Accenture at the University of Minnesota.
As for advice for current students, Rogalski said students should remain open to a variety of industries. “Technology plays a big part in every industry,” he said. “Computer science permeates everything in industry now a days.”
Soundbyte, Spring-Summer 2008 (pdf)
For CSE alumnus Wolf Ketter (Ph.D. 2007), the lure of computer science wasn’t in the discipline itself, but in its dynamic applications to the business world. Ketter’s broad mastery of this area has enabled him to do fascinating work in the area of information systems and supply chain management.
Since earning his doctorate in computer science, Ketter became a tenure-track faculty member doing research on the technology for information systems at one of world’s top management schools, the Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University in the Netherlands. He founded and runs a 10-15 person research group called Learning Agents Research Group at Erasmus. The group’s work focuses on autonomous intelligent agents to support human decision making capabilities in the area of business networks, electronic markets, and SCM.
As part of this work, Ketter’s team cracked into the big business of international flower auctions held in the Netherlands. “60 percent of flowers being sold in the world are auctioned from the Netherlands,” Ketter said. For one project, his team is creating a system to improve tactical and strategic decision-making of the flower chain and at the flower auction sites.
In another new project, his research group is working on smart business networks by developing advanced decision support systems and autonomous software agents to assist managers by gathering and analyzing information, making recommendations, and supporting business decisions. Ketter said he became interested in this work far before deciding to pursue a doctoral degree.
After earning a diploma and a master’s in electrical engineering in Germany, he had various jobs and also earned a master’s degree in Software Engineering from the University of St. Thomas. After meeting CSE professor Maria Gini, he began looking into pursuing a doctorate at the U of M. While pursuing his degree, he taught courses in the department’s Master of Science in Software Engineering (MSSE) Program.
Ketter said he is fond of his time at the University and in the department. He met his wife, Elena, in the department while they both worked in Gini’s research group. “Wolf is a friendly, good-hearted person and an enthusiastic, tireless worker,” said John Collins, the MSSE Director of Graduate Studies. “It’s great fun to sit down with Wolf and toss ideas around, and it often does not take too long to come up with more ideas for research and papers than anyone could possibly pursue.”
Currently Ketter is seeking to hire one talented Ph.D. student and one scientific programmer to broaden his research group. He said he also hopes to host a CSE student researcher for a semester to work as part of his group.
Soundbyte, Spring-Summer 2008 (pdf)
CSE 2007 Distinguished Alumni Award winner Jeff Dean (B.S. 1990) knew that he wanted to study computer science from an early age. “I started typing in and modifying other people’s computer programs when I was about 9, started writing my own programs at about 11 or 12, and got my first paying software job in the summer when I was 13,” he recalled.
Now at Google in California, working as a Google Fellow in the Systems Infrastructure Group, if you ask him why he still loves computer science he’ll give you a quick answer: “I like that you can write software that a lot of people can use,” he said. “It’s a field where you can have a lot of impact in the world.”
The CSE department honored him in 2007 at its biannual Open House and Technology Forum luncheon with the Outstanding Alumni Award. The University of Washington, where Dean earned his Ph. D. in 1996, also honored him with an alumnus achievement award in 2006 for his work, which has also earned him the praise and admiration of his colleagues.
In preparing for his career, Dean earned a B.S. in Computer Science and Economics from the University of Minnesota (1990), before going on to work at the World Health Organization’s Global Programme on AIDS, developing software to model the impact of the AIDS pandemic. After earning his Ph.D. Dean went on to work at the Digital Equipment Corporation’s Western Research Lab, California.
Dean said he enjoyed attending the University of Minnesota, because there are a wide range of courses. Despite a keen interest in the area of computer science, he said he also learned the importance of incorporating other disciplines, thus pursuing a double major in economics.
In addition to discovering the range of applications that computer science can have, he said many CSE courses shaped his interests and future study. In particular, he said a course on distributed parallel computing, taught by the now CSE Department Head and William Norris Professor Vipin Kumar, inspired him. “It sparked my interest in doing parallel computing,” Dean said.
With a solid computer science base and additional education and experience, Dean has reached his goal of creating software for the masses and says life at Google is good.
Dean’s work at Google, which began in 1999, encompasses a wide range of CSE disciplines, such as working on large-scale information retrieval, which involves solving a vast array of problems. He describes his work as behind the scenes, serving as the “building blocks” of software.
However, Dean is very modest about his work. Uygar Oztekin, another CSE graduate (Ph.D. 2004) now at Google, said that Dean has worked on critical programs, everything from “low level libraries to high level components and services.” He added that Dean’s work is used daily by many Google groups and software products.
Dean’s two most prominent projects (that he can discuss) include MapReduce and Bigtable, both of which are “critical, high impact components” to the system infrastructure. Oztekin said Bigtable impacts, “Google Analytics, Google Earth, Google Base, personalized search, and Orkut.” He added that, “MapReduce is an extremely useful infrastructure piece used by many (almost all) engineers in Google.”
In addition to his software work at Google, Dean has also been involved in hiring software engineers. When asked about what qualities make CSE professionals stand out, Dean had a very succinct answer.
He said that applicants with a broad skill set, who have dealt with realistic problems, are more likely to get his attention. Dean added, “I think that today many of the interesting problems in computer science are actually at the intersection with other disciplines, like biotechnology, where having a good understanding across a broad range of disciplines is extremely important.”
At 9-years old, CSE alumnus Brad Miller (Ph. D. 2003) knew that he wanted to go into computer science. He said the fascination began when his school received its first Apple computer and he had his first taste of programming.
Fast forward to today; Miller is a computer science professor at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, where he completed his bachelor’s degree. He teaches undergraduate students everything from computer graphics to programming. He also participates in research with students and has co-authored textbooks with fellow Luther professor David Ranum, including, Problem Solving with Algorithms and Data Structures Using Python, and another textbook set to be published in February, 2008.
While Miller’s job requires him to be nimble in all areas of computer science, his background lies in recommender systems. He said sorting through all of the information on the Internet has always been an issue, but recommender systems offer solutions.
While attending graduate school at the University of Minnesota in 1995, Miller began working with CSE professors Joseph Konstan and John Riedl on various projects, including GroupLens.
Soon they discussed forming a company, along with post-doctoral students David Gardiner and Steven Snyder (psychology). In 1996, they formed Net Perceptions, pioneering the commercialization of recommender systems. The company became one of the University’s most successful technology start-ups.
At its peak, Net Perceptions was one of Minnesota’s leading information technology companies, with a market capitalization of more than $1 billion. Miller’s involvement yielded accolades, including the distinction of Fellow of the World Technology Network and receiving the Sloan E-Commerce Award from MIT in 1999.
Prior to attending graduate school, Miller spent 10 years in the industry sector. He worked at Control Data in expert systems in energy management and then later at a company called Apertus as project leader for expert systems. Luther’s Ranum said Miller’s diverse industry background is a great asset to Luther College. “His technical knowledge is unmatched,” he said. “We really lucked out and kind of got the best of both worlds when we hired Brad.”
CSE alumnus Jim Pichler (M.S.S.E. 2003) isn’t afraid of a challenge. He ambitiously nurtured two highly successful start-up companies in the past 15 years; Technology Squared and Digital River, while still finding time for volunteering.
After graduating with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota- Duluth, Pichler took a job with a small start-up, called Technology Squared. In that job he did everything from setting-up the network to wiring. The company grew fast and in 1995 Pichler’s talents were tapped for a spin-off company, called Digital River.
At Digital River, Pichler thrived on building e-commerce stores. The company soon became a world leader in digital software downloads. In 1998, Pichler designed the systems integration for the company, which is still widely used today. He also refined an expertise in fraud prevention, a topic that he has published papers on and speaks about at conferences.
Pichler returned to academia in 2001, entering the CSE’s two-year Master of Science in Software Engineering (MSSE) Program, administered by the University of Minnesota’s Software Engineering Center (UMSEC). He attended classes on select days, while continuing to work at Digital River full-time. Pichler, who currently serves as Digital River’s Senior Director of Software Quality Assurance, said the program had a definite impact on his career and forced him to think differently about his work.
While Pichler has proven to be goal focused in the business and academic worlds, he is equally passionate about reaching out to children and encouraging early involvement in science and technology fields.
He is the president-elect of the University’s Institute of Technology Alumni Society (ITAS) and plays a major role in leading K-12 activities and outreach. In addition, he’s a senior member of the IEEE computing group and currently serves as a member of the CSE department’s Computer Science Associates group and Eden Prairie’s Partnership for Emergency Readiness Consortium.
CSE professor Mats Heimdahl, also the Director of UMSEC, said that in addition to serving on many volunteer boards, Pichler also routinely helps with University events. “Jim has been an invaluable resource for the department and the Institute of Technology,” Heimdahl said. “We have to be careful so to not wear him out.”
CSE alumnus Dr. Ananth Grama (Ph. D. 1996) didn’t expect to fall into high performance computing when he started his doctoral work at the University of Minnesota’s CSE department. “My beginnings were in robotics,” he said.
But while working under the guidance of his adviser, William Norris Professor and CSE Department Head, Vipin Kumar, he said his area of focus changed. “Vipin did an absolutely outstanding job motivating us,” he said. “He was the inspiration for all of us with his energy and drive.”
Grama, now a professor of computer science and University Scholar at Purdue University, described the underlying theme of his work as the development of novel algorithms and use of advanced computing platforms to solve complex problems in science and engineering.
Grama’s work on two large federal projects showcases his broad abilities. In one project he works on system biology, using high performance computing to model the interactions of proteins and genes in networks. Grama said he is researching how these networks differ in humans, mice, and plants. “We were among the very first groups to look at how to analyze these networks,” he said.
In his other major project called, ‘Realtime Control of Large Civil Infrastructures,’ he works to model stress and corrosion in building structures. Grama is enthusiastic about the potential impact of his work. “...our work has the potential to make a fundamental impact on diverse domains, ranging from computational biology to structural engineering,” he said.
According to his peers, like Purdue University Professor Ahmed Sameh, Grama has become highly successful in his field. “He’s widely accepted at the national and international level as an expert in parallel computing as well as computational biology,” Sameh said.
As evidence of this, since leaving the CSE department Grama was awarded the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award in 1998, the Purdue University School of Science Outstanding Teacher Award in 2002, and the Purdue University Scholar designation in 2002. He is also a co-author of the widely used textbook, “Introduction to Parallel Computing,” which he worked on as a CSE graduate student.
Sameh, a former U of M CSE department head, said he first met Grama when he was a grad student. “I detected immediately that this fellow was going to have a really bright future,” he said. Sameh said since coming to Purdue he and Grama have had numerous opportunities to work together.
“We’ve had several joint grants with NSF and DARPA and even grants with industry,” he said. Sameh said he finds satisfaction in Grama’s accomplishments. “It was gratifying to see an alumnus of CS at Minnesota do extremely well at Purdue and the national and international level.”
Although CSE alumnus Mike Cassano (B.S. 2005) only left the CSE department two years ago, he has accomplished a lot in his brief career. His triumphs include founding two companies and finishing his Masters in Business Administration from the University’s Carlson School of Management.
Cassano founded his company, IDC WebDev, with a high school friend while pursing his degree in the CSE department. He said he ran the business, which specializes in software programming and design, while attending school. While he already had the entrepreneurial spirit, Cassano said the CSE department made it possible for him to do more for his clients – including design, database work, and client management.
“In my second year, as a sophomore, I joined John Riedl’s lab, GroupLens,” he said. “That’s where I learned the most in the program.” GroupLens is a research group focused on projects relating to human-computer interaction, like MovieLens, a movie recommender service. Cassano said this hands-on experience in GroupLens is exactly what he needed to succeed. “It really gives you a chance to see what it’s like in real world applications,” he said.
He credits Riedl and CSE Professor John Carlis for guiding him in his undergraduate work. Since earning his undergraduate degree, Cassano dove into an MBA program and started a new enterprise. Seth Werner, a lecturer in the marketing department of the Carlson School of Management, said he met Cassano when he was interviewing for teaching assistants. Soon after hiring him, Werner and Cassano began to share business ideas and a bond formed.
In 2006 the duo formed a company called, ‘name out loud.’ Cassano said it’s a software program in which individuals can speak their name into a Web browser, so others can listen to it and pronounce it correctly. “Corporations can integrate this feature in their online directory,” he said.
Werner said he and Cassano are a good match for this business, because they have a good balance of the necessary skills, expertise, and resources. “He’s not just a fanciful programmer that is void of the business side,” Werner said of Cassano. “He’s done a fantastic job of getting the product completed and working.”
CSE alumnus Dr. Panos Pardalos (Ph.D. 1985) said that when he began studying optimization he never expected it to have so many applications. But after working in optimization for more than 20 years, he describes it as, “A tool that appears in many sciences.”
Pardalos, now a Distinguished Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Florida, said optimization can be used for everything from finding the shortest distance between two points to figuring out the best way molecules can join together. “Now we apply optimization to many things – to medicine, to telecommunications, to transportation, to drug design,” Pardalos said.
Because of his experience with a wide range of applications, Pardalos said he urges current students in computer science to explore other disciplines in addition to computer science specialties. “The disciplines are merging together,” he said.
At the University of Florida, Pardalos is an affiliated faculty member of the Computer Science Department, the Hellenic Studies Center, and the Biomedical Engineering Program. He also carries the title of Co-Director of the Center for Applied Optimization.
Since obtaining his degree from the University of Minnesota, Pardalos has held visiting appointments at numerous prestigious universities and research institutions, including Princeton University and AT&T Labs Research, to name a few.
Pardalos has also authored eight books, served on the editorial boards of many scholarly journals, organized international conferences, and amassed an endless list of awards and honors. His honors include an honorary doctoral degree from Lobachevski University in Russia, the designation of an AAAS and INFORMS Fellow, and the Greek National Award and Gold Medal for Operations Research in 2001.
Michael Saunders, a research professor at Stanford University and a colleague of Pardalos, describes him as extremely energetic in his professional work. “He’s incredibly hard working. He’s editor of numerous journals in quite a range of areas,” Saunders said. “He organizes eight conferences every year, which is astounding.” He also went on to say that Pardalos is always eager to tackle hard questions in the field.
Although Pardalos left the University of Minnesota long ago, he said he tries to make it back every two years for speaking engagements. But beyond professional and scholarly ties, Pardalos said the University campus also holds a personal sentiment. “I met my wife here,” he said on a visit to campus in the fall of 2006. Pardalos said he met his wife, Rosemary, at the University’s Coffman Memorial Union.
In addition to finding his match in Rosemary at the U of M, Pardalos said he also found a supportive adviser, former CSE Department Head Ben Rosen and a great community of international students. “I enjoyed it very much,” he said.
CSE alumnus Edmond Chow (Ph.D. 1997) is a computer scientist at D. E. Shaw Research in New York where he works on algorithms and software for high performance molecular dynamics simulations.
These simulations determine the motion of atoms using classical physics and models of how atoms interact, called force fields. Chow said computational chemists are using this technology to investigate proteins and the mechanisms behind their function, which could ultimately lead to better pharmaceuticals.
One highlight of Chow’s recent work is a parallel code for performing molecular dynamic simulations. “We put a lot of effort into making it really fast,” he said. A paper he co-authored on the subject won the Best Paper Award at the 2006 ACM/IEEE Supercomputing Conference in Tampa, Florida.
During his graduate work at the University, CSE professor Yousef Saad served as Chow’s advisor. Chow said he has many fond memories of the University and Professors Saad, Haesun Park and Daniel Boley. He said he often wishes that he would have stayed in graduate school longer, singling out math and physics as courses he would have taken.
CSE professor Yousef Saad described Chow as a “good success story.” He said that Chow made quite an impression as the “new kid on the block,” when only a couple months after his arrival to the department Chow had a well received paper at a conference on iterative methods.
In between receiving his doctorate and his current position, Chow worked as a computational scientist and project leader in the Center for Applied Scientific Computing at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. There he worked on large-scale simulations solving large linear systems; a direct offshoot of his doctoral thesis.
During this time, Chow was awarded a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest award bestowed by the United States government to engineers and scientists beginning their careers.
CSE alumnus Michael Whalen (Ph.D. 2005) loves to prove software wrong, especially if it could mean saving lives. He thrives on ferreting out software flaws in safety critical programs; diagnosing them early in the development process. “Software is in charge of lots of things that can kill you,” he said. “So, it’s important to be sure that it works correctly. What I do is one way to check whether software works as intended.”
As a Senior Software Engineer at Rockwell Collins, Whalen specializes in formal methods, a technique for proving or disproving whether safety critical software meets its requirements – making sure it does what it’s supposed to do. The expertise he’s gained in the field has led him to work on projects with major companies, including notable names like NASA and Lockheed Martin.
Whalen attended Luther College as an undergraduate, but said his graduate work primed him for his career. In his graduate study, he attended readings to discuss software issues hosted by CSE Professor Mats Heimdahl, also the director of University of Minnesota’s Software Engineering Center (UMSEC).
In one reading session, Whalen read a paper focused on how a faulty software system resulted in the deaths of cancer patients. “It made me sick to my stomach,” he said. This paper was the motivation for Whalen to focus his efforts on software verification in safety critical systems. He added that the CSE department directly impacted his career path and work on safety critical systems. “It totally changed the direction of what I’m doing,” Whalen said. “I feel that I’m doing something that is both technically challenging and that I can feel good about.”
While working for Rockwell Collins, Whalen has collaborated with the University of Minnesota and NASA on a project that involved building technology that allows engineers to easily verify software written using a tool called Simulink. As part of the NASA funded project, Whalen helped prove that aircraft display software met its requirements.
Rick Butler, a senior research engineer at the NASA Langley Research Center, worked with Whalen on the project. He said Whalen’s work with formal methods was very important to the effort, because it detected software bugs early.
“Even in a very small program,” Butler said. “The number of test cases exceeds the number of atoms in the universe very quickly.” He said Whalen can symbolically examine all of the possible input scenarios without having to execute each one. Butler described the results of the project as “wonderful.” He added, “We’re very pleased with the work that they did.”
In a current verification project that is still ongoing, Whalen is collaborating with Lockheed Martin, proving properties about flight control programs. “Our work [at Rockwell Collins] is being noticed throughout the industry, which led to the collaboration with Lockheed,” he said.
In a related project he also helped Heimdahl and NASA Ames to analyze safety requirements for the docking procedure of the new NASA Crew Exploration Vehicle (Orion) with the Space Station. “NASA is evaluating new technologies for use in the replacement for the shuttle,” said Whalen. “And I strongly believe that this technology would be great.”
Whalen is enthusiastic about his work and his experience in the CSE department. He has kept a strong connection to the CSE department by serving as the liaison between Rockwell Collins and the University. “I get to apply cutting-edge research from the U on real systems,” he said. “It’s a great place to be.”
The 2005 CSE Distinguished Alumni Award recipient, Dr. Donald G. Krantz, is the is the Chief Operating Officer at Protomold. The key to the success of the company in rapidly producing prototypes of plastic parts from 3-D CAD models is a powerful computer cluster. Previously he served as the Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at MTS Systems Corporation, a global supplier of testing products and industrial sensors. MTS testing products help customers accelerate and improve their design, development, and manufacturing processes and are used for determining the mechanical behavior of materials, products, and structures.
Dr. Krantz has also held the positions of Vice President of Engineering and Technology for the MTS Test Division, Vice President, Advanced Systems Division, and Program Manager in the Advanced Systems Division.
Prior to coming to MTS, Dr. Krantz was an Engineering Fellow at Honeywell Defense Systems Division and at Alliant Techsystems Inc. His technical accomplishments are seminal and span a variety of technical areas. He wrote the AVOS CP/M-based operating system for the blind and visually impaired in the early 1980s. Working for Honeywell in the late 1980s, he was a systems engineer helping to prototype several remotely-piloted and autonomous land vehicle concepts for the military. He wrote the Ada-based Aladdex operating system for the DARPA Aladdin multiprocessor. During this time, he was a lead developer of the automatic fire control system for the Paladin M109E5 Howitzer, the first fielded military system using embedded Ada software.
At MTS in the 1990s, he worked with CSE Professor Maria Gini (he was awarded a CSE Ph.D. working under her guidance) and Professor Max Donath on various aspects of system architecture and localization subsystems for mobile robots, including RoboCart and the MnDOT SafeTruck. He was one of the main developers of the DARPA Distributed Robotics program Scout robot working with Professor Nikos Papanikolopoulos, defining operational concepts, mechanical designs and writing the first set of embedded software.
During this same period, he developed several systems for AeroMet Corp, DARPA, the Army Research Lab, and Lockheed Martin for 3-D direct fabrication of titanium components using laseradditive manufacturing. Working with Professors Sue Mantell, Dennis Polla, Rakesh Harjani, and others, he was the
PI and systems engineer for a novel remotely-queried embedded wireless strain sensor using RFID technology and MEMS strain sensors. He was project engineer for several large-scale seismic research shaker tables, including the multi-table system at the Bridge Structures Lab at UNR. He has published two books and approximately 60 articles in various trade magazines and academic journals.
Adapted from an article in Soundbyte, Fall 2005-Winter 2006 (pdf)
Dr. Richard A. Weinberg received the CSE Distinguished Alumnus Award at the fourth biennial Technology Forum on October 17, 2003. Dr. Weinberg, who received an M.S. degree and Ph.D. from the department, is the Director and Founder of the USC Computer Animation Laboratory which he established in 1985. He has a long record of involvement in computer graphics and animation. He has been motivated by the excitement of generating pictures that cannot be done by hand and the opportunities presented by interacting with different kinds of information in the computer.
After completing his B.A. degree in computer science/graphics at Cornell University, Dr. Weinberg, a native of Saint Louis Park, returned to Minnesota to work for the Control Data Corporation in research. A year later in 1975, he enrolled at the University of Minnesota to pursue graduate work in computer science. His interest in graphics and animation led him to work with Professor William Franta, first in the Hybrid Computer Lab and then in the Special Interactive Computer Lab.
During his time as a graduate student he worked as an intern at NASA producing computer graphics for the space shuttle and astronaut training. He also worked for Cray Research where he established the Computer Graphics Group and marketed Cray computers for use in animation. After Dr. Weinberg completed his Ph. D. in 1982, he moved to Los Angeles to work on animation for the movie, “Last Star Fighter”. Three years later he joined the University of Southern California, which has the top film school in the world, to establish a masters program that would combine computer animation and digital arts. The program he co-designed is currently called the MFA in Film, Video and Computer Animation. This degree is offered by the Division of Animation and Digital Arts at USC.
Dr. Weinberg is also the Chief Technology Officer of USC’s Annenberg Center for Communications. In this role he is responsible for corporate relations directed towards bringing technology to the Center for such applications as computer animation and visual effects.
During his professional career, Dr. Weinberg has done research in the areas of computer animation, neurosurgery visualization, graphics system design, multimedia, scientific visualization and entertainment technology. In addition to receiving the Distinguished Alumnus award, he gave the keynote address at the Technology Forum on “Entertainment Technology and its Applications.”
Soundbyte, Fall 2003-Winter 2004 (pdf)
Sometimes members of a family excel in the same craft. Wolfgang Mozart and his sister Fanny were both talented musicians. Another brother and sister who are both successful in the same profession are Tom and Marilyn Rochat, members of the Computer Science Associates, an advisory council for the Computer Science and Engineering department. Both are software engineers, Marilyn at Medtronic and Tom at General Dynamics, and both are alumni of CSE graduate programs.
Tom and Marilyn grew up in Saint Louis Park, the children of a public school music teacher. They both majored in mathematics as undergraduates and then taught in the public school system, but their paths from schoolteacher to software engineer were very different.
Marilyn Rochat majored in mathematics, German, and secondary education at Gustavus Adolphus College. After graduation she taught 7th and 8th grade mathematics in Roseville for three and a half years before going to Ghana for the Peace Corps. There she taught mathematics for three years. Most people join the Peace Corps for a two-year assignment, so her family began to wonder whether she would ever return to Minnesota. To their relief she did return after three years. During the next five years she worked as a recruiter for the Peace Corps in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
After working four years recruiting for the Peace Corps, Marilyn started working halftime at Control Data when Tom told her of an opening in his group. After a year, she resigned from the Peace Corps to work full-time in the computer industry, and at the same time she started taking graduate courses in computer science because she felt a need to further her education in this area. After six years of taking courses, mostly through UNITE, the program at the University that provides distance education for professionals, she completed a Master of Science in Computer Science.
The year before completing the master's degree, Marilyn changed employers, joining the Arrhythmia Management Group at Medtronic in product development. There she develops software for an instrument called a programmer that communicates with a defibrillator, pacemaker, or other implanted cardiac device. When a patient with a defibrillator visits a clinic, a doctor or nurse places the magnetic wand of the programmer over the defibrillator. Data collected by the defibrillator, such as arrhythmias that occurred, therapies it provided, and information on the battery and leads is collected in the programmer. In addition to examining the data, the clinician can also adjust the defibrillator settings.
Tom Rochat went to the University of Minnesota as an undergraduate, majoring in mathematics and completing preparation to be an elementary school teacher. After two years of teaching, he decided he would prefer to teach at a junior college, and so he returned to the University to get a masters degree in mathematics. There he was advised to also get a minor in computer science. While taking computer science courses, he decided he wanted to be a software engineer. Later, in the 90's, Tom earned a MCIS degree from the Computer Science and Engineering department.
After completing the master's degree in mathematics, he joined Control Data. His group at Control Data is now part of General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems. They provide systems for the military including both software and hardware. Since his time at Control Data, Tom has been involved with high performance computing, a very challenging and exciting field. Many of the applications he works on require special-purpose hardware, so he is involved in hardware design as well as the design of software for very interesting hybrid architectures that have involved parallel processors and different types of interconnections between the processors.
Tom became involved with the Computer Science Associates because the group he was part of at Control Data was a member. He wanted to be involved with the University so when the representative from his group to the CSA wanted to step down, Tom took the position. Tom has worked with members of the department on research. This included company funded research in the Digital Multimedia Research Center, run by David Du and work with Professors Pen Yew and David Lilja on compilers. Tom was the Chair of CSA from 1996 to 1999.
Marilyn got involved with the CSA when Tom was an assistant to the Chair. He mentioned that Medtronic did not have a representative on the CSA and suggested she attend. After asking around her company Marilyn started attending CSA meetings as Medtronic's representative.
Alumni Marilyn and Tom Rochat have contributed to their companies through their work as software engineers and to the CSE department through their involvement with the Computer Science Associates.
-- Bobbie Othmer
Alumnus Ed Chi of the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) was in the news – Time Magazine, The Economist, the Associated Press, and Information Week – because of interest in his work on Web usability.
He and colleagues at PARC use the concept of information "foraging" to describe the behavior of Web users as they traverse Web links in searching for information, likening this behavior to that of an animal foraging for food in the wild. They also use a concept called "information scent" to give a measure of the cost and value of accessing a Web page. Using these ideas they hope to produce tools to help understand the relationships among user needs, user actions, and Web site design.
Ed was at the U of M in late February 2001 participating in an Institute for Mathematics and its Applications (IMA) Workshop on the Digital Library and Information Access, giving a talk about the "Scent of the Web," and visiting friends.
Ed is originally from Taiwan, the child of academic parents. He spent a year in Minnesota when he was in fifth grade and then came back four years later to go to South High, when his mother decided to complete a Ph.D. at the U. He overlapped his bachelor's degree work with high school, completing the requirements for a B.S. in C.S. in two years in '94. During this time, he worked at the Geometry Center on visualizing mathematical structures, and created one of the first visualizations of the Web in 1994.
He continued on at the U for his M.S. in C.S., completed in December 1996 in computational molecular biology with an emphasis in information visualization. He had thought of going to another school for a Ph. D., but decided to stay at the U, and working with Professor John Riedl as his thesis advisor. He completed his doctorate in March 1999 in the areas of visualization, user interfaces, and graphics. For his thesis, Ed developed a spreadsheet for visualization in which each cell can contain a data set represented using interactive graphics. The spreadsheet analogy is continued with the availability of operations on individual cells and among cells.
One might think that someone who completed his Ph.D. less than seven years after graduating from high school must work all the time. This is not true of Ed who has many interests, including Tae Kwon Do, photography, riding his motorcycle, making pottery, and writing poetry.
Ed is currently the area manager and senior research scientist at the Palo Alto Research Center Augmented Social Cognition Group. For more information about Ed, including papers and links to press articles, see his Web site geekbiker.com.
--Bobbie Othmer
Adapted from an article in Soundbyte, 2001.
Alumni, we want to hear from you!
Please send your news about milestones, jobs, promotions and awards to the External Relations Coordinator at news [at] cs.umn.edu . Submissions will be included in the next newsletter and on the CS&E department Web site.
Alumni Spotlight - an excerpt from the fall|winter 2007-2008 issue of the CS&E Soundbyte newsletter. (pdf)
