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2006

[9/20/06]

GVU Funds Seed Grants for 2006-2007

GVU Seed Grants were awarded to:

  • Visualized Decision Making: An Application to Shared Decision Making in Cancer Treatment (Jacko and Stasko)

  • Flock: Interfacing Crowds with Entertainers (Freeman, Dellaert and Balch)

  • Threads for Development: Computer Education Revolutions for Sub-Saharan Africa (Grinter, Best, and Guzdial)

[7/21/06 News]

siggraph 2006 logo

GVU Participates in SIGGRAPH 2006

Members of the GVU community are participants in SIGGRAPH 2006, scheduled July 30-Aug. 3 in Boston, Massachusetts:

PAPERS:

  • James F. O'Brien (GVU alum), Bryan M. Klingner Bryan E. Feldman, Nuttapong Chentanez, University of California, Berkeley, "Fluid Animation With Dynamic Meshes"
  • Jessica K. Hodgins (former GVU faculty), Sang Il Park, Carnegie Mellon University, "Capturing and Animating Skin Deformation in Human Motion"
  • Jack Tumblin (GVU alum),Northwestern University; Ramesh Raskar Amit Agrawal, Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL), "Coded Exposure Photography: Motion Deblurring using Fluttered Shutter"

SKETCHES:

  • "Constructive Solid Trimming," John Hable, Georgia Institute of Technology and Electronic Arts, Inc; Jarek Rossignac, Georgia Institute of Technology
  • "Automatic Splicing for Hand and Body Animations," Victor Zordan (GVU alum), University of California, Riverside; Anna Majkowska, Petros Faloutsos, University of California, Los Angeles
  • "Anticipating Impacts," Ronald Metoyer (GVU alum), Benjamin Hermens, Oregon State University; Victor Zordan (GVU alum), Chun-Chih Wu, Marc Soriano, University of California, Riverside
  • "Texturing Fluids," Vivek Kwatra (GVU alum), David Adalsteinsson, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Nipun Kwatra, Georgia Institute of Technology; Mark Carlson (GVU alum), DNA Productions
  • "A Texture Synthesis Method for Liquid Animations," James F. O'Brien (GVU alum), Adam W. Bargteil, Funshing Sin, Jonathan Michaels, Tolga G. Goktekin, University of California, Berkeley
  • "Simultaneous Coupling of Fluids and Deformable Bodies," James F. O'Brien (GVU alum), Nuttapong Chentanez, Tolga G. Goktekin, Bryan E. Feldman, University of California, Berkeley
  • "Hierarchical Simplification of City Models to Maintain Urban Legibility," William Ribarsky (former GVU faculty), Remco Chang, Thomas Butkiewicz, Caroline Ziemkiewicz, Zachary Wartell (GVU alum), University of North Carolina at Charlotte; Nancy Pollard (GVU alum), Carnegie Mellon University
  • "traces::," Kevin Quennesson, Ali Mazalek, Georgia Institute of Technology, GVU Center
  • "GPU-Accelerated Transparent Point-Based Rendering," Yanci Zhang, Renato Pajarola (former GVU post-doc), Universität Zürich

ART GALLERY - Electronically Mediated Performances:

  • Jam'aa for Haile, Gil Weinberg, collaborators: Scott Driscoll, Travis Thatcher, Georgia Institute of Technology

COURSES:

  • Procedural Modeling of Urban Environments, co-organizers: Jack Tumbin (GVU alum), Northwestern University; Peter Wonka, Arizona State University (former GVU post-doc)
  • Computational Photography, co-organizers: Ramesh Raskar, MERL; Jack Tumbin (GVU alum), Northwestern University

[4/05/06 News]

GVU Community Participates in CHI 2006

Several members of the GVU community are participants in CHI 2006. Scheduled April 22-27 in Montréal, Québec, Canada, CHI is the premier conference on human factors in computing systems.

CoC Associate Professor Rebecca Grinter, serves as a papers co-chair and CoC Professor Jim Foley serves as an education co-chair.

Best of CHI Awards
CHI 2006 Award Nominees awarded by SIGCHI:

  • Giovanni Iachello, Khai Truong, Gregory Abowd, Gillian Hayes, Georgia Institute of Technology ; Molly Stevens, Logical Design Solutions; "Prototyping and Sampling Experience to Evaluate Ubiquitous Computing Privacy in the Real World"
  • Lena Mamykina, Siemens; Elizabeth D. Mynatt, Georgia Institute of Technology; David R. Kaufman, Columbia University; "Investigating Health Management Practices of Individuals with Diabetes"

PAPERS:

  • Stephen Voida, W. Keith Edwards, Rebecca E. Grinter, Georgia Institute of Technology; Mark W. Newman, Nicolas Ducheneaut, PARC; "Share and Share Alike: Exploring the User Interface Affordances of File Sharing"
  • Lena Mamykina, Siemens; Elizabeth D. Mynatt, Georgia Institute of Technology; David R. Kaufman, Columbia University; "Investigating Health Management Practices of Individuals with Diabetes"
  • Gillian Hayes, Gregory Abowd, Georgia Institute of Technology; "Tensions in Designing Capture Technologies for an Evidence-Based Care Community"
  • Giovanni Iachello, Khai Truong, Gregory Abowd, Gillian Hayes, Georgia Institute of Technology ; Molly Stevens, Logical Design Solutions; "Prototyping and Sampling Experience to Evaluate Ubiquitous Computing Privacy in the Real World"
  • Yelena Nakhimovsky, Google & Georgia Institute of Technology; Rudy Schusteritsch, Kerry Rodden, Google; "AdWords Help Center"
  • Jason A. Day, James D. Foley, Georgia Institute of Technology; "Evaluating Web Lectures as an Alternative Approach to Education: A Case Study from HCI"
  • Jennifer Mankoff (GVU alumna), Carnegie Mellon University; "Practical Service Learning Issues in HCI"
  • Catherine Zanbaka (GVU alumna), Paula Goolkasian, Larry Hodges (former GVU faculty), University of North Carolina, Charlotte; "Can a Virtual Cat Persuade You? The Role of Gender and Realism in Speaker Persuasiveness"
  • Saurabh Bhatia, Scott McCrickard (GVU alumnus), Virginia Tech; "Listening to Your Inner Voices: Investigating Means for Voice Notifications"
  • Anind K. Dey (GVU alumnus), Carnegie Mellon University; Ed de Guzman, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; "From Awareness to Connectedness: The Design and Deployment of Presence Displays"

POSTERS:

  • Gillian R. Hayes, Georgia Institute of Technology; "Documenting and Understanding Everyday Activities through the Selective Archiving of Live Experiences"
  • Brandon Brown, Marshini Chetty, Andrea Grimes, Ellie Harmon, Georgia Institute of Technology; "Reflecting on Health: A System For Students to Monitor Diet and Exercise"
  • Gisele Bennett, Georgia Institute of Technology; Kay H. Connelly, Katie A. Siek Indiana University; Gitte Lindgaard, Bruce Tsuji, Carleton University; "Reality Testing: HCI Challenges in Non-Traditional Environments"
  • Johanna Brewer, Amanda Williams, University of California, Irvine; Joseph Kaye, Cornell University; Susan Wyche, Georgia Institute of Technology; "Sexual Interactions: Why We Should Talk About Sex in HCI"
  • Scott Counts, Microsoft; Henri ter Hofte, Telematica Instituut, Netherlands; Ian Smith (GVU alumnus), Intel; "Mobile Social Software: Realizing Potential, Managing Risks"
  • Amy S. Bruckman, Georgia Institute of Technology; "A New Perspective on Community and its Implications for Computer-Mediated Communication Systems"
  • Aditya Chand, Anind Dey (GVU alumnus), Carnegie Mellon University; "Jadoo: A Paper User Interface for Users Unfamiliar With Computers"
  • Edward C. Clarkson, Jason A. Day, James D. Foley, Georgia Institute of Technology; "An Educational Digital Library for Human-Centered Computing"
  • Myungcheol Doo, Kent Lyons, Thad Starner, Georgia Institute of Technology; "The Korean Twiddler: One-Handed Chording Text Entry for Korean Mobile Phones"
  • Mario Romero, Zachary Pousman, Michael Mateas, Georgia Institute of Technology, "Tableau Machine: An Alien Presence in the Home"
  • Jennifer Wiley, Ja-young Sung, Gregory Abowd, Georgia Institute of Technology, "The Message Center: Enhancing Elder Communication"

SESSION CHAIRS:

  • Thad Starner, Georgia Institute of Technology, for papers session "Mobile Surfing and Effects of Wearables"
  • Elaine Huang, Georgia Institute of Technology, for interactivity session "Meet the Artists: Music, Dance, and Painting"
  • Gregory Abowd, Georgia Institute of Technology, for experience reports "User-Centered Design for Learning and Education"

PANELISTS:

  • Amy Bruckman, Georgia Institute of Technology, for "Managing Deviant Behavior in Online Communities"

JUDGES:

  • Rebecca Grinter, Georgia Institute of Technology, for the student design competition


2005

[7/25/05 News]

GVU Among Top Contributors to SIGGRAPH 2005

Several members of the GVU community are participants in SIGGRAPH 2005, scheduled July 31-Aug. 4 in Los Angeles, California.

The Papers program, in particular, is the premier forum for presenting the finest research in computer graphics and interactive techniques, according to a June 2005 SIGGRAPH press release. The GVU Center and Georgia Tech are among the leading contributors to this year's Papers program.

PAPERS:

  • Vivek Kwatra, Irfan Essa, Aaron Bobick and Nipun Kwatra, "Texture Optimization for Example-based Synthesis." To appear in ACM Transactions on Graphics, SIGGRAPH 2005.
  • Liu Ren, Alexei Efros, Jessica K. Hodgins (former GVU faculty), Carnegie Mellon University; Alton Patrick, Jim Rehg, Georgia Institute of Technology, "A Data Driven Approach to Quantifying Natural Human Motion"
  • Huamin Wang, Peter J. Mucha, Greg Turk, Georgia Institute of Technology, "Water Drops on Surfaces"
  • John Hable, Jarek Rossignac, Georgia Institute of Technology, "Blister: GPU-Based Rendering of Boolean Combinations of Free-Form Triangulated Shapes"
  • John Hable, Jarek Rossignac, Georgia Institute of Technology, "Blister: GPU-Based Rendering of Boolean Combinations of Free-Form Triangulated Shapes"
  • Kevin Quennesson, "conscious=camera," as part of SIGGRAPH's "Emerging Technologies" section. Special thanks to LCC Associate Professor Diane Gromala, CoC Assistant Professor Frank Dellaert and CoC Associate Professor Irfan Essa.
    Links:
  • Sung-Eui Yoon, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Peter Lindstrom (GVU alum), Valerio Pascucci Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, "Cache-Oblivious Mess Layouts"
  • Bryan E. Feldman, James F. O'Brien (GVU alum), Bruan M. Klinger, University of California, Berkeley, "Animating Gases With Hybrid Meshes"
  • Okan Arikan, David Foryth, James F. O'Brien (GVU alum), University of California, Berkeley, "Fast and Detailed Approximate Glorbal Illumination by Irradiance Decomposition"
  • Amy A. Gooch, Sven C. Olsen, Jack Tumblin (GVU Alum), Bruce Gooch (Northwestern University), "Color2Gray: Salience-Preserving Color Removal"

REPRISE OF UIST AND 13D PAPERS:

  • Blair MacIntyre, Maribeth Gandy, Steven Dow, Jay David Bolter, Georgia Institute of Technology, "DART: A Toolkit for Rapid Design Exploration of Augmented Reality Experiences"

SKETCHES:

  • "Interactive Design and Visualization of Tensor Fields on Surfaces," Eugene Zhane (GVU alum), Oregon Sate University; James Hays (GVU alum), Carnegie Mellon University; Greg Turk, Georgia Institute of Technology
  • "Digital Paper Cutting," Yanxi Liu, James Hayes (GVU alum), Carnegie Mellon University; Ying-qing Xu, Harry Shum, Microsoft Research Asia
  • "Digital Paper Cutting," Yanxi Liu, James Hayes (GVU alum), Carnegie Mellon University; Ying-qing Xu, Harry Shum, Microsoft Research Asia
  • "A Semi-Langrangian Contouring Method for Fluid Simulation," Adam W. Bargteil, Tolga G. Goktekin, James F. O'Brien (GVU alum), John A. Strain, University of California, Berkeley
  • "Streaming Compression of Triangle Meshes," Martin Isenburg, Jack Snoeyink, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Peter Lindstrom (GVU alum), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
  • "Light Waving: Estimating Light Positions From Photographs Alone," Holger Winnemoeller, Ankit Mohan, Jack Tumblin (GVU alum), Bruce Gooch, Northwestern University
  • "Tabletop Computed Lighting for Practical Digital Photography," Ankit Mohan, Jack Tumblin (GVU alum); Bobby Bodenheimer (former GVU post-doc) Vanderbilt University; Reynold Bailey, Cindy Grimm, Washington University in St. Louis/font>

POSTERS:

  • "Operation Rhinoctopus: A Real-Time Interactive Video Manipulation Device," Paige Taylor, Diane Gromala, Kevin Stamper, Allison Sall, Georgia Institute of Technology
  • "A Sketch Interface to Support Storyboarding of Augmented Reality Experiences," Peter Presti, Maribeth Gandy, Blair MacIntyre, Steven Dow, Georgia Institute of Technology

COURSES:

  • Computational Photography, co-organizers: Ramesk Raskar, MERL; Jack Tumbin, Northwestern University (GVU alum)
  • Modern Techniques for Implicit Modeling, co-organizers: James F. O'Brien (GVU alum), University of California, Berkeley; Terry S. Yoo, National Library of Medicine, NIH

SPECIAL SESSIONS:

  • "Extreme Fashion: Designers, Artists, and Technologists Present A Glimpse Into the Place Where High Fashion Collides With High Technology." Moderator: Margaret Orth, International Fashinon Machines. Panelists: Elise Co mintymonkey; Katherine Moriwaki, Trinity College Dublin; Thad E. Starner, Georgia Institute of Technology; Jenny Tillotson, Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design

BIRDS OF A FEATHER:
Blair MacIntyre and his team (Georgia Institute of Technology) have scheduled a Birds of a Feather gathering for the user community of DART.

  • Title: DART: The Designer's Augmented Reality Toolkit
  • Time: 10 am - 12 noon, Thurs., Aug. 4
  • Location: Los Angeles Convention Center, Room 505

PAPERS ADVISORY BOARD:
Jarek Rossignac, Greg Turk, Irfan Essa, Georgia Institute of Technology; Nancy Pollard (GVU alum), Carnegie Mellon University


[5/23/05 News]

> GVU HOSTS ROBOCUP 2005 U.S OPEN
GVU, the College of Computing and Georgia Tech successfully hosted RoboCup U.S. Open 2005 held on campus May 7-10. The robotic competition attracted several schools, colleges, universities and spectators from the nation and around the world to compete in several leagues. The Marietta Daily Journal ran the article, "Robot dog soccer a popular game," about one of the competitions in its May 10, 2005 edition and Reuters ran a television story on the event, focusing on the robotic dog soccer competition (four-legged league) on May 13, 2005.

Thanks go to Kuka Robotics, who served as the sponsor of the event. Winner results follow:

Four-legged League:

  • First place - CMDash '05, Carnegie Mellon University
  • Second place - UPennalizers, University of Pennsylvania
  • Third place - UT Austin Villa, University of Texas at Austin

Small-size League:

  • First place - Wingers, University of Buffalo
  • Second place - RoboCats, Ohio University
  • Third place - Robocup Laval, Laval University, Canada

3D Simulation League:

  • First place - UTUtd, University of Tehran, Iran
  • Second place - Caspian, Iran University of Science and Technology
  • Third place - MRL, Qazvin Islamic Azad University Mechatronics Research Laboratory

2D Simulation League:

  • First place - Robosina, Bu-Ali-Sina University
  • Second place - Apollo, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China
  • Third place - SEU_T, Southeast University, China

Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) League:

  • First place - Red Knight RoboRescue Squad, Benilde-St. Margarets School, Minnesota
  • Second place - NIIT-Blue, Niigata Institute of Technology, Japan
  • Third place - RAPTOR, Carnegie Mellon University and University of Pittsburgh

OTHER AWARDS

U.S./German Championship:

  • First place - Microsoft Hellhounds, Dortmund University, Germany

Urban Search and Rescue League:

  • "Best in Class" Mobility - Raptor, Carnegie Mellon University and University of Pittsburgh
  • "Best in Class" Autonomy - Raptor, Carnegie Mellon University and University of Pittsburgh

I. Media

> REGENTS PROFESSOR RON ARKIN (COC)
He is featured on the cover of Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine, Spring 2005 issue. The feature story,
"Robots & Ethics," quoted him extensively on the state of robotic research today and what is ahead on the horizon. Arkin is director of the Mobile Robot Lab. The article also mentions CoC Assistant Professor Charles Isbell. The same story contains a sidebar on CoC Assistant Professor Tucker Balch and his team's research on the behavior of bees to ultimately inspire the design of robots and computers.

> ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR REBECCA GRINTER (CoC)
Her group's study on sharing digital music in the workplace, which was presented in a paper at CHI 2005, continues to garner press. NewScientist.com posted the article, "Digital music-sharing stirs social tensions," which also mentions CoC graduate student Amy Voida, on May 16, 2005.

> ASSISTANT PROFESSOR BLAIR MACINTYRE (COC)
He was interviewed for "Smart City," a National Public Radio show that aired on April 16, 2005. The 10-minute segment discussed his and his team's augmented reality research, including the Voices of Oakland project in Oakland Cemetery with LCC Professor Jay Bolter, grad students Jaemin Lee and Steven Dow; the DART project with Jay, Steven and Maribeth Gandy, research scientist; and the Augmented Office project with Elizabeth Mynatt, CoC associate professor. Click here to listen to the broadcast.

II. Conferences

> ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR AMY BRUCKMAN (CoC)
She and CoC graduate student James Hudson are co-authors of a paper accepted at ECSCW'05 (9th European Conference of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, to be held Sept. 18-22 in Paris, France. The paper title is "Empirical Approaches to Internet Research Ethics." CoC Associate Professors Rebecca Grinter and Keith Edwards, as well as GVU alumnus Anind Dey, serve on the program committee.

> ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR RICHARD CATRAMBONE (Psych)
He will give a tutorial at the INTERACT '05 conference in Rome, Sept. 12-16. The tutorial title is "Improving Interfaces, Instructions, and Training Materials Through Task Analysis."

> STEPHEN VOIDA (CoC Ph.D. Student)
He presented a workshop position paper entitled, "Context Histories, Activities, and Abstractions: Ubiquitous Computing Support for Individual and Collaborative Work," co-authored with CoC Associate Professor Elizabeth Mynatt at the 1st International Workshop on Exploiting Context Histories in Smart Environments. The workshop was held in connection with the Pervasive 2005 Conference in Munich, Germany, May 8-13, 2005. Lonnie Harvel, an affiliated member of GVU and ECE senior research scientist, was also one of the workshop organizers.

III. Honors/Awards/Grants

> GVU MEMBERS RECEIVE COC AWARDS
Several members of the GVU community were honored at the College of Computing's 14th Annual Awards Celebration held Tues., April 26, 2005:

  • Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Assistant - Mary Ellen (Ellie) Harmon
  • Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant - Jason Elliott
  • Outstanding Graduate Research Assistant - Vivek Kwatra
  • Outstanding Ph.D. Dissertation - Gabriel Brostow
  • Outstanding Senior Faculty Research - Irfan Essa
  • The Raytheon Faculty Fellowship - Jim Rehg (GVU) and Wenke Lee (CoC)
  • William A. "Gus" Baird Faculty Teaching Award - John Stasko
  • Boeing Scholarship - Mark DeJesus
  • IBM Eclipse Award - Mary Jean Harrold
  • NSF Career Awards - Tucker Balch, Blair MacIntyre, Frank Dellaert
  • NSF Graduate Research Fellowships - Shwetak Patel, Chris Wojtan
  • Georgia Tech Service Recognition Awards - Janet Kolodner (25 years of service)

> ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR JOHN STASKO (CoC)
He is the recipient of a new NSF grant from the HCI program titled, "Expanding the Desktop: Transforming Personal Computing through Large Pixel-Space Displays." The grant amount total is $483,687 for three years.


[4/22/05 News]

I. Media

> ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR GREGORY ABOWD (CoC)
He is the guest editor of an upcoming special issue of IEEE Pervasive Computing magazine on the topic of smart phones. In that same issue, CoC Ph.D. students Gillian R. Hayes and Khai N. Truong have an article on experience buffers and technology support for autism titled, "Autism, Environmental Buffers, and Wearable Servers."

> ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR REBECCA GRINTER (CoC)
Her group's study on sharing digital music in the workplace, which was presented in a paper at CHI 2005, ran in news spots across the U.S. beginning with the April 1, 2005 Georgia Tech Research News
release, "You Are What You Listen to: Users of Digital Music Sharing System Judge Others by their Playlists" Several similar stories followed. Here is just a sampling: Atlanta Journal/Constitution, April 5, 2005 article, "Co-workers find clues to you in your iTunes," (Living section, p. E2) which also mentioned CoC Associate Professor Keith Edwards and CoC graduate student Amy Voida; online in the technology section on nbc4.com on April 5, 2005; San Francisco Chronicle online article on April 18, 2005; Washington Post online article also on April 18; and in the April 18, 2005 edition of Georgia Tech's The Whistle.

In addition, Amy Voida gave a live television interview on CNN International on Thurs., April 21, 2005, about the iTunes research that she conducted while interning with Grinter at the Palo Alto Research Center. The interview aired during the Tech Watch segment of "CNN Today" which is broadcast on CNN International.

> ZIA KAHN (CoC Ph.D. STUDENT)
His article, "MCMC-Based Particle Filtering for Tracking a Variable Number of Interacting Targets," co-authored with CoC Assistant Professors Tucker Balch, and Frank Dellaert, was accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 2005.

II. Conference/Papers

> SIGGRAPH 2005
Several members of the GVU community are participants in SIGGRAPH 2005, scheduled July 31-Aug. 4 in Los Angeles, California. A more comprehensive list of GVU participants in SIGGRAPH will be forthcoming in a future special edition of "Eye." Here is a sampling:

PAPERS:

  • Vivek Kwatra, Irfan Essa, Aaron Bobick and Nipun Kwatra, "Texture Optimization for Example-based Synthesis." To appear in ACM Transactions on Graphics, SIGGRAPH 2005.
  • Liu Ren, Alton Patrick, Alexei Efros, Jessica Hodgins, Jim Rehg, "Quantifying Natural Human Motion" (title subject to change)
  • Kevin Quennesson, "conscious=camera," as part of SIGGRAPH's "Emerging Technologies" section. Special thanks to LCC Associate Professor Diane Gromala, CoC Assistant Professor Frank Dellaert and CoC Associate Professor Irfan Essa.
    Links:

----OTHER CONFERENCE NEWS----

> ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR RICHARD CATRAMBONE (PSYCH)
He has been selected to present a tutorial at the INTERACT 2005 (International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction), to be held Sept. 12-16 in Rome, Italy. The title of the tutorial is "Improving Interfaces, Instructions, and Training Materials Through Task Analysis."

> ASSISTANT PROFESSOR TUCKER BALCH (CoC)
He has been invited to give a plenary talk at AAAI 2005 (National Conference on Artificial Intelligence) to be held July 9-13 in Pittsburgh, PA. He will discuss ongoing research in the BORG Lab to model the behavior of multi-agent systems. Balch is also an invited speaker at Oxford University as part of the Gordon Research Conference on Neuroethology in August.

> ASSISTANT PROFESSOR FRANK DELLAERT (CoC)
He and his research team have had several papers accepted recently at conferences. Two papers were accepted at the new "Robotics, Science and Systems" conference, scheduled June 8-11, 2005, at MIT: "Data driven MCMC for Appearance-based Topological Mapping," authors: Ananth Ranganathan and Frank Dellaert and "Square Root SAM," author: Frank Dellaert. Two were accepted at the IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR 2005,) to be held June 20-25 in San Diego: "Mixture Trees for Modeling and Fast Conditional Sampling with Applications in Vision and Graphics," authors: Frank Dellaert, Vivek Kwatra, and Sang Min Oh and "Multi-target Tracking with Split and Merged Measurements," authors: Zia Khan, Tucker Balch and Frank Dellaert. Three were accepted at ICRA 2005 (International Conference on Robotics and Automation), held April 18-22 in Barcelona, Spain: "A Markov Chain Monte Carlo Approach to Closing the Loop in SLAM," authors: Michael Kaess and Frank Dellaert; "Using Hierarchical EM to Extract Planes from 3D Range Scans," authors: Rudolph Triebel, Wolfram Burgard and Frank Dellaert; and "What Are the Ants Doing?," authors: M. Egerstedt, T. Balch, F. Dellaert, F. Delmotte, and Z. Khan

> JILL COFFIN (DIGITAL MEDIA Ph.D. STUDENT)
Her paper, "Transfer of Open Source Culture to Diverse Collaborative Communities," has been accepted to DIAC (Directions and Implications of Advanced Computing) 2005, held May 20-22 at Stanford University.

> MARCELA MUSGROVE (HCI MASTER'S DEGREE STUDENT)
She presented a paper at the "Seeing, Understanding, Learning in the Mobile Age" conference in Budapest, Hungary, on April 28, 2005.

> KEITH O'HARA (CoC Ph.D. STUDENT)
He presented the paper, "Physical Path Planning Using the GNATs," co-authored with Victor L. Bigio, Eric R. Dodson, Arya J. Irani, Daniel B. Walker and Tucker R. Balch, at ICRA 2005 (International Conference on Robotics and Automation). The conference was held April 18-22 in Barcelona, Spain.

III. Honors/Awards/Grants

> ASSISTANT PROFESSOR FRANK DELLAERT (CoC)
He is a recipient of a $90K NSF CAREER award for "Markov Chain Monte Carlo Methods for Large Scale Correspondence Problems in Computer Vision and Robotics." The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a Foundation-wide activity that offers the National Science Foundation's most prestigious awards in support of the early career-development activities of those teacher-scholars who most effectively integrate research and education within the context of the mission of their organization. Such activities should build a firm foundation for a lifetime of integrated contributions to research and education.

> GVU STUDENTS WIN UROC SYMPOSIUM 2005
Andrew Guillory, CoC undergraduate student, won the Judges' Award for first place in the annual 2005 Undergraduate Research Opportunities in Computing (UROC) Symposium for "Learning Behavior Models from Observations and Low Level Knowledge." He also won the People's Choice First Place Award for the same research project. His prizes included $500, an Intel laptop and an Intel Axim Palmtop. His advisor is CoC Assistant Professor Tucker Balch. Undergrads Jeffrey Crenshaw & Jeremy Townsend won the People's Choice Second Place Award and an Intel Axim Palmtop for "ABL/UT Infrastructure." Their advisor is LCC Assistant Professor Michael Mateas. The symposium was held Wed., April 13, 2005 and is supported by a generous gift from Intel. The UROC Program was founded in 1998 to encourage College of Computing undergraduates to become involved in research.

> JILL COFFIN (DIGITAL MEDIA Ph.D. STUDENT)
She has been awarded a funded year of study at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. She has been accepted into the Wearable Computing Lab at ETH to conduct research for the year.

> PAM HASSEBROEK (PUBLIC POLICY, Ph.D. Student)
Georgia Tech's School of Public Policy honored her as its Doctoral Student of the Year. Her research applies organization theory to information security to better understand how social factors influence security. Her work holds promise for illuminating the role of non-technical factors in this important policy area.

> JUSTIN JANG (CoC Ph.D. STUDENT)
He has been accepted to the 2005 NSF East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes (EAPSI) program for U.S. graduate students in science and engineering. He will spend the summer at National Taiwan University in Taipei, Taiwan, June 26 - August 20, 2005, where he will receive an NSF stipend of $3000, along with travel to Taiwan, plus funds for living expenses. The primary goals of EAPSI are to introduce students to East Asia and Pacific science and engineering in the context of a research laboratory, and to initiate personal relationships that will better enable them to collaborate with foreign counterparts in the future.

> KRIS NAGEL (CoC Ph.D. STUDENT)
She has been selected as a winner of the Google 2005 Anita Borg Scholarship. The scholarship promotes Dr. Anita Borg's (1949-2003) vision of inspiring and motivating women to embrace the technological revolution as active participants and leaders. The award is part of Google's commitment to further Dr. Borg's vision by encouraging women to pursue careers in computing and technology. A total of four scholarships ($10,000 each) were awarded based on the strength of candidates' academic background, their responses to short essay questions and letters of recommendation.

> GVU STUDENTS RECEIVE 2005 NSF GRADUATE RESEARCH FELLOWSHIPS
Shwetal Patel, Erika Sheehan, Chris Wojtan and James Hayes (a GVU Alumnus, BS '03) are recipients of 2005 Graduate Research Fellowships from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Ph.D. student Nick Diakopoulus received an honorable mention. The purpose of the fellowship program is to ensure the vitality of the human resource base of science, technology, engineering and mathematics in the United States and to reinforce its diversity by offering 1,000 graduate fellowships in this competition. The prestigious fellowship provides three years of support for graduate study leading to research-based master's or doctoral degrees. Awards are given based on the students intellectual merit and the impact of their research.


[3/18/05 News]

I. Media

> ASSISTANT PROFESSOR TUCKER BALCH (CoC)
He was quoted in the Discovery Channel online news brief,
"Robots Reveal Rat Behavior," on Feb. 24, 2005. He comments on how he and his team are using robots to study insect behavior.

> ASSISTANT PROFESSOR BRUCE WALKER (CoC AND PSYCH)
He was interviewed for an Atlanta Business Chronicle article, "Work, interrupted," on the growing addiction of being connected. Professor Walker discussed the need to unplug and unwind, despite the pulls to remain reachable at all times.

> ASSISTANT PROFESSOR GIL WEINBERG (MUSIC)
His paper, "Interconnected Musical Networks - Towards a Theoretical Framework," was accepted for publication in the Computer Music Journal and his paper, "Voice Networks - Exploring the Human Voice as a Creative Medium for Music Collaboration," was accepted for publication in Leonardo Music Journal.

II. Conferences
MARK GUZDIAL (CoC ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR)

He was very busy at ACM SIGCSE, the technical symposium of computer science education, held Feb. 23-27, 2005, in St. Louis, MO:

  • He presented a paper, "Design Process for a a Non-Majors Computing Course," co-authored with Andrea Forte on how they designed the course, "Introduction to Media Computation" (CS1315)
  • Allison Tew presented a paper along with Charles Fowler and Guzdial on how the results of CS1315 transferred to Gainesville College when they adopted the course. Paper title: "Tracking an Innovation in Introductory CS Education from a Research University to a Two-Year College."
  • Barbara Ericson presented a paper with Maureen Biggers and Guzdial on the high school teachers workshops CoC has offered. Paper title: "A Model for Improving Secondary CS Education."

See http://home.cc.gatech.edu/guzdial/39 for more paper information and links.

Also for the symposium, he was on a panel on CS Education Research challenges; a panel on comparing the experiences of women in CS at various institutions; co-chair of the Doctoral Consortium; and invited to present in an NSF Showcase of highlighted CS education projects.

> ASSISTANT PROFESSOR GIL WEINBERG (MUSIC)
He was asked to serve on the paper review panel for the International Computer Music Conference to be held in Barcelona, Sept. 5-9, 2005, and serve on the paper review panel for the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression to be held in Vancouver, May 26-28, 2005.

> RAFFAY HAMID (CoC Ph.D. STUDENT)
He, along with a few authors including Aaron Bobick and Charles Isbell, recently had a paper accepted in CVPR 2005, the International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, scheduled June 20-26 in San Diego, CA. The citation follows:

Raffay Hamid, Amos Johnson, Samir Batta, Aaron Bobick, Charles Isbell, and Graham Coleman. Detection and Explanation of Anomalous Activities: Representing Activities as Bags of Event n-Grams. To appear in IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2005.

III. Honors/Awards/Grants

> GILLIAN HAYES (CoC Ph.D. STUDENT)
She is the recipient of the Don Bratcher Human Relations Award which she will accept at the Student Honors Luncheon on Thurs., April 21, 2005. The award honors members of the Georgia Tech campus community who are engaging in exemplary human relations work. The award grants one faculty/staff member $3,000 and one undergraduate/graduate student $1,500.

> KRIS NAGEL (CoC Ph.D. STUDENT)
She has been selected as a finalist for the Google 2005 Anita Borg Scholarship. The scholarship promotes Dr. Anita Borg's (1949-2003) vision of inspiring and motivating women to embrace the technological revolution as active participants and leaders. The award is part of Google's commitment to further Dr. Borg's vision by encouraging women to pursue careers in computing and technology. A total of four scholarships ($10,000 each) will be awarded based on the strength of candidates' academic background, their responses to short essay questions and letters of recommendation.

IV. Visits

> PROFESSOR JAREK ROSSIGNAC (CoC)
On Mon., Feb. 28, 2005, he hosted a visit for Dr. Kirk Kanter, Professor of Surgery and Chair in Pediatric Cardiothoracic Surgery, at Emory University's School of Medicine. Kanter is interested in the Twister shape manipulation technique that Rossignac developed in collaboration with CoC Research Scientist Chris Shaw and Ph.D. student Ignacio Llamas. Ignacio also demonstrated Twister to middle school students during their visit to the BORG Lab on Thurs, Feb. 17, 2005 and subsequently to high school students during the Cool Computing@GT event on Fri., Feb. 25, 2005.


[3/11/05 News - CHI 2005 Special Edition]

Several members of the GVU community are participants in CHI 2005, scheduled April 2-7 in Portland, Oregon:

CoC Associate Professor Rebecca Grinter will be the CHI 2006 Papers Co-Chair along with Professor Tom Rodden from the University of Nottingham, UK.

FULL PAPERS:

  • "Is Your Web Page Accessible? A Comparative Study of Methods for Assessing Web Page Accessibility for the Blind," Jennifer Mankoff (GVU alum), Carnegie Mellon University (USA); Holly Fait, Exploratoreum (USA); Tu Tran, University of California, Berkeley (USA)
  • "Location Disclosure to Social Relations: Why, When, & What People Want to Share," Sunny Consolvo, Ian E. Smith (GVU alum), Tara Matthews, Anthony LaMarca, Jason Tabert, Pauline Powledge, Intel Research Seattle (USA)
  • "Privacy and Proportionality: Adapting Legal Evaluation Techniques to Inform Design in Ubiquitous Computing," Giovanni Iachello, Gregory D. Abowd, Georgia Institute of Technology (USA)
  • "Six Themes of the Communicative Appropriation of Photographic Images," Amy Voida, Elizabeth D. Mynatt, Georgia Institute of Technology (USA)
  • "Listening In: Practices Surrounding iTunes Music Sharing," Amy Voida, Rebecca E. Grinter, W. Keith Edwards, Georgia Institute of Technology (USA); Nicolas Ducheneaut, Mark W. Newman, Palo Alto Research Center (USA)
  • "Examining Task Engagement in Sensor-Based Statistical Models of Human Interruptibility," James Fogarty, Andrew J. Ko, Htet Htet Aung, Elspeth Golden, Karen P. Tang, Scott E. Hudson (GVU alum), Carnegie Mellon University (USA)
  • "Extensible Input Handling in the subArctic Toolkit," Scott Hudson (GVU alum), Jennifer Mankoff (GVU alum), Carnegie Mellon University (USA); Ian Smith (GVU alum), Intel Research (USA)
  • "Digital Family Portrait Field Trial: Support for Aging in Place," Jim Rowan, Elizabeth D. Mynatt, Georgia Institute of Technology (USA)
  • "A Study on the Manipulation of 2D Objects in a Projector/Camera-Based Augmented Reality Environment," Stephen Voida, Georgia Institute of Technology (USA); Mark Podlaseck, Rick Kjeldsen, Claudio Pinhanez, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center (USA)
  • "When Participants Do the Capturing: The Role of Media in Diary Studies," Scott Carter, University of California, Berkeley (USA); Jennifer Mankoff (GVU alum), Carnegie Mellon University (USA)
  • "Camera Talk: Making the Camera a Partial Participant," K.K. Lamberty, Georgia Institute of Technology (USA), Janet L. Kolodner, Georgia Institute of Technology (USA)

SHORT PAPERS:

  • "An Empirical Study of Typing Rates on mini-QWERTY Keyboards," Edward Clarkson, James Clawson, Kent Lyons, Thad Starner, Georgia Institute of Technology, College of Computing and GVU Center (USA)
  • "Wizard of Oz Interfaces For Mixed Reality Applications," Steven Dow, Jaemin Lee, Christopher Oezbek, Blair MacIntyre, Jay Bolter, Georgia Institute of Technology (USA)
  • "Experience Buffers: A Socially Appropriate, Selective Archiving Tool for Evidence-Based Care," Gillian Hayes, Khai Truong, Gregory Abowd, Georgia Institute of Technology (USA); Trevor Pering, Intel Research, USA
  • "mudibo: Multiple Dialog Boxes for Multiple Monitors," Dugald Hutchings, John Stasko, Georgia Institute of Technology (USA)
  • "Preliminary Evaluation of the Interactive Drama Facade," Rachel Knickmeyer, Michael Mateas, Georgia Institute of Technology (USA)
  • "Indexing Unstructured Activities with Peripheral Cues," Heather Richter, Andrew Skaggs, Gregory Abowd, Georgia Institute of Technology (USA)
  • "Virtual Rear Projection: Do Shadows Matter?," Jay Summet, Gregory D. Abowd, Gregory M. Corso, James M. Rehg, Georgia Institute of Technology (USA)
  • "Flipper: a New Method of Digital Document Navigation," Liyang Sun, Georgia Institute of Technology (USA); François Guimbretière, University of Maryland, College Park (USA)
  • "Conveying Values Between Families and Designers," Amy Voida, Elizabeth D. Mynatt, Georgia Institute of Technology (USA)
  • "Indexing Unstructured Activities with Peripheral Cues," Heather Richter, Andrew Skaggs, Gregory D. Abowd, Georgia Institute of Technology (USA)

DOCTORIAL CONSORTIUM:

  • "Design and Analysis of Groupware for Large Displays," Elaine Huang, Georgia Institute of Technology (USA)

PANELS:

  • "The Book as User Interface: Lowering the Entry Cost to Email for Elders"
    Scott Davidoff, Carson Bloomberg, Ian Li, Jennifer Mankoff (GVU alum), Susan Fussell, Carnegie Mellon University (USA)
  • "A Gesture-Based American Sign Language Game for Deaf Children"
    Valerie Henderson, Seungyon Lee, Helene Brashear, Thad Starner, Georgia Institute of Technology (USA); Harley Hamilton, Atlanta Area School for the Deaf (USA)
  • "StoryGrid: A Tangible Interface for Student Expression"
    Tom Moher, University of Illinois at Chicago (USA); Ben Watson (GVU alum), Northwestern University (USA); Janet Kim, University of Illinois at Chicago (USA); Claudia Hindo, Louis Gomez, Northwestern University (USA); Stephen Fransen, Roberto Clemente High School (USA); Tim McEneany, University of Illinois at Chicago (USA)

WORKSHOPS:

  • "Distributed Display Environments"
    Organizers: Dugald Ralph Hutchings, John Stasko, Georgia Institute of Technology (USA); Mary Czerwinski, Microsoft Research (USA).
    Accepted workshop papers:
    • "An Overview of the Carnegie Mellon HCI Institute Ph.D. Program," Scott E. Hudson (GVU alum), HCI Institute, Carnegie Mellon University
    • "HCI and HCC Graduate Education @ Georgia Tech," James Foley, Georgia Institute of Technology
    • "Creating a Broad, Interdisciplinary HCI Experience: A View of the HCI Certificate Program at Virginia Tech," D. Scott McCrickard (GVU alum), C. M. Chewar, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech)
  • "Graduate Education in Human-Computer Interaction"
    Organizers: Michel Beaudouin-Lafon, Université Paris-Sud (France); James Foley, Georgia Tech University (USA); Jonathan Grudin, Microsoft Research (USA); James Hollan, University of California San Diego (USA); Scott Hudson (GVU alum), Carnegie Mellon University (USA); Judy Olson, University of Michigan (USA); Bill Verplank, Stanford University (USA)
  • "Tool Support for Divisible Interfaces"
    Jeffrey S. Pierce, Heather E. Mahaney, Georgia Institute of Technology (USA)
    Accepted paper for the CHI 2005 Workshop, "The Future of User Interface Tools"
  • "Tools for Designing Computational Spaces"
    Steven Dow, Maribeth Gandy, Blair MacIntyre, Georgia Institute of Technology (USA)
    Accepted paper for the CHI 2005 Workshop, "The Future of User Interface Tools"
  • "End-User Programming: Empowering Individuals to Take Control of their Environments"
    Anind K. Dey (GVU alum), Carnegie Mellon University
    Accepted paper for the CHI 2005 Workshop, "The Future of User Interface Tools"
  • "Leveraging 1,000 and 10,000-Fold Increases: Considering the Implications of Moores law on Future UI Tools Research"
    Scott E. Hudson (GVU alum), Carnegie Mellon University
    Accepted paper for the CHI 2005 Workshop, "The Future of User Interface Tools"
  • "Designing for Place in Urban Cemeteries"
    Steven Dow, Susan Wyche, Georgia Institute of Technology (USA)
    Accepted paper for the CHI 2005 Workshop, "Engaging the City: Public Interfaces as Civic Intermediary"

REVIEWERS:

  • Doctoral Consortium: Anind Dey (GVU alum), Carnegie Mellon University (USA)
  • Interactivity: Quan Tran, Georgia Institute of Technology (USA)
  • Papers: Gregory Abowd, Amy Bruckman, Mark Guzdial, Elizabeth Mynatt, Jeffrey Pierce, John Stasko, Elaine Huang, Carlos Jensen, James Rowan, Michael Terry, Quan Tran, Joe Tullio, Amy Voida, Stephen Voida, Georgia Institute of Technology (USA); Doug Bowman (GVU alum), Virginia Tech (USA); Anind Dey (GVU alum), Carnegie Mellon University (USA); Lena Mamykina (GVU alum), Siemens Corporate Research (USA); Jennifer Mankoff (GVU alum), Carnegie Mellon University (USA); Scott McCrickard (GVU alum), Virginia Tech (USA); David Nyugen (GVU alum), Nokia Research Center (USA); Ian Smith (GVU alum), Intel Research Seattle (USA); Benjamin Watson (GVU alum), Northwestern University (USA)

[2/28/05 News]

I. Media

> THE AWARE HOME
The Washington Post, Jan. 30, 2005 edition, printed a story on the Aware Home, "Surf City, Here She Comes," quoting CoC Associate Professor Elizabeth Mynatt. The piece is about older adults and their attitudes and use of technology with regards to aging.

> REGENTS PROFESSOR RON ARKIN (CoC)
He was the guest speaker at Yale University on Feb. 2, 2005 as part of a
Technology and Ethics Working Research Group Workshop.> He spoke on "Bombs, Bonding, and Bondage: Issues in Human-Robot Interaction."

> ASSISTANT PROFESSOR BLAIR MACINTYRE (CoC)
His Augmented Environments Lab was highlighted in the Technology Review.com article, "Augmented Reality: Another (Virtual) Brick in the Wall" on Feb. 15, 2005. The story mentions the research projects "Voice of Oakland" and DART. The article was picked up by the ACM TechNews in its "Top Stories for Wed., Feb. 16, 2005" edition.

> GILLIAN HAYES (CoC Ph.D. STUDENT)
She is featured and quoted in the 2004 Georgia Tech Foundation Annual Report on p. 14, under "Endowment Sponsored Programs.

II. Conferences

> CHI 2005
Several members of the GVU community are participants in CHI 2005, held April 2-7 in Portland, OR. Stay tuned for a special issue of this email, titled "Eye on GVU - CHI 2005 Edition" focused on the conference, to be released next week.

III. Honors/Awards/Grants

> ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR GREGORY ABOWD (CoC)
He received a grant from the Cure Autism Now Foundation (CAN) and was named to their advisory board for innovative technologies for autism (CAN-ITA).

> ASSISTANT PROFESSOR JEFF PIERCE (CoC)
He received a $50K gift from Microsoft Research for his proposal "Expanding the Computing Curriculum Beyond the Desktop Computer," as part of the Microsoft Research University Relations Tablet PC and Computing Curriculum Request for Proposals 2005.

> PROFESSOR JAREK ROSSIGNAC (CoC)
He was invited to give a lecture as part of Texas A&M University's Computer Science Distinguished Lecturer Series on Feb 16, 2005.

> SENIOR RESEARCH SCIENTIST CHRIS SHAW (CoC)
Georgia Tech CoC Undergrads are selected to appear at the 2005 Independent Games Festival Student Showcase, scheduled March 9-11 in San Francisco, for their work,"Team Robot," developed by Devin Cline, Dusty Embrey, Kyle Mahan and Tommy Parry. The project, created for the Fall 2004 offering of CS4455 Video Game Design and Programming, will be awarded $500 travel allowance by IGF to help offset the costs associated with attending the festival. This is the fourth year in a row that a Georgia Tech team has been selected for the Independent Games Festival Student Showcase. Past selections are: "XenoHammer" in 2002; "Doggone Catastrophe" in 2003; "Kube Kombat" and "Growbot" in 2004. Georgia Tech is the winningest university in the annual IGF Student Showcase, with five selections in the five years that the showcase has existed.


[1/20/05 News]

I. Media

> THE AWARE HOME
The Aware Home is featured in GEMC Georgia magazine, January 2005 issue, in the
story, "Aging in Place: Georgia Tech's Aware Home helps keep elderly in touch," on p. 34.

> REGENTS PROFESSOR RON ARKIN (COC)
Georgia Tech's Tech Topics magazine, Winter 2004 issue, p. 14, printed the article, "Shall We Dance?: Robots will serve, entertain," focusing on his research on human-robot interaction. Also as director of the Mobile Robot Laboratory, Arkin says interaction with robots will become more prevalent.

> ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR REBECCA GRINTER (CoC)
She has an article published on usability and security in the Journal of Personal and Ubiquitous Computing. The reference follows:

Dourish, P., Grinter, R. E., Delgado de la Flor, J. and M. Joseph (2004) "Security in the Wild: User Strategies for Managing Security as an Everyday, Practical Problem." Journal of Personal and Ubiquitous Computing. 8(6) 391-401.

> ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR MARK GUZDIAL (CoC)
His new book, "Introduction to Computing and Programming in Python, A Multimedia Approach," released Mon., Dec. 27, 2004, is available at Amazon.com. It is published by Prentice Hall.

> ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR JULIE JACKO (ISyE)
She and other Georgia Tech researchers work with designing software for computer users with low vision is featured in Research Horizons, a Georgia Tech publication. The story, "One Size Doesn't Fit all: Software under development would customize graphics-based computer interaction for people with low vision," ran in the Fall 2004 issue on p. 24.

> PROFESSOR JANET MURRAY (LCC)
She was member of the jury that judged the 2004 AFI Television Programs of the Year. Unlike any other film or television award currently given, the AFI Awards selections are made through AFI's unique 13-person jury process in which scholars, artists, critics and AFI trustees discuss, debate and determine the most outstanding achievements of the year, as well as provide a detailed rationale for each selection. The awards were given Fri., Jan. 14, 2005, in Los Angeles.

> ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR COLIN POTTS (COC)
He is quoted in the "Quote, Unquote" section of The Whistle, Georgia Tech's faculty/staff newspaper, Dec. 13, 2004 edition. He comments on the reliability of information found on the Internet. The quote was picked up by the Associated Press: "I thought this was hilarious and filed it away in a scrapbook for my lecture next semester... I also forwarded it to several people. Unfortunately, as another colleague informed me by e-mail a few minutes later, it's a hoax."

> ED PRICE (IMTC DIRECTOR)
Georgia Tech's Research Horizons magazine ran a story on his work heading the development of an integrated, searchable online catalog of moving images. The story, "Motion Picture History: Moving images project offers access to archived video and film," was printed in the Fall 2004 issue, p. 21. The project is funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

> ASSISTANT PROFESSOR THAD STARNER (CoC)
His group's work with wearable computing appeared in a Technology Review on-line article, "Wearable Computing for the Commons," on Wed., Dec. 1, 2004.The same story was picked up by several other web sites including: ExectTech News, News Target Network and Smart Mobs. Also, Kent Lyons, one of Thad's researchers, was quoted extensively in the Technology Research News online article, "Conversations control computers," about prototype handheld computer applications that tap keywords from conversations.

> JASON BROTHERTON (GVU ALUMNUS)
He appeared in a BBC interview on RFID tags which was part of a piece on technology advances of 2004. The segment aired on the weekly show, "Go Digital with Tracey Logan," on Mon., Jan. 3, 2005. The interview is available from that site at http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsa/n5ctrl/progs/05/go_digital/03jan.ram (go to 17:30 minutes into the show for Jason's interview).

> JAMES O'BRIEN (GVU ALUMNUS)
He was featured in the Time magazine article, "What Does Wind Really Look Like?" published in the Jan. 10, 2005 issue in its "Innovators" section.

II. Conferences/Papers

> PROFESSOR DIANE GROMALA (LCC)
She has or will present in several conferences::

  • In Beijing, China, she presented an invited paper at the 6th International Research Conference, Consciousness Reframed: Qi and Complexity, held Wed., Nov. 24, 2004. The paper, "Ecstasis: Beyond Skin but Not Out of Body," examined the ways in which new technologies can enhance sensorial awareness. She also presented "The Visceral Dimension: Physically Provocative Technologies" at Peking University, School of Software, Thurs., Nov. 25, 2004. Her exhibition: "Call" was held at the Red Gate Gallery, one of the foremost museums of contemporary art in mainland China. The Red Gate Gallery is situated within the remaining gate house in the 500-year-old Wall of Beijing.
  • In Atlanta, she will present a paper at the annual College Art Association's conference, scheduled Feb. 14-16, 2005. Her paper, "Re-enervating Flesh: Organic Matter and Visceral Sensations of BioTechnologies" will be in the panel, "Hybridity: Arts, Sciences, and Cultural Effects."
  • In Ahmedabad, India, Professor Ravi Mokashi, Professor Gromala, and her graduate students Sunil Parihar and Madhur Khandelwal co-authored papers entitled, "Design Visions: Centers of Synergetic and Dynamic Interfaces between Education Centers and Society," and "Collaborative Agents of Design: Interdisciplinary Research Design Education," which have been accepted at ICOGRADA's International Design conference DETM, to be held at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, India, March 2-4, 2005.
  • At SIGGRAPH '05, Professor Gromala has been selected as a jury member of the Emerging Technologies venue, held July 31 - Aug. 4 in Los Angeles.

III. Honors/Awards/Grants

> PROFESSOR JAMES FOLEY (CoC)
He was elected to the board of directors of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents. The Council is an organization of presidents, presidents-elect, and recent past presidents of about 60 scientific federations and societies whose combined membership numbers more than 1.4 million scientists and science educators, according to its web site, http://www.cssp.us/. Since 1973, CSSP has served as a strong national voice in fostering wise science policy, in support of science and science education, as the premier national science leadership development center, and as a forum for open, substantive exchanges on emerging scientific issues. Council membership spans the top elected officers of the full spectrum of physical, mathematical, and life sciences, and science and mathematics education.

> PROFESSOR JAREK ROSSIGNAC (CoC)
He gave a distinguished lecture at the University of Southern California at Los Angeles, "Interactive Design and Compression of 3D Shapes and Animations," on Wed., Dec., 1, 2004. He also had a paper published in the Computer-Aided Design Journal. The reference is:

"Education-Driven Research in CAD," Jarek Rossignac. Computer-Aided Design Journal (CAD), Vol 36/14 pp 1461-1469, 2004. GVU Tech. Report GIT-GVU-03-26.


2004

[11/19/04 News]

I. Media

> ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR REBECCA GRINTER (CoC)
She has two articles published on the topic of usability and security. The references follow:

  • Balfanz D., Durfee, G., Grinter R. E. and D. K. Smetters (2004) "In Search of Usable Security - Five Lessons from the Field," IEEE Security & Privacy, Special Issue on Usable Security. September/October. 19-24.
  • Balfanz, D., Durfee, G., Grinter, R. E., Smetters, D. K., and P. Stewart (2004) "Network-in-a-Box: How to Set Up a Secure Wireless Network in Under a Minute" accepted to USENIX Security Symposium 2004. San Diego, California. August 9-13. 207-222.

> PROFESSOR JAREK ROSSIGNAC (CoC)
An article on the Delphi prediction for his Edgebreaker 3D compression that he co-authored with Dr. Volker Coors from Stuttgart University, appeared in The Visual Computer, Vol. 20, Numbers 8-9, November 2004 issue, pp. 507-520. The
article was published online Wed., Sept. 15, 2004.

II. Conferences

> UIST
Several members of the GVU community were participants in UIST 2004, held Oct. 24-27 in Santa Fe, NM:

Papers:

  • "A Gesture-based Authentication Scheme for Untrusted Public Terminals." Shwetak N. Patel, Jeffrey S. Pierce, and Gregory D. Abowd.
  • "Augmenting Conversations using Dual-Purpose Speech." Kent Lyons, Christopher Skeels, Thad Starner, Cornelis Snoeck, Benjamin Wong and Daniel Ashbrook (Georgia Tech)
  • "Automatic Projector Calibration with Embedded Light Sensors." Johnny Lee (CMU), Paul Dietz (Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs), Dan Maynes-Aminzade (Stanford University), Ramesh Raskar (Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs), and Scott Hudson (CMU and GVU alumnus)
  • "DART: A Toolkit for Rapid Design Exploration of Augmented Reality Experiences." Blair MacIntyre, Maribeth Gandy, Steven Dow and Jay David Bolter (Georgia Tech)
  • "A Toolkit for Managing User Attention in Peripheral Displays." Tara Matthews (UC Berkeley), Anind Dey (Intel-Berkeley Research Lab, GVU alumnus), Jennifer Mankoff (GVU alumna), Scott Carter and Tye Rattenbury (UC Berkeley)
  • "Using Light Emitting Diode Arrays as Touch-Sensitive Input and Output Devices." Scott Hudson (CMU, GVU alumnus)
  • "Haptic Pen: A Tactile Feedback Stylus for Touch Screens." Johnny Lee (CMU), Paul Dietz, Darren Leigh, William Yerazunis (Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs) and Scott Hudson (CMU, GVU alumnus)

Session:
  • Blair MacIntyre, CoC assistant professor, was chair of the session on 'Gestures"

Poster:
  • "The Sharing Palette: A User Interface for File and Service Sharing." Stephen Voida (Georgia Tech), W. Keith Edwards (PARC) and Mark W. Newman (PARC/UC Berkeley)

Sponsored Demonstrations:
  • "Fast, Detailed Inference of Diverse Daily Human Activities." Matthai Philipose, Sunny Consolvo, Tanzeem Choudhury, Kenneth Fishkin, Ian Smith (Intel Research Seattle, GVU alumnus), Dieter Fox, Henry Kautz and Donald Patterson (Univ. of Washington)
  • "Place Lab: Wide-scale Device Positioning Using Radio Beacons in the Wild." Anthony LaMarca, Yatin Chawathe, Ian Smith (GVU alumnus), Sunny Consolvo, Jeff Hightower, James Scott, Tim Sohn, Pauline Powledge, Anand Balachandran, Gaetano Borriello and Bill Schilit (Intel Research Seattle)

------OTHER CONFERENCE NEWS--------------

> ASSISTANT PROFESSOR THAD STARNER (CoC)
He and Kent Lyons, CoC Ph.d. student, taught a tutorial ("Wearable and Mobile Human Computer Interaction") on mobile interfaces during ISWC'04 (International Symposium on Wearable Computers), held Oct. 31 - Nov. 3 in Arlington, VA. Also for the conference, Starner arranged a panel session of DARPA/ONR/NIST/NSF/NIDDR program managers on funding opportunities for wearables and Augmented Reality. He served on the ISWC program and technical committees. In addition, the following were accepted at ISWC:

  • Long paper: "Expert Chording Text Entry on the Twiddler One-Handed Keyboard," Kent Lyons, Daniel Plaisted, Thad Starner
  • Short paper: "FreeDigiter: A Contact-Free Device for Gesture Control," Christian Metzger, Matt Anderson, Thad Starner
  • Poster: "Augmenting a pH Medical Study with Wearable Video for Treatment of GERD," Thad Starner, Ashbrook Daniel

  • > Abstracts and other info

> ASSISTANT PROFESSOR BRUCE WALKER (PSYCH)
Software developed in his Sonification Lab to turn scientific data into auditory graphs has been put to a new use. Multimedia artist Tom Dukich has used the "Sonification Sandbox" to sonify 1800 days (5 years) of weather data from Seattle and Spokane as part of an art installation called "Visualize and Sonify." The exhibit is at the GoodWorks gallery in Spokane during November 2004.

> ASSISTANT PROFESSOR GIL WEINBERG (MUSIC)
He presented two papers at the International Computer Music Conference. The first paper, "Georgia Tech Music Department - Studio Report," describes the recent developments and new research projects in the Music Technology Program at Tech. The second paper, "Voice Networks," describes a set of applications for networked music collaboration based on the human voice. As part of the conference Professor Weinberg's interactive composition, "iltur," was performed in a concert by a group of musicians, including LCC student Matthew Warne.

> ELAINE HUANG (CoC Ph.D. STUDENT)
She presented her work, "Design and Analysis of Groupware for Large Displays," at the CSCW (Computer Supported Cooperative Work) Doctoral Colloquium, held Sat., Nov. 6 in Chicago, IL, as part of CSCW 2004.

> DUKE HUTCHINGS (CoC Ph.D. STUDENT)
He and CoC Associate Professor John Stasko, along with yesterday's GVU Brown Bag speaker, Mary Czerwinski from Microsoft Research, will host a workshop on "Distributed Display Environments" at CHI 2005. Workshop submissions will be accepted soon. CHI 2005 is held in Portland, OR, April 2-7.

> GIOVANNI IACHELLO (CoC Ph.D. STUDENT)
At Mobile HCI 2004, on Sept. 14-17, he presented the full paper,"The Personal Audio Loop: Designing a Ubiquitous Audio-Based Memory Aid," a user study and privacy analysis of a mobile, personal short-term voice recorder that is always active. This work was done with Gillian Hayes, Shwetak Patel, Khai Truong, Julie Kientz, Rob Farmer and CoC Associate Professor Gregory Abowd. Also at the conference on Sept. 13, Iachello organized with GVU alumnus Ian Smith (Intel Seattle Research, USA) and Mika Raento (University of Helsinki, Finland), the Workshop on Location System Privacy and Control. The workshop addressed privacy issues in location technologies from a multidisciplinary, human-centered perspective, integrating an analysis of their technical characteristics with relevant usability, social and legal considerations. HCI 2004 was held Oct. 13-16 at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland.

> JESSICA PARADISE (CoC Ph.D. STUDENT)
She presented the paper, "Designing a cognitive aid for the home: a case-study approach," co-authored with CoC Associate Professor Elizabeth D. Mynatt, Cliff Williams and John Goldthwaite, Georgia Tech senior research scientist at ASSETS '04, held Oct. 18-20 in Atlanta, GA.

III. Talks/Lectures

> ASSISTANT PROFESSOR BLAIR MACINTYRE (CoC)
He gave a talk titled "Design Exploration of Interactive Augmented Reality," on Tues., Oct. 26, 2004, as part of the Applied Complexity Lecture Series at the Santa Fe Institute. The talk abstract follows: Applied Complexity developers are often tasked to visually present agent-based models back to organizations for validation and iterative refinement. I will discuss our work with Augmented and Mixed Reality (AR/MR). A major part of our work is understanding how to support new media designers during exploration and design of these complex, 3D experiences that mix physical and virtual worlds. This support has manifested itself in The Designer's Augmented Reality Toolkit (DART), a design environment for AR experience. Our work focuses on supporting early design activities, especially a rapid transition from storyboards to working experience, so that the experiential part of a design can be tested early and often. DART allows designers to specify complex relationships between the physical and virtual worlds, and supports 3D animatic actors (informal, sketch-based content) in addition to more polished content.

> PROFESSOR JAREK ROSSIGNAC (CoC)
He delivered a Distinguished Lecture at the Ohio State University Department of Computer Science and Engineering, where he presented his work on human-shape interaction and on the compression of 3D shapes and animations.


[10/20/04 News]

I. Media

> GVU HOSTS ASIMO VISIT TO GEORGIA TECH
The GVU Center hosted the inaugural launch of the Honda Motor Corporation's ASIMO humanoid robot national university tour, Sept. 23-25, 2004, at Ferst Center on the campus of Georgia Tech. The tour is designed to encourage the study of science and engineering and to educate the public about the tremendous possibilities in the field of robotics. GVU also hosted related events surrounding the visit, including presentations to prospective high school students about the Center's research and a private ASIMO demonstration and reception for the GVU community. The event received local television coverage.
The Whistle, Georgia Tech's newspaper for faculty and staff, ran a front page blurb on the event in the Sept. 20, 2004 edition.

> AWARE HOME ON CNN EXPLORER
CNN aired a segment on Fri., Oct. 8, 2004, on the Aware Home, featuring the Digital Family Portrait and Cook's Collage research projects. For more information on the Aware Home, see http://www.awarehome.gatech.edu/index.html.

> ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR AMY BRUCKMAN (CoC)
A story on The Turing Game was posted online at CNN.com on Oct. 13, 2004. The article, "Can you prove you're not a machine," mentions how GVU alumnus Josh Berman and CoC Associate Professor Amy Bruckman created the online game in the late '90s to help understand issues of online identity such as gender and race.

> PROFESSOR RAMESH JAIN (ECE & CoC)
ACM Ubiquity published an interview of him in their latest webzine, Issue 29, Vol. 5, Sept. 15-21, 2000. The article, "Refining the Search Engine," has already been picked up by leading search bloggers such as John Batelle's Searchblog in the story, "Ramesh Jain: the Search Steering Wheel."

> ASSISANT PROFESOR BLAIR MACINTYRE, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR ELIZABETH MYNATT (CoC)
They and GVU student Stephen Voida (together with other CoC faculty and students) had an article featured in an issue of IEEE Pervasive Computing magazine. The abstract for the article quotes that "a major challenge facing ubiquitous computing R&D is the difficulty of writing software for complex, distributed applications. Automatic application partitioning can help development teams rapidly prototype distributed ubiquitous computing systems." The citation follows:

Liogkas, N., MacIntyre, B., Mynatt, E.D., Smaragdakis, Y., Tilevich, E., and Voida, S. (2004, July-Sept.) Automatic partitioning for prototyping ubiquitous computing applications. IEEE Pervasive Computing, 3(3), pp. 40-47.

> ASSISTANT PROFESSOR MICHAEL MATEAS (CoC)
His research is discussed in the Gamespot story, "Redefining Games: How Academia is Reshaping Games." The article describes Michael's AI-based approach to game research and describes current projects in the Experimental Game Lab. The article also includes interviews with LCC Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Janet Murray and IDT alum Gonzalo Frasca. In addition, his and Andrew Stern's interactive drama Facade is discussed in "I Kill You," an article on video game violence at Idle Thumbs. In the story, Facade is presented as an example of a game that moves beyond simple violence-based game mechanics.

> ASSISTANT PROFESSOR GIL WEINBERG (Music)
His interactive composition "iltur" was performed at the NWEAMO (New West Electro-Acoustic Music Organization) Festival in San Diego, Oct. 1-9, 2004. The mission of NWEAMO is to forge connections between the classical electronic avant garde and artists working at the experimental fringes of electronica.

> JAY SUMMET, MATTHEW FLAGG (CoC Ph.D. STUDENTS)
Their work, advised by CoC Associate Professors Jim Rehg and Gregory Abowd, was featured in the ProAV magazine article, "Projecting a Good Image," by Tim Kridel, in the August 2004 issue, vol. 21 no. 8, pp. 78-79. See a PDF scan of the article at http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~summetj/papers/ProAV2004-VRP.pdf.

II. Conferences

> ASSISTANT PROFESSOR BLAIR MACINTYRE (CoC)
His group's research on DART (The Designer's Augmented Reality Toolkit) will be featured in a number of conferences this fall:

  • At Ubicomp 2004, held Sept. 7-10 in Nottingham, UK, Steven Dow demonstrated how DART can be used for prototyping ubicomp and mixed reality experiences (Steven Dow, Blair MacIntyre, Maribeth Gandy and Jay David Bolter. "Prototyping Applications for the Physical World Using Integrated Capture/Playback Facilities").
  • At UIST 2004, MacIntyre will present a paper on the design of DART.  During the UIST demo and poster session, his team will demonstrate DART to conference attendees. UIST is held in Santa Fe, NM, Oct. 24-27.
  • At ISMAR 2004, the DART team will demonstrate DART's advanced capabilities for handling multiple sensors and fusing them together in a simple and useful way. The symposium is held Nov. 2-5, 2004 in Arlington, VA, co-located with ISWC04 (8th IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers).
  • At Presence 2004, MacIntyre presented a paper on the concept of "aura" and the importance of real places and objects (Blair MacIntyre, Jay David Bolter and Maribeth Gandy, "Presence and the Aura of Meaningful Places"). The conference was held Oct. 13-15 in Valencia, Spain.

Also, at ISMAR 2004, Enylton Coelho will present a paper on the design of OSGAR, a 3D toolkit for AR, built on top of OpenSceneGraph (Enylton Machado Coelho, Blair MacIntyre and Simon Julier "OSGAR: A Scene Graph with Uncertain Transformations"). Integrating uncertain transformations into a 3D scene graph is vital for building AR applications that function in realistic environments.  OSGAR provides a high-level abstraction to programmers for representing uncertainty and building applications that adapt as uncertainty changes. They will demonstrate OSGAR as part of the ISMAR demo session. The conference is held Oct. 24-28 in Ponte Vedra Beach, FL.

> PROFESSOR JAREK ROSSIGNAC (CoC)
He gave an invited lecture on Mesh Compression at the 13th International Meshing Round Table in Williamsburg, VA, Sept. 19-22, 2004. In 1992, Sandia National Laboratories started the Meshing Roundtable as a small meeting of like-minded companies and organizations striving to establish a common focus for research and development in the field of mesh and grid generation.

> IDRIS HSI (CoC Ph.D. STUDENT)
He has an accepted paper, "Measuring the Conceptual Fitness of an Application in a Computing Ecosystem," to be published in the proceedings of the Workshop on Interdisciplinary Software Engineering Research (WISER) which is co-located with the ACM SIGSOFT Conference "Foundations of Software Engineering-12." The paper discusses how methods of ontological excavation can be combined with use cases to approximate the conceptual fitness and usefulness of an application. The conference and workshop are held in Newport Beach, CA, Nov. 2-5, 2004.

> DELPHINE NAIN (CoC Ph.D. STUDENT)</