9:30 a.m., Dec. 10, 2008----More than 150 people attended Computer Science Research Day at the University of Delaware on Monday, Dec. 8.

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Sponsored by the Department of Computer and Information Sciences (CIS) in the College of Arts and Sciences, the event was designed to showcase the research being conducted by graduate students in the department and to serve as a forum for interaction among students, faculty, alumni, and research professionals from industry and government.

Chandra Kambhamettu, associate professor of computer and information sciences, served as host of the event, which consisted of a keynote speech by Ram Ramanathan, a panel discussion, graduate student research posters, a computer science Jeopardy! game and tours of the department's newly renovated research labs.

Ramanathan, who earned his master's degree and doctorate in computer sciences from the University of Delaware in 1989 and 1992, respectively, is a network scientist with BBN in Cambridge, Mass.

His talk, “Mobile Networking Research: A Story and its Morals,” addressed three themes: the evolution of wireless networking technology, the evolution of the research community in this area, and his own evolution as a researcher.

Ramanathan said that the morals of his story can apply to any field: failure is usually a prerequisite for success, “bubbles” exist in the research world just as they do in commercial markets and it's important not to get up caught in them, and the best research problems are firmly grounded in reality.

He urged students to consider new directions, to exploit new technology enablers, and to question prevailing wisdom.

“It's been an exciting journey for me,” Ramanathan said, “and UD prepared me well for it. I was offered freedom in my research direction and held to standards as high as those at any of the most prestigious schools in the country.”

The panel consisted of Joan Peckham, program director at the National Science Foundation; Cathy Wu, professor at Georgetown University; Keith Decker, associate professor of computer and information sciences at UD; and David Sincoskie, professor in UD's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

The discussion, which addressed the future of computer science, was moderated by Lori Pollock, professor of computer and information sciences at UD.

“We are really pleased to have such a distinguished and diverse panel,” said David Saunders, chairperson of the Department of Computer and Information Sciences, in introducing the participants.

Decker told stories from the medical and security fields, emphasizing that computer science principles are increasingly being used to solve societal problems involving such issues as allocating scarce resources, avoiding unintended interactions, and maintaining safety in public places.

“Rather than asking 'what is computer science?'” he said, “we should be asking 'what isn't computer science?' It can be applied to any human process. The challenge is that we're in the computational dark ages, and we have to figure out how to get computation taught the same way we teach reading, writing, and math.”

Peckham also emphasized the increasing importance of computational thinking, which, she said, equips us to reason at multiple levels of abstraction simultaneously, think algorithmically, apply mathematical concepts to solve complex problems, and understand the dimensions and consequences of scale. “The future of computer science will be computational thinking,” she said.

Sincoskie, who has been chosen to lead UD's new Center on Information and Communications Systems, talked about the future of the field in terms of seven research challenges: information networking, mobile networking, cybersecurity, advanced computing systems, multifunctional materials, wireless communications, and robotics.

According to Wu, as biology has become an increasingly quantitative science, computer science has become essential to biological discovery. With research expertise in bioinformatics, she sees an increasing trend from reductionism in biology, with a focus on individual components, to integration, where the focus is on systems. Computer science facilitates processing and analysis of experimental data.

According to Kambhamettu, the research day enables graduate students working in different groups to learn about the work being done by their colleagues. The poster process, which includes peer review and submission of extended abstracts, is also designed to give grad students some experience with the publication process.

Forty-eight posters, most with multiple authors, were presented at the event and will be published with abstracts in an electronic proceedings.

Several faculty and some 25 undergraduates from schools in the region -- including Bloomsburg, Rowan, and Lincoln universities and Ursinus and Washington colleges -- also attended the research day.

“Events like this allow our students to get a feel for what graduate research is like,” said Richard Liston, assistant professor at Ursinus.

“The day really brings our department together,” said Paul Amer, University of Delaware Distinguished Alumni Professor of Computer and Information Science. “Many of our grads who teach in the region come back and bring their students with them. It's a great chance for us to recruit new students for the program and catch up with some of our alumni.”

Article by Diane Kukich
Photos by Ambre Alexander