No More Database Design or Web Programming

Consider adding “no more database design or web programming” to your list of New Year’s resolutions. At DEMO 2008, UC San Diego startup App2you announced that it is opening itself up to the general public – initially for free. With app2you’s patented algorithms, you can whip up a customized interactive Web application in minutes without touching a line of code or thinking a single database-driven thought.

App2you’s key innovations come from a series of patented algorithms that perform the database design and programming for you.

“Users simply specify page design and decide who should have access to what information using our JustSketch tool. Our algorithms do the rest,” says Yannis Papakonstantinou, app2you founder and computer science professor from UC San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering.

App2you is one of the 16 startup companies nurtured since 2002 by the William J. von Liebig Center for Entrepreneurism and Technology Advancement at UCSD’s Jacobs School of Engineering. The von Liebig Center – recently recognized for excellence by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the Max Planck Institute of Economics – awarded app2you critical seed funding through a competitive review process in 2006. The support enabled Papakonstantinou and his team of UCSD students to develop the technology to the point where they could attract the angel funding they needed to commercialize their algorithms.

Read the full release here.

Center for Networked Systems (CNS)

The Center for Networked Systems (CNS) at UCSD has a new brochure which you can check out online.

The scribblings on the whiteboard on the back page are related to professor Joe Pasquale's work on long-running replicated systems.

Amin Vahdat, a UCSD computer science professor is the current CNS Director. I have pasted his director's message below:

The last decade has been witness to exponential
growth in the speed and coverage of digital communication
networks. We are now at an inflection
point in the utility of the now global communication
network. Moving forward, the reach of the
network will enable a new class of applications
and opportunities to collaborate and communicate.
With these opportunities come a number of
challenges. As networked applications and
services permeate our daily experience, we will
require new techniques to improve the security of
our data and to manage scale and complexity of
the millions of compute and communication
elements powering the global network.

At UCSD’s Center for Networked Systems (CNS),
we have assembled a world-class team of faculty
and students, performing cutting-edge research in
all areas of computer networks, from optical
interconnects and wireless sensor networks to
data center architectures and network security.
Our faculty are internationally recognized leaders
with a reputation for working on practical, highimpact
problems, while simultaneously performing
fundamental research to advance the state of the
art. Our students are highly sought after, regularly
securing top industrial and academic positions.

A significant differentiator at CNS is our culture of
industrial partnership. By working closely with our
member companies to define research efforts of
mutual interest, we are able to engage the top
companies in our field to both understand the
important problems facing real deployed communication
systems and to jointly work toward solutions.

Our students typically enjoy the opportunity to either
begin or continue collaborative research as
a part of our very successful summer internship
program. On a number of occasions, summer
internships have led to dissertation topics and
even impacted company practices or products.
We believe the revolution in communication networks
is just beginning. With the strength of our
students, our faculty, and our deep collaborations
with our industrial partners, UCSD’s Center for
Networked Systems will continue to be at the
forefront of these exciting times.

-Amin Vahdat, Director

Selective Scanning for Faster Prostate Pathology

In new work from the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering and the UCSD Medical Center, computer vision and machine learning techniques are being used to create an automated system to analyze low magnification images of prostate tissue sections and select those parts of the specimen that should be scanned at high magnification for examination by human diagnosticians. Pathologists hardly ever view entire images at high resolution, but rather concentrate on a few relevant parts. The new system selects the parts that warrant scanning at high magnification.

The very large sizes of image files generated by digital microscopes with a scanning mechanism can make it hard for pathologists at different locations to consult with each other by sharing files through the Internet. The new approach can decrease the space required for storage and time for transmission by a factor of ten.

The new collaborative work from UCSD electrical engineering Ph.D. student Mayank Kabra, computer science professor Yoav Freund and UCSD Medical Center clinical pathology professor Steve Baird will be presented on Thursday 17 January 2008 at the Workshop on Bio-Image Informatics: Biological Imaging, Computer Vision and Data Mining, 2008, hosted by UC Santa Barbara’s Center for Bio-Image Informatics.

Read the full abstract here: Selective Scanning for faster Prostate Pathology
Mayank Kabra ECE, UC San Diego; Yoav Freund CSE, UC San Diego; Steve Baird School of Medicine, UC San Diego