TowerMadness Developers

Iman Mostafavi (above) is a computer science Ph.D. student at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. He is one of three developers of the hot iPhone game, TowerMadness. It is one of the most cheat-resistant iPhone games around.




Arash Keshmirian (left) is a UC San Diego computer science BS/MS alumnus who is now a Silicon-Valley based entrepreneur and consultant. Arash is a developer of TowerMadness.




Volker Schönefeld is a former visiting graduate student to UC San Diego’s computer science department who is completing his doctoral degree at RWTH Aachen University, in Aachen Germany. Volker is a developer of TowerMadness. The game's cheat resistance features grew out of replay technology Schönefeld pioneered in 2003 for Waaagh!TV, his e-Sports broadcasting company. Waaagh!TV develops software that allows thousands of users to simultaneously watch live online matches of the popular computer game Warcraft III.

iPhone game that is tough on cheaters

I just posted a story about TowerMadness, an iPhone game created by three computer scientists with ties to UC San Diego's computer science department. If you are a gamer, you'll love the 3D graphics and the sophistication of the aliens in TowerMadness...they are much smarter than your average iPhone "bad guys".

But there is much more to this game. The press release focuses on how computer science PhD student Iman Mostafavi, computer science alumnus (BS/MS) Arash Keshmirian, and former computer science visiting student Volker Schönefeld created one of the most cheat-resistant iPhone games. Their strategies is tied to technologies Volker Schönefeld developed for his e-Sports broadcasting company Waaagh!TV.

Computer Science Educator/Researcher Leads Associated Press Story

Beth Simon teaches computer science at UC San Diego. But that is just the beginning. She is also pioneering new ways to use technology to engage students during computer science lectures. Some of her work was profiled this week in an Associated Press article by Megan Scott entitled "Classrooms Go High-Tech to Engage Students."

Read more about her cutting-edge technology-meets-education research in Pulse, the alumni magazine of the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.

The AP article also quoted UC San Diego student Karen Tamayo. I'm trying to track her down now...to take her picture and find about a bit more about what kind of research she is doing with Beth Simon.

UC San Diego Research and National Security

Future military missions will depend on large, networked groups of sensor-equipped vehicles, which can be deployed in extreme conditions with little to no human intervention.

“Inspiration can be taken from biological groups like schools of fish, flocks of birds. These will be multi-robot networks, where each individual senses its environment, communicates with others, processes information gathered and takes local action in response, said Sonia Martinez, an assistant professor the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UC San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering.

Martinez outlined her ideas at The La Jolla Conference on Innovation Support for National Security, held last month at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) at UC San Diego. (Read the Jacobs School story here, which was adapted from the Calit2 story by Tiffany Fox)

(Watch webcasts of the conference here.)

The conference brought together thought leaders from the U.S. military, the defense industry and local research institutions to identify challenges, threats and solutions in the areas of advanced autonomous robotics and cybersecurity.

Einstein Smiling Robot News roundup

Here is a round up of some of the stories on the Einstein robot that learned to make its own facial expressions, thanks to a mirror, machine learning, and some serious UC San Diego brain power.

LiveScience.com
http://www.livescience.com/technology/090710-robot-expression.html

Popular Science
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-07/einstein-robot-teachest-itself-smile

TG Daily
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/43157/135/

Wired
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/07/robotsmile/

Technology Review blog Kristina Grifantini (DK) (B,D,E)
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/23825/?nlid=2173

Technology Review video stream: (DK) (B,D,E)
http://www.technologyreview.com/video/?vid=388

Tehran Times
http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=198622

KPBS radio
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2009/jul/10/ucsd-robot-learns-human-facial-expressions/

CNET Gadget blog: “crave” Einstein bot: E = mc smile
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10286624-1.html

DViCE
http://dvice.com/archives/2009/07/a-robot-that-ca.php

GIZMODO
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2009/07/robot-einstein-still-learning-to-smile/

gizmag
http://www.gizmag.com/robot-learning-facial-expressions/12218/

Switched
http://www.switched.com/2009/07/12/self-taught-einstein-bot-learns-to-smile-creepily/

MSN 9 News
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/glance/836366/robot-einstein-learns-to-smile

Popular Science video stream
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-07/einstein-robot-teachest-itself-smile

Engadget
http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/10/einstein-robot-learns-to-smile-teaches-us-how-to-feel/

The Einstein robot video on YouTube had more than 73,000 hits as of Friday July 17
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBUtxfUY_w0&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Egizmodo%2Ecom%2Eau%2F2009%2F07%2Frobot%2Deinstein%2Dstill%2Dlearning%2Dto%2Dsmile%2F&feature=player_embedded

New Drugs from Natural Compounds

Congratulations to Julio Ng (front) and Nuno Bandeira (back), the UC San Diego researchers and co-lead authors on a Nature Methods paper describing computational and experimental advances that enable researchers to quickly and inexpensively determine whether natural compounds collected in oceans and forests are new -- or if these pharmaceutically promising compounds have already been described and are therefore not patentable.

The UC San Diego web-based tools for sequencing nonribosomal peptides (at no cost to researchers at nonprofit organizations) are available at: bix.ucsd.edu/nrp

This research appeared this week on a number of media outlets, including:

Scientific American (story by Brendan Borrell)
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=new-algorithm-antibiotic-hunt

Genetic Engineering News
ttp://www.genengnews.com/news/bnitem.aspx?name=58159197

Natural Products Industry Insider http://www.naturalproductsinsider.com/news/2009/07/new-drugs-faster-from-natural-compounds.aspx

Genome Web Daily News
http://www.genomeweb.com/proteomics/ucsd-team-develops-de-novo-sequencing-dereplication-method-decipher-nonribosomal

NanoEngineering for Fighting Cancer Video Wins!!!

The University of California, San Diego NanoTumor Center and NanoTecNexus (NTN) (formerly NanoBioNexus)—a leading nanotech education organization—won the 2009 Bronze Telly Award for the production of a video on approaches to fighting cancer using nanotechnology. Read the story here.

The three minute video, entitled “Fighting Cancer with Nanotechnology,” is embedded below and can be viewed at NanoTecNexus, YouTube and around the Web. The video was produced in collaboration with Mindeliver Media, a San Diego-based media company specializing in pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and science industries.