Computer Science Alum "Building" Rome in a Day

Computer scientists around the world are working on various projects that involve automated reconstruction of 3-D images from photos pulled off the Web. One of the researchers working in this area is Sameer Agarwal, who earned his computer science PhD here at the Jacobs School of Engineering. Agarwal is now Acting Assistant Professor of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington.

National Geographic recently profiled Agarwal's "building-Rome-in-a-day" work. Read the story at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/09/090924-flickr-rome-build-day.html

Sameer Agarwal earned his PhD in the Computer Vision Laboratory at UC San Diego, where Serge Belongie was his advisor. At UCSD, Agarwal worked on a similar project--from pictures to three dimensions--with Department of Computer Science and Engineering PhD student Manmohan Chandrakar (who just started a post-doc at UC Berkeley with Prof. Ravi Ramamoorthi). Excerpt from that 2008 story below:

Your pictures of the Grand Canyon, Times Square or other destinations may be pretty good, but wouldn’t it be nice to show them off in three dimensions? An award-winning 3D reconstruction algorithm designed by a team of computer science researchers from UC San Diego brings this dream within the grasp of reality.

This research gets at the heart of “autocalibration,” a well-studied, fundamental problem in computer vision. Autocalibration aims to recover the three dimensional structure of a scene using only its images, acquired from cameras whose internal settings and spatial orientations are unknown.

Cybersecurity Expert and Computer Science Professor Stefan Savage Giving Lecture

Inside the Mind of an Internet Criminal: How Economics Impact Cyber Security

Presented by: Stefan Savage, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering University of California, San Diego

Program Overview

When asked why he robbed banks, Willie Sutton famously responded, "Because that's where the money is." Today, the same sentiment is widely applied to the Internet as well. The tremendous growth of on-line commerce has made Internet users, their computers and their data a valuable target for criminal actors. Compounding this raw opportunity, the Internet itself provides a uniquely efficient capability for perpetrating these crimes at scale. Indeed, over the last decade, the ability to easily compromise large numbers of Internet hosts has emerged as the backbone of a vibrant criminal economy encompassing unsolicited bulk-email, denial-of-service extortion, piracy, phishing and identity theft. Both the underlying platform (botnets) and the vertical applications built upon it (e.g., Spam, credit card theft, etc.) are themselves market commodities, bought and sold on the underground, and under constant pressure to innovate. However, in spite of the fact that virtually all on-line crime is economically motivated, the underlying economics are poorly understood and even more poorly quantified. Absent such knowledge, today's computer security efforts are inherently unfocused -- all the more so due to our inability to evaluate improvements to security on any quantitative basis. In this talk, Dr. Savage will survey this landscape and what is known about the criminal ecosystem underlying it, describe the fundamental asymmetries that have emerged between attacker and defender, and suggest a way forward for the security community.

Who Should Attend

Scientists, engineers, physicians, healthcare leaders, venture capitalists, technology and life sciences professionals, services providers, and business leaders.


About the presenter

Stefan Savage is an associate professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, San Diego. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Washington and a B.S. in Applied History from Carnegie-Mellon University. Savage's research interests lie at the intersection of operating systems, networking and computer security and he currently serves as director of the Cooperative Center for Internet Epidemiology and Defenses (CCIED), a joint effort between UCSD and the International Computer Science Institute. Savage is a fairly down-to-earth guy and only writes about himself in the third person when asked.

To attend this event » Register Now!

Questions?

Please contact Bethany Kraynack at 858.964.1312 or bkraynack@connect.org

Structural Engineering Professor and von Liebig Center Featured in San Diego Business Journal

Jacobs School of Engineering structural engineering professor Yu Qiao (pictured above), his startup AgileNano and the UCSD William J. von Liebig Center are featured in a recent San Diego Business Journal story by Ned Randolph.

The subject: Agile Nano--the start-up company that crystalized around the nanotechnology based compressible energy absorbing liquid that Qiao and his team developed.

The material absorbs energy on a near molecular scale instead of relying on the mechanical properties of solid materials. One of the first applications the researchers are looking at: military helmets that better protect against brain trauma. Learn more about AgileNano's technology here.

“San Diego is a very unique community,” says Rosibel Ochoa, von Liebig Center executive director. “We all know each other, and everyone contributes. You can leverage a lot of resources for companies to get started and grow.”

Read the full story here: "Startups Connect With Investors on Their Way to Market"

Read a story in the Jacobs School alumni magazine Pulse about professor Yu Qiao's work in energy conservation and clean tech.

Create Critters. Learn Java. (Help Me Identify the Winning Student)

The UC San Diego undergraduate who created the toughest CSE8B Java critter is name-less. Do you know the winner's name? The needs-to-be-named person speaks at 1 min 40 seconds. Leave the person's name in the comments section of this post, or email me at dbkane AT ucsd DOT edu.

Check out the two minute video that tries to capture the energy and excitement exuding from CSE8B, which Beth Simon taught during the 2009 Winter Quarter. Any other comments on the class? Leave comments!

I shot video on the final lecture, when the students held a tournament in which their "critters" battled each other. To create critters, the students had to understand "inheritance" in the computer science/Java sense of the word. Each student extend the critter class in a unique way, and then the various critters battled.

Materials Science Professor Wins International Award

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) professor Marc A. Meyers won the 2009 Rinehart Award, given at the 9th Congress of the DYMAT Association on the Dynamic Mechanical and Physical Behavior of Materials Subjected to Dynamic Loading, held in Brussels, Belgium, from September 7 to 11.

The 2009 award was given to professor Meyers (UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering Materials Science and Engineering) and to Prof. Field (U. Cambridge, UK). Meyers is affiliated with UC San Diego's Materials Science and Engineering program, which is concerned with the structure, properties and applications of materials. This university-wide program aims to provide fundamental knowledge for understanding of materials with the objective of predicting, modifying, and tailoring the properties of materials to yield enhanced material performance.

Meyers was one of the Jacobs School professors recently profiled in an NSF video. Watch the video here. Read the transcript and learn more here.

Three hundred researchers from 29 countries attended the DYMAT congress, which was held at the Royal Military Academy. DYMAT is a European based global association coordinating activities in the domain of dynamic behavior of materials.

The citation in the plaque received by Prof. Meyers reads: For outstanding achievements to the understanding and modeling of the structure/ property and damage behavior of materials subjected to high-strain-rate and shock-wave loading. The award was given at the inaugural session of the meeting, after keynote lectures by Profs. Field and Meyers , by General Major Harry Vindervogel, commander of the Royal Military Academy, and by Dr. Richard Dormeval (CEA-France), president of DYMAT. The DYMAT award, established in 1990, is a global recognition, and past recipients are from the USA (4), Russia (1), Japan (1), Germany (1), and China (1).

Undergrad Research Portal Launched

UC San Diego just launched an undergraduate research portal which will serve as the entry point for all students in all disciplines who wish to explore the rewards and challenges of participating in undergraduate research. Check out the quick reference guide below, and get started!

From Concrete Canoe to Capitol Intern: Mark Galvan Makes Waves

Mark Galvan (center) stands with Congresswoman Susan Davis
(CA-53) and the Capitol’s chief administrative officer, Dan Beard

Jacobs School undergraduate Mark Galvan builds concrete canoes, instals solar panels, ensures LEED certification for UCSD campus buildings...and now he is the first "green intern" at the United States Capitol in Washington D.C.

UC San Diego senior Mark Galvan recently began working three days a week in the Office of the Architect of the Capitol and “Green the Capitol” offices, and two days a week in the office of Congresswoman Susan Davis (CA-53).

Read the full story here, at the UC San Diego news site.