Speaker; Prof. A. Boukerche, Canada Research Chair, PARADISE Research Laboratory, University of Ottawa, Canada

An Emergency Preparedness and Response Based Wireless Ad hoc and Sensor System: A Necessary Public Security and Safety Testbed.

Abstract
This talk will consist in an overview about the major research projects related to wireless multimedia, context aware computing and wireless ad hoc and sensor networks, distributed and collaborative virtual environment, which we are currently investigating at PARADISE Research Laboratory, uOttawa. Next, we shall focus upon the design of large-scale distributed system for critical conditions monitoring class of applications using both location/context aware computing and wireless multimedia sensor and actor technologies. Then, we shall focus upon the node congestion problem in mobile and wireless ad hoc and sensor networks.

Frequent topology changes caused by node mobility in mobile and wireless ad hoc networks make routing in ad hoc wireless networks a challenging problem. Message routing requires mobile hosts to act as routers, by means of store and forward mechanisms. However, limitations on capabilities of mobiles require a control on node congestion due to message forwarding. We shall discuss the message traffic and congestion control mechanisms and show how they can improve and reduce the overhead of both proactive and reactive ad hoc routing protocols.

Finally, if time permits, we will talk about LIVE testbed, a convergence of Wireless sensors, wireless multimedia and virtual environment technologies we are developing at PARADISE Research Laboratory for an emergency preparedness and response class of applications as well as SWiMNet, a high performance testbed we have developed which allows very detailed and realistic model specifications. It will facilitate and enable us to evaluate and design new protocols and applications for future generations of mobile ad hoc and sensor network technologies.

Dr. A. Boukerche, is a Full Professor of Computer Science and held a Canada Research Chair Position at the University of Ottawa. Prior to this, he was Faculty Member at the Dept. of Computer Sciences and Engineering, University of North Texas. He also worked as a Senior Research Scientist at Metron Corp. located in San Diego, California, where he was leading several DoD projects on data distribution management for large-scale distributed and interactive systems. He also worked as a visiting scientist at Caltech/JPL-NASA, where he contributed to a project centered on the specification and verification of the software used to control interplanetary spacecraft operated by JPL/NASA Laboratory. He is the Founding Director of PARADISE Research Lab at uOttawa. His current research interests include Wireless Networks and Mobile Computing, Wireless Ad hoc and Sensor Networks, Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks, Distributed management and security system for wireless and mobile networks, and large-scale distributed interactive simulations and collaborative virtual environment.

He serves as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, IEEE Wireless Communication Magazine, ACM/Springer Wireless Networks, Elsevier Ad Hoc Networks, Elsevier Int'l Journal on Pervasive and Mobile Computing, Wiley's Wireless Communication and Mobile Computing Journal, the Int'l Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing (JPDC), Wiley's Security and Communication Networks Journal and SCS Transactions on Simulation. He serves as a Program Co-Chair for Globecom 2008- and 2009 Ad Hoc, Sensor and Mesh Networking Symposium, ICPP 2008, and the Steering Committee Chair for ACM/IEEE MSWiM and IEEE/ACM DS-RT Conferences.

He was the recipient of several awards, including ICC 2008 and ICC 2009, IWCMC 2009, and IEEE/ACM PADS Best Paper Awards, The Ontario Distinguished Researcher Award, the prestigious Premier's Ontario Research Excellence Award, and the George S. Glinski Award for Excellence in Research


Prof. Alok N. Choudhary, G. Searle Professor, McCormick School of Engineering and Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University

High-End Analytics and Data Mining for Sustainable Competitive Advantage

In the rapidly changing business environment, with global competition and maturing markets, competitive advantage is extremely important. Furthermore, in most industries product differentiation is no longer a decisive edge over competition. Thus, there is fierce competition to find, grow and keep loyal and profitable customers, optimize processes, adapt quickly to rapidly changing environments, and discover actionable knowledge quickly as those are the only way to grow business and profitability. Transforming a product-centric organization into a customer-centric one to achieve the above objectives is another critical step. This talk will present vision, strategy, emerging technologies and analytics using which businesses can hope to obtain sustainable competitive advantage. The talk will also provide a synergistic perspective on strategy, organizational transformation, and technology enabled relationship management. Steps and strategies involved in a successful deployment of operational and analytical infrastructure along with a landscape of key business intelligence technologies will be presented. The talk will present many examples from targeted marketing, modern marketing and briefly discuss the future of marketing.

Biography:
Alok Choudhary is a John G. Searle Professor and chair of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a Professor of Marketing and Technology Industry Management at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He is the founding director of the Center for Ultra-scale Computing and Information Security (CUCIS). Prof. Choudhary was a co-founder and VP of Technology of Accelchip Inc., in 2000, which was eventually acquired by Xilinx. He received the National Science Foundation's Young Investigator Award in 1993. He has also received an IEEE Engineering Foundation award, an IBM Faculty Development award, an Intel Research Council award, and in 2004. In 2006 he received the first award for "Excellence in Research, Teaching and Service" from the McCormick School of Engineering. He is a Fellow of the IEEE. His research interests are in high-performance computing, data intensive computing, scalable data mining, computer architecture, high-performance I/O systems and software and their applications in many domains including information processing (e.g., data mining, CRM, BI) and scientific computing (e.g., scientific discoveries). Alok Choudhary has published more than 300 papers in various journals and conferences. Alok received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 1989.


Resource Allocation for Energy Efficient Large-Scale Distributed Systems

Global warming and climate change trends call for urgent action to manage information and communication technologies in a sustainable manner by minimizing energy consumption and utilizing resources more efficiently. Distributed computing environments have become the de facto platforms for many applications. These systems bring a range of heterogeneous resources that should be able to function continuously and autonomously. However, distributed systems expend a lot of energy which raises a range of important research issues related to the use and virtualisation of ICT resources in a way offers significant potential to contribute to the goal of what has been described as ‘green computing’. This talk will review some of the important questions related to the development of new algorithms and tools for energy–aware resource management allocation for large–scale distributed systems enabling these systems to become environmentally friendly.

Albert Y. Zomaya is currently the Chair Professor of High Performance Computing and Networking in the School of Information Technologies, The University of Sydney. Prior to joining Sydney University he was a Full Professor in the Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department at the University of Western Australia, where he also led the Parallel Computing Research Laboratory during the period 1990–2002. He is the author/co-author of seven books, more than 350 publications in technical journals and conferences, and the editor of eight books and eight conference volumes. He is currently an associate editor for 16 journals, the Founding Editor of the Wiley Book Series on Parallel and Distributed Computing and a Founding Co-Editor of the Wiley Book Series on Bioinformatics. Professor Zomaya was the Chair the IEEE Technical Committee on Parallel Processing (1999–2003) and currently serves on its executive committee. He also serves on the Advisory Board of the IEEE Technical Committee on Scalable Computing and IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society Technical Committee on Self-Organization and Cybernetics for Informatics and is a Scientific Council Member of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social–Informatics, and Telecommunications Engineering (in Brussels). Professor Zomaya is also the recipient of the Meritorious Service Award (in 2000) and the Golden Core Recognition (in 2006), both from the IEEE Computer Society. He is a Chartered Engineer (CEng), a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the IEEE, the Institution of Electrical Engineers (U.K.), and a Distinguished Engineer of the ACM. His research interests are in the areas of high performance computing, parallel algorithms, mobile computing, and bioinformatics.