School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering ANNUAL REPORT 2009 - 2010 Faculty of Computer Science & Engineering Faculty of Industrial Engineering1 Contents 3 Director’s Welcome 4 A New School 6 Research 28 Faculty Excellence 32 Community Outreach 30 Student Excellence 36 Academic Programs 40 Directory GLOBAL IMPACT THROUGH 52 Publications COMPUTING AND ENGINEERING Michael Deirdre Paul Johnson Crow Meldrum Executive Dean President Dean Ira A. Fulton Arizona State Ira A. Fulton Schools of University Schools of Engineering Engineering Gerald John Yann-Hang Farin Fowler Lee Graduate Program Chair Program Chair Programs Industrial Computer Chair Engineering Science and SCIDSE Engineering Director’s Welcome Director’s Dear Friends and Colleagues, You’ll see numerous faculty and student awards and achievements throughout this report. One student group won the Microsoft Imagine Cup earlier this year, our Hello from Tempe and welcome to our 2009 – 2010 Annual Report. This has been junior faculty are winning CAREER Awards, our senior faculty are being noted as an exciting year as we kicked off the new School of Computing, Informatics, and most highly-cited authors, and our people are being honored with best paper awards Decision Systems Engineering. By combining our existing healthy programs in at all levels. For the purposes of the report we have tried to classify activities into Computer Science, Computer Systems Engineering, and Industrial Engineering, four central themes: Computational Intelligence and Algorithms, Data Management we have constructed a school that spans the spectrum from data to decisions. and Information Assurance, Network Science and Systems, and Software and Systems Engineering. However, many of the activities transcend multiple areas We begin with a goal of envisioning, creating, and implementing transformational and frequently involve faculty from other Schools as well. This is by intent. We technologies for improving our everyday life through secure, timely, assured and pride ourselves in being the home for computing and decision technologies, but ubiquitous access to reliable and relevant information. For the business analyst, our mission is to reach out and employ these technologies for advancing the social that may mean understanding the current state of one’s competitors and supply condition. Seeing these opportunities also helps keep us focused on meaningful chain. For the blind individual, that means artificial sensory perception to enable avenues for our theoretical research. self-reliance. Our faculties of Computer Science and Engineering and Industrial Engineering are coalescing into an integrated academic unit that is reshaping the Please enjoy the remainder of the report, and let me hear your thoughts. We are information driven society through internal cooperation and transdisciplinary always looking to expand our partnerships, so if you see a project of interest, or the external collaborations. ideas herein suggest a new possibility to you, please contact us to discuss ways to collaborate. And, as always, we welcome you to visit us in the Valley of the Sun. The school is making significant strides – growing in breadth while simultaneously For more details, you can also check out our web site at http://engineering.asu.edu/cidse strengthening our core disciplines and individual program size. We now have over 1,500 on-campus students and many more participating in our on-line programs. Particularly gratifying is the continued advancement in the quality and quantity of our research. Our funded research and number of graduate research assistants Director, School of Computing, Informatics, continues to grow. and Decision Systems Engineering Professor of Industrial Engineering 3 A NEW SCHOOL... Our Mission The School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering (SCIDSE) at ASU is a community of faculty, staff, and students encompassing the disciplines of computer science, computer systems engineering, industrial engineering, informatics and systems engineering. Our mission is to pursue academic excellence and societal impact through outstanding teaching, use- inspired, cutting edge research, and leadership in service to the profession and community. We seek to provide a flexible and proactive environment that promotes innovative thinking, diversity, transdisciplinary teaming, scholarship, and ethical behavior in order to advance and realize the potential of computing and information technology to enhance society. 4 Our Vision We envision a society where secure, accurate, and current information is ubiquitously available and data is seamlessly collected, managed, and converted into information that entertains individuals, empowers businesses and guides the decisions of both in their daily affairs. Our vision includes helping the blind to see and companies to plan. We envision the ASU School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering as a community recognized by its colleagues internationally as a leader in enabling this society and by students as a preferred location for acquiring the knowledge and skills necessary to contribute to this vision. We envision a community of scholars cooperatively engaged in transdisciplinary research addressing the grand challenges of modern society and supporting the intellectual growth of students and colleagues. 5 COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND ALGORITHMS COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND ALGORITHMS DATA MANAGEMENT AND INFORMATION ASSURANCE NETWORK SCIENCE AND SYSTEMS SOFTWARE AND SYSTEMS ENGINEERING RESEARCH 6 COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND ALGORITHMS Computational intelligence encompasses a collection of fundamental research Data Mining and Machine Learning. As scientific and enterprise data sets areas dealing with the creation of knowledge from data, the development of grow with respect to data characteristics (scale, accuracy, timeliness, media), algorithms for controlling computing decisions, and the effective approaches dimensions, and instances it becomes imperative to develop new approaches for interfacing computers and humans. The area focuses on enhancing to extract spatial and temporal relationships, correlation patterns and human decision making and learning and the automation of computing knowledge. The faculty are actively engaged in developing new methods for processes. identifying patterns and extracting information. (Huan Liu, George Runger, Teresa Wu, Jieping Ye, Nong Ye) Specialty Areas and Faculty Contacts: Imaging, Graphics and Visualization. Rendering clearer images of urban Artificial Intelligence. SCIDSE researchers are addressing problems in scenes for games and homeland security, geometric modeling of images for automated planning and scheduling, constraint satisfaction, knowledge new approaches to detect biosignature disease indicators using volumetric representation and reasoning, natural language processing, multi agent systems, and other measures, recovery and digitization of information content in and the semantic web. (Chitta Baral, Pat Langley, Joohyung Lee, Subbarao physical media and dynamic movements are all being addressed by SCIDE Kambhampati, Kurt VanLehn, Jieping Ye) researchers. (Gerald Farin, Baoxin Li, Gregory Nielson, Peter Wonka, Yalin Wang) Theory and Algorithms. Understanding complexity and the theory of computation are critical for developing efficient algorithms. Research in this Statistical Modeling. From universe to earth to nano scale, random group focuses on both fundamental theory for analyzing algorithms and on phenomena influence behavior. Models and methods are being developed developing specific deterministic and randomized algorithms for solving to better understand and predict random behavior to allow for more efficient classic problem formulations relevant to the emerging problems in society and acquisition of knowledge (Design of Experiments), improved estimation of technology. (Rida Bazzi, Charles Colbourn, Goran Konjevod, Andrea Richa, system reliability, better characterization of system capability and making Muhong Zhang) more accurate and meaningful inferences from data. (Jing Li, Doug Montgomery, Rong Pan, George Runger) 7 Research Brief - COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND ALGORITHMS "Finding Allies for the War of Words," which is funded through 2013, is part of the Minerva Initiative, a social science research program funded by the U.S. Department of Defense. Woodward, whose expertise is in Islam in Southeast Asia, leads a multi-disciplinary, multi-university team that includes, from ASU, Hasan Davulcu and Arun Sen (School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering), Steven Corman (Hugh Downs School of Human Communication), and Thomas Taylor (School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences); David Jacobson of the University of South Florida; Riva Kastoryano, Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales, Sciences Po (France); and Muhammad Sani Umar, Northwestern University. “Despite the enormous literature concerning extremist Muslim movements,” stated Linell Cady, Director of CSRC, “there has been little discussion of the role of religious and cultural practices in countering them. This project aims to address that gap by examining the ways in which Muslim communities themselves fight back against extremist groups, at local, regional and global levels.” At a colloquium on this topic sponsored by the Center, Muhammad Sani Umar, who heads the West Africa team, detailed the difficulties of such a project. “Radical and non-radical