Department of Computer Science Content Research Overview of the Computer Science Department This brochure gives an overview of the ongoing research activities at the Department of Computer Science of ETH Zurich. It is a collection of the two-page research summaries given by every professor of the Department. The following pages are in alphabetical order of the names of the professors. Gustavo Alonso Information and Communication Systems Research Group Armin Biere Formal Methods for Solving Complexity and Quality Problems Walter Gander From Numerical Analysis to Scientific Computing Gaston Gonnet Computational Biochemistry and Computer Algebra Markus Gross Computer Graphics Laboratory Thomas Gross Laboratory for Software Technology Jürg Gutknecht Program Languages and Runtime Systems Petros Koumoutsakos Computational Sciences Friedemann Mattern Ubiquitous Computing Infrastructures Ueli Maurer Information Security and Cryptography Bertrand Meyer Chair of Software Engineering Kai Nagel Modeling and Simulation Jürg Nievergelt Algorithms, Data Structures, and Applications Moira Norrie Constructing Global Information Spaces Hans-Jörg Schek Realizing the Hyperdatabase Vision Bernt Schiele Perceptual Computing and Computer Vision Robert Stärk Computational Logic Thomas Stricker Parallel- and Distributed Systems Group Roger Wattenhofer Distributed Computing Group Emo Welzl Theory of Combinatorial Algorithms Peter Widmayer Algorithms, Data Structures, and Applications Carl August Zehnder Development and Application Group The most up-to-date research summaries can be found under Û research in the Web presentation of the Department. This version is as of June 12, 2002. Information and Communication Systems Research Group Information Systems Prof. Gustavo Alonso http://www.inf.ethz.ch/department/IS/iks/ [email protected] Figure 1 to 4 BiOpera, a develop- ment and run time environment for cluster and grid computing The motivation behind our research uted at a large scale and heterogeneous. Thus, much of our Computers and networks are pervasive. In the new millennium, research goes into building the core middleware infrastructure both will play an ever increasing and decisive role in all human needed to cope with the new communication environments: endeavors. By exploring and striving to understand the oppor- wireless, nomadic, ubiquitous, multi-hop, ad-hoc, etc. We also tunities offered by the synergy between information and com- use these core middleware systems to develop real applica- munication technology, our research is contributing to turn tions, thereby making useful contributions while obtaining such technologies into the very fabric of society. Progressing important feedback for our long term research goals. towards a true information and communication society, how- ever, involves more than producing faster, more efficient, or Large scale distributed computing new technologies. The real breakthrough will be when we One of our main research projects is a development and run- finally learn to build software systems that are less intrusive, time environment for the specification, execution, and moni- less prone to failures, and better tailored to the user’s needs. toring of complex sequences of application invocations in dis- Our work aims at overcoming the many obstacles we face in tributed environments. Such systems are likely to become a key building such systems. First, in our research, by solving a wide building block of corporate IT infrastructures, software devel- variety of scientific and engineering problems. Second, in terms opment environments, and scientific computing since they pro- of education, by motivating and teaching students to explore vide the services necessary to integrate distributed, heteroge- new approaches to software development, systems architec- neous applications into a coherent whole. The system currently ture and systems integration. available, OPERA, is a generic kernel that combines research interest with practical constraints in terms of efficiency, scala- Our research bility, easy-of-use, and fault tolerance. We have already used In our search for the recipe for better software systems, we are OPERA to implement several real applications. One of them is a exploring a wide range of application scenarios. We work at all platform for electronic commerce (WISE) that has been adopt- levels of the software hierarchy: from programming languages ed by several companies. Our most recent effort is to create a to user interfaces, including communication protocols, data computing grid with OPERA as the basic middleware. storage, and system properties like scalability, performance, or persistence. We also believe that future systems will be distrib- Information and Communication Systems Research Group Prof. Gustavo Alonso Gustavo Alonso was born Research Center before in Madrid, Spain in 1965. joining ETH in 1995. In 1998 He holds a degree in he became an Assistant Telecommunication Professor for Computer engineering from the Science and since then Universidad Politecnica de leads the Information and Madrid (1989), and a M.S. Communication Systems (1992) and a Ph.D. (1994) in Research Group. Computer Science from the University of California at Santa Barbara. He worked at the IBM Almaden Figure 6 to 7 Full resolution image of a solar flare (above) and its low resolution counterpart (below). The low resolution image is very similar to the original and yet much more efficient to store and compute Applications in ad-hoc environments Browsing terabytes of scientific data Novel computing environments like mobile ad-hoc networks Most scientific applications reflect the still widespread percep- (MAHNs) are challenging our understanding of software design. tion that software development can be effectively done in an To support these new computing environments, we need to ad-hoc manner and without proper training. This perception is abandon the traditional paradigm whereby software capabili- the more surprising given that such applications are today ties are determined at build time. Indeed, when the ability to among the most complex challenges faced by information and react to changes or new environments is encoded in an appli- communication technology. We are committed to change this cation before it is deployed, the flexibility of that application is perception through education. We are also participating in a quite limited. Worse still, the mere fact that the application number of projects where we are developing scientific tools carries its own code for adaptation makes it more complex using modern software techniques. Our goal is to come up and, therefore, more difficult to maintain and evolve. The self- with generic solutions that can be applied to a wide range of organizing nature of the communication environment sug- problems and are not just a one-time programming effort. gests a possible solution to this problem. What is needed is to As an example of these efforts, we are building a data center treat functionality as a dynamic property so that applications for a NASA satellite. The center provides tools for browsing can be adapted at run-time. Following this idea, we are build- approximated data, performing low-resolution analysis, and ing the infrastructure necessary to allow software applications synchronization of client caches with the server and among capable of self-organization. Instead of establishing before- peers. It also offers several innovative interfaces to allow users hand what an application can and cannot do, we propose to to efficiently peruse large amounts of data. let applications that meet in an ad-hoc fashion to exchange The most interesting aspect of these tools is that, although and adapt their functionality in order to pursue their common quite innovative in themselves, they can be used with many goal. We have a first prototype, PROSE, that enables self-orga- other types of scientific data, thereby providing scientist the nization. It is based on a run-time aspect oriented tool for Java type of reuse and standard development platforms common to virtual machines. We are also working on a number of applica- the IT world. tion scenarios including ad-hoc containers and Jini based robots capable of self-organization. Formal Methods for Solving Complexity and Quality Problems Computer Systems Group Formal Methods Prof. Armin Biere http://www.inf.ethz.ch/~biere/ [email protected] Motivation Computer systems developed today are becoming increasingly complex, and can no longer be reasonably mastered by conventional methods. Despite consistent use of classical testing and validation technologies, the quality of new systems is often insufficient. In order to keep quality on a tolerable level, projects may have to deal with missed deadlines. In some case even the entire project has to be canceled due to quality problems. On the other hand, computer systems are becoming ubiquitous in our daily lives. This increases everyone’s dependency on computer sys- tems. Even our life itself depends on the correct functioning of such systems (e.g., steer-by-wire). In this context, quality problems are unac- ceptable. Under this premise, only those who understand quality assurance as an integral part of systems engineering will survive international com- petition. This applies to companies as well as educational institutions! As a first step, reflection and professionalization of the development process as such, is gaining importance in the software industry. Quality measurement and repeatability are