Fall2 0 0 3 Alumni News

We’re moving in!Siebel Center dedication slated for springWe have been watching the Thomas M. Siebel Center forComputer Science take shape with much anticipation. Itis now nearing completion. Schedules for the move havebeen finalized and nonessential materials will move inNovember and December and staff and students willmove just after January 1.

The dedication ceremonies for Siebel Center has beenset for April 30 at 2:00 pm. Other associated events willcontinue on May 1. This promises to be a big weekend foralumni, students, staff, and friends of the CS department.

“We expect everyone to be delighted when they visitSiebel Center. It is spectacular,” said M. Dennis Mickunas,associate head and dedication chair. “We are also veryexcited to be able to showcase our talented students and

faculty during this time. Labs, such as the Active Spaces,will be open for visitors to tour as well asdemonstrations of senior design and EOH projects. Wewill also have a panel discussion and our arTechnologyexhibit which will show art meeting technology at itsfinest. The event is also a celebration to recognize all thehard work by many dedicated people.”

We invite alums and friends to be interviewed for ourcollection of oral histories. Tell us about your experiencesand stories. Many of our archived segments will beshown throughout the dedication.

The most current information is available at:www.cs.uiuc.edu/siebel.

CS celebrates three faculty investituresFamily, friends and the university community gatheredto celebrate the investiture of three of its facultymembers. Michael T. Heath was invested as the firstFulton Watson Copp Chair in Computer Science. MarcSnir was invested as the first Michael Faiman andSaburo Muroga Professor in Computer Science whichestablished by Douglas B. MacGregor, MS ‘80. KlaraNahrstedt was invested as the College of EngineeringRalph M. And Catherine V. Fisher Professor.

Fulton Watson Copp ChairFulton Watson Copp was a 1925 graduate of the collegeof Engineering with a degree in electrical engineering.During his career, he was a consultant for Trans PacificPetroleum, extracting oil from shale in Australia. WhenMr. Copp passed away in December 1990, he left agenerous gift to the college and the department. As aresult, the Copp Chair was established to recognize afaculty member who is an internationally renownedleader in computer science, has an ongoing researchprogram central to the mission of the department, and isa prominent educator with a reputation for outstanding

and innovative teaching.Prof. Michael T. Heath

received his PhD fromStanford University in1978. His main researchfocus is scientificcomputing and parallelcomputing. In additionto his full-time facultyresponsibilities in thecomputer sciencedepartment, Prof. Heathis the Director of theComputational Science

and Engineering Program and the Director of the Centerfor Simulation of Advanced Rockets. In scientificcomputing, his interests are primarily in numericallinear algebra and optimization. Prof. Heath’s honorsinclude the Everitt Award for Teaching Excellence andthe Campus Award for Excellence in Graduate andProfessional Teaching. He has also an Association forComputing Machinery (ACM) Fellow.

Fulton Copp’s family, Sandy andWendell Snyder, Elizabeth Copp,

celebrated the investiture withProfessor Michael Heath

continued on p. 2

2 ALUMNI NEWS

Alumni News is published twice ayear. All ideas expressed in theAlumni News are those of theauthors or editors and do notnecessarily reflect the officialposition of the alumni or theDepartment of ComputerScience.

Editor: Kathleen Zanotti

Send address changes orsubmissions to:Editor, Alumni NewsDept. of Computer Science1304 West Springfield AvenueUrbana, IL 61801

Email: alumni@cs.uiuc.eduFax: (217) 333-3501www.cs.uiuc.edu

In this IssueAlumni News

Printed on recycled paper with soyink.

The University of Illinois is an equalopportunity and affirmative actioninstitution.

Investitures continued from p. 1

Douglas B. MacGregor earned his MSin computer science in 1980. He laterearned his PhD in informationscience from Kyoto University in1990, where he was one of the firstAmericans to obtain a doctorate in atechnical discipline from a majorJapanese university, with both hisoral exams and doctoral defenseconducted in Japanese.

Doug MacGregor’s professionalbackground includes being anexecutive with Data GeneralCorporation and Dell, forming amultimillion dollar joint venturewith Matsushita, and serving on thefaculty of the Harvard BusinessSchool. He has said that he lovesbuilding organizations andbusinesses. He has often beenassigned the job of “turning around”a group essential to a business thatwas not operating in a way thatoffers a competitive advantage.MacGregor founded thisprofessorship to honor MichaelFaiman and Saburo Muroga inrecognition of their service anddedication to students as exemplifiedby their teaching and guidance aswell as for their contributions to thefield of computer science.

Prof. Emeritus Michael Faimanreceived his PhD in physics from theUniversity of Illinois in 1966 after asix-year career with the DigitalComputer Laboratory, whichincluded work on the design andconstruction of ILLIAC II which

spearheaded a newgeneration of computers.His research includedgraphical processing,device theory, circuitdesign, logic design, andnetworks, and he was co-author of PertinentConcepts in ComputerGraphics. He wasparticularly noted for histeaching of computerarchitecture in CS 231. In

the 1970s, he instituted the firstinstructional hardware labs in thedepartment. In the last 14 years of hiscareer, Prof. Faiman was director ofgraduate programs.

Prof. Emeritus Saburo Murogareceived his PhD in electricalengineering from the University ofTokyo in 1958. Subsequently, heworked at the Nippon Telephone andTelegram Corporation (NTT), theuniversity’s Digital ComputerLaboratory, and the IBM ResearchCenter. He returned to Illinois in 1964to teach in the newly established CSdepartment and conducted researchin threshold logic, design automation,and computer-aided design of VLSIchips. His logic design automationmethods have been used extensivelyin industry, and he is the author ofseveral landmark books.

Prof. Marc Snir earned his PhD in1979 from the Hebrew University ofJerusalem. He worked for IBM beforecoming to the department in 2002 ashead. His research includes work onparallel interconnection networksand mechanisms for efficient, large-scale shared memory support, andperformance visualization tools. AtIBM Research, he contributed to thedesign of the IBM SP2 supercomputersystem and several large-scale sharedmemory systems. He received theIBM Outstanding Innovation Award(both in 1989 and 1994), the IBMCorporate Award, and the IBMServer Teamwork Award. He is anIEEE and ACM Fellow.

Faiman Muroga Professorship

Doug MacGregor, wife?, Marc Snir, Saburo Muroga,Yoko Muroga, Mike Faiman, and Lia Faiman

AlumniNews 7Executive Advisory Council 4

DepartmentAwards 10Cluster open house 15From data to information 14Faculty news, new faculty 8From the corner office 3IBM partners with CS 9Investitures 1Recent gifts 6Revised undergraduate curriculum 11Senior projects 13Siebel technology 12Student news 11

Fall 2003 3

— Marc Snir

From the corner office . . .

I shall use this column to brieflyupdate you on the current stateof the department.

The work on the Siebel Centercontinues at full steam. Thewebcam on our web site doesnot show you much progressanymore, since the exterior isnearly complete. Work focusesnow on internal wiring andplumbing. We do not have

cameras installed inside the building, but you areinvited to take a virtual tour of the building from ourweb site, courtesy of Prof. John Hart, and his studentsBrent Yarger and Tony Kaap, who have developed a 3Dvirtual reality model of the center. We expect to moveinto the new building before the end of this year, andplan for a grand opening on April 23rd. Stay tuned formore information on this event.

Newspapers have been full in the last few monthswith news of the bad financial situation of stateuniversities, and of large tuition increases in some states.Illinois has not been spared: our university has seen an18% cut in state support in the last two years. Theoverall tuition increase this year has been modest (5%),but a tuition surcharge of $1000 was approved for theCollege of Engineering.

The budget cuts have led to a reduction in manyservices (library, maintenance, etc.) and a deferral ofmany investments. Luckily, the department has beenspared most of the cuts, and has seen only a modestdecrease in its direct budget. However, it is hard to haveaggressive expansion plans in the current budgetarysituation.

The large tuition increases at many universities haveled to proposals for caps in tuition increases; House

Representative Howard McKeon, made a proposal topenalize campuses that increase tuition much faster thanthe rate of inflation. IMHO, such a proposal is misguided,for several reasons: It is an unfunded federal mandate forthe states that are required to fund the increase in thecost of higher education or else loose federal money. It isa double whammy for state universities: universitiesthat see their state budgets cut will be further penalizedby federal government. More fundamentally, there aregood economic reasons why the cost of higher educationincreases faster than the rate of inflation.

While technology has decreased the number of hoursof labor needed to produce a car, it has not reduced thenumber of hours of labor needed to “produce” a degree.Indeed, as long as we measure the quality of highereducation by the ratio of students to faculty, then weacknowledge that such a reduction cannot occur. Salariesare by far the main expense for higher education. Thus,the cost of higher education is bound to increase at leastas fast as salaries for highly qualified personnel increase;most of us expect our salaries to increase faster thaninflation.

I do not believe that the cost of higher education canbe significantly reduced, without reducing the quality ofthe education. The real political problem is to decide whoshould bear this cost: the parents of the students, or thecountry as a whole.

We are welcoming this year three new facultymembers: Eyal Amir, Stephen Bond and Indranil Gupta(see page 8 for their bios). They will strengthen us in keyresearch areas, and bring the number of facultymembers to 46. The number of students has not changedsignificantly. While the number of undergraduateapplicants has shrunk by 50% in the last two years, weare still selective in our admittance, and are very happywith the quality of our undergraduate students.

Cyber Security: A Dialogue on Policy and TechnologyCyber Security is a major concern to government,industry and the broad public. Neither the political northe technical realms can independently produce acomprehensive solution to this complex problem. Topromote this dialog between various consitutencies, theCollege of Engineering assembled a distinguished panelof experts from government, industry, and academia toexplore policy and technology aspects of informationassurance.

Panelists: Bob Blakley, IBM Corporation; Brad Boston,Cisco Systems, Inc.; Bill Sayles, Intel Corporation; Steve

B. Lipner, Microsoft Corporation; Shane V. Robison,Hewlett-Packard Company; and John Stammreich, TheBoeing Company.

Moderators: John Bourgoin, MIPS Technologies; Adm.Archie Clemins, U.S. Navy (Ret.); and Marc Snir,Department of Computer Science.

Keynote presentation: Richard J. Wilhelm, Booz AllenHamilton.

The video of the entire program or individual paneldiscussion questions is available at:

www.securitysummit.uiuc.edu.

Marc Snir

4 CS ALUMNI NEWS

The department hosted the secondmeeting of its new ExecutiveAdvisory Council on August 28,2003. The Council, created to informthe profound program changes thatthe department expects to undertakeover the next few years, has beenexpanded to include twelvemembers with three positions stillvacant. The two new councilmembers, appointed after theinaugural Council meeting in Aprilare: Noreen Iles, VP Retail Systemsfor Sears Roebuck & Company andJohn M. Fox, President of VentureMarketing

The Council meeting centered ondeveloping plans for the GrandOpening Celebration of the ThomasM. Siebel Center for ComputerScience, scheduled to take place April30-May 1, 2003. Attendees witnessedthe culmination of months ofinternal collaboration as theydiscussed and previewed earlyprototypes of the host of interactiveand smart technologies scheduled tobe deployed at the Grand Opening.The prototypes included a collectionof e-learning technologies, a smartoperating system, examples of fineart candidates suitable for exhibitionin SC’s technology-based art gallery,and a virtually navigable 3-Drendering of the Siebel Center itself.The SC Grand Opening promises tobe an event remarkable not only forthe technical achievement itrepresents, but also for thecoordination required to enable thelabyrinth of collaboration betweenfaculty, students, and alumni that ismaking it possible.

“Many, many people have had toagree to give priority, time, andcooperation; but, in the end, ourefforts appear to be paying off — theresponse has been great,” saiddepartment head Marc Snir. “Ourplanning has been underway for thisevent since December of last year.

Over the next few months, as thelast of the bricks and mortar are putinto place at the Siebel Center, wewill move into the next phase ofbuilding this unique facility,deploying the equipment andtechnologies that will enable it togrow into the living laboratory Mr.Siebel envisioned when he made hisremarkably generous gift. If all goesaccording to plan, we will instate afacility where students work alongside with some of the world’s mostdistinguished researchers, not onlyto prototype next generationsolutions, but to deploy and testtheir solutions using the buildingand its occupants as their testbed.”

In an academic community ofcomputational researchers, enabledby a feedback loop of skilledcomputer scientists andunrestricted by the need todemonstrate a business case foradvancing technological solutions, asignificant acceleration in longerterm solutions to society’s moreintractable problems becomespossible.

EAC BiosIra Cohen graduated from UIUC

with a BS in computer science(1981). After leaving the university,he went to work for a smallconsulting company and inNovember 1982, Cohen and hispartner, Ken Kelley, foundedAdvanced Systems Concepts. Thecompany specializes in databaseand programmer productivity toolsfor the IBM iSeries of midrangecomputers. Ira’s duties involvemanaging daily operations,accounting, and some softwaredevelopment. He and his wife Debrahave endowed two scholarships.

Ron Cytron received a MS (1982)and a PhD (1984) in computer sciencefrom UIUC. Cytron was a researchstaff member at IBM’s Thomas J.Watson Research Center until 1993.He is currently a CS professor atWashington University in St. Louis.His research interests includeoptimized middleware for embeddedand real-time systems, fast searchingof magnetic media, and hardwareand runtime support for object-oriented languages.

John Fox is the president andfounder of Venture Marketing. Hebegan his career as a field salesengineer with Intel where he receivedthe Intel Distinguished EmployeeAward. He became an early hire atUS Robotics, then a start-up, wherehe directed sales and marketing. Hemoved to Productivity PointInternational. John holds a BS incomputer science (1979) from UIUCand an MBA in marketing (1984)from Keller Graduate School ofManagement.

John Entenmann of St. Croix, U.S.Virgin Islands, is the ChiefInvestment Officer and ChiefFinancial Analyst of Global CapitalAdvisors, LLC, a fund managementfirm that is the exclusive advisor to aBermuda exempt investment fundand a licensed SBIC. John graduatedfrom with a BS in computer science(1984) from UIUC. He has worked forOracle for nine years, seven as thevice president of Business IntelligenceTools.

Kumar Goswami recently joinedHP Labs where he is managingfundamental research on utilitycomputing — the top research anddevelopment initiative at HP as wellas at computer companies such asIBM and Sun. Prior to joining HP,Kumar was the President and CTO of

Executive Advisory Council: a new eraby Deborah Israel

Summer 2003 5

Kovair for 4 years which he co-founded with his wife KrishnaSubramanian. He is currently ontheir board. Before Kovair, Goswamispent time at other startups andcompanies such as TandemComputers, General Electric andRaytheon. He received his MS (1988)and PhD (1993) in computer sciencefrom UIUC.

Noreen Iles is Vice President ofMarketing, Merchandising, andSupply Chain Systems for Sears,Roebuck and Co. With 20 years ITexperience, Iles is an organizationalleader in the use of a wide variety oftechnologies. She has strong, broadtechnical background with solidbusiness consulting and teamworkskills. Noreen holds a BS in computerscience (????) from the UIUC.

Timothy Krauskopf recentlyfounded a new transportationstartup company, Round LakeFreight, which he plans toimplement new technology andservice ideas for the truckload freightindustry. He served as a VicePresident at Motorola, managingseveral core product teams of theInternet Software and ContentGroup (ISCG). Previously, Krauskopfwas head of Information Services atThe Field Museum in Chicago, andco-founder, Chief Technical Officerand Vice President of Research andDevelopment for Spyglass, Inc.Krauskopf has a MS (1987) incomputer science from the UIUC anda MM (1999) from the KelloggGraduate School of Management atNorthwestern.

Doug MacGregor, see bio on page2.

Mary McDowell was recentlynamed senior vice president andgeneral manager of enterprisesolutions for Nokia. She will head theenterprise group, which comprisesmobile devices and security issues.She had been with Compact as asenior vice president of their serverbusiness. She continued this role aspart of the new HP. McDowell wasnamed one of the Top 20 Women inTechnology in Houston in 2000. Sheserves on the Board of Visitors forthe College of Engineering at theUniversity of Illinois. She holds a BS(1983) in computer science fromUIUC.

Ed Reingold is chair of the CSdepartment at his alma materIllinois Institute of Technology wherehe received PhD (1971) in computerscience from Cornell University.Reingold was a faculty member inthe Department of Computer Scienceat UIUC from 1970 until hisretirement at the end of 2000. Hisresearch interests are in theoreticalcomputer science especially thedesign and analysis of algorithmsand data structures. A Fellow of theAssociation for ComputingMachinery (ACM) since 1995,Reingold has authored orcoauthored more than 50 researchpapers and 9 books. While at Illinois,he has won awards for hisundergraduate and graduateteaching.

Thomas M. Siebel is Chairmanand Chief Executive Officer of SiebelSystems, Inc. Previously he was CEOof Gain Technology, a multimediasoftware company, and held anumber of senior managementpositions at Oracle Corporation. Afrequent industry spokesman, hereceived the David Packard Award

from the Business Executives forNational Security in 2002 and wasnamed CEO of the Year by IndustryWeek magazine. In 2000 and 2001, hewas recognized by Business Week asone of the top 25 managers in theworld. He is the author of threebooks-Virtual Selling, Cyber Rules,and Taking Care of eBusiness. Heserves on the board of advisors of theCollege of Engineering (UIUC), theStanford University Graduate Schoolof Business, and the StanfordUniversity Law School. Mr. Siebelattended UIUC, where he received aBA (1975) in history, MBA (1983),and MS (1985) in computer science.

Richard Schell, is currentlyExecutive Vice President Products atNetIQ. A 20-year veteran in thehigh-tech industry, Schell has heldexecutive positions at NetscapeCommunications, Central PointSoftware, Borland and iSharp. AtNetscape, Schell was the first to holdthe position of Senior Vice President,Product Development, where hebuilt a world-class engineering teamstarting from a team of 20 to over600. He also held the position ofGeneral Manager for the company’sClient Product Division, where hewas responsible for a product linethat contributed more than half thecompany’s revenue. Schell is on theboard of directors for McAfee.comand holds both a MS (1977) and aPhD (1979) in computer science fromUIUC.

6 CS ALUMNI NEWS

Thank You!The following alums and friends ofthe department have made generousgifts and donations during theperiod July 14, 2002 and November12, 2003.

Dean’s Club ($500 or more)

Channing B. Brown IIIThomas P. BurkeIra R. and Debra Jo CohenRonald L. and Elena S. DanielsonJohn K. and In-Yung Kim EntenmannMichael FaimanScott H. FisherMarc A. GalloC. William GearDennis G. GrzesiakJohn L. LarsonDouglas B. MacGregorMarc S. and Susan A. Price MartinezWilliam E. MiskovetzRavi NairKeith D. NaterDaniel A. Reed and Andrea L. KrupaR. Douglas and Sharon RohnCraig W. RoweThomas M. and Stacey SiebelCynthia M. Tao and Paolo AloeMichael J. Wolfe

Sponsors ($100 to 499)

Kiran M. Puri and Duane S. AndresDavid B. BabiczRichard J. BarreraMark H. and Susan C. BergrenTodd F. BrandtRobert M. BryantRobert L. BudzinskiRobert J. BuryGordon M. CollonsJames M. Conrad

Steven James CoteRobert D. CullumLeslie N. DaleyBrian E. and Laura M. DawsonJoy L. DorethyRoss M. ErlebacherDaniel L. FriendDonald K. FriesenScott D. GaussRaymond R. and Barbara P. GerdesBradley A. GoodmanEdward H. GornishMark A. GreinerJohn D. HalburEdward W. Hennessy IIJeffrey R. and Eileen M. JasicaChristopher J. JennerDaniel J. KopetzkyBlake S. and Shelly KrassWilliam J. and Carol A. KubitzJohn H. LampkinSteven T. LauterburgSteven D. Lawrenz and JeniferPertusetDavid E. Le MarDavid R. LeisterDaniel R. LestourgeonLawrence T. LevyAnthony V. MaKiyoshi MaruyamaWilliam F. MitchellKeith MorganAaron C. OgrenSue A. OlsonSusan Q. and Gary J. PaceKaren K. PalagiMichael P. PeercyDaniel A. PittLiesel PoppelbaumMalcom R. and Cheryl C. RaileySteven M. SalatoAlfred J. SeitaJohn J. ShillingJoan K. Slotnick

Kevin J. SmithMarc and Avigail SnirJames M. and Sara M. SpencerCharles E. and Sandra M. ThompsonSteven K. TurnerBenjamin S. H. WangNicole Allegre WellsWilliam E. WitnikKevin J. and Tammy T. Wooley

Contributors (up to $99)

Martin S. AcksMichael BerryLinda C. Y. ChockDouglas D. Dankel IIJudith A. DeckerColleen T. EnghauserGordon L. FellowsLorinda M. FranklinRobert K. Gjertsen, Jr.John G. HolmMuhammad Zia HydariRussell C. and Marlo D. JonesMark P. KimballDenise M. KurowskiJeremy S. LaBoySharad and Rachna MehrotraWayde E. MilasJ. Robert NeelyGary P. OswaltMichael A. PadgettSnehal C. PatelLeon PresserDaniel S. RothschildAndrea M. ScheirerMichael D. and Suzette D. SchneiderMichael S. SchultzKent D. SiefkesDonald and Gail SmithJames M. and Barbara E. SternJohn R. and Martha N. ThompsonWilliam F. Walker and Mary M.

Wisnewski

Summer 2003 7

2000s

1990sRyan Shoff, BS 99 in computerscience and finance, and MarciPetersen, JD 00, were married in lateAugust 2002 in Morton, Ill. Ryan isemployed by McBride and Schoff.

James W. Oberweis, BS 96, presidentof Asset Management, runs the firm’ssecurities division, OberweisSecurities Inc., acquired rivalsGeneva Securities in ArlingtonHeights and Madison Securities Inc.in Chicago. In June he entered into ajoint venture with Rosenthal CollinsGroup L.P., a commodities tradingspecialist, to handle their stocktrades.

1980sJames Conrad, BS 84, is an associateprofessor at the University of NorthCarolina at Charlotte. He is author ofseveral books used to teach science ingrade and high schools usingStiquito, a small, simple, andinexpensive six-legged robot that hasbeen used as a research platform tostudy computational sensors,subsumption architectures, neuralgait controllers, emergent behavior,cooperative behavior, and machinevision.

1970sJackson Hu, MS 76 and PhD 78, wasnamed CEO of United Microelec-tronics Corporation (UMC) in July.He joined the company at thebeginning of 2003 as head of UMC’sDesign Support Division andpresident of the New BusinessDevelopment Group that will focuson assessing the foundryrequirements of emerging IC designcompanies. He was president andCEO of SiRF Technology.

Ian Chai, PhD ??, was married lastJune to Juliane Chew in Malaysia. He

Alumni News

In Memoriam

is an assistant professor atMultimedia University in Cyberjaya.Six from UIUC attended to thewedding including best man GlennChappell, and groomsmen MaddoxBeckman, PhD 03, and LaurenceThong.

Linnea Herbst, BS ??, and MichaelZimmerman were married in fall2002 in Morton, Ill. The couple isemployed by Accenture in Chicago.

Thomas “Ted” Radel, BS ??, and JulieRay were married last November inQuincy, Ill. He is a seniorprogrammer/analyst for QuincyCompressor.

Andrew R. Olson, BS ?? and MS ?? incs & math??, and Susan A. Haywardwere married in January 2003 inNormal, Ill. He is employed as avideo game programmer byTreyarch of Los Angeles, Calif.

Larry Vail, MS 78, is chairman of theOlivet Nazarene University’s CSdepartment. He received the 2003Richard M. Jones Faculty Award forExcellence.

Pankaj Jalote, PhD ??, has beennamed to eForce Executive AdvisoryBoard. He is currently on the facultyof IIT in Kanpur, India. He was on thefaculty at the University ofMaryland and was head of the CSEdepartment from 1998-2000.

Other news

Alex Zoghlin, cofounder of onlinetravel company Orbitz Inc. steppeddown as chief technology officer. Hehelped create their powerful searchengine. After leaving Illinois heformed Neoglyphics Media Corp., aWeb site developer which he soldRenaissance Worldwide in 1998.

Thomas Slivinski, PhD 67, died inMarch in Washington DC. AfterUIUC he served in the Army andconceptualizing the it’s firstcomputer system. In 1971 hejoined the Environmental Protec-tion Agency and worked on there-election campaign for Presid-ent Nixon developing the firstautomated direct mail campaign.In 1974, he began ManagementResponse, Inc. providing techn-ical consultation to stategovernment welfare organiza-tions and law firms. He later wasthe Chief Operating office forMandex Corporation in the 1980s.He was a consultant in distancelearning and pioneered a systemfor disabled students to takeclasses from home. In 1997 he methis wife Aurelija while setting upInternet link between highschools in Pennsylvania andLithuania. In 2000 Thomasembarked on a teaching career atKogod School of Business. Hetaught classes in informationsystems and technology. He issurvived by his wife and twodaughters, Auste and Geidre.

Christ John Xydes, BS ?? and MS77, died in November 2002 inTucson while on business. He hadjust celebrated 25 years with IBMwhere he was a manager. He wasknown as a builder starting earlyon with an erector set and latermoving to playground equipmentfor his two sons Alexander andNicholas. His wife, Ronda Hruby,noted that he was also excellentat building bridges between histeam split between San Jose andTucson

8 ALUMNI NEWS

The CS department has three newassistant professors this coming yearbringing the total to 46; 16professors, 9 associates and 21assistants.Eyal Amir received his PhD fromStanford University in 2001. He did

postdoctoral researchat the University ofCalifornia at Berkeley.His research combinestheoretical and appliedartificial intelligence;agent control

architecture, reasoning algorithmsfor large knowledge bases, andplanning algorithms. He begins inspring 2004.

Stephen Bond received his PhD inmathematics from the University of

Kansas in 2000. Hecompleted postdoctoralwork at the Universityof California at SanDiego. His researchareas are numericalanalysis and scientific

computing, with an emphasis onbiomolecular modeling.

Indranil Gupta received his PhDfrom Cornell University in 2003. His

primary research areasare large-scaledistributed systems,fault-tolerantcomputing, peer-to-peercomputing, real-timesystems and ad-hoc

networks. His research focuses ongroup communication problemsarising in large-scale peer-to-peersystems.

Sarita Adve recently became amember of the NSF CISE AdvisoryCommittee.

Gul Agha was selected as the 2003Arthur Schoffstall Lecturer byRensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Hegave a series of two lectures: TheWeb of All Things: EmbeddedComputing, Software Agents and theExpanding Cyberspace and TheChallenge of Networked EmbeddedSystems.

Marco Caccamoreceived a NSF CAREERgrant for $400,000 forhis research intoadaptive resourcemanagement in highlydynamic real-time

systems with physical constraints.Kevin Chang was named a NCSA

Fellow. He received a $25,000 grantfor his project, “Exploring andIntegrating the Deep Web: Building aDatabase of Databases”.

Eric de Sturler was nameddirector for the SIAM Activity Groupon Supercomputing (SIAG/SC).

David Padua and Josep Torrellasreceived a grant from the UIUC-CNRS Collaboration Program tostudy A New Framework forProgram Optimization, incollaboration with a French teamlead by Paul Feautrier of Universitede Lyon.

Daniel Reed wasappointed to thePresident’s InformationTechnology AdvisoryCommittee (PITAC) Itwill help guide theadministration’s efforts

to accelerate the development andadoption of information for the 21stcentury. The members, who areleading IT experts from industry andacademia, will provide the Presidentwith expert, independent advice onmaintaining America’s preeminencein advanced informationtechnologies.

Jean Ponce and three colleagues,were awarded a patent for apachinko-like machine thatmanipulates polygonal parts withan array of pins. Potentialapplications include automatedparts feeding and product assembly.

Grigore Rosu and Jose Meseguerreceived a grant of $639,545 fromNSF for research on scalable formalmethods for multidimensionalcomponents. The research will leadto important advances in softwaretechnology such as: higher softwaredependability by enforcing multipleassurance criteria and newmathematical models and metricsfor multi-dimensional component-based software.

Dan Roth was the program chairfor the Association for Computa-tional Linguistics conference held inSapporo, Japan in 2003.

Marc Snir and Josep Torrellasreceived a NSA grant for $266,600 forresearch on teraflop architecturebased on superconducting switch orcrossbar.

Marc Snir, was elected to theBoard of Directors of the ComputingResearch Association (CRA). Theassociation is comprised of morethan 200 North American academicCS departments in addition tolaboratories and research centersand affiliated professional societies.

Josep Torrellas became a Memberof the Editorial Board of the IEEEComputer Architecture Letters(CAL), and an Associate Editor of theACM Transactions on Architectureand Code Optimization (TACO).

Yuanyuan Zhoureceived a NSF grant$350,000 for researchon collaborative andautonomic buffer cachemanagement library.

Craig Zilles, receiveda NSF grant for $240,000 to researcha hardware/software framework formanaging on-chip communication

New facultyFaculty News

M. Caccamo

Y. Zhou

D. Reed

E.Amir

S. Bond

I. Gupta

latency. This new application willfurther the development of criticalpath techniques and offer novelapproaches to dynamicoptimization.

Fall 2003 9

Ralph M. and Catherine V.Fisher ProfessorKlara Nahrstedt was invested as theRalph M. and Catherine V. FisherProfessor. This newly createdprofessorship honors outstandingyoung faculty members in the earlystages of their careers. Her researchinterests include advancedmultimedia distributed computingservices, multimedia middlewaresystems, and quality of service. Sheis coauthor of the widely usedmultimedia book Multimedia:Computing, Communications, andApplications. She has receivednumerous honors including a NSFCAREER Award in 1996; XeroxAward for Faculty Research in 1998;and the Campus Award forInnovation in UndergraduateInstruction Using EducationalTechnologies in 2000.

Prof. Nahrstedt received her BAdegree in mathematics (1984) andMSc Degree in numerical analysis(1985) from Humboldt University inBerlin. After receiving her PhD incomputer science from theUniversity of Pennsylvania (1995),she joined the CS department.

George and Ann Fisher haveactively supported the university formany years including a pledge of $2million to the College of Engineeringto fund several professorshipsincluding this one which honors hisparents. He earned a BS in civilengineering in 1962. He began atAT&T Bell Laboratories, moved toMotorola, Inc. eventually becomingthe chairman and CEO and laterassumed leadership of EastmanKodak Company until 1999.

IBM was awarded $53.3 million byDARPA for the second phase of theHigh Productivity ComputerSystems program and will partnerwith a consortium of 12 leadinguniversities and Los AlamosNational Laboratory. The Universityof Illinois is represented byDepartment of Computer Scienceresearchers Josep Torrellas, RalphJohnson, David Padua, and MarcSnir.

The IBM proposal, PERCS(Productive, Easy-to-use, ReliableComputing Systems), follows avision of a highly-adaptable systemthat configures hardware andsoftware components to matchapplication demands. A majoremphasis of the machine proposal isease of use, as supported by itsarchitecture, compiler, operatingsystem, and language support.

“The UIUC team was involved inthe year-long phase one when theyhelped conceive the architecture andsoftware systems of the machine. Inthe three-year phase two, the UIUCteam has a major role in thearchitecture definition, compilationsupport, innovative middleware,programming environments, and thedefinition of a productivityevaluation framework and metrics,”said Josep Torrellas, the principalinvestigator of the team.

IBM aims at producing a systemthat automatically analyzes theworkload and dynamically respondsto the changes in applicationdemands by configuring itscomponents to match applicationneeds.

At the end of phase two, a newcompetition will open the path to a48-month, full-scale engineeringdevelopment effort. By 2010, a newlevel of high performance computingtechnology will be attained with thenext level of performance developingin the research labs.

IBM and CS partnerin research

Investitures continued from p. 2

Klara Nahrstedt and graduate students

ACM and IEEEFellows namedThe Association for ComputingMachinery (ACM) has namedProfessors Daniel Reed and JiaweiHan as Fellows for 2003. Membersare recognized for theircontributions to the field ofcomputer science and informationtechnology.

Prof. Reed's ongoing researchinterests include tools andtechniques for capturing andanalyzing the performance ofparallel systems via instrumentationand presentation techniques, andcollaborative virtual environmentsfor real-time performance analysis.

Prof. Han's research interestsinclude database systems; datamining; data warehousing; streamdata mining; Web mining;spatiotemporal data mining; andbio-data mining.

Josep Torrellas has been namedan Institute of Electrical andElectronics Engineers (IEEE) Fellow,for his contributions and leadershipin the area of shared-memorymultiprocessors.

Prof. Torrellas’ research interestsare in parallel and sequentialcomputer architecture, processor-memory integration, thread-levelspeculation, low power design, andreliability.

The Committee of National SecuritySystems and the National SecurityAgency (NSA) announced that theuniversity’s security courses havemet the National Training Standardsfor Information Systems SecurityProfessionals, NSTISSI No. 4011.Illinois is part of a small group ofuniversities that have received thiscertification. The university was alsodesignated a Center of AcademicExcellence in Information Assuranceby NSA.

Security coursescertified

10 ALUMNI NEWS

Department AwardsStudentsAwards4.0 Senior Geoffrey C. LevineBronze Tablet Michael W. Collins, Michael A.

Gorczowski, Joseph M. Kelley, Geoffrey C. Levine,Joseph L. Orndorff, Kyle R. Treadway, John L.Wright

CS Outstanding Teaching Assistant Nazim ElmaziC. W. Gear Hari Govind V. Ramasamy, Geoffrey C.

Levine, Matthew M. MarquisseeMichael J. Hughes Rajat Banerjee, Jeffrey C. Carlyle,

Nathaniel M. Furrer, Quincey A. Koziol,James M. Laird, Shawn T. Lindberg, Chad W. Lowe,Daniel L. Peterson

David J. Kuck Svetlana Lazebnik, Alper UngorDuncan H. Lawrie Leadership Vilas DharC. L. and Jane W-S. Liu Shivani AgarwalOutstanding Math/CS Matthew M. MarquisseeJohn R. Pasta Joshua S. Paul, Rachel E. KaiW. J. Poppelbaum Jose RenauBen Jay Rosenthal Jayant DeSouzaJames N. Snyder Stephen A. Saville, Bo Cui

ScholarshipsAFCEA Shrader Chad M. CumbyAltera Eric J. ZimmermanCaterpiller Frederick Anguiano, Alan Perez-RathkeSara and Louis Cohen Thomas BartaCrowe Chizek James F. BreslerDunn Systems Mary E. Pacold, Mani PartheeshFranz Hohn and J. P. Nash Daniel C. PozdolDaniel L. Slotnick Kelly W. YehSpyglass Jean Q. He, Haley M. Miller, Jessica L. SchoenGeneral John A. Wickham Joseph M. KelleyWilliam and Ruth Witt Qihua (Lily) YangWarren Young Shawn T. Lindberg

FellowshipsRichard T. Cheng Ahmed A. SobeihIBM Jose RenauILLIAC Dong XinIllinois Distinguished Xiaoming LiIntel Christopher J. Hughes Milos PrvulovicAndrew and Shana Laursen Daniel W. Cranston,

Shen DongMotorola Naomi H. Caldwell, Tanya L.A. Crenshaw,

Elizabeth A. PartridgeSaburo Muroga Xiaohui Gu, Joseph M. Kelley,

Patrick W. Lacz, Xue LiuNASA Daniel W. Bullok, Bradley JonesGK-12 NSF Teaching Wendy A. Edwards, Smitha SriramNVidia Nathan CarrRay Ozzie Johnathon R. FischerSiebel Scholar Sindhura Bandhakavi, Srikanth Kandula,

Vivek Sadanand, Joel R. Stanley, Jed L. TaylorSURGE Afsaneh H. Shriazi, Erin M. WolfVerizon Jacob T. Biehl

Faculty and StaffChancellor’s Distinguished Staff Award Barbara CiconeCS Staff Awards Patrick M. Patterson, Anda L. OhlssonC. W. Gear Junior Faculty Award Steven M. LaValleDad’s Association Certificate of Merit Barbara E. Cicone

Hughes awrd winners:Quincey Koziol (from left),

Daniel Peterson, Chad Lowe,Shawn Lindberg,

Nathaniel Furrer andJames Laird

Debra Jo Cohen,Lily Yang (Witt Scholarship)and Ira Cohen (BS ‘81)

Steven LaValleGear Award

Barbara CiconeChancellor’s &

Dad’s Association

Johnathon FishcherOzzie Fellowship

Vilas DharLawrie Award

Joseph KelleyBronze Tablet and

Muroga Fellowship

Mary PacoldDunn Scholarship

Jose RenauPoppelbaum Award

Bo CuiSnyder Award

Fall 2003 11

This past March students andfamilies from all over the stateconverged at the university for theannual Engineering Open House. Atmany times in the day they allseemed to be in DCL; it was packed.Projects challenged kids of all ages totest their skills while building avirtual university or playing a game.CS students explained conceptsbehind their projects and answeredquestions based on the level of theireager listeners.

  Two CS projects won EOHawards for their hard work.SIGGraph’s Magrathea: ComputerGenerated Natural Phenomenareceived 3rd place in the originalundergraduate research. SIGArchalso received a third place for theirAutoMiller in the real worldcategory. EOH 2004 will be heldMarch 12-13.

Senior Shawn Davis, NCSAemployee, was chosen as campusstudent employee of the year.

Zack Rosen creates web tool forcampaign network of presidentialcandidate Howard Dean.

Kunal Bagga received the IntelStudent Research Contest forundergraduates for his proposal“Real-Time Pre-Processing of OpenDomain Question Answering.”

Campus was abuzz withgraduating students and their familyand friends attending the 132ndcommencement ceremony held May17 at the Assembly Hall. Altogetherthere were 245 CS graduates: 189bachelor’s degrees, 31 MS and 18MCS (including 8 from the Internetprogram), and 7 PhDs.

Student News

Create,innovate,fasinatewith CS

EOH2003

Nicole Pakiz, whoreceived her BS inMay, was thechief honcho forEOH 2003.

“The purposeof the two-dayevent is to raisethe public’sawareness in

science and engineering and to catcha glimpse of future technology,” saidPakiz. “Engineering Open House is agreat forum for teaching othersabout how engineering affects theirlives. Students from all engineeringdisciplines will showcase their talentthrough innovative projects, designcompetitions and demonstrations.”

Pakiz EOH Director

Graduate student Tony Chang, andundergraduates Jeff Tamer andSteve Downing, won the regionalcompetition for the 28th AnnualACM International CollegiateProgramming Contest. They will bespending their spring break inPrague competing against 71 otherteams from around the globe.

At last year’schampionships, Tony Changand under-graduates SeanMonahan and Neil Drummreceived an honorable mention.

Revised undergrad curriculumComments on the proposed newundergraduate curriculum forengineering students are beingrequested. The revision will notaffect Math/CS or Stats/CS majors.

The first CS curriculum wasintroduced in 1972 and the lastrevision was in 1986 with onlyminor modifications taking placesince then. The field has changeddramatically in the meantime and sohave the interests of the students.

According to the new proposal,the goals are:

- To ensure that all CS studentshave a working knowledge of howmodern computer systems work.This should include anunderstanding of the principles ofnetworking and, specifically,Internet protocols (topics that arenot currently covered in requiredcourses).

- To ensure that all CS studentshave good skills in the design andimplementation of software systems,and have experience working inteams.

- At the same time, to enhance ourstudents’ abilities to thinkabstractly.

- To permit a high degree offlexibility at upper levels of thecurriculum. At first, we areproposing specialization only withinCS, but we are designing for possiblemultidisciplinary programs in thefuture. Some candidates for futuretracks include managementinformation systems, graphic design,and bio-informatics.

The current requirement of 14 CScourses and four applicationsequence course will be replaced by

continued p. 15

A fast game of FoozBot

Nicole Pakiz

CS head Marc Snirwith with new alums

Team members: Tony Chang (left),Jeff Tamer and Steve Downing

12 ALUMNI NEWS

continued on p. 14

What’s under the hood?Chuck Thompson, BS 91 andMCS 01, is a hard man tocatch in the departmentthese days. Not only is he the

manager of the department’s Technology Services Group(TSG), but he is also the chief architect for Siebel Centertechnology. A few months ago many of the finaldecisions on Siebel Center technology were still beingmade, but one thing was certain: everyone wanted onlythe best and the latest of what current technology has tooffer. Now that those decisions have been made and themove into the building draws closer, Chuck was able togive us a preview of what to expect in the new home ofthe computer science department.

What does networking look like in SC?The Siebel Center network is a major upgrade in bothperformance and reliability from that installed at DCL.This upgrade is necessary to accommodate the bigincreases in distributed multimedia, SAN usage andother advanced research that will be happening in SiebelCenter.

We chose Foundry Networks as the vendor. There arenine networking closets, two on each floor except for thelower level, with almost 5000 copper and fiber jacksdistributed among them. Each closet will be served by aFoundry FastIron 1500 Ethernet switch. These accesslayer switches are connected via 4Mb/s links to two coreswitches. The core switches are also Foundry FastIron1500’s and will be connected to each other at 8Mb/s. Themain data center will be served by two FoundryServerIron 800 switches connected to the core at 8Mb/s.All of the networking equipment will be on UPS.

There is a lot of wire in the building. What are we doingwith wireless?The department’s wireless networking has always beenahead of the campus curve and we expect to stay there.We’ll be using wireless base stations that have theability to support multiple wireless networks. This willallow us to use one set of base stations to support thecampus wireless network (which uses a VPN client foraccess), provide a network that uses WPA for security (anewer standard that campus doesn’t support yet) andalso handle research wireless networks that may nothave any security on them. Siebel Center was designedwith wireless in mind. There are 25-30 ceiling locationson every floor that have power and data jacks availableto accommodate the installation of a wireless node.While this is far more locations than any wirelessinstallation is likely to use, it will help ensure that wecan put base stations wherever necessary to provide the

best possible coverage for the entire building.

With so much computing planned, how will theinfrastructure change?With the move to Siebel Center, we will fundamentallychange our underlying IT infrastructure. Currently wehave two Sun Microsystems E450 machines whichprovide most of the department IT services includingbackups, email, web sites, mailing lists, softwaredistribution, file sharing, and more. If either one of theseservers goes down, everyone in the department knows it.System upgrades and maintenance are impossible toperform without impacting all department users.

Our new philosophy is to scale out, not up, byreplacing the two large servers with many smallermachines, each dedicated to a single service. When onesystem goes down under this new architecture, only oneservice is affected instead of the many that would betoday. Actually, even one system going down won’t benoticeable most of the time. Most services will beprovided by multiple machines. If one becomesunavailable, the architecture will make sure that usersare simply redirected to a system that is still functional.While this new architecture will provide the departmentwith a more robust and better performing ITinfrastructure, it is its flexibility that will allow researchto be integrated as safely as possible into a productionenvironment.

HP has generously donated 36 Xeon-based serversthat will be the foundation of this new infrastructure.Most will run Red Hat Linux with a few runningWindows Server 2003. The Foundry ServerIron 800switches mentioned earlier will provide networkconnectivity. Storage will be provided by an HPEnterprise Virtual Array (EVA) 5000 utilizing the first-ever Storage Area Network (SAN) installed within thedepartment.

What is some of the other technology going into SiebelCenter?Siebel Center has an extensive electronic lock andbuilding automation system. The only physical keys area handful of masters. The only “key” most people willhave will be their campus ID. The lights and HVACsystem are both computer-controlled. Once fullyactivated, users will be able to adjust the lights andtemperature of their offices from their desktop computer.Or their latest research application.

The average Siebel Center classroom will have moretechnology in it than most technology-equippedclassrooms on campus. This technology will be used bothwithin the classroom and to enhance and expand our

Fall 2003 13

Tony Kaap and his advisor, Prof. John Hart, have beenbusy creating a 3D VRML walk through of Siebel Center.The structure is up, the furniture is moving in, and thetextures are filling the walls and floors. The walkthrough will also be graphical department directory.Click on a door and enter the room. If it is a faculty office,the finalversion willhave icons tobring upinformationsuch as theirweb pageand researcharea.

The department is in the process of revising itsundergraduate curriculum. At the heart of the changesis a set of educational outcomes that students areexpected to obtain by graduation. One course thatclearly integrates many of these outcomes is ourcapstone senior projects course.

Teams of students are challenged to analyze, proposesolutions to real-life problems, and work directly withclients. Specifically they need to think clearly andprecisely about computational problems, apply theirknowledge, work productively in a team environment,and possess excellent written and oral communicationskills.

Ralph Johnson, coordinator of senior projects, invitesarea companies and organizations to submit projects.He works with clients to find the right depth for theproject so that is neither too easy nor difficult. Many ofclients find this to be a very positive experience andparticipate annually. This year the projects ranged fromhelping to build the Champaign-Urbana communitywireless system to developing an on-screen keyboardfor Linux.

Dr. Johnson has a hands-off approach to the class. “Atthe beginning of the fall semester I talk about problemsolving and project management, and I give thempresentation pointers. I use their interests to matchthem to projects. Their number one goal is to make theirclients happy. They are on their own after that but I willhelp them when they get stuck,” he said.

The students are required to keep a log of theiractivities through the year. This not only keeps Johnson

informed of their progress but helps keep them stay ontask. A progress report is given at the end of the fallsemester. A final presentation is made at the end of theyear; their deliveries are assured and sprinkled withstories of their successes and failures. They also drawtechnical questions from the audience, and solutions toproblems are offered by their classmates.

Motorola, which has been involved with the projectssince its inception, is an enthusiastic partner. Their firstproject was a visualization tool for a simulator that theywere building for a new RISC processor.

“We have been involved every year since then, with asmany as three projects in one year,” said Scott Preece,software architect. “We have used the projects to test outnew ideas and to build tools to support developmentteams. They have built software tools that would nothave been funded by normal development budgets. Forinstance one team worked on a tool for managing paperssubmitted to our annual software symposium, anotherbuilt a tool to analyze event logs from hardwaredebugging tools. Some of the tools have gone into regularuse; others have been experiments that we learned from.We think it’s important to give students an opportunityto learn the demands of industrial development. We havealso been able to hire a number of these students aftergraduation.”

This year several of the groups worked on Siebel-related projects. One group completed exploratory workon the firewalls that will be implemented. Since a vendorwas not been chosen until the end of the course, theyhelped develop policies and configuration tools. Theyprovided a solid base to build on and made an impact onthe final selection decision.

Another group worked on creating touch screenpanels and information system that will be used outsideof classrooms, conference rooms, instructional labs, RAoffices, and administrative offices. The panels willinclude information on the scheduled events, notices,advertisements for lectures, a staff directory, etc. Theywere to design the hardware and software for thedisplay, using off the shelf components; functionality andease of maintenance were key features.

“There is a direct correlation between the amount oftime the client spends with the group and the success ofthe project. Regular feedback is necessary to help keepthem on track,” said Chuck Thompson, client andmanager of systems services for CS.

The senior projects course has been in existence since1995 and has been an elective for students. When the newcurriculum is instituted, all students will be required tocomplete either the senior project or a thesis course.

For more information on the course and projects, seehttp://slappy.cs.uiuc.edu/cs292/.

Senior projects: real-life experience

3D Siebel walkthrough

Take the tour at: graphics.cs.uiuc.edu/sc/

14 ALUMNI NEWS

From data to information: a long way to go!After twenty years of working withdatabases and data mining, Prof.Jiawei Han still becomes excitedwhen speaking about his research.“We are drowning in data butstarving for knowledge. I like to putintelligence into data andinformation systems,” said Prof.Han. “You can induce so muchinformation or knowledge from veryscattered data using data miningand it can be applied to so manydifferent fields.”

Prof. Han received his PhD fromUniversity of Wisconsin in 1985 andwas on the faculty of Simon FrasierUniversity for 14 years. He came tothe department in 2001 and is amember of the Database andInformation Systems (DAIS) researchgroup.

“One area of research thatpromises great potential is streamdata mining; mining huge amountsof data that stream or pass through asystem. For instance NASA and theNational Weather Service collectterabytes of data that are impossiblefor a person to grasp and theybecome expensive to store, said Prof.Han. “Organizations such as theseneed an automated system thatwould process the information as itcomes in like a watchdog looking forpatterns. For example in the area ofsecurity; discovering patternsquickly is essential because fastresponse rates are critical.”

He is also collaborating withNCSA on a project, Mining AlarmingIncidents in Data Streams (MAIDS),that investigates algorithms andscalable mining methods to turnvolumes of data into usefulinformation. The system could beused in data-rich areas such asnetwork intrusion detection,telecommunication data flow andfinancial data trend predictions.

Another area of his researchfocuses on mining sequentialpatterns and structured patterns.“With support from NSF we are

deepening our understanding ofthese patterns and are developing aset of efficient, highly scalable,application-oriented sequential/structured pattern mining methods.Both methods have broadapplications, including analysis ofcustomer purchase sequences,analysis of Web page structures,understanding disease treatments,and the discovery of DNA sequencesand molecule structures,” said Prof.Han.

His work has led to writing thebook on algorithms, Data Mining:Concepts and Techniques, whichwas an outgrowth of a data miningtutorial he gave at ACM SIGMODconference in 1996. Unlike other datamining textbooks, his bookconcentrates on concrete algorithmicmethods that systematically teachand train students. He is at work onthe second edition.

He was given the IBM FacultyAward for the past two years thatincludes funding to support hisresearch on cross-relational mining.In this case data are mined acrossmany databases that might bedeveloped by different companiesand government agencies. Againalgorithms are used to find patternsfrom the data sources. There arebenefits for both sides with thispartnership; he has teamed with IBMresearchers to co-author papers andhis students were chosen forsummer internships.

“I work with a very talented teamof graduate students and visitingscholars. We have manypublications on data mining. Thisyear at ACM SIGKDD conference wegot in four out of 34 accepted fullresearch papers. We are a veryactive group,” said Prof. Han.

In 2002 he received theOutstanding Contribution Award atthe IEEE International Conference onData Mining. He also serves as one ofthe Directors on the ExecutiveCommittee for ACM SIGKDD and is

the ACM SIGKDD CurriculumCommittee chair. The committee isdeveloping a curriculum on datamining or undergraduate andgraduate courses at institutionsworldwide.

Within CS, he is guiding thedevelopment of its new curriculumin this area. The current offering ofbackbone courses in databasesystems will be increased to includetwo additional lines, data mining andtext information systems, at both theundergraduate and graduate levels.These new courses will start theiroffering in this coming academicyear. Students will be able tospecialize in one of these three lines.Future lines might includebioinformatics.

He has been teaming with othermembers of the CS faculty. He andProf. Yuanyuan Zhou are jointlyteaching a seminar course thatcombines their expertise of datamining and networking and focuseson data mining for security,performance, and softwarerobustness.

The DAIS group is constructing aweb-based Integrated DynamicInformation Service (IDIS) systemfor the department. It willperform web crawling within theCS domain and the research areasthat are not covered under thecurrent search function. It willrank the importance andfreshness of the pages, performautomated classification andclustering and build a multi-dimensional database that willhelp users in hierarchical andkeyword-based searches.Students will also help developIDIS as part of project in theirdatabase and informationsystems courses.

Inside Siebel

Fall 2003 15

Prof. Han is also working withProf. David Padua, and David Kuck,who is a Professor Emeritus and IntelFellow. They are researchingmethods to make data mining morescalable by using parallel processors.He along with professors JosepTorrellas and Yuanyuan Zhou and aprofessor at Purdue University arelooking at architecture-side datastorage systems, how to use datamining to find software bugs andbuild robust software systems. Thisproject will be funded as one of newmedium-size NSF ITR projects.

Other members of the Databaseand Information Systems (DAIS)group include:

Kevin Chang, who is interested indata management issues whichinclude Internet information accessand query processing, digitallibraries and Web databases;

AnHai Doan whose researchfocuses on databases, artificialintelligence, and data integrationobject identification and sharing;

Marianne Winslett whoseresearch interests are in databasesand related areas, especially securityand parallel I/O for high-performance scientific computation.

ChengXiang Zhai whose interestscenter on information retrieval,processing and management of largeamounts of text, algorithms thatexploit language technologies anduse of language models, and how toorganize, search the vast amounts oftext information.

Siebel tech continued from p. 12

18 CS courses. Dropping some of thenon-CS courses will allow studentsnine hours of electives.

Some of the proposed changes are:- ECE 205 and 206, Math 285, and

the application sequence be dropped.- CS 173 be increased to 3 hours- new courses in systems

programming and programmingstudio

- senior project, senior thesis orsoftware engineering sequence berequired

- CS track will includeconcentrations in areas such as:systems, graphics, and databases.

The proposed curriculum may befound on the CS web site.

Comments may be directed to:Sam Kamin, Director of Undergrad-uate Programs, kamin@cs.uiuc.edu.

Curriculum ontinued from p. 11distance learning program.

As people walk into Siebel Centerfrom the west entrance one of thefirst things they’ll see is the largevideo wall that will be located on theeast end of the atrium. Students havealready asked about being able tohook the latest game consoles up toit.

What excites you about moving intoSiebel?TSG is a service organizationdedicated to providing the highestlevel of computing resources to ourfaculty, staff and students. I believethe new infrastructure we’reinstalling at Siebel Center will helpto create an environment in whichresearch and academics can thrive.To paraphrase a slogan of BASF’s,“We don’t do the research, teaching,or learning. We allow faculty, staffand students to research better,teach better and learn better.”Without all of the technology goinginto it, Siebel Center would be justanother (very nice) new building.What excites me is the opportunityto be part of making Siebel Center aliving lab instead of just a building.

Did you know?Next fall most university courseswill be renumbered. Most of thechanges will be at the 300 and400 levels. Undergraduatecourses will range from 100-400and graduate courses will befrom 400-500.

Clusters of single processor or small-scale shared memory nodes are fastreplacing traditional supercompu-ters for many applications. Theyprovide a cost-effective platform toperform computations that formerlycould only be run on a supercompu-ter. Research groups now can havethe power of a supercomputer at afraction of its cost.

Much of the research in areas suchas architecture, compilers, andparallel computing requires largeclusters to provide enough band-width to run the programs. Fourteenfaculty members and their graduatestudents from the CS and theCoordinated Science Laboratory(CSL) joined together to develop sucha cluster and to celebrate the openingof their new lab.

The cluster consists of 75computers with two processorseach. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD)generously donated the 150 AthlonMP 2000+ processors that power thiscluster. NSF awarded a $120,000grant.

Cluster Open House

“These research projects addresscritical problems spanning a largenumber of areas in computer scienceand engineering. The cluster will notonly allow us to achieve the fullpotential of our current researchprograms, but will enable newresearch that would not be possiblewithout such a shared facility,” saidProf. Sarita Adve the proposal’sprincipal investigator.

Graduate students Ruchira Sasanka,Christopher Hughes, and Milos

Prvulovic with new cluster.

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CHAMPAIGN, IL 61820

Live Web cam and timelapse construction video at: www.cs.uiuc.edu

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