Write or Radiate

Professor Christopher Rose
Rutgers University

1:00pm Friday December 9, 2011, ITE 227

Communication theory researchers do the relatively routine but deeply important work that maintains and expands our increasingly connected society. It is therefore easy to forget that communications research, by its very nature, is more than about telephones and the Internet, but is about interactions of any and every kind. That is, communication theory is an inherently profound subject and as communications researchers, we should be sensitive to the deeper questions our discipline often raises. In illustration, we describe how some routine wireless research had something surprising to say about how we might efficiently communicate across a wide range of distances and in so doing knocked on the door of one of the "big questions" — are we alone in the universe?

Christopher Rose was a semi-lifer at MIT from 1975 to 1985. He was paroled by his new wife and new baby in 1985 when he graduated with a Ph.D. in EECS. Almost immediately afterward he began what is now a 26-year-and-counting postdoc in communication theory starting at Bell Laboratories Research where he rubbed shoulders with a wide range of uniformly delightful technical angels and curmudgeons. He's currently an ECE professor at Rutgers, WINLAB and an IEEE Fellow cited for "contributions to wireless systems theory."

Chris has always been confused about his technical identity and has thus roamed over research terrain that has included introducing surprisingly good random switch architectures as an antidote to the "topology of the week" rage back in the late '80s, better-than-fiber superconducting coax with levitated center conductors during the heady days of High-Tc superconductors, and a variety of wireless problems, culminating in his proudest moment — an interview on NPR where a caller asked him about crop circles and ET communication. That interview (and the Nature paper which spawned it) has done wonders for his reputation as an expert witness.

He is currently thinking hard about (but not making loads of progress on) fundamental problems in bio-molecular communication. He is also thinking about communications as a lens on everything — with some already surprising initial results.

• Leaders of Tomorrow Youth Center -- Arts Instructors -- ID# 9245504
• Howard County Arts Council -- Community & Web Relations -- ID# 9248288
• Maine Conservation Corps -- Field Team Leader -- ID# 9248230
• Maine Conservation Corps -- Field Team Member -- ID# 9248231
• Maine Conservation Corps -- Trail Training -- ID# 9248229
• Bright Spot, Inc -- High School Mathematics Tutoring -- ID# 9245891
• SECU Credit Union -- Teller -- ID# 9248279

• UMBC Office of Residential Life -- Desk Manager - Residential Life -- ID# 9248235
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Environmental Health Research Experience Program (EH REP) at the University of Washington Seattle

The Environmental Health Research Experience Program (EHREP) is a funded nine week, summer experience for undergraduates with interest in an interdisciplinary field that uses the tools of science to solve human health problems related to the environment. EHREP provides students with hands on experience in laboratories of leading researchers, introduces them to key environmental and occupational health issues while offering research exposure that will help them become competitive for graduate school.  Students will work full-time under the supervision of a faculty mentor and will receive a stipend of $5,200. 

 The program is meant for students underrepresented in the sciences.  The deadline for student applications is February 15, 2012. 

MS Thesis Defense

Analyzing the Growth of Hoeffding Trees

Mayank Sawhney
12:00-1:30pm Thursday 1 December 2011, ITE 346

Mining high speed data streams has become a necessity because of the enormous growth in the volume of electronic data. In the past decade, researchers have suggested various models for learning in both stationary and concept drifting data streams. Hoeffding Trees (Domingos & Hulten 2000) are one such model for mining stationary data streams. Several modifications of the nave Hoeffding Tree algorithm have been proposed to study data streams.

Our work analyzes the behavior of Hoeffding Trees when they are trained on infinite and experiments, we show that the Hoeffding bound suffers from an inherent shortcoming. Even after reaching a stage where accuracy asymptotes, Hoeffding Trees continue to grow. We examine this behavior in data streams with both nominal and numeric attributes. We also study enhancements made to the naive Hoeffding Tree algorithm and also evaluate different discretization methods.

In our work, we analyze how the Hoeffding bound relates to the information gain when splits are made and also when we send a random distribution as a data stream. We conclude that this behavior is a result of decisions made for the early growth of Hoeffding Trees and the induced randomness in an online setting. We also argue that the presence of this behavior will impact the use of Hoeffding algorithms in real world online applications.

Committee Members

• Dr. Tim Oates (Chair)
• Dr. Tim Finin
• Dr. Kostas Kalpakis

Maryland State Delegate Kirill Reznik (District 39 in Montgomery County) is seeking interns to work in his Annapolis office during the Maryland General Assembly's 2012 Legislative Session. Delegate Reznik serves on the Health and Government Operations Committee. While his committee primarily focuses on health care related topics, his office will focus on passing legislation on a variety of issues. This is an excellent opportunity to learn how the Maryland government operates and gain valuable experience working in a legislative body. Along with administrative work, interns will gain hands-on experience while researching legislation that will come before the Health and Government Operations Committee, working on constituent issues, and helping staff to pass legislation sponsored by the Delegate. Interns will also be encouraged to follow legislation of their personal interest as those bills work through the legislative process. Interns should be college students willing to commit at least two full days a week from the middle of January to the middle of April. All applicants are welcome, regardless of Maryland residency.