Entering the Labyrinth of (Inexact) Computer Science: A Cyber-Physical Approach

Radu Marculescu
Carnegie Mellon University

During high school, I was fascinated by science. I used to read stories about Nobel Prize laureates and dream about their discoveries. Despite this, I became an engineer and, over the years, got to appreciate the power and transformative nature of computing in all human endeavors.

In recent years, due to the cyber-physical systems (CPS) advent, I have found renewed interest and (somehow unexpected) opportunities to revisit some long forgotten topics in math and physics realizing that they can actually offer a much deeper understanding of CPS modeling and optimization. Truth being told, designing cyber-physical systems still feels more like an art rather than science but, in order to harness their huge potential, we need to reach beyond the established confines of computer systems design and (re)define a new science of CPS design.

Starting from these overarching ideas, I discuss the theoretical foundations and practical implications of using a network approach to developing new mathematical models and tools needed to guide the CPS optimization ranging from hardware, all the way up to software, and (user-aware) application development. In other words, this talk is precisely about the subtle interplay between science and engineering and the joy of seeing things come full circle.

Biography: Radu Marculescu is a Professor in the Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, USA. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California in 1998. He has received several best paper awards in the area of design automation and embedded systems design. He has been involved in organizing several international symposia, conferences, workshops, as well as guest editor of special issues in archival journals and magazines. His research focuses on modeling and optimization of embedded systems, cyber-physical systems, and biological systems. Radu Marculescu is a Fellow of IEEE.

Innovative Instruction in the CS Classroom - Why faculty aren't obsolete ... yet.

Kate Lockwood
California State University (Monterey Bay)

This talk will review several innovative pedagogical techniques including the inverted classroom, peer-led instruction and problem-based learning. In addition to covering the basic tenets of each approach, we will look at applications to the Computer Science classroom. Where possible, we will examine the results of these teaching techniques on student retention, interest, and success. Ample time will be left for discussion around incorporation of innovative teaching strategies and their potential for the future of computer science education.

Biography: Kate Lockwood is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Information Technology at California State University, Monterey Bay. Professor Lockwood's PhD is from Northwestern University where she worked on cognitive modeling of spatial language use and diagram understanding. Her current research interests include qualitative spatial relationships, computer science education, and increasing participation in technology related fields.

Who Needs Books Anyway? Interactive Learning Materials in the Digital Age.

Linda Mannila
Åbo Akademi University, Finland

Long gone are the days when printed textbooks were the only source of information to use in the classroom. While the first electronic books were nothing more than a scanned PDF of a printed book, students and faculty today have access to a multitude of different types of electronic and activating learning material. In this presentation we will give an overview of current trends in interactive learning materials and electronic textbooks in general, and for computer science in particular. In this context, we will demonstrate an interactive mathematics textbook for high schools, which has been developed in our research group within an EU-project and that has been piloted with 400 students in three countries, including Sweden. Finally, we will also discuss some challenges and make some predictions about what we may expect from the future.

Biography: Linda Mannila received a PhD in Computer Science in 2009 and works as a lecturer and researcher at the Department of Information Technologies at Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland. She is passionate about helping others learn the fundamentals of CS and aims at developing materials and methods that engage and activate students. Linda has been working with web-based education since 2003 and is currently involved in projects related to electronic and interactive textbooks.

What is a File?

Professor Richard Harper
Socio-Digital Systems, Microsoft Research

For over 40 years the notion of the file, as devised by pioneers in the field of computing, has been the subject of much contention. Some have wanted to abandon the term altogether on the grounds that metaphors about files can confuse users and designers alike. More recently, the emergence of the "cloud" has led some to suggest that the term is simply obsolescent. In this talk I want to suggest that, despite all these conceptual debates and changes in technology, the term file still remains central to systems architectures and to the concerns of users. Notwithstanding profound changes in what users do and technologies afford, I suggest that files continue to act as a cohering concept, something like a "boundary object" between computer engineers and users. However, the effectiveness of this boundary object is now waning. There are increasing signs of slippage and muddle. Instead of throwing away the notion altogether, I propose that the definition of and use of files as a boundary object be reconstituted. New abstractions are needed, ones which reflect what users seek to do with their digital data, and which allow engineers to solve the networking, storage and data management problems that ensue when files move from the PC on to the networked world of today.

Biography: Richard Harper is Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research in Cambridge and co-manages the Socio-Digital Systems group. Richard is a sociologist concerned with how to design for 'being human' in an age when human nature is often caricatured or rendered in stereotypical ways. Current sources of such views are computationalism and network science. Caricaturing can restrict understanding of human affairs and can inhibit imagination in the design of computer technologies. Richard has been exploring these issues in his many books and articles, as well as demonstrating the value of richer, more perspicuous views on human nature in his technology prototypes and innovations.

His 10th book, Texture: Human expression in the age of communications overload (MIT Press) was awarded the Society of Internet Researcher's 'Book of the Year (2011)'. Amongst his prior books was the IEEE award winning The Myth of the Paperless Office (MIT Press,2002), co-authored with Abi Sellen, and Inside the IMF: an ethnography of documents, technology and organisational action (Academic Press, 1997). In 2011 he published The Connected Home: the future of domestic life (Springer, Dec, 2011). His latest collection (tentatively entitled) 'Doubt: Essays on Trust, Computing and Society', will be published by CUP (New York) later this year. He is currently working on a monograph (with Dave Randall and Wes Sharrock) called Choice: The science of reason in the 21st Century.

Why Technologies for Choice Support and Persuasion Should Merge

Professor Anthony Jameson
DFKI

Computer science has produced several types of technology for supporting or influencing people's choices: Recommender systems and decision support systems aim to help people make better choices where it is not known in advance which option is best, while persuasive technology aims to persuade people to adopt a predetermined option. So far, these approaches have been developed largely independently. I will first explain the relationships among them with reference to a compact summary of concepts from research on human choice and decision making. Then I will argue that methods for supporting and influencing choices are best viewed as being like the black and the white keys on a piano keyboard: Using them together is more natural and effective than using them separately.

Biography: Anthony Jameson is a principal researcher at DFKI, the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, where he heads the Choosability Engineering research unit, which synthesizes and exploits knowledge about human choice and decision making in the design and study of (intelligent) interactive systems. He is the author of the chapter Choices and Decisions of Computer Users in the 2012 edition of the Human-Computer Interaction Handbook and founding coeditor-in-chief (with John Riedl) of the ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems.