School of Information Technology Archives | Research & Innovation

91��ɫ displays research and innovation at YTA Solutions Showcase

fmaquito — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 08:00:00 +0000

91��ɫ researchers and students displayed their research projects and innovations at the 91��ɫ Technology Alliance’s Solutions Showcase event, which took place at the Markham Convergence Centre (MCC) on March 10.

Titled “Game Changers: How local innovations are creating a new ‘business as usual'”, the (YTA) showcase encouraged participants from industry, academia and government agencies to display discovery research and innovations through six-minute Lightning Lectures and a hands-on Demo Lounge.

91��ɫ Professor , chair of the Department of Computer Science & Engineering in the Faculty of Science & Engineering, presented the 91��ɫ-led Centre for Innovation in Information Visualization and Data-Driven Design (CIV-DDD). The project, which involves researchers in the Faculties of Fine Arts and Science & Engineering, along with graduate students and other industry and academic partners, promises to develop the next generation of data discovery, design and visualization techniques by developing new computational tools, representational strategies and interfaces.

Right: 91��ɫ Professor Amir Asif, second from left, chats with visitors at the 91��ɫ Technology Alliance's Solutions Showcase event

Professor and a group of undergraduate students from her laboratory in the Department of Earth & Space Science & Engineering displayed 91��ɫ’s Mars rover and spoke about their successful involvement in international Mars rover competitions. A group of graduate students from Professor ’s laboratory in the School of Information Technology, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, also spoke about their recent research.

MBA students Navneet Budhia, Boris Chan, Vitaliia Rubinovitch, Eli Ilatov and Shakti Kumar from the Schulich School of Business’ (EVCG) also participated; their members apply their skills to help local entrepreneurs grow their businesses. “It’s really important for students to get off campus and interact with real companies,” said Budhia, president of EVCG. “This is where academia and industry meet to create value for both the companies and the students.”

Left: The Mars rover was on display at the showcase and was accompanied by a team of undergraduate students from the Department of Earth & Space Science and Engineering

Stan Shapson, vice-president research & innovation, agreed. “Universities usually expect companies to come to our campus,” he explained. “By co-locating with industry organizations like YTA and creating a presence in the for our service unit, , 91��ɫ is sending a very powerful message to our partners. We’re helping industry enhance and forge new connections to 91��ɫ’s research and training capacity, which demonstrates our openness to collaboration.

“Paradoxically, we’re finding that it’s sometimes easier to get students and researchers to interact at our new 91��ɫ Region home in the MCC than it is on our main campus.”

Other showcase participants included the and , 91��ɫ Region’s recently announced Regional Innovation Centre. 91��ɫ’s participation in the YTA Solutions Showcase was made possible by a Regional Opportunities Fund grant from NSERC.

The 91��ɫ Technology Alliance Showcase was one of many ongoing events at the MCC that provide faculty and students with opportunities to seek research collaboration and internships with industry. 91��ɫ’s also runs programs and services at MCC providing a space to support collaboration with 91��ɫ Region community organizations and municipal agencies.

To learn more about Innovation 91��ɫ, contact Dan Lynch, manager of industry liaison.

By Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer

The post 91��ɫ displays research and innovation at YTA Solutions Showcase appeared first on Research & Innovation.

Professor Marin Litoiu recognized for cloud computing achievements

fmaquito — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 10:00:00 +0000

This has been a banner year for Marin Litoiu. The computer scientist has won two major awards and just received a $500,000 grant to expand his research at 91��ɫ.

Litoiu has won awards before, but these particular ones stem from his pioneering work in cloud computing, the next big evolution in computing technology. “It’s one of the hot topics in computing these days,” he says. Since cloud computing surfaced as a brilliant idea in 2007, he’s led much of the exploration into this new frontier.

Right: Marin Litoiu

Cloud computing will spell the end of desktop computers and institutional servers in five to 10 years, predicts Litoiu. Instead, hardware functions such as storage, memory and processing, and office and enterprise software will be provided and managed automatically from remote servers via the Internet (or “cloud”).

Through the Internet, off-site service providers will automatically update software, provide security and guarantee uninterrupted service. Software as a Service, as it’s called, will be cheaper, more convenient and more reliable, says Litoiu.

He compares it to the evolution of electricity delivery. In the early days, companies and institutions used their own generators to supply power. Now we all plug into a remote continental grid.

At 91��ɫ, a few cluster groups, including his own, already operate on clouds. Facebook and Google run on cloud computing systems, though they’re not completely automated, he says. Banks don’t yet, but “it’s just a matter of time before everything is run on virtual systems.”

Litoiu started his career as a computer science professor in Romania. He immigrated to Canada in 1996 and started a second PhD, this one in systems engineering. Within a year, IBM recruited him as a senior researcher at its Centre for Advanced Studies, where he led more than 30 research projects with academics and partners across the globe.

In 2007, when the idea of cloud computing began percolating in labs around the world, IBM created the Centre of Excellence for Research in Adaptive Systems () and appointed him director. “We were among the first in the world to create a centre to look at this very new concept of cloud computing,” says Litoiu.

Even after his return to academia in 2008, when he joined 91��ɫ’s School of Information Technology, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, Litoiu continues to collaborate with IBM on developing computing tools and infrastructure. “I’m a strong believer in collaborating with industry because it gives students industrial experience and a chance to apply their skills to real problems. I want their theses to be relevant.”

This year, IBM named him CAS (Centre for Advanced Studies) . The award recognizes Litoiu's leadership in cloud computing research, research that benefits IBM and industry at large, and Litoiu’s continuing efforts to share his research and knowledge with IBM developers.

Left: Marin Litoiu (left) accepts Faculty Fellow of the Year award from IBM's Bart Vashaw

Litoiu specializes in adaptive computing systems – in computers that take care of themselves. In naming him Faculty Fellow of the Year, IBM cited two of his collaborative research projects. One was “Real-time monitoring and simulations of business processes”, which aimed to pinpoint then shorten delays in automated functions, such as those used in finance and human resources applications. The other was developing a business-driven cloud optimization architecture, which resulted in several prototypes and papers. One paper won the at the 2010 Association for Computing Machinery Symposium on Applied Computing in Switzerland in March.

In 2009, Litoiu also won the IBM Project of the Year Award for building a two-layered cloud computing model for desktop virtualization: the first layer would provide storage and raw computation; the second, services such as software management (see YFile Dec. 18, 2008).

“These awards validate my assumption that the work we do is meaningful and has an impact not only on the academic community but also on industry, on one of the biggest players in the world in computing,” says Litoiu, of IBM. “The other important thing is that students involved in the research are directly or indirectly exposed to the industry and industrial technology and that their research is rewarded as well.”

At 91��ɫ, Litoiu leads a research team of 12 post-doc and graduate students. Soon they will be working in a new lab dedicated to cloud computing research. The Natural Sciences & Engineering Research Council of Canada has just granted him $234,000, and IBM has made up the difference for a total of $500,000 to start a new project in cloud computing.

“We live in a pretty exciting world,” says Litoiu. “There are a lot of things to be done in computing. We’re not even halfway through this computer revolution.”

By Martha Tancock, YFile contributing writer

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin

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Professor Jimmy Huang to host three IT conferences; topics include artifical intelligence

fmaquito — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Professor Jimmy Huang is a very busy man. In addition to the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies appointing him director of the School of Information Technology, he will be helping to host three prestigious international conferences in upcoming weeks. The conferences will focus on research into artificial intelligence, intelligent agent technology, active media technology, and information and knowledge management.

While current search-engine technology uses algorithms that rely on keywords to uncover pertinent information, the research of Huang and his colleagues uses algorithms with a capacity for natural-language processing and contextual understanding that can uncover more complex information. Rather than looking for instances of words, these elaborate algorithms can make sense of the words. The applications of the research are vast.

Right: Jimmy Huang

They can analyze, for instance, the text of blog postings and the feedback of its respondents and then make humanlike, intuitional assessments of the information. “The analysis could indicate changes in public mood on certain issues, or rising or diminishing support for a certain political leader,” says Huang.

His technology research seeks to improve the health-care system by reducing costs and improving services. Huang advocates the digitizing of all health-care records – texts, charts, X-rays and other image files – and making them securely accessible on the Internet.

How will this improve health care? “One of the reasons that health care is so expensive is due to the incentive for doctors and specialists to provide unnecessary or duplicate services, and to the inefficiencies of a system that creates multiple, proprietary medical records,” says Huang. He cites the example of a general practitioner drawing blood for a test, then referring a patient to a specialist who might perform the same procedure again due to the inaccessibility of the original GP’s files.

“If there were one comprehensive set of records for the patient, centrally and securely available on the Internet, practitioners wouldn’t have to resort to phone calls and courier services to exchange information,” says Huang. Improved access to information could reduce services and associated costs while maintaining the same level of care. “It would also allow for a more global perspective on a patient’s health as various practitioners wouldn’t be limited in the scope of information available to them and, with the assistance of algorithms, could uncover heretofore unseen conditions.”

Huang offers another example of the benefit of centralized resources by citing his own experience with a leg injury. His doctor referred him to a specialist near his home. However, the specialist couldn’t fit him into his schedule for two months. By then, the injury was repaired on its own, for better or worse. A centralized information system could analyze a patient’s surroundings in a more subtle way, not simply in terms of where the GP’s office is situated, but where the patient lives or works. An advanced algorithm could locate an available specialist in another area who might be available sooner.

The sphere of application is, likewise, immense: from opinion mining and sentiment analysis to context-aware computing and social networking or matchmaking.

The joint 2010 International Conferences on Active Media Technology and Brain Informatics will be on the Keele campus from Aug. 28 to 30, and the 2010 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conferences on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology will take place at 91��ɫ from Aug. 31 to Sept. 3. The 19th ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM 2010) will be held at the Fairmont Royal 91��ɫ from Oct. 26 to 30.

“Bringing these venerable, annual conferences to 91��ɫ for the first time represents quite a coup for the University. Among the list of sponsors are some of the major companies involved in the information technology industry and the competition for papers among prospective participants was extremely competitive,” says Huang. “I’m very grateful for the support of the Offices of the Vice-President Academic & Provost and the Vice-President Research & Innovation, and the Dean’s Office of the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.”

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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