Author: csblog

SACHI Seminar: Oliver Schneider and Karon MacLean

We have a SACHI seminar on Monday 12th June 2017 which will be given by two speakers, presenting two connected talks within the normal hour slot.

The speakers are Dr Oliver Schneider from the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany and Professor Karon MacLean who is Professor of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia, Canada.

Details for the two talks are as follows.

Title:  Haptic Experience Design: How to Create for Touch

Abstract:  Touch is everywhere in our daily lives, but interactive technology has traditionally prioritized visual and audio feedback. Recently, a variety of haptic feedback methods promise the benefits of touch for application areas like eyes-free feedback, emotional robots, and physically embodied education. However, haptic experiences are challenging to create – designers must draw from expertise in psychology, mechanical engineering, software engineering, and design theory, and work simultaneously with touch, vision, and audio.

To understand and support haptic experience design, we interviewed professional hapticians (makers of haptics) to provide a first definition and description of their process and its constituent challenges. We developed a series of design tools to support rapid, iterative creation of experiences for the most common haptic interface: expressive vibrotactile feedback. By characterizing haptic experience design and informing supportive tools, we make a first step towards establishing haptic design as its own field, akin to graphic and sound design.

Bio:  Oliver Schneider is a Postdoctoral Scholar with the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany. His Ph.D. topic at the University of British Columbia (UBC) was Haptic Experience Design: describing the process designers follow when creating haptic experiences and developing software tools to support them. Oliver received his M.Sc. in Computer Science from UBC and a B.Sc. Honours from the University of Saskatchewan, and has worked with Disney Research on novel haptic interactions. Through his research, Oliver seeks to empower people to work creatively with novel haptic, multimodal, and multisensory interactive technology.

Title:  Making and Experimenting with Furry Robots with Feelings

Abstract:  Touch has a major role to play in human-robot interaction. Here, advances in tactile sensing, wearable and context-aware computing as well as robotics more broadly are spurring new ideas about  how to configure the human-robot relationship in terms of roles and utility, which in turn expose new technical and social design questions.

This talk will focus on my group’s recent work on haptic or physical human-robot interaction, where we aim to bring effective haptic interaction into people’s lives by examining how touch (in either direction) can help address human needs with the benefit of both low- and high-tech innovation. I will give a sense of these efforts from three perspectives, each involving significant technical and evaluative design challenges: sensing emotive touch, designing expressive robot bodies and behaviours, and creating evaluative scenarios where participants experience genuine – and changing – emotions as they interact with our robots.

Bio:  Karon MacLean is Professor of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia, Canada, with a B.Sc. in Biology and Mech. Eng. (Stanford) and a M.Sc. and Ph.D. (Mech. Eng., MIT)  and time spent as professional robotics engineer (Center for Engineering Design, University of Utah) and interaction researcher (Interval Research, Palo Alto). At UBC since 2000, her research specializes in haptic interaction: cognitive, sensory and affective design for people interacting with the computation we touch, emote and move with, whether robots, touchscreens or mobile activity sensors. Special Advisor on Knowledge Mobilization to UBC Faculty of Science; Charles A. McDowell Award, 2008; Assoc Editor of  IEEE Transactions on Haptics; co-chair of the 2010 and 2012 IEEE Haptics Symposium; Director of UBC’s pan-university Designing for People Research Cluster.

SACHI Seminar: Daniel Vogel, University of Waterloo

Title:  New Approaches to Mode-Switching

Abstract:  The fundamental unit of all interaction is issuing commands, and the trickiest types of commands are those that control “modes” — different ways to map the same input to different application actions. For example, the current mode in a tablet drawing app could determine if the exact same sequence of touch movements draws a line, pans the canvas, makes a marquee selection, or issues a gestural command. Switching between modes like these are frequent, so finding optimum mode-switching methods is important.  In this talk, I survey my group’s work to understand and improve mode-switching and command selection for different input types and device form factors. These include: Pin-and-Cross, a touch overloading technique combining static touches with nearby crossing selection; Conté, a pen-like input device that leverages small changes in contact geometry; Doppio, a reconfigurable two-faced smartwatch for tangible input; and Gunslinger, a mid-air interaction technique using bare hand postures and gestures performed in a relaxed arms-down position.

Bio:  Daniel Vogel is an Assistant Professor and co-director of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab in the Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo. His research interests are fundamental characteristics of input and novel forms of interaction for current and future computing form factors like touch, tangibles, large displays, mid-air gestures, and whole-body input. In addition to earning PhD and MSc degrees from the University of Toronto, Dan holds a BFA from the Emily Carr University of Art + Design, and he leverages his combined art and science background in his research. For example, he was recently awarded a major grant to build a $1.8 million lab to explore the intersection of HCI and Fine Art in spatial augmented reality. Dan’s 2004 paper on interactive ambient displays is one of the ten most cited papers in the nineteen-year history of ACM UIST, and he has received honours including: multiple best paper awards at ACM CHI; the Bill Buxton Dissertation Award (2010); a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship (2011 – 2013), and an Ontario Early Researcher Award (2017).

Event details

  • When: 15th June 2017 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Maths Theatre B
  • Format: Seminar

SRG Seminar: Evaluation Techniques for Detection Model Performance in Anomaly Network Intrusion Detection System by Amjad Al Tobi

Everyday advancements in technology brings with it novel challenges and threats. Such advancement imposes greater risks than ever on systems and services, including individual privacy information. Relying on intrusion specialists to come up with new signatures to detect different types of new attacks, does not seem to scale with excessive traffic growth. Therefore, anomaly-based detection provides a promising solution for this problem area.

Anomaly-based IDS applies machine learning, data mining and/or artificial intelligence along with many other methods to solve this problem. Currently, these solutions seem not to be tractable for real production environments due to the high false alarms rate. This might be a result of such systems not being able to determine the point at which an update is required. It is not clear how detection models will behave over time, when traffic behaviour has changed since the last time the model was re-generated.
Continue reading

Event details

  • When: 1st June 2017 13:00 - 14:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33b
  • Series: Systems Seminars Series
  • Format: Seminar

SACHI Seminar: Mike Hazas, Lancaster University

 

Title:  Internet services, energy demand and everyday life

Abstract:  Over the last decade, the growth in data traffic across the Internet has been dramatic, and forecasts predict a similar ongoing pattern. Since this is associated with remarkable electricity consumption (about 10% globally, and rising), such a trend is significant to efforts to reduce carbon emissions.  This calls for careful attention to the nature of these trends, as levels of Internet electricity demand become ever more directly and explicitly problematic.  Based on a host of prior literature and two field studies, this talk explores what we know about the energy intensity of digital stuff, and the growth of Internet traffic.  It considers how such traffic can be attributed to different Internet services like video streaming or social networking, and how these link to everyday practices which draw upon and generate data online.

Biography:  Dr Mike Hazas is a Senior Lecturer at Lancaster University, who works at the confluence of human-computer interaction and social science. His research combines qualitative and quantitative methods to understand everyday practices and technologies, how they can be related to carbon emissions and energy demand, and more sustainable trajectories. Mike co-directs the multidisciplinary Socio-Digital Sustainability group at Lancaster, and has served as a chair of the CHI Specific Application Areas subcommittee for the last three years.  Mike is a co-investigator in the DEMAND Centre (EPSRC, 2013-2018) which is concerned with the relationship of social practices and energy demand.

Event details

  • When: 30th May 2017 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Format: Seminar

SRG Seminar: New Network Functionality using ILNPv6 and DNS by Khawar Shehzad

This research deals with the introduction of a new network functionality based on Identifier-Locator Network Protocol version 6 (ILNPv6), and Domain Name System (DNS). The chosen area of concern is security and specifically mitigation of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS). The functionality proposed and tested deals with the issues of vulnerability testing, probing, and scanning which directly lead to a successful DDoS attack. The solutions presented can be used as a reactive measure to these security issues. The DDoS is chosen because in recent years DDoS have become the most common and hard to defend attacks. These attacks are on the availability of system/site. There are multiple solutions in the literature but no one solution is based on ILNPv6, and are complex in nature. Similarly, the solutions in literature either require modification in the providers’ networks or they are complex if they are only site-based solutions. Most of these solutions are based on IPv6 protocol and they do not use the concept of naming, as proposed by ILNPv6.

The prime objectives of this research are:

  • to defend against DDoS attacks with the use of naming and DNS
  • to increase the attacker’s effort, reduce vulnerability testing, and random probing by attackers
  • to practically demonstrate the effectiveness of the ILNPv6-based solution for security

Event details

  • When: 18th May 2017 13:00 - 14:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33b
  • Series: Systems Seminars Series
  • Format: Seminar

SRG Seminar: Investigation of Virtual Network Isolation Security in Cloud Computing Using Penetration Testing by Haifa Al Nasseri

Software Defined Networking (SDN) or Virtual Networks (VNs) are required for cloud tenants to leverage demands. However, multi-tenancy can be compromised without proper isolation. Much research has been conducted into VN Isolation; many researchers are not tackling security aspects or checking if their isolation evaluation is complete. Therefore, data leakage is a major security concern in the cloud in general.

This research uses an OpenStack VN and OpenStack Tenant Network to test multi-tenancy features. We are evaluating the relationship between isolation methods used in cloud VN and the amount of data being leaked through using penetration tests. These tests will be used to identify the vulnerabilities causing cloud VN data leakage and to investigate how the vulnerabilities, and the leaked data, can compromise the tenant Virtual Networks.

Event details

  • When: 4th May 2017 13:00 - 14:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33b
  • Series: Systems Seminars Series
  • Format: Talk

Workshop on Considering Technology through a Philosophical Lens

Technology fundamentally shapes our communication, relationships, and access to information. It also evolves through our interaction with it. Dialoguing across disciplines can facilitate an understanding of these complex and reciprocal relationships and fuel reflection and innovation.

This hands-on, participant-driven and experimental workshop will start a discussion of what can come from considering technology through a philosophical lens. Through discussions and hands-on design activities, it will provide an introduction to and reflection on questions at the intersection of computer science and philosophy, such as:

  • How have philosophy and technology shaped each other in the past?
  • How can philosophical ideas and methods guide research in Computer Science?
  • How can thinking through technology help Humanities researchers discover relevance and articulate impact in their research?

Engaging these questions can provide participants an entry-point into exploring these themes in the context of their own research.

This workshop is aimed at researchers from computer science who are curious about philosophy and how to leverage it to inform technically oriented research questions and designing for innovation. It is also aimed at researchers in the arts & humanities, social sciences, and philosophy who are curious about current research questions and approaches in computer science and how questions of technology can stimulate philosophical thought and research.

Attending the workshop is free but please register by emailing Nick Daly: nd40[at]st-andrews.ac.uk

Organisers: Nick Daly (School of Modern Languages) and Uta Hinrichs (School of Computer Science)

 

Event details

  • When: 18th May 2017 10:00 - 13:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Format: Workshop

Translational Research into Common Psychiatric Disorders, Professor Douglas Steele, Professor of Neuroimaging / Consultant Psychiatrist, University of Dundee

Translational Neuroimaging Based Psychiatric Research

Computational methods are having a considerable influence on contemporary neuroscience research: in data collection (non-invasive functional brain imaging), data analysis and computational modelling of healthy and abnormal brain and behaviour. The presentation is in two parts. Part 1 is an overview of the current main computational-neuroscience areas in research. Part 2 focuses on some recent high impact research into potential empirical and mechanistic biomarkers for psychiatric disorders.

Event details

  • When: 24th April 2017 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Format: Colloquium, Seminar, Talk

SRG Seminar: “Evaluating Data Linkage: Creation and use of synthetic data for comprehensive linkage evaluation” by Tom Dalton and “Container orchestration” by Uchechukwu Awada

The abstract of Tom’s talk:

“Data linkage approaches are often evaluated with small or few data sets. If a linkage approach is to be used widely, quantifying its performance with varying data sets would be beneficial. In addition, given a data set needs to be linked, the true links are by definition unknown. The success of a linkage approach is thus difficult to comprehensively evaluate.

This talk focuses on the use of many synthetic data sets for the evaluation of linkage quality achieved by automatic linkage algorithms in the domain of population reconstruction. It presents an evaluation approach which considers linkage quality when characteristics of the population are varied. We envisage a sequence of experiments where a set of populations are generated to consider how linkage quality varies across different populations: with the same characteristics, with differing characteristics, and with differing types and levels of corruption. The performance of an approach at scale is also considered.

The approach to generate synthetic populations with varying characteristics on demand will also be addressed. The use of synthetic populations has the advantage that all the true links are known, thus allowing evaluation as if with real-world ‘gold-standard’ linked data sets.

Given the large number of data sets evaluated against we also give consideration as to how to present these findings. The ability to assess variations in linkage quality across many data sets will assist in the development of new linkage approaches and identifying areas where existing linkage approaches may be more widely applied.”

The abstract of Awada’s talk:

“Over the years, there has been rapid development in the area of software development. A recent innovation in software or application deployment and execution is the use of Containers. Containers provide a lightweight, isolated and well-defined execution environment. Application container like Docker, wrap up a piece of software in a complete file-system that contain everything it needs to run: code, runtime, system tools, system libraries, etc. To support and simplify large-scale deployment, cloud computing providers (i.e., AWS, Google, Microsoft, etc) have recently introduced Container Service Platforms (CSPs), which support automated and flexible orchestration of containerised applications on container-instances (virtual machines).

Existing CSP frameworks do not offer any form of intelligent resource scheduling: applications are usually scheduled individually, rather than taking a holistic view of all registered applications and available resources in the cloud. This can result in increased execution times for applications, and resource wastage through under utilised container-instances; but also a reduction in the number of applications that can be deployed, given the available resources. In addition, current CSP frameworks do not currently support: the deployment and scaling of containers across multiple regions at the same time; merging containers into a multi-container unit in order to achieve higher cluster utilisation and reduced execution times.

Our research aims to extend the existing system by adding a cloud-based Container Management Service (CMS) framework that offers increased deployment density, scalability and resource efficiency. CMS provides additional functionalities for orchestrating containerised applications by joint optimisation of sets of containerised applications and resource pool in multiple (geographical distributed) cloud regions. We evaluate CMS on a cloud-based CSPs i.e., Amazon EC2 Container Management Service (ECS) and conducted extensive experiments using sets of CPU and Memory intensive containerised applications against the custom deployment strategy of Amazon ECS. The results show that CMS achieves up to 25% higher cluster utilisation and up to 70% reduction in execution times.”

Event details

  • When: 20th April 2017 13:00 - 14:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33b
  • Series: Systems Seminars Series
  • Format: Seminar

ACM SIGCHI: Communication Ambassador & Turing Award Celebration News

Congratulations to Hui-Shyong Yeo, who has been selected as both an ACM SIGCHI communication ambassador and to represent SIGCHI at the ACM 50 Years of the A.M. Turing Award Celebration.

Yeo is a 2nd year PhD student and is particularly interested in exploring and developing novel interaction techniques. Since joining us in SACHI, he has had work accepted at ACM CHI 2016 and CHI 2017, ACM MobileHCI 2016 and 2017 and ACM UIST 2016. His work has featured at Google I/O 2016, locally on STV news and he gave a talk at Google UK in 2016 about his research. His work has also featured in the media including in Gizmodo, TheVerge, Engadget and TechCrunch., see his personal website for more details. Continue reading