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Topic: Computational Cameras: Redefining the Image

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Innovation in the Knowledge Economy

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This session presents both interesting scientific problems and challenging application domains that live at the confluence of music and computer science. Douglas Eck, Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Montreal and member of the "BRAMS” International Laboratory for BRAin Music and Sound, will discuss humanizing computer-generated piano performances with an eye toward computer composition for video games. Christopher Raphael, Associate Professor in the School of Informatics at Indiana University and head of the Music Informatics program, will present his musical accompaniment system "The Informatics Philharmonic" in service of violin virtuoso John Sanderson, who is a student in the IU Jacobs School of Music.

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The review process for computer science publications and proposals is crucial to the health of our field, especially for new researchers seeking to establish themselves in the field. Current and past processes have been criticized for a variety of reasons, including timeliness of decisions; fairness, especially to “outsiders;” and openness. The responses have included turnaround time guarantees and process changes. Some journals and conferences have moved to double-blind reviewing, though not without strong opposition. NSF moved some time ago from a journal-style review process to doing most reviews via panels that meet physically in one location. Meanwhile, conference program committees have moved in the opposite direction. Many do not meet physically and instead use an asynchronous on-line process. This panel will discuss the concerns that have led to change, the degree to which process changes have addressed these concerns and/or created new problems, and what further steps ought to be taken from here.

A recent USENIX workshop also addressed many of these issues. Papers and slides for that USENIX workshop are posted at http://www.usenix.org/events/wowcs08/tech/.

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Web 2.0 is a set of tools that enables the masses to easily create content on the WWW, in the form of blogs, social networks, video and photo collections, and simple application creation frameworks. In addition, Web 2.0 has amplified the importance of relationships between users that are represented in social networks. The emergence of this new and varied content has led to a flurry of research activity that aims to mine the content and infer useful data from it (e.g., sentiment analysis, network analysis). This session presents a sampling of some recent work in this area, and exposes some of the important directions for future research in Computer Science.

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In recent years, biomedical informatics (sometimes called medical informatics or health informatics) has emerged as an important and well-received discipline at many medical schools, often involving close collaborative relationships with computer science departments at the same institution. In this workshop discussion we will define the field of biomedical informatics, identify its scope and relationship to computer science, and characterize some of the fundamental research problems to which computer scientists can contribute. The goal is to enhance interact-tions between researchers in biomedical informatics and computer science while also addressing the differences between the fields and the resulting synergies that exist.

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The "three Rs" of industry-academia collaboration, Research, Recruiting, and Relevant skills, are just some of the many dimensions both parties can work along to reap the benefits of a win-win partnership. The goal of this panel is to explore a number of successful industry-academia models for research collaboration through the experience of non-US academic colleagues, with the view to learn in what ways US models have been adjusted to better match local cultural, legal, and other relevant practices, or how they may fundamentally differ from US-based efforts.

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The transition from undergraduate to graduate student and from graduate student to faculty or industry does not always go smoothly for students. How can graduate programs assist students in making these transitions? This panel will describe programs and courses designed to help students prepare for these changes.

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Many people believe that, at least within academia, explicit sexual harassment is a thing of the past, and more subtle forms of gender discrimination have waned. Unfortunately, there continue to be disturbing incidents of harassment, and "implicit bias" is a pervasive phenomenon, particularly in male-dominated fields such as computer science. This interactive session: 1) will focus on practical solutions departments can effectively implement, including ways of responding to harassment that does not meet the legal threshold but is detrimental to the environment and all involved; and 2) will be based on strategies that are grounded in extensive research from the social-science literature.

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Tuesday, July 15

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10:00 am - 10:30 am

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As many departments struggle with declining or stagnant enrollments in computer science, the mismatch between the wealth of career opportunities for CS graduates and the perception of such opportunities among young people poses a significant challenge. The problem is particularly acute with young women and under-represented minorities. Outreach programs for middle and high school students, aimed at dispelling myths and communicating the excitement and the range of opportunities for CS graduates, is an important element of broadening the pool of potential majors. This session will present and discuss a series of outreach programs.

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Students today have a wide variety of choices. Computer science educators are challenged to develop innovative curricula that draw in students (perhaps more broadly than we have before), motivates and retains them, and still prepares them to compete in a global marketplace for research and development. Departments across the country are inventing innovative curricula to meet these challenges. The panel will feature representatives from several of these departments to discuss what they are trying and learning.

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An increasing number of CS faculty at relatively small universities and colleges are developing research programs. Due to factors such as limited facilities, teaching loads or institutional culture, research projects tend to be "small scale." This panel session will address the contributions that such work makes and/or could make to the research community as well as to the institution, funding opportunities geared toward this sort of research, and problems and pitfalls unique to such a program.

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This panel will discuss the implications of wikinomics, i.e., web-enabled collaboration, for the computing research community. How has the Internets culture of open collaboration/ dissemination impacted the pace of computing research, i.e., is the productivity of our community improving? To what extent has CS research been democratized? What are the success stories and where are the failures? What are the negative implications/risks arising from open collaboration?" Is there a balance to be struck between centralized and distributed research? What are the implications for—and the future role of—intellectual property and the commercialization of CS research? Looking beyond wikinomics, what other opportunities are there to change our business practices and accelerate CS research?

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Wednesday, July 16