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Society and the Computing Profession

Society and the Computing Profession

Available Speakers on this Topic

Saurabh Bagchi – West Lafayette, IN, United States

Dependability in a connected world: From the very large to the very small
Much of the computational infrastructure that we encounter today and that we increasingly rely on for critical applications is provided by a distributed system, be it the air traffic...
Why Being a Faculty Member Beats Being a Rock Star
In this talk, I will prove through careful analysis, rigorous empirical evidence, and wild anecdotes that being a faculty member at a tier 1 research university is far preferable to being a...

Brian A. Barsky – Berkeley, CA, United States

Computational Optometry: Optometry and Vision Science Meets Computer Graphics and Geometric Modeling
We define computational optometry as multidisciplinary research integrating optometry and vision science with computer graphics and geometric modeling. This endeavor began with research on a...
Computer Aided Geometric Design and Modeling for Curve and Surface Representations
Computer aided geometric design and modeling is concerned with the mathematical techniques for the representation of curves and surfaces in the computer for image display and object fabrication....
Innovative Approaches to Teaching Animation
This presentation will discuss two innovative courses on animation. First, "The Art of Animation" explores the artistic, aesthetic, and cinematographic underpinnings of animation...
Simulating Human Vision and Vision Correcting Displays
Research on simulating human vision and on vision correcting displays that compensate for the optical aberrations in the viewer's eyes will be discussed. The simulation is not an...
The BLUR Project at Berkeley: Algorithms for Computer Generated Imagery, Computational Photography, and Aiding Human Vision
The multidisciplinary BLUR project at UC Berkeley combines computer graphics with optics, optometry, and photography. This research investigates mathematical models to describe the shape of...
Vision Realistic Rendering

Present Vision-realistic rendering (VRR) is the computer generation of synthetic images to simulate a subject's vision, by incorporating the characteristics of a particular...

Kaveh Bazargan – Tehran, Iran

Introduction to Research Methods in Human-Computer Interaction
The output of outstanding Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research can be considered as an input for the work of brilliant designers and engineers that fuel disrupting inventions or major...

Michel Beaudouin-Lafon – Orsay Cedex, France

Research metrics: the good, the bad and the ugly of bibliometrics and University rankings
Over the past decade, research metrics have become an important part of the discourse on research, from hiring committees to government policy. Researchers display their h-index on their web...

Erik Brunvand – UT, United States

Computational Thinking Meets Design Thinking: Technology and Arts Collaborations
There seems to be an explosion of interest in exploring arts and technology connections: new media, digital media, kinetic art, new frontiers, emergent media, interdisciplinary,...
Technological Fluency through Circuit Bending
Electronic technology is pervasive in our modern world but how it actually works can be a mystery to many people. In 1999 and 2002 the National Research Council (NRC) released influential...
What Programmers Should Know about DRAM
Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) is what makes up the "main memory" of most computer hardware. It's also much stranger than you might think, and has hidden complexity that...

Tracy K Camp – CO, United States

The Incredible Shrinking Pipeline

The number of Bachelor degrees awarded in Computer Science in the United States reached an all-time high in 2002-03 (57,439), and the trend of women earning a...

What I know now ... that I wish I knew then

Tracy Camp, a Full Professor of computer science, has received over 20 grants from the National Science Foundation, including a prestigious NSF CAREER award. In total, her projects have...

Alain Chesnais – Toronto, ON, Canada

3D Content For The Web
One of the most exciting developments in browser technology is the ability to present and interact with 3D assets in a web page. This talk will focus on the introduction of WebGL since 2011...
Managing Your ACM Chapter
Alain Chesnais will talk about his experience working in chapter leadership for the past 25 years. He started out his ACM experience volunteering to stuff envelopes for the Paris chapter in...

Luca Chittaro – Udine, Italy

Mobile Persuasion for Health and Safety Promotion
Mobile apps are a very promising tool to promote attitude and behavior change in users. However, creating effective and successful mobile apps for health and safety promotion requires a wealth of...

Dipankar Dasgupta – Memphis, TN, United States

Coordination in Open Collaboration Communities
Open collaboration communities produce highly complex work yet lack many of the coordination mechanisms that exist in more traditional organizations. This study examines an open source software...

Kerstin Dautenhahn – Hatfield, United Kingdom

Social Robotics A New Generation of Robots Built for People
Compared to how people interact with computer and other electronic devices, something ‘special’ happens when humans come in contact and interact with physical robots....

Gianluca Demartini – Sheffield, United Kingdom

The Power of Big Data
More and more data is being generated around us by every activity we do in our daily life. Such large amounts of data are changing the way we do things and are used to make data-driven decisions...

Geraldine Fitzpatrick – Vienna, Austria

Changing Academic Life: sharing experiences and strategies
It doesn’t matter with whom you talk or what country or institution they come from, almost every academic will say that the nature of academic work is changing significantly and that the...

Marcus Foth – Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Connected Urbanism and Cohabitation in the Smart City
Ubiquitous computing, mobile devices, and big data come together to give rise to a new urban paradigm being celebrated by many technology corporations and municipalities alike: the smart...
Human-Computer & Human-Food Interactions: Beyond Nutritional Data and Educational Information
Raising people’s awareness of healthy and ecological food options with nutritional data and educational information does not foster a sustained practice towards a more environmentally...
Smart Cities beyond Fad and Hype: Connecting People, Place and Technology
Ubiquitous computing, mobile devices, and big data come together to give rise to a new urban paradigm being celebrated by many technology corporations and local governments alike: the smart...
The Promise of Blockchain Technology for Food & Agriculture
After its first prominent application as part of the digital cryptocurrency Bitcoin, blockchain and distributed ledger technology are gaining in popularity. Blockchain comprises a chain of...

Silvia Giordano – MANNO ,TI, Switzerland

The role of Applied Studies
The applied research is more close to real world than basic research, and for this reason is closer to industry. But, it is also fun and as challenging as basic research. How applied research can...

Jennifer Golbeck – College Park, MD, United States

Foretold Futures from Digital Footprints: Artificial Intelligence, Behavior Prediction, and Privacy
For a few years, we have been developing algorithms to predict individual attributes like personality traits, political preferences, and demographics. More recently, we have shown that AI combined...
The Human Side of Cyber Security
Security experts often claim that people are the most unreliable part of their systems. I argue that the problem is not people behaving insecurely, but security systems that are designed with no...

Donald Gotterbarn – Johnson City, TN, United States

Computer Ethics and Technology
This talk focuses on computer ethics as it relates to the day to day activities of practicing computer professionals. The emphasis is on real world moral and legal issues for the practicing...
Software Development: More Than Just Programming
We are often surprised by the number of non-programming related issues that affect the professional’s efforts to develop quality software and web interfaces. Development efforts are...
Unmanaged Risk: Why Systems Don't Work
The focus on software testing and risk analysis during software development has only had a limited effect in reducing software failures. This talk will present a new approach to the identification...

Michael Gschwind – Yorktown Heights, NY, United States

Technology Futures - The IBM Technology Forecast
Join me for a look at IBM's vision for the near term future, or as IBM terms it, IBM's Global Technology Outlook (GTO). IBM Research and its global community of some of the...

Laura M Haas – San Jose, CA, United States

Impact! Great Research, Great Scientists, Great Careers
I have worked with researchers in both industry and academia over the course of my career, and helped many to grow their influence and stature. This talk is a compilation of the best...

Vicki L Hanson – Dundee, United Kingdom

Inclusive Technologies

Nearly 1 of every 5 people either currently has a disability or will develop a one in their lifetime. For these...
The Age Wave

Are technology difficulties an inescapable fact of ageing? Or are there factors that can equip future generations of older adults with skills that will erase...

James A Hendler – Troy, NY, United States

Knowledge Representation in the Era of Deep Learning, Watson and the Semantic Web
A burst in optimism (and unwarranted fear) has grown around a number of technologies that are high impact and able to solve problems that have challenged AI researchers for years. The...
Social Machines: The Coming Collision of Artificial Intelligence, Social Networking, and Humanity
As technology has increasingly brought computing off of the laptop and into our social domain, we see society more and more impacted by the interactions allowed by mobile technologies and...
The Semantic Web
For more than a decade now, the Semantic Web community has been listening to one critic after another explain why the technology will not work. The good news is that we have now exceeded the...

James D Herbsleb – Pittsburgh, PA, United States

Coordination in Open Collaboration Communities
Open collaboration communities produce highly complex work yet lack many of the coordination mechanisms that exist in more traditional organizations. This study examines an open source software...
On the Diminishing Prospects for an Engineering Discipline of Requirements
What do the following have in common? (1) describing the computation an electronic control unit should perform as it detects rotational speed from wheel speed sensors and adjusts hydraulic valves...

Seiji Isotani – Sao Carlos - SP, Brazil

Bridging the gap between research on educational technology and social impact
Most researchers in the field of Technology-Enhanced Learning dream of developing cutting-edge technology that can have a real impact on learning at schools. Nevertheless, for most of...

Joaquim A Jorge – Lisboa, Portugal

Game Over? New Approaches to Teaching Engineering Courses
Gamification has been explored recently as a way to promote content delivery in education, yielding promising results. However, little is known regarding how it helps different students...
How to get your paper rejected from a Computer Graphics Journal
This is a tongue-in-cheek lecture about what NOT to do to publish a paper in an international scientific journal dedicated to Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques. Writing papers is...
The Future of Media Interfaces
We are living in a post-WIMP world. Indeed, more and more users access information, communicate and operate mobile information appliances foregoing the still common mouse and keyboard of yonder....

Min-Yen Kan – Singapore, Singapore

Technology vs Learner Engagement: Always a Trade Off?
Does have more learners necessarily mean less engagement? Hear the perspectives of experts from research and practice on what technologies can be used to up your engagement with learners and...

David J Kasik – Sammamish, WA, United States

Lessons Learned: Technology Transition
New research occurs internationally and at a breathtaking rate. Publications and presentations routinely feature novel concepts that could be highly beneficial. Even so, putting the...

Fernando Koch – Melbourne, Australia

Disruptive Technologies and the Future of Society
The new generation of technology development -- including Computational intelligence, Cognitive Computing, Internet of Things, Social Computing and Virtual Reality, and others – will disrupt...
Evolution of Digital Education and Impact on Learning Performance
The evolution of Digital Education focuses on delivering the best quality education for all. The results will be the enhancement of society as a whole, impacting from health to happiness, from...
Social Applications and Sensible Societies
In this lecture, we will entice the audience to think of mobile media technologies as a tool to address urban social issues. The explanation will explore the potential of mobile devices,...
The New Era of Cognitive Computing Experience
In this lecture, we explain the nature of potential new experiences that the era of Cognitive Computing will require. Historically, human-computer interaction has progressed from...

Dirk Lewandowski – Hamburg, Germany

THE POWER OF SEARCH ENGINES
Search engines are the premier tools when it comes to finding information on the Internet. Newer technological developments show how search is changing from the query-results paradigm to...

Oge Marques – Boca Raton, FL, United States

Can you trust what you see? The magic of visual perception
This lecture presents and explains a diverse collection of visual perception phenomena that challenge our common knowledge of how well we detect, recognize, compare, measure, interpret, and make...
Leadership and Communication Skills for Engineers and Computer Scientists
This lecture provides an overview of successful leadership and communication skills that engineering and computer science students and professionals can use to thrive in today’s...

Jeanna N Matthews – Potsdam, NY, United States

Becoming a researcher: practical strategies for taming the angst and changing the world
For beginning researchers, identifying their research topic can be a daunting and intimidating task. (You mean I need to find the right question and then answer it too?) This talk is part pep talk...
Big Data? Big Promise, Big Problems
The data that we record daily about ourselves through our cell phones, credit card purchases, emails, social media postings, etc., helps us connect with each other and improve our life...

Jacquelyn F Morie – Los Angeles, CA, United States

Creating Meaningful Works of Virtual Reality (VR) Experiences
Drawing on my 25 year history of creating meaningful virtual reality experiences, I will discuss the techniques I have developed to help evoke emotional responses from participants in such...
History of Virtual Reality
This talk introduces the basics of early VR history, including the people and inventions that enabled it. I define what fully immersive VR means and look at the factors that support full...
The Ultimate Selfie: Musings on the Future of Our Human Identity
Identity in today's world is being radically redefined by our access to sophisticated technologies that allow us to share images of ourselves ubiquitously, don a variety of avatars to...

Zoran Obradovic – Philadelphia, PA, United States

Computational Methods for Early Diagnostics and Multiple Blood Cleansing Interventions in Sepsis
Sepsis, a severe complication of pathogen infection that triggers systemic inflammatory response and can lead quickly to multiple organs damage, is recognized as one of the leading causes of...

Sharath Pankanti – Yorktown Heights, NY, United States

Actionable Video Content Summarization: Lessons from Practical Case Studies
For the first time in the history of universe, the video data generated by humans has exceeds all other forms of the data. While no one denies the utility of the information hidden within...
Biometrics
The determination of identity can be accomplished by three generic means. Conventionally, an exclusive possession (either a physical, e.g., key or electronic, e.g., cookie), knowledge (e.g.,...
Multi-media Compliance: A practical paradigm for managing business integrity
In virtually every business context there is a need to establish some form of monitoring system to ensure that employees comply with business processes and policies. Compliance failures range from...
Public Sector Surveillance
Situation awareness is the key to security. Awareness requires information that spans multiple scales of space and time. The increasing need for sophisticated surveillance systems and the move to...
Retail video analytics
The retail industry grosses trillions of USD revenue annually worldwide and provides numerous opportunities for innovation to facilitate real-world business operations. Applications include: loss...

Gyana R Parija – New Delhi, India

CBC2015: Industry Connect
IBM's Watson represents a whole new class of industry specific solutions called cognitive systems. It builds on the current paradigm of Programmatic Systems and is not meant to be a...
Using Hybrid Goal Programming for performing National Analysis of Wild land Fire Management in US
We present a multi-criteria budget allocation model for assigning national budgets across all the Fire Planning Units (FPU) in the US. We discuss the innovations we have made, based on users...

Shrisha Rao – Bangalore, India

Safety Issues in Cyber-Physical Systems
Computers and software components are now integral to large complex systems in almost all sectors of modern society. The safety of such systems is therefore dependent upon many...

Andrzej Rucinski – Strafford, NH, United States

OPPORTUNITY OF INTERNET OF THINGS SEMINAR
Internet of Things (IoT) is an expanding space for researchers, students, and professionals. Development of IoT applications is hindered by the lack of available design tools,...

Valentina Salapura – NY, United States

Innovation at IBM -- Smarter Planet Initiative
When IBM set its sights on helping to create a smarter planet two years ago, we predicted the evolution of an increasingly instrumented, intelligent and interconnected world. Intelligence is being...

Xipeng Shen – Raleigh, NC, United States

Tackling Memory and Concurrency Barriers for Modern Parallel Computing
Two key barriers for tapping into the full power of modern (massively) parallel machines are the limited bandwidth in memory and the limited parallelism in some applications. This talk presents...

Seth Shostak – Mountain View, CA, United States

The Challenges of Artificial Intelligence Boundless Benefits or the Threat of Runaway Machine Sentience?
Of the several transformative developments we can expect in the 21st century, none has more promise – or generates more concern – than the invention of generalized, artificial...

G R Sinha – Hyderabad, India

Developing Employability Skills using ICT Tools
Employability skill has become buzzword all across the world. The set of skills that empower someone to become competent enough so that he/she can survive in all odds. The employability...

Biplav Srivastava – Yorktown Heights, NY, United States

Joys and Challenges of On Demand Research in Industry
Industrial labs provide an alternative career option to research minded graduates in addition to academia. The opportunities to bring one's innovations to practical products are immense...

Richard Stallman – Boston, MA, United States

A Free Digital Society: What Makes Digital Inclusion Good Or Bad?
There are many threats to freedom in the digital society. They include massive surveillance, censorship, digital handcuffs, nonfree software that controls users, and the War on Sharing....
Computing, Freedom and Privacy
The way digital technology is developing, it threatens our freedom, within our computers and in the internet. What are the threats? What must we change?
Free Software and Your Freedom
The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement developed the GNU operating system, typically...
Should We Have More Surveillance Than The USSR?
Digital technology has enabled governments to impose surveillance that Stalin could only dream of, making it next to impossible to talk with a reporter undetected. This puts...
The Danger of Software Patents
Richard Stallman will explain how software patents obstruct software development. Software patents are patents that cover software ideas. They restrict the development of software, so that every...

David G. Stork – Sunnyvale, CA, United States

Computer vision in the study of art: New rigorous approaches to the study of paintings and drawings
New rigorous computer algorithms have been used to shed light on a number of recent controversies in the study of art. For example, illumination estimation and shape-from-shading methods...

Harold Thimbleby – Wales Uk

Creativity, innovation and taking risk in your research
Most people just “do” research without thinking strategically about their work, their interests and how to do better. What is their plan when a paper or a funding application gets...
Human error is not the problem
Error, if it was a disease, would be classified as the third biggest killer after cancer and heart disease. Why is it neglected, and what can be done?
Missed solutions to WWII Enigma design weaknesses
The German World War II Enigma suffered from design weaknesses that facilitated its large-scale decryption by the British throughout the war. The main technical weaknesses (self-coding and...
Pirate talks: Getting to great presentations
Pirates say Arrrrr! This is the best mnemnonic on how to give great presentations: audience, remember, route...

Pirate Harold Thimbleby...
Social network analysis and interactive device design analysis
All interactive systems respond to what users do by changing what they are doing Ñ though sometimes maybe not in the way you intended! What they were doing before and after any particular...
Unsafe in any bed
‘Unsafe At Any Speed’ was the title of Ralph Nader’s damning critique of the 1960s car industry. We are at a similar position with today’s healthcare: Terrible, but quite...

André Tricot – Toulouse, France

The upward and downward links between credibility, trust and authority
The Internet and its main tools (Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, Tweeter) deeply raise and renew fundamental questions, that everyone asks almost everyday: Is this information or content true? Can I...

Wan Abdul Rahim Bin Wan Mohd Isa – Shah Alam, Malaysia

Culture Influences to Information Privacy
There is strong inclination on the importance of knowledge management (KM) concept and role towards ensuring components such as ethics and culture are relevant to the applications development,...

Ingmar G Weber – Doha, Qatar

A Digital Socioscope
How can Twitter data be used to study individual-level human behavior and social interaction on a global scale? This talk introduces the audience to the methods, opportunities, and...
Digital Demography
Demography is the science of human populations and, at its most basic, focuses on the processes of (i) fertility, (ii) mortality and (iii) migration. Knowing basic population characteristics if of...
Introduction to Computational Social Science
Due to the increasing availability of large-scale data on human behavior collected on the social web, as well as advances in analyzing larger and larger data sets, interest in applying...
Using Social Media for Health Studies
Given that users share all kinds of minutiae on social media, can this noisy, crowd-sourced data be used for health studies? This talk presents a number of recent examples that show the...

Bebo White – San Francisco, CA, United States

Cybercurrencies and Blockchain (fiction, fallacy, fact, fun, and future)
Hardly a day goes by without a news story about Bitcoin or Ethereum, two of the best known and strongest cybercurrency technologies. Opinions run the spectrum, from those who view it as...
The Web: A Nostalgic View of the Past and Informed Hopes for the Future
This lecture draws upon the speaker’s 30-year love affair with WWW technology – from his first exposure at CERN in 1989 and the first US Web site at SLAC in 1991 to his current...

Tao Xie – Raleigh, IL, United States

Pathways to Technology Transfer and Adoption: Achievements and Challenges
Producing industrial impact has often been one of the important goals of academic or industrial researchers when conducting research. However, it is generally challenging to transfer research...
PhD-Program Preparation for Successful Post-PhD Career
It is valuable for PhD students to think ahead on what kinds of career paths the students intend to seek and what kinds of skills such career paths would require the students to have. This talk...

Moustafa A Youssef – New Borg Elarab City, Alexandria, Egypt

Ubiquitous Indoor Localization: The Indoor Equivalent of GPS
Although GPS has been considered a ubiquitous outdoor localization technology, we are still far from a similar technology for indoor environments. While a number of technologies have been...

Demetrios Zeinalipour-Yazti – Nicosia, Cyprus

Distributed All k Nearest Neighbor Queries
A wide spectrum of Internet-scale mobile applications, ranging from social networking, gaming and entertainment...