Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Dr. Deborah Trytten Earns Regents Award for Superior Teaching for 2011

Dr. Deborah Trytten receiving Superior Teaching Award
The Regents' Award for Superior Teaching was established June 6, 1963 with the first awards presented in the spring of 1964.  Originally, the award was given to three individuals each year.  In 1965, the policy was amended to provide a maximum of five and a minimum of three awards each year.  In 1978, the awards were expanded to include superior accomplishment in any of the following:  Teaching, Research and Creative Activity, Professional and University Service, with a miximum of nine awards in one year and with the understanding the majority of the awards will be given for superior teaching.  In 2010, the awards were limited to one recipient each year for Teaching, Research and Creative Activity and Professional and University Service.

Dr. Trytten received this award in recognition of her many years of excellent service as Undergraduate Liaison for the School of Computer Science, her mentorship of students and new faculty members, and her teaching contributions in lower division courses.

Dr. Rex Page Appointed as Fullbright Specialist

Dr. Rex Page

Prof. Rex Page was appointed as a Fulbright Specialist to collaborate with colleagues at Halmstad University in Sweden this summer. They will adapt curricular materials developed by
Page on the use of mechanized logic in software development for use in the Halmstad Computer Science program and will conduct an international workshop for educators.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

CS Poster Presentations at GSA Research Event

Three CS students, Tom Palmer, Shohrab Hossain, and Qing Zhao presented posters at the GSA 2011 Spring Research conference held at the National Weather Center in Norman, OK.


Shohrab Hossain
Abstract of Shohrab Hossain's Poster:
Mobile networks can be formed in bus, train, aircrafts, satellites with a wide variety of on-board IP-enable devices and Network Mobility (NEMO) protocols are required to support uninterrupted services to ongoing sessions. Node mobility has a direct impact on the performance evaluation of various NEMO protocols. However, most of the analysis on mobility protocols used random waypoint mobility model which does not always represent real-world movement patterns in city streets. In this paper, we have developed an analytical model to analyze the stochastic properties of city section mobility model, a realistic street mobility model. We have used the model to analyze the performance of the basic network-mobility protocol. We have used ns-2 simulation to compare the performance of NEMO using city section and random waypoint models. Results have been obtained for average throughput, packet drop probability, end-to-end delay, handoff frequency, and signaling overhead and show significant deviation between the mobility models. Our analysis thus can help in estimating the various performance metrics of mobile network deployed in city streets.

Tom Palmer
Abstract of Tom Palmer's poster:
Many logical planning systems depend on user-provided predicates and functions for representing the environment. In Blocks World tasks, for example, the basic predicate on(X, Y) represents that block X is on block Y. From such a basis, sophisticated algorithms can solve tasks of interesting complexity. However, automatically inventing such predicates is often considered a difficult problem. Our goal here is to work from physical attributes about items and thereby infer logical relations. Currently, we focus on human-labeled examples of world situations with different consequences. To learn relations, we employ the Spatiotemporal Multidimensional Relational Framework of Bodenhamer at al. (2009). Going forward, we seek to discover distinct situations in a more automated fashion as well as to improve the speed and reliability of learning.

Qing Zhao
Abstract of Qing Zhao's poster:

A high efficiency class-E power amplifier (PA) based on Gallium Nitride (GaN) high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) is designed and tested. Compact impedance transformation network is implemented using microstrip transmission lines, so that it simultaneously achieves fundamental load transformation and harmonic impedance control. At 2.705GHz, the PA provides 42dBm output power, power added efficiency (PAE) of 58% and gain of 12.5dB.

Monday, April 4, 2011

OU-A Wins South Central Region

Programming team (OU A) finished FIRST in the 2010 ACM South Central USA Regional Programming Contest.   Congratulations to the outstanding winning team members Peter Reid, Caleb Eggensperger, and Allen Smith and their Coach Professor Rex Page.  They were the only team which solved all the 8 problems and we would have still won without the 8th problem as we had the smallest completion time.  ResultsCOE article.

2010 Outstanding Senior Awards

Meghan Reike and William Brewer earn the 2010 Outstanding Senior Award.

Dr. Page Receives Three Year Grant

The National Science Foundation has awarded a three-year grant totaling $500,000 to support a collaboration between Dr. Rex Page and a Matthias Felleisen of Northeastern University. The project calls for building an interactive development environment and supporting modular software development and validation with the ACL2 mechanized logic and its associated programming langauge, and the development of tested curricular materials to introducing undergraduate students to this technology. Dr Page's portion of the work focuses on curricular materials and outreach. Dr Felleisen and his team at Northeastern will deliver the IDE.

Dr. Andrew Fagg receives NIH Grants

Andrew H. Fagg, collaborating with faculty at OU, OUHSC, Virginia Commonwealth University, Northwestern University, University of Chicago, and University of Texas Dallas, has recently received three grants from the National Institutes of Health (total for CS and Fagg: $1,015,659). Two projects focus on brain-machine interfaces for the control of prosthetic limbs and for interpreting the neural encoding of sounds and odors.  The third explores control techniques for an assistive robotic crawler for young children who are at risk for developing Cerebral Palsy.