Course material 2010–11
Current Research Topics
2010–11
Principal lecturer: Mr Nishanth Sastry
Taken by: MPhil ACS
This course is a series of self-contained, introductory lectures on various current research topics. For a flavour of what to expect, see last year's version here. This course is non-examinable.
All lectures from 4-5pm in Lecture Theatre 1.
Announcements:
We are done with lectures for the Michaelmas term. Lectures will continue in Lent, starting Jan 21.
Schedule: (Also available for subscription from talks.cam)
| Date | Lecturer | Topic | Lecture Materials | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 15 Systems |
Derek Murray | Introduction to Data Center Computing After attending this lecture, students should be able to: * describe the main applications of data-centre computing * explain the software and hardware factors that influence the construction of modern data centres * explain the trade-offs when choosing a programming model for distributed computation |
pptx | |
| Oct 22 Theory |
Arno Pauly | Algorithmic Game Theory Two prototypic problems from Algorithmic Game Theory are presented: Finding Nash equilibria in bi-matrix games and finding pure equilibria in network congestion games. These problems are complete for the complexity classes PPAD and PLS, respectively, which will also be introduced. |
||
| Oct 29 Systems |
Nishanth Sastry | Building Secure Systems On and For Social
Networks This lecture will first explore the privacy consequences of online social networks and show how to support social applications without trusing an external provider like Facebook. Then we will turn tables and look at ways to build secure systems by leveraging the trust embedded in social links. |
ppt, pdf | |
| Nov 5 Security |
Joseph Bonneau | Side-Channel Cryptanalysis Most cryptosystems are designed and argued secure at a mathematical level. In the real world, however, implementations of ciphers often leak additional information to attackers-timing, power consumption, heat, and more. This talk will describe a variety of side channel attacks against common systems, and discuss possible countermeasures. |
Notes | |
| Nov 12 Systems |
Kiran Rachuri | Mobile phones based continuous sensing systems This lecture will introduce the various sensors embedded in modern smart phones, and possible application scenarios. Details about EmotionSense, a mobile phones based emotion sensing platform will be discussed along with design techniques for energy efficient sensor sampling. |
Slides | |
| Nov 26 Programming Research |
Dominic Orchard | Mathematically Structuring Programming Languages Goals gain a feel for using a language as a meta language to describe another - understand the concept of a monad and its use for structuring effects, in particular exceptions - understand the merit of using abstract mathematical structures to help structure programs and language semantics |
Notes, pdf | |
| Jan 21 Theory |
Arno Pauly | Computation with real numbers Summary: How can real numbers be represented in order to compute with them? Floating point numbers offer only finite precision, and this can have a devastating impact in some applications. Exact real number computation is possible, however, using lazy lists. Some examples are given that demonstrate the principles of corresponding algorithms, and the limits of computability in this regard |
Notes | Slides |
| Fri, 18 Feb Graphics and Interaction |
Christian Richardt | Non-Photorealistic Rendering (NPR) At its core, NPR is aiming to make communication more effective and aesthetic, by abstracting and stylising digital images or videos. We will first look at historical developments in NPR and then concentrate on state-of-the-art techniques. |