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I G N I T I N G I D E A S 44 C O M P U T I N G A N D I T

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F R O M T H E D E A N

Computing and IT is ourfourth publication in a six-issue Igniting Ideas serieshighlighting our school’sresearch focus areas. Eacharea contributes to our strate-gic objective of performinghigh-quality research whilepreparing future researchersfor industrial, academic, andgovernment positions.

Represented in this issueare hardware and softwareadvances that improve theworld around us; e.g., ourresearch in machine recogni-tion of characters, biometrics,communications, and cybersecurity improve our postalsystems, security systems, cel-lular phones, and computingsystems. As has been our prac-tice, we have also includednoteworthy educational andapplications projects relatedto this issue’s theme.

On a personal faculty note,I am pleased to announce thatso far this year we have heardthat three of our junior facul-ty—Paul DesJardin and VenkatKrovi of MAE and Hung QuangNgo of CSE—have beenawarded 2004 NSF CAREERAwards. These promising aca-demics follow in a rich tradi-tion of our young faculty, whohave won 15 awards since theseries was initiated in 1997.

I trust that you will enjoyreading about the accomplish-ments of our faculty and staffin Computing and IT.

Mark H. KarwanProfessor and Dean

School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

412 Bonner HallBuffalo, NY 14260

Nonprofit org.U.S. Postage

PaidBuffalo, N.Y.

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enior-level students in the Department of Computer Science andEngineering who take Software Engineering and other capstone

design courses have invented the UB Talker, a product designed tobe a working artificial speaking device while providing socially rele-vant and real-world experiences.

The device uses a touch-screen, menu-driven laptop computerto select words and phrases to help speech-impaired persons communicate. Displays can be preprogrammed or entered in an on-screen keyboard during conversation. The device uses contextawareness, phrase completion, and an evolving intelligence thatprepares responses in anticipation of choice. Statistics are derivedusing frequency of use, most recently used, time of day, day ofweek, and time of year to present most-likely phrases to users.Over time, it adapts to a user’s patterns and habits, and becomesconversational and increasingly easier to use.

Speech-impaired persons at two local sites are using thedevice. One stroke patient who is unable to speak but hassome motor skills used the device to make his first phone callin more than 20 years. Colleague UB groups are using the UBTalker as a test and research plat-form to study natural languagesynthesis and advanced adaptivetechnology design.

Leading the effort are KrisSchindler, Michael Buckley, andHelene Kershner of the Departmentof Computer Science and Engineering.

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School of Engineering and Applied Sciences www.eng.buffalo.edu ub-seas@eng.buffalo.edu

he center’s work has generated suchadvances that today CEDAR is a leadingdeveloper of automated mail whose

accomplishments include:• Software that reads handwritten mail at

blur speed—20 pieces per second with an accuracy rate of over 98 percent

• Annual savings to the United States PostalService (USPS) estimated at $150 millionper year

Further evidence of success is sustainedfunding from USPS over the past two decadesand designation of CEDAR as a Center ofExcellence by USPS.

Srihari is joined by CEDAR associate director and professor of computer science

and engineering Venugopal Govindaraju andCEDAR’s research staff, as well as associateprofessor of computer science and engineer-ing Rohini K. Srihari.

While the analysis of scanned paper documents, particularly handwritten ones,continues to be CEDAR’s core research topic,there are now several research projects involv-ing document types that are “born digital.”Applications explored also include documentanalysis and recognition, forensic documentexamination, textual information retrieval,biometrics, medical informatics, and biomed-ical information retrieval.

Selected CEDAR milestones include:• 1995 - Name and Address Block Reader

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Twenty years ago, Sargur N. Srihari, SUNY Distinguished Professor and CEDAR executive director, had an idea that handwriting could be recognized by machine.Since then, this idea has blossomed into world-renowned cutting-edge research onpattern recognition, machine learning, and information retrieval technology that isconducted at UB’s Center of Excellence for Document Analysis and Recognition.

S O M E T H I N G T O

A B O U Twrite home

(NABR) installed at most U.S. InternalRevenue Service processing centers

• 1998 - First Handwritten AddressInterpretation (HWAI) technology deployedby the USPS

• 1999 - Handwriting systems incorporatedby Lockheed Martin in systems for AustraliaPost and the United Kingdom Royal Mail

• 2002 - Handwriting Individuality Analysiswork cited, leading to the acceptance ofhandwriting evidence in U.S. federal courts

• 2002 - Image Evaluation System deployedby USPS to evaluate recognition systemsfor letter mail and subsequently for flatsand parcels

• 2003 - CEDAR-FOX, a system for questioned document examination andhandwriting processing, is made availableto the law enforcement community

CEDAR has been a conduit for scholarlyactivity, as well as individual accomplishmentfor scientists and students alike. Research sci-

entists at CEDAR hold 10 registered patentsand have published more than 500 technicalpapers. The organization has supported morethan 500 students, resulting in the award ofseveral hundred master’s degrees and morethan 40 doctoral degrees.

Looking Back on Two Decades of Scholarship and Breakthroughs at UB’s CEDAR

Revealing the Real You

he UB School of Engineeringand Applied Sciences has justcreated the Center for Unified

Biometrics and Sensors (CUBS) tofoster the development of radicallydifferent biometric technologiesgeared toward developing applica-tions to improve comfort, conven-ience, and security for personal andcommercial use. The center estab-lishes a unified biometric frameworkto facilitate the development ofnext-generation biometric systems.This framework will allow evalua-tion of market needs and con-straints in choosing the biometrictechnologies best suited for a par-ticular application. Researchers willdevelop new biometric technolo-gies from proof-of-concept toproduct-readiness, including usability studies and educational

outreach to evaluate and mitigateethical and legal concerns.

Since the terrorist attacks of9/11, physical biometrics—such asan individual’s height, weight, shapeof the iris in the eye, vein structure,and hand geometry—have becomeincreasingly important for securityapplications because they cannot beeasily faked. This technology willalso reach to industrial and forensicapplications.

CUBS leverages researchersfrom UB’s SEAS, College of Arts andSciences, School of Informatics, andSchool of Medicine and BiomedicalSciences to form a multidisciplinaryteam to address some of our coun-try’s most critical needs. VenuGovindaraju, professor of computerscience and engineering, directs the new center.

Exciting projects on theresearch agenda include:

• Pathobiometric systems that can automatically track illnesses in livestock, such as mad cow disease, by analyzing aerial images of large cattle herds, along with other farm data

• A state-of-the-art automated fingerprint identification system

• Biometrics systems modeled after the methods that animals use to understand their environments

With funding from the NationalScience Foundation, the New YorkState Office of Science, Technology,and Academic Research (NYSTAR),and several companies, CUBS willbridge academia and industry indesigning, developing, and prototyping biometric devices forcommercialization.

Original Image Energy Map Threshhold Map

A Fresh Approach to Genomic Data Mining

truly multidisciplinary team ofresearchers has been formed at

UB to develop novel genomic data-mining algorithms. Led by principalinvestigator Aidong Zhang, professorof computer science and engineering,and co-PIs Maurizio Trevisan, dean ofthe UB School of Public Health andHealth Professions, and WilliamJusko, professor of pharmaceutics,

the project is laying the groundworkfor the establishment of a NationalInstitutes of Health biomedical com-puting center. Other investigatorsinclude Jan Chomicki, Jian Pei, andXin He, computer science and engi-neering; Richard Almon, biology;Murali Ramanathan, pharmaceutics;Yulan Liang, School of Public Healthand Health Professions; and Steven

Pruitt and Ping Liang, Roswell ParkCancer Institute.

The team will provide expertiseand infrastructure to merge researchactivities of computational and bio-medical scientists. Specifically, theywill develop specialized data-miningalgorithms to analyze patterns andrelationships in gene-expression data.They will also investigate novel

A approaches to conduct patternmeasurements, cluster analysis andvalidation, time series analysis, andintegrated dimensional analysis, aswell as study the relationship betweenclustering and gene regulation.

The development of techniquesto effectively analyze genomicdatasets is a critical step in work onthe medical applications of bioinfor-

matics. The synergistic merging ofcomputer science expertise and bio-medical expertise is expected toadvance biomedical research to thenext level. Working side by side, witha clear understanding of the research

approaches each uses, computationaland biomedical scientists will be in aposition to make the critical contribu-tions necessary to reap the benefits ofnew treatments for common diseaseswith unmet medical needs.

UB, already listed among Yahoo’s“Top Wired” campuses in the U.S.,continually seeks innovative waysto evolve its computing and ITinfrastructure.

Over the past few years, theschool has been involved in universi-ty initiatives toestablish UB as one ofthe largest academicsupercomputing facil-ities in the nation.Several projects,including the installa-tion of Dell, IBM, andSun machines in theCenter for Computa-tional Research, havehelped UB accomplishthis goal. UB distin-guished professor ofcomputer science andengineering and CCR director RussMiller leads the group.

At the school level, a majorstate initiative funded the creationof the New York State Center forEngineering Design and IndustrialInnovation. This center, a top-endvisualization facility led byChristina Bloebaum, professor forcompetitive product and processdesign in the mechanical and aero-space engineering department, isheavily involved in industrial andscientific research.

Another recent project construct-ed a remote sensing satellite groundstation on campus to collect environ-mental field data from around theworld. A cooperative project involv-ing faculty from engineering, geog-raphy, and geology, this resource will

be a valued campus-wide tool for researchand instruction. CharlesBrunskill, director ofScience andEngineering NodeServices, joined projectdirector MohammedSultan, professor ofgeology; JosephAtkinson, professor ofcivil, structural, andenvironmental engi-neering; and ChrisRenschler, assistant

professor of geography.The school’s latest student-

oriented venture is a system thatallows students to create electronicportfolios of their academic activi-ties throughout their tenure at theuniversity and show prospectiveemployers or graduate schools theirselected work on a CD or Web site.Brunskill and SENS staffer Molly IvesBrower are implementing this systemwith Sandy Peters, associate directorof UB academic services, and instruc-tional designer Roberta Sullivan.

Leading the Pack: More and More Wired at UB

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The UB Department of ComputerScience and Engineering, with 24faculty, ranks 20th in R&D expendi-tures (approx. $7.5 million yearly)among 94 Ph.D.-granting computer

departments in U.S. public universi-ties and colleges, using the mostrecent available NSF data. UB ranks16th on a per-faculty basis.

Top 20 in Funding

E N G I N E E R I N G A T T H E E D G E

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There’s a new resource in the ongoing searchfor ways of presenting technology to pre-college students in an interesting and under-standable fashion. Now high school teacherscan direct their students to a Web site designedto help them learn scientific principles and topics that many students find elusive.

Called “Web-Based Technology Education,”the project is a creation of David Shaw, profes-sor of electrical engineering and head of UB’sCenter for Innovative Engineering Learning,in cooperation with colleagues from theCollege of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Stony Brook.

The goal of the project is to produceinstructional modules to address the newlypublished national standards for technologicalliteracy that specify content for the study oftechnology for high school students. School dis-tricts in parts of upstate New York and LongIsland are participating in development andevaluation of the site’s materials. At this time,modules exist for Music in the Digital World,Drying by Design, and Safety Light Systems(see www.eng.buffalo.edu/Shaw).

The project is financially supported by agrant from the National Science Foundation.

Science in the Classroom Award-winning Applets Acclaimed Algorithm

Professor of elec-trical engineeringChu Wie’s semicon-ductor appletservice was recog-nized with a 2003

MERLOT (Multimedia Education ResourceLearning and Online Teaching) Classics Award.His site provides more than 60 simulations, ani-mations, and tutorials applets on semiconductorsand device physics, as well as semiconductordevice manufacture and operation. Topics rangefrom crystal structure and electronic energybands through device fabrications to circuit

design and simulation. The applets provide aninteractive environment that allows students toexplore effects of changing parameters on theoperation of devices.

Leading academics and practitioners havecited Wie’s applets as being a great help inunderstanding semiconductor devices. Theapplets are being used in undergraduate instruc-tion throughout the nation, including at theUniversity of Notre Dame, the University of Texasat Austin, and Virginia Polytechnic Institute andState University. Wie’s work has been noted innumerous publications, including Science, andmay be seen on the Web at jas.eng.buffalo.edu.

cell phone can be a lifeline in an emergency—unless calls cannot be completed when lines getjammed at peak times or if users are out of

range of repeater stations in coverage areas.To the rescue comes CSE professor

Chunming Qiao, whose pioneering work,called iCAR (integrated Cellular and Adhoc Relaying system), focuses on how tomake high-speed wireless connectivityavailable virtually anywhere, anytime.

iCAR was introduced to address thespecific problem of having limited data-rate and scarce bandwidth resources intoday’s cell phone systems, coupled withthe problem of having limited coverage andmobility support using wireless ad hoc tech-nology, such as WLAN (802.11). A unique featureof iCAR is the use of ad hoc relaying stations (ARSs)that relay voice or data calls from a location where thedownlink quality (e.g., signal strength or bit rate) is low,because either the cellular coverage is poor or the areais currently congested with many other calls, to a near-by location with a much better downlink quality. Resultsobtained by Qiao and his team showed that iCAR caneffectively improve the performance of a conventionalcellular system. The concept of iCAR can also be applied

to extending the coverage and improving the mobilitysupport and scalability of wireless ad

hoc systems. Since each ARScan be as simple as a

custom-made cellphone, it is

portable andcan be quick-ly deployedand effective-ly used as apart of a res-cue operationin a disaster

area (e.g.,Ground Zero). Qiao’s work on

iCAR—the harbinger of thepush toward convergence between

cellular and wireless LAN technologies—has been fea-tured in such magazines as Business Week and WirelessEurope, as well as on international Web sites, includingCanadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and NewScientists (UK). The work is funded in part by theNational Science Foundation’s ITR program and by theNokia Research Center.

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Research by UB distinguished professor ofcomputer science and engineering Russ Miller,director of the UB Center for ComputationalResearch, with Nobel Laureate HerbertHauptman and Charles M. Weeks, both of theHauptman-Woodward Medical ResearchInstitute, resulted in a direct-methods proce-dure called “Shake-and-Bake” that is listed onthe poster “The Top Ten Algorithms of the 20thCentury” by Computing in Science andEngineering.

Miller was listed on HPCWire’s 2003 list ofTop People and Organizations to Watch in high-performance computing.

he UB Center of Excellence in Information SystemsAssurance Research and Education (CEISARE)—

designated a Center of Excellence by the NationalSecurity Agency—conducts research to protect comput-ing networks from cyberattacks, and trains computerscientists and engineers in these techniques.

CEISARE, under the direction of associate professorof computer science and engineering ShambhuUpadhyaya, is a leader in academic homeland securityefforts. The center’s activities include:• Promoting and conducting multidisciplinary

research in Information Assurance (IA) andcyberwarfare

• Collaborating with companies throughoutthe nation engaged in security research

• Educating and training the next generation of IA specialists

A blend of engineers, scientists, mathe-maticians, and management and legal special-ists, the group addresses technical issues incybersecurity, as well as legal implications.

The center has received generous financialsupport from the National Security Agency, theDefense Advanced Research Projects Agency,the Air Force Research Labs, the Information

Institute at Rome, New York, and Telcordia Technologiesof Morristown, New Jersey. Recent funding includes tworesearch grants from NSA/ARDA: Data Fusion andIntrusion Detection, and Protecting Documents fromInsider Threats; a third recent grant from theDepartment of Defense provides for two new and tworeturning student scholarships, funding that comes withthe center’s NSA designation.

Much of CEISARE’s research is conducted in theaffiliated SPIDER—Security, PrIvacy, DEpendabilityResearch Lab, also directed by Upadhyaya.

Guarding Against CyberattacksHope for Tangled Lifelines

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Human Engineering Information

uman decision making under uncertainty includes workon computer and display technologies to aid decision

makers (e.g., fatigued pilots interpreting computerizedcockpit displays). Ann Bisantz, associate professor of industri-al engineering, is investigating properties of graphical repre-sentations of uncertainty based on blurred or degraded

icons, as well as visual, auditory, and tactile representationsof spatially distributed uncertainty.

Her research reveals that people are able to successfullymap iconic representations to underlying concepts of uncer-tainty, and that performance on dynamic decision-makingtasks using such representations is similar to that of numeric

representations. Further work explored participants’ interpre-tation of icons by empirically generating fuzzy membershipfunctions that mapped their interpretationof the icons’ meaning to probabilities.These results, too, indicated that peoplegenerated membership functions withmaximal values closely correlated to theintended numeric values; also, membershipfunctions were reasonably similar acrossindividuals. In combination, these are

important findings because they suggest that such repre-sentations may be implementable and allow display design-

ers to use a single icon to encode the uncertaintyabout an object’s identity (e.g., hostile/friendly aircraft)

along with other dimensions, such as location.This work is supported by Bisantz’s NSFCAREER grant and involves collaborationwith the UB Center for MultisourceInformation Fusion and UB colleaguesJames Llinas and Thenkurussi Kesavadas.

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xtracting meaning from a Web siteand linking it with information from

related Web locations is the focus ofwork by Rohini K. Srihari, PIand CSE associate profes-sor, and Miguel Ruiz, co-PI and assistant profes-sor in the UB School ofInformatics. They areanalyzing documents todetermine if the informationcontent of the sum of the partsis greater than that of the individualparts. For example, could viewing differ-

ent sites on related subjects yield a syn-ergistic overview that could compro-mise security?

An overlooked consequence ofmultiple documents by multiple sources

could be the unintended accessibility ofcritical security information, a specialcase of text mining referred to asunapparent information revelation.

While information analysts cur-rently use search engines to siftthrough extensive document collec-tions for such links, automated toolsare far more efficient in exposing them,or at least generating plausible conceptchains. In this scenario, a user purpose-fully surfs a Web site with the intentionof exposing a particular link, or chainof links, between key concepts. The

challenge is to decipher his ultimateinformation need based on his queries.For example, is he trying to gain infor-mation on how to sabotage aircraft?

The proposed solution combinesthe robustness and efficiency of infor-mation retrieval systems models withthe higher granularity of informationextraction models. Search enginesrepresent document content bycounting the frequency of specificwords. Information extraction systemsfocus on entities, relationshipsbetween entities, and events. This

Concept Chain Graphs: A Hybrid Framework for Text Mining

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This was true when it was written and iseven more critical today. AddressingNaisbitt’s “enemy,” researchers at UB’sCenter for Multisource InformationFusion analyze monolithic data sets to

identify patterns and seek meaningfrom massive information. Their focus ison multiple-source information process-ing environments, such as in multiple-sensor or multiple-instrumented

systems. These environments occur fre-quently in defense applications foradvanced surveillance and reconnais-sance systems, as well as in robotics,civil infrastructure systems, medicalmonitoring systems, intrusion detectionsystems, intelligent transportation sys-tems, and environmental monitoringapplications.

Center accomplishments include:• Significantly improved ground-object

tracking from combining multiple-sensor observations and a priori terrain and cultural-feature data

• More accurate and complete situation-al information on civil disaster condi-tions, derived from multiple field

“We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge. This level of information isclearly impossible to be handled by present means. Uncontrolled and unorganized informa-tion is no longer a resource in an information society, instead it becomes the enemy.”

—John Naisbitt, Megatrends (1980)

Unlocking Knowledge

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UIR module determines that these twodocuments reveal new associationbetween wiring and accidents

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Next Issue: Energy, Flows and Materials Processing

As the scientific community develops anational tera-scale infrastructure forhigh-performance computing, BinaRamamurthy and Bharat Jayaraman,CSE research assistant professor andprofessor and chair, respectively, areparticipating in NSF’s Course, Curricu-lum, and Laboratory ImprovementProgram to introduce grid computingconcepts and to optimize existing com-puting and data resources.

Companies are eagerly embrac-ing grid computing and promotingit under various names (e.g., utilitycomputing, on-demand computing).Scientists and practitioners believethe grid developed for scientificcomputing will one day make com-puting freely available as yetanother “utility,” as accessible asthe electrical power grid and thetelephone grid.

The researchers are developingGridForce—Grid For Research Col-laboration and Education, sponsoredby NSF—a network of computation-al units cooperating to share com-pute cycles, data, and other resourcesusing an open and standardizedservice-based framework.

GridForce seeks to promote gridawareness and technical readiness inthe workforce. Accomplishments sofar include:• Introducing grid computing in the

department’s curriculum• Building laboratory prototypes

to support grid application devel-opment in the courses

• Conducting workshops for industryFuture projects include grid-based

program execution envi-ronments and a grid-based anomaly detection system.

Going Gridreports, to aid in casualty rescue andimproved management of emergency-response equipment and vehicles

• Definition of a new and formallygrounded methodology for the testingand evaluation of data fusion-capableaircraft

This highly multidisciplinary tech-

nology is also applicable to a wide arrayof nonmilitary problems. For example,the center is conducting research withPenn State in condition-based mainte-nance, making maintenance schedulingmore cost effective by integrating sen-sors into the equipment. An NIH projectis on multispectral mammography.

Other grant sponsors include theU.S. Air Force Office of ScientificResearch, the Office of Naval Research,the U.S. Army, and the National SecurityAgency. Top industrial partners areLockheed-Martin and Boeing.

James Llinas, ATA professor ofindustrial engineering, is director of the center.

Data Information Knowledge Understanding

Data Rec’d FromThe Environment

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Capacity and Reach ofDecision Maker’s Mindis Variable

project focuses on building conceptchain graphs combining both systemsin a probabilistic framework. Textmining is achieved by automaticdetection and visualization of interest-ing paths and subgraphs within theconcept chain graph.

The group has processed 15,000FAA Web pages and constructed aninitial concept chain graph. Next theywill showcase a tool whereby thegraph can be visualized, and connec-tions between critical concepts can beviewed in terms of the documentsand text snippets that connect them.

The National Science Foundationand the FAA currently fund theirresearch.