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TUCS Newsletter 15.10.2013

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TUCS activities

TUCS Distinguished Lecture Series

TUCS Distinguished Lecture on 25.10.: Axel Jantsch

Friday, October 25, 2013 at 13.15

ICT Building, Auditorium Alpha

Coffee served from 12:45

Axel Jantsch, KTH: "The Rise and Fall of System-on-Chip: Driving Concepts and Trends in the Field of Integrated Circuits Between 1990 and 2020"

Host: Juha Plosila, University of Turku

Abstract:

The defining trend in our information technology age is Moore's law: "The number of transistors that can be integrated on a single silicon die doubles every 18 months." Due to that law, System on Chip (SoC) has emerged as a concept in the late 1990s when so many transistors could be integrated on a single chip that entire computing systems could be realized, including a processing unit, memory, interconnect, peripheral devices, and few hardware accelerators. Since then, Moore's law has relentlessly continued unabated to increase on-chip capabilities and we have seen the emergence of multi-core, many-core, Networks-on-Chip, single-chip cloud computers, and many more amazingly complex, tiny devices.

How long can it continue? Where will Moore's law lead us? And what comes after?
As silicon based technology is driven to its very limits, we observe a variety of other technologies emerging and maturing. Carbon-nano tubes, micro-mechanical devices, printed and flexible circuits, and functional materials, excite engineers' imagination with their potential to applications far beyond traditional silicon devices. As Moore's law finally runs out of steam, a heterogeneous future emerges that is based on a rich variety of technologies with silicon based components as merely one of many elements, even though a central one.

This talk will describe the main trend lines and deflection points of IC technology development from the 1990s to the early 2020s, a period that witnesses an explosive growth in complexity of single chips and ends in a commonization of silicon based technology among many other technologies.


Bio:

Axel Jantsch is a professor in Electronic Systems Design at KTH, the Royal Institute of Technology, in Stockholm Sweden. He is head of the department of Electronic Systems and director of iPack, the Swedish Excellence Center for Intelligent Packaging. A. Jantsch has been visiting or guest professor at University of Cantabria, Spain, Univerity of Technology, Vienna, Chinese Academy of Science, Shenzhen, and Fudan University, Shanghai.

A. Jantsch is the author of the book "Modeling of Embedded Systems and SoCs" and has edited and co-edited four books on architecture and design of Systems-on-Chip and Networks-on-Chip. He has made many contributions to modeling theory, methodology, design and architecture of single-chip systems and is one of the pioneers of the concept of Network-on-Chip.

The TUCS Distinguished Lecture Series is a forum for public lectures by outstanding national and international researchers in all aspects of computing, coming both from academia and industry. All lectures are free and open to the public.

Welcome!

TUCS Research Programme Activities

Abstract: Square matrices A,B are elementary strong shift equivalent (ESSE) over a ring R if there are (not necessarily square) matrices U,V such that A=UV and B=VU. Strong shift equivalence (SSE) over R is the transitive closure of this relation. Shift equivalence (SE) of matrices over R is a more tractable relation. For every ring, SSE over R imples SE over R.
Theorem: for every square matrix over R, the SSE-R classes within its SE-R class are in bijective correspondence with the algebraic K-theory group NK_1(R).
I'll explain the statement of the theorem, its motivation from symbolic dynamics, and state some applications to positive matrices, group extensions of shifts of finite type and the algebraic K-theory of endomorphisms.
This is joint work with Scott Schmieding.

Abstract: In 1920, Georg Pólya taught us, in the later words of Shizuo Kakutani, that "A drunken man will eventually find his way home, but a drunken bird may be lost forever."

In more mathematical terminology, simple random walk in one or two dimensions is recurrent, but in three or more dimensions transient. When, in the well-known nursery rhyme, Gretel leaves a trail of bread crumbs to help find her way home from the forest, one would expect that her "risk-reduced" random walk is also recurrent. It is interesting that we cannot prove this yet. More puzzling yet is that in the general elementary situation, we are not sure that there is a dichotomy at all - for once reinforced random walks on locally finite connected countable graphs the possibility of partial recurrence has not yet been excluded.

In this lecture I want to try to explain possible reasons for the behaviour Pólya discovered, at a leisurely pace, and the conjectures, now over twenty years old, concerning reinforced random walks on ladders. I'll finish then, time permitting, with a new dichotomy conjecture which, if true, would allow us to classify graphs into recurrent and transient ones.

TUCS Day

TUCS Day was organised on Friday 4 October 2013 at the Naantali Spa. All TUCS PhD students, supervisors and researchers in TUCS research programmes and research units were invited to learn about and discuss the latest developments in TUCS and spend a relaxing day at the Naantali Spa.

Programme:

9.00 – 9.30         Coffee

9.30 – 9.45         Welcome by TUCS Director Johan Lilius

9.45 – 10.45           Presentations by TUCS Research Programmes

10.45 – 11.30         TUCS and the new graduate school system

11.30 – 12.00         Presentation of the EIT ICT Labs

12.00 – 13.00         Buffet lunch at Le Soleil -restaurant

13 00 -                 Free use of the Naantali Spa pool area

16.00                Bus transport back to Turku

About sixty people from all around TUCS participated in the event. The day started with presentations of the TUCS Research Programmes (unfortunately due to scheduling difficulties TISRA was not represented) and the new graduate school system in both universities. Good questions were asked and interesting facts were learned. The EIT ICT Labs was also presented. Juha Plosila gave a short talk about the Master School, Natalia Diaz Rodriguez told about her experiences as a student in the EIT ICT Labs Doctoral School and Pasi Liljeberg spoke about the projects organised within the EIT ICT Labs. After the more informative side of the day the participants enjoyed a fabulous and plenty buffet lunch with starters, mains and desserts at the restaurant Le Soleil. Especially the dessert table with countless different little cakes was exquisite. The afternoon was reserved for relaxation at the pool area of the spa with free use of the saunas, pools and hot tubs. All in all the day was both informative and fun, filled with good discussion, new ideas and relaxation.

Fourth call for TUCS travel grants

 The fourth and final call for the TUSC travel grants during 2013 is underway. The  deadline for applications is Friday 1st November and the applicants will be informed of decisions by Fri 8th November.

 

Applications should be submitted to ([email protected]) according to the guidelines at http://tucs.fi/education/information-students/travelling-instructions-phd-students/ before the deadline 1.1.2013, 16.00 pm.

 

Any applications arriving after the deadline will automatically be moved to next year.

PhD Movie Screening

TUCS welcomes everyone to join us for a FREE screening of the PHD Movie.

Time: Wednesday, 20.11.2013 at 18:00

Place: Auditorium Alpha, ICT-Building

The PHD movie is the independently-produced live-action adaptation of the online comic strip Piled Higher and Deeper. Filmed on location at the California Institute of Technology, the movie follows four graduate students and their struggles with teaching, love and getting their research to work.

http://www.phdmovie.com/

P.H.D. – Piled Higher and Deeper. Web comic published online at http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php

http://tucs.fi/news/article/phdmovie.php

The event in Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/523599557715943/

TUCS GP doctoral defences

On Friday, October 18th, TUCS GP Student Zhiyuan Yao presents his Doctoral thesis "Visual Customer Segmentation and Behavior Analysis – a SOM-Based Approach" for public criticism. The opponent of M.Sc. Yao is Professor Ranjan Kini from Indiana University Northwest, United States. Professor Barbro Back will act as the custos at this public defence.

Time: 12 noon
Place: Auditorium Gamma, The ICT Building

On Friday, September 13th, TUCS GP Student Maryam Kamali presented her Doctoral thesis "Reusable Formal Architectures for Networked Systems" for public criticism. The opponent of M.Sc. Kamali was Professor Tiziana Margaria-Steffen from Potsdam University, Germany. Docent Luigia Petre acted as the custos at this public defence.

Time: 12 noon
Place: Auditorium Gamma, The ICT Building

New courses

Inforte courses

 

 

Jyväskylä 29–30/10/2013

ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE MANAGEMENT

Speaker: Professor Robert Winter, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland

Organizer: Post-doctoral researcher Mirja Pulkkinen, University of Jyväskylä

Registrations and more information: http://inforte.jyu.fi/events/ea

 

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Tampere 6–7/11/2013

PROCEDURAL CONTENT GENERATION IN GAMES

Speaker: Associate Professor Julian Togelius, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Organizer: Teaching associate Timo Kellomäki, Tampere University of Technology

Registrations and more information: http://inforte.jyu.fi/events/pcg

 

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Tampere 26–27/11/2013

GAMIFICATION

Speaker: Juho Hamari, University of Tampere

Registrations and more information: http://inforte.jyu.fi/events/gamification

 

See detailed programs http://inforte.jyu.fi/

Courses on transferable skills at University of Turku

http://www.utu.fi/fi/Tutkimus/tutkijakoulu/courses/Sivut/home.aspx

Announcements

Call for applications: EIT ICT Labs Innovation & Entrepreneurship education for PhD students

http://doctoralschool.eitictlabs.eu

Call open until 11 November 2013.

Enrich your doctoral degree with an Innovation and Entrepreneurship skills and mind-set!

After completing the program, participants  will be commercially aware research leaders who understand current and future challenges, as well as the opportunities that these present to industry. To achieve this goal, the program concept provides mobility and standardized I&E education that complements the ordinary doctoral studies.

HOW TO APPLY?

-A web application opened to collect the applications.  

-Required documents listed in the website.

Please visit: http://doctoralschool.eitictlabs.eu/application/

WHO CAN APPLY?

Doctoral students at EIT ICT Labs partner universities. Partner universities in Finland: Aalto University, University of Helsinki, Åbo Academy, University of Turku, University of Oulu.  Students from other universities, please contact doctoral school office: [email protected]

MORE INFORMATION?

-Homepage: http://doctoralschool.eitictlabs.eu

-EIT ICT Labs Doctoral School Office: [email protected]

-Local contacts: Aalto University: [email protected]; University of Oulu: [email protected]; University of Turku and Åbo Academy: Outi Tuohi <[email protected]>; University of Helsinki: Pirjo Moen <[email protected]>

Long-term loans of literature from The Gösta Branders' Research Fund

Every year, a sum of 17 000 euros from The Gösta Branders' Research Fund is available for researchers at Åbo Akademi University, who wish to apply for scientific literature relevant to their research projects.

The books are acquired by the Åbo Akademi University Library and lent to the applicant researcher as long-term loans.

Use the electronic form to submit your application. Log in with your ÅAU username and password. Applications can be submitted from September 20 to October 20, 2013.

For more information, contact Aart Jan de Heer, phone 215 4296, e-mail [email protected].

Call for experts EACEA/2013/1

Call for expressions of interest N° EACEA/2013/01 for the establishment of a list of experts to assist the Education, Audiovisual and Culture executive Agency in the framework of the management of European Union programmes in the field of education, audiovisual, culture, youth, sport, EU aid volunteers, and citizenship or any other programmes delegated to the Agency.

The call for expressions of interest is open for the lifetime of the programmes managed by the Agency, i.e. until 31.12.2020. Experts can register at any time prior to the last three months of validity of the call.

Who can be an expert?

You have a chance of being selected as an expert if you:

What will the assignments involve?

The Agency may need external expertise in the following programme:

Experts' tasks may include:

More infromation: http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/about/call_experts/call_experts_2013_en.php

2014 Technology Days

The 2014 Technology Days will be held in Espoo, Finland on 16 - 18 January 2014. Technology Days bring the natural sciences and technology within reach of the general public.

This time the theme will be Air, one of Aristotle's four elements. The event will consist of around 90 top-notch scientific lectures and technology related workshops and activities for the whole family.

More about the event (in Finnish): http://www.technologyacademy.fi/fi/events/tekniikan-paivat-2012/

Internationalization Seminar 2013

Internationalization Seminar 2013, organized by IB-Hub, TUAS, Team Finland Varsinais-Suomi and Expat, aims to create a connecting point for Southwest Finland SMEs who plan to expand business abroad. Additionally, with diverse target audiences ( guest companies, experience experts, TUAS partners, teachers and students), the seminar creates opportunities to approach diverse business cases, expand network and discover typical business etiquette. The event is organised 23 October 2013, 12-15.30 at Lemminkäisenkatu 30, Turku.

Seminar is free of charge.

Register via http://ib-hub.fi/internationalization-seminar/

If any questions, please contact [email protected]

TUCS GP travel reports

TUCS GP travel report: SAFECOMP 2013 by Yuliya Prokhorova

Full name of the event: The 32nd International Conference on Computer Safety, Reliability and Security (SAFECOMP 2013)

Place and date: Toulouse, France, September 24-27, 2013

Type of event: conference

My article:

The scientific profile of the event: SAFECOMP is a leading conference in the areas of safety, security and reliability of critical computer applications. It provides an opportunity to share the insights and exchange experience on emerging methods, approaches and practical solutions. Major topics of the conference are fault tolerant and resilient hardware and software, architectures, error detection and error recovery mechanisms, distributed and real-time monitoring and control, model-based design and analysis, formal methods, verification and validation, safety and security cases, etc. The conference covers such application domains as railways, automotive, aerospace and avionics, medical devices and healthcare, etc.

Opinion on the best paper and its topic: In my opinion, there were two best presentations. One of them was given by Ewen Denney titled “A Formal Basis for Safety Case Patterns”. The other one was given by Sami Haddadin (one of the invited speakers) titled “It is (almost) all about human safety: a novel paradigm for robot design, control, and planning”.

Number of participants: it was around 165 registered participants during the main conference and affiliated workshops.

Social events: There were three social events during the conference. The first one was the welcome cocktail at the City Hall of Toulouse. The second event was the guided city tour which finished by wine tasting. The last event was the visit to the AIRBUS A380 final assembly chain. Afterwards, it was the banquet at the hotel d'Asezat, which is a Renaissance hotel particulier (palace) of the 16th century.

Touristic impressions: The conference took place at LAAS-CNRS. It is one of the biggest labs of French National Centre for Scientific Research (about 700 pers.). LAAS-CNRS research activities cover various topics including crucial computing, robotics, networks and communications. SAFECOMP 2013 was well organized as a one-stream conference without parallel sessions, allowing easy networking and fruitful discussions. In general, my impression of attending the conference and visiting Toulouse is highly positive. The most remarkable event was the visit of AIRBUS, which I really enjoyed.

TUCS GP travel report: SERENE 2013 by Yuliya Prokhorova

Full name of the event: 5th International Workshop on Software Engineering for Resilient Systems (SERENE 2013)

Place and date: Kiev, Ukraine, October 1-4, 2013

Type of event: autumn school and conference

My article:

The scientific profile of the event: The SERENE workshop provides a forum enabling researchers and practitioners to exchange reports on advances in all areas relevant to the development of methods for assuring resilience of software-intensive systems. In particular, it covers such topics as relations between resilience, dependability and quality attributes; modelling of resilience properties using formal and semi-formal techniques; frameworks, patterns and software architectures for resilience; cloud computing and resilient service provisioning; resilience of software-hardware co-engineering; etc. In addition, the co-allocated autumn school covers different approaches that address resilience in specific domains, namely cloud computing, self-adaptive systems, complex distributed systems, and electric power systems.

Opinion on the best paper and its topic: All the presentations at the workshop were very interesting. However, I would like to point out a couple of the best ones in my opinion. One was an invited talk given by Robin Bloomfield titled “Security Informed Safety: if It's Not Secure, It's Not Safe”. The other one was “The SafeCap Project on Railway Safety Verification and Capacity Simulation” presented by Alexander Romanovsky.

Number of participants: It was about 50 participants in total during the autumn school and the workshop itself.

Social events: There were three social events during the workshop. The first one was the welcome reception. The second one was the banquet at the restaurant with the traditional Ukrainian cuisine accompanied with live folk singing performed by a local band wearing traditional Ukrainian costumes. The last event was the guided excursion around one of the most beautiful cities in Ukraine, its capital - Kiev.

Touristic impressions: The overall program of the workshop consisted of two parts: the 2-day autumn school and the workshop itself. The school took place at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kiev while the workshop was organized in one of the conference rooms of a hotel. This distribution allowed the participants to discover the city of Kiev and to learn about one of the biggest universities in the country. The SERENE workshop was well organized and had a rich as well as interesting social program. I really enjoyed my stay in Kiev and would recommend visiting this beautiful city to my colleagues.

TUCS GP travel report:  AMCIS 2013 by Henri Korvela

Full name of the event: o        19th Americas Conference on Information Systems

Place and date: Chicago, USA, August 15-17, 2013

Type of event: Conference

My article:

The scientific profile of the event: AMCIS is a very broad general IS research conference with a variety of tracks focusing on most IS research topics, with 28 major tracks and dozens of parallel sessions. The theme this year was “Hyperconnected world” with somewhat of a Big Data focus which was the topic of the keynote speech by Jeanne Ross.

Opinion on the best paper and its topic: Attending one of the roundtable discussions where wip papers were presented and discussed in a small group, it’s a very interesting way and is more interesting to all participants compared to poster sessions.

Number of participants: Several hundreds, 345 research papers and 173 wip papers presented.

Social events: Welcome reception on Thursday and a visit to the Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity exhibition at The Art Institute of Chicago

Touristic impressions: Location was very central, an easy walk away from the highlights of Chicago. Museums, shopping, Navy Pier. Although the weather at the time was very hot so I was using the sightseeing tour buses to head out or return as much as possible. Main starting hub for tours was just a 10 min walk away and one of the stops right outside the conference hotel.

TUCS GP travel report: Central European Conference on Cryptology 2013 by Noora Nieminen

Full name of the event: Central European Conference on Cryptology 2013

Place and date: Telč, Czech Republic, June 25-30, 2013

Type of event: Conference

My article:

The scientific profile of the event: The aim of the conference is to bring together researchers in all aspects of cryptology.

Opinion on the best paper and its topic: I think that the most interesting paper was “An Efficient Password Based Blind Signature for Real World Applications” by Sangeetha Jose, Preetha Mathew K and Chandrasekaran Pandu Rangan because it was one of the few papers suggesting fresh, practical cryptographic applications. Moreover the presentation about the results in this paper was probably the best in this conference.

Number of participants: In total there were 44 participants.

Social events: In the first evening, we had a conference dinner at the restaurant in the Masaryk University Centre Telč (the conference place). Next day we had a visit to the Telč Chateu (http://www.zamek-telc.eu/en/)

Touristic impressions: The city of Telč is a small and beautiful city near the border of Czech Republic and Austria. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and that brings tourists from all over the world. During my visit there were not too many tourists, but the day I left was clearly more vivid than the previous days. The central square and the three lakes around the city are worth seeing, in addition to the Telč Chateu.

TUCS GP travel report: EUROMICRO DSD by Sergey Ostroumov

Full name of the event: 16th EUROMICRO Conference on Digital System Design (DSD)

Place and date: Santander, Spain, September 4-6, 2013

Type of event: Conference

My article:

The scientific profile of the event: The conference was dedicated to design of various systems. In particular, the topics covered resilience of systems, application of micro technologies to diverse areas of modern life as well as modeling and verification of these systems.

Opinion on the best paper and its topic: In my opinion, there were three presentations that I would like to mention as the best ones. One of them was given by Rory O’Connor and was entitled “Inside International Standards: A Contributor’s Perspective”. Another one was delivered by Jan Madsen and was devoted to “Biochips: The Integrated Circuit of Biology”. The last one entitled “Resilient Architectures for Energy-Efficiency” was given by Antonio Gonzalez.

Number of participants: about 80 including invited speakers

Social events: There were two social events. One event took place at the City Hall of Santander hosted by the city council. The other one was at the medieval city of Santillana del Mar, where we visited Romanic collegiate church, walked ancient streets and had a fabulous dinner at the local restaurant.

Touristic impressions: The conference was very well organized. All the conference sessions took place at the same hotel. Due to a significant number of participants, the sessions were run in parallel. Nonetheless, the schedule was carefully preserved so that the participants could attend the most interesting presentations from different sessions. The city of Santander was very welcome, clean and peaceful. Unpleasant weather, which drastically changed from sunny and warm to rainy and rather cold, could not destroy a positive overall impression of the conference venue and the place.

Open jobs at University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University

Latest publications at TUCS

Articles in journals (28):

Articles in proceedings (37):

Technical reports (3):