CS Research Overview

Main Strengths

The department has broad expertise in five flagship research areas: the development of theory for useful applications, Software Engineering, Interactive Systems, Computer Systems, and Computer Security.

Technical Reports

Seminar and Colloquium Information

Upcoming Conferences and Workshops at UTEP

    CoProD'09, Nov 9-10, 2009.

    NAFIPS, North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society, May 22-24, 2011.

Recent Conferences and Workshops at UTEP

    6th UTEP/NMSU Workshop, Nov 7, 2009.

    SCAN'08, Sept 29 - Oct 3, 2008.

    Constraint Programming and Decision Making Workshop, Oct 3-4, 2008.

    SIGDOC 2007

Research Labs

• Army High Performance Computing Research Center (AHPCRC), Teller, room 118.
• Center for Information Assurance, Longpre, Freudenthal ...
• CyberShare, Gates, Romero, Geology room 124.
• Dynamic Adaptation in Support of Extreme Scale Lab (DAiSES), Teller, room 316/317.
• Interactive Systems Group (ISG), Novick, Ward, room 109.
• Robust Autonomic Systems Lab, Freudenthal, Longpre, Gonzalez
• Software Engineering Affinity Lab (SEAL), Gates, Roach, Teller, room 106.
• Software Specification and Verification Research Lab, Cheon, room 128.
• Theory Research and Applications across Computer Science (TRACS), Ceberio, Kreinovich, Longpre, room 124/125.
• Trust Group, Pinheiro, room 128.
• Vision and Learning Lab (VLL), Fuentes, room 109D.

Sample Projects

• Dynamically Adaptable Operating Systems
  In extreme scale systems, which consist of hundreds of thousands of nodes, conventional operating systems become a performance bottleneck. Dynamically changing resource usage patterns demand OS dynamic adaptation. We are exploring various adaptations, for example in I/O scheduling, and ways to develop or evolve heuristics to trigger adaptation (DAiSES Homepage). Pat Teller, Barton Miller (University of Wisconsin).
• Peer-to-Peer Systems
  Peer-to-peer systems need to develop structure based on the observed behavior of the nodes they encounter. We are exploring applications of game theory and constraint processing to solve problems of data placement and trust determination. Eric Freudenthal, Martine Ceberio.
• Dialog Systems Usability
  We are working to improve the usability of spoken dialog systems, to enable users to access information over the telephone more easily and quickly, especially by improving the turn-taking to make system responses swifter and more appropriately timed (Interactive Systems Group, Responsive Systems Project). David G. Novick, Nigel Ward, Olac Fuentes, Jon Amastae (Linguistics), Bill Lucker (Psychology).
• The Java Modeling Language
  One way to make software more reliable is to create detailed specifications and check that the implementation in fact meets these specifications. We are developing JML, an extension to Java, which allows automatically checkable, executable specifications to be embedded in the code (UTJML Home Page). Yoonsik Cheon, Gary Leavens (Iowa State University).
• Cassini Science Planning and Analysis
  The Cassini spacecraft lifted off in 1997 and began a four-year mission orbiting Saturn in 2004. During this time, three software products primarily developed and maintained at UTEP have been released to the rings science community. These include the Footprint Viewer, a tool developed to assist in the detailed construction and visualization of observation sequences; this was responsible for identifying previously undiscovered errors in observation sequences. Currently we are extending the CASVU data analysis tool, which was used in 2004 for the Cassini Orbital Insertion Hazard Analysis where data collected during the approach phase of the mission was used to assess the hazard to the spacecraft as it crossed the ring plane. (Cassini-Hugyens Mission, Planetary Rings Node, Cassini Orbital Insertion). Steve Roach.
• Teaching Computational Thinking
  We are developing and investigating the effectiveness of an introductory course in computational thinking titled An Introduction to Computational Systems, also sometimes known as as CS-Zero. This course introduces students to the basics of programming through multimedia, and then uses these programming techniques to examine basic functions that draw lines and curves. At the end of the course students use these same techniques to explore the principles underlying familiar physical processes. Eric Freudenthal and Ann Gates.
• Protein Structure Prediction
  Predicting the structure of proteins in vivo is a challenge because of the vast complexity of the problem. We are exploring algorithms based on flexible constraints and various machine learning methods which have the potential to drastically reduce the amount of computation required. Martine Ceberio, Olac Fuentes.
• Interval Computations
  Reasoning under uncertainty is a pervasive problem in science and engineering. We are applying and extending interval computation techniques to problems in geoinformatics, image processing, hardware timing analysis, finite element methods, reliability assessments, and medical treatment, among other areas (Interval Computation Web Site). Vladik Kreinovich, Martine Ceberio.
• Virus-resistant Computing.
  Virus scanners don't have enough choices: a program is either banned or fully trusted, so systems remain vulnerable to "malware" not yet known to be dangerous. We are exploring the extension of non-discretionary access control techniques to make them suitable for containing damage to un-administered (home) systems. Eric Freudenthal, Luc Longpre.
• Verification of Transformations
  Divergences between formal specifications and the code written to implement them are a major source of errors in complex systems. The use of transformations is one way to automatically derive the implementation from a specification, thus avoiding errors. However, transformations can be difficult to write. Our work focuses on ways to demonstrate that a set of transformation rules do indeed preserve the semantics of a specification. So far we have verified some of the software used in the implementation of the Sandia Secure Processor. This software was implemented using transformations written in HATS, originally developed by Victor Winter. We verified the transformations using the automated theorem prover ACL2. We are now planning to extend this proof system to handle more general transformation rules. (ACL2). Steve Roach.
• Geoinformatics and Image Processing
  We are pioneering the new face of cyber-infrastructure by providing access to a diverse collection of large-scale resources and software tools to support various kinds of geological analysis and research (Geon Project Homepage). Ann Quiroz Gates, Randy Keller (Geology).
• Unification of Verification and Validation Methods
  We are developing a unified and comprehensive approach to the verification and validation (V&V) of software systems, integrating V&V of both functional and non-functional properties. This project is aiming to engender a major enhancement in software quality, by enabling an approach where properties can be verified by static analysis, testing, or model checking or be compiled to runtime monitors as appropriate or required (Milaap Homepage). Yoonsik Cheon, Pat Teller, James Browne (UT-Austin), Calvin Lin (UT-Austin).
• Software Engineering Projects
  We are pioneering the new face of cyber-infrastructure to foster interdisciplinary research, education, and professional collaborations in science through access to a diverse collection of large-scale resources and software tools. Our research focuses on service-oriented architecture (SOA) technologies that support the publication, discovery, and usage of resources over a grid, with an emphasis on formal methods for checking correctness of data and web services, provenance (metadata about information origin) languages, tools and methods in support of trust and accuracy for results from cyber-infrastructure-based applications and services. The provenance infrastructure is based on Inference Web Web technologies. We are collaborating and applying this work to a number of projects including the Geoscience Network (GEON Project Homepage) and the Circumarctic Environmental Observatories Network (www.ceoninfo.org). Software Engineering Affinity Laboratory (SEAL). Ann Quiroz Gates, Vladik Kreinovich, Paulo Pinheiro da Silva, Steve Roach.
• Quantifying Privacy
  We are developing rational policies for the release of information from databases requires good models of privacy. We are developing methods for ascribing privacy values to individual pieces of data and for computing the value of a collection of pieces of data. Luc Longpre.
• Peer-to-Peer Protocols
  We are developing algorithms and protocols for the scalable and timely dissemination of authorization information suitable for untrusted peer-to-peer systems: (Fern Project). Eric Freudenthal, Luc Longpre.

... and many more, many listed on individual faculty pages.

An Invitation: The faculty and students involved in each project typically have weekly meetings, which have not only project-related activities but also presentations and discussions of papers and systems. If you're interested in participating, contact a faculty member for details.

There are also many smaller research projects. Several have arisen from interdisciplinary collaboration; others reflect student initiative, such as work in universal access, in computer science education, and in computer-mediated communication.

Support

These and other projects have received support from the NSF, DARPA, DoE, USCGS, ARL, NASA, and IBM, among others. Past large grants include MII and PACES.