Spatiotemporal Data Mining and Analytics:
Issues, Methods, and Applications

Shen-Shyang Ho, Nanyang Technological University

12:00pm Thursday, 3 March 2016, ITE325b, UMBC

The extensive and ubiquitous uses of sensors (e.g., satellites, in-situ sensors) and smartphones have resulted in the collection of huge amount of time-stamped data with location information. These large-scale dynamic datasets present many research challenges and application opportunities. In this talk, I describe my research work on spatiotemporal tasks related to (1) application-specific pattern mining, (2) prediction methods, (3) similarity search, and (4) privacy issue. Moreover, I highlight my new research direction in array-based distributed database for spatiotemporal domains.

Shen-Shyang Ho is a tenure-track assistant professor in the School of Computer Engineering at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore since January 2012. Before this, he was a researcher at the University of Maryland, College Park from 2010 to 2011. He was a postdoctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology from 2009 to 2010 and a NASA postdoctoral fellow at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) from 2007 to 2009. Shen-Shyang received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from George Mason University in 2007 and his Bachelor (Honors) in Science (Mathematics and Computational Science) from the National University of Singapore in 1999. His research was supported by NASA, JPL, and GSFC between 2007 and 2012. His current research is supported by the Ministry of Education (Singapore), National Research Foundation (Singapore), Rolls Royce (UK), and BMW (Germany). He has two US patents and one pending Germany patent. He has given technical tutorials at AAAI (2011), IJCNN (2011), and ECML (2014).

Host: Cynthia Matuszek

Learning models of language, action and perception
for human-robot collaboration

Dr. Stefanie Tellex
Department of Computer Science, Brown University

4:00pm Monday, 7 March 2016, ITE325b

Robots can act as a force multiplier for people, whether a robot assisting an astronaut with a repair on the International Space station, a UAV taking flight over our cities, or an autonomous vehicle driving through our streets.  To achieve complex tasks, it is essential for robots to move beyond merely interacting with people and toward collaboration, so that one person can easily and flexibly work with many autonomous robots.  The aim of my research program is to create autonomous robots that collaborate with people to meet their needs by learning decision-theoretic models for communication, action, and perception.  Communication for collaboration requires models of language that map between sentences and aspects of the external world. My work enables a robot to learn compositional models for word meanings that allow a robot to explicitly reason and communicate about its own uncertainty, increasing the speed and accuracy of human-robot communication.  Action for collaboration requires models that match how people think and talk, because people communicate about all aspects of a robot’s behavior, from low-level motion preferences (e.g., “Please fly up a few feet”) to high-level requests (e.g., “Please inspect the building”).  I am creating new methods for learning how to plan in very large, uncertain state-action spaces by using hierarchical abstraction.  Perception for collaboration requires the robot to detect, localize, and manipulate the objects in its environment that are most important to its human collaborator.  I am creating new methods for autonomously acquiring perceptual models in situ so the robot can perceive the objects most relevant to the human’s goals. My unified decision-theoretic framework supports data-driven training and robust, feedback-driven human-robot collaboration.

Stefanie Tellex is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Assistant Professor of Engineering at Brown University.  Her group, the Humans To Robots Lab, creates robots that seamlessly collaborate with people to meet their needs using language, gesture, and probabilistic inference, aiming to empower every person with a collaborative robot.  She completed her Ph.D. at the MIT Media Lab in 2010, where she developed models for the meanings of spatial prepositions and motion verbs.  Her postdoctoral work at MIT CSAIL focused on creating robots that understand natural language.  She has published at SIGIR, HRI, RSS, AAAI, IROS, ICAPs and ICMI, winning Best Student Paper at SIGIR and ICMI, Best Paper at RSS, and an award from the CCC Blue Sky Ideas Initiative.  Her awards include being named one of IEEE Spectrum’s AI’s 10 to Watch in 2013, the Richard B. Salomon Faculty Research Award at Brown University, a DARPA Young Faculty Award in 2015, and a 2016 Sloan Research Fellowship.  Her work has been featured in the press on National Public Radio and MIT Technology Review; she was named one of Wired UK’s Women Who Changed Science In 2015 and listed as one of MIT Technology Review’s Ten Breakthrough Technologies in 2016.

Students,

In the Career Center, we use UMBCworks, powered by Symplicity. To build student feedback into their software development process, Symplicity is seeking creative individuals who are passionate about innovation, from schools who use Symplicity products, to apply for their Student Advisory Group. The group will be comprised of 20+ students from institutions all over the world.

As advisors to the company, students will be asked to participate in six virtual meetings each year (only a laptop and an internet connection is required), and will be compensated with a $25 Amazon gift card for each meeting attended.

It is a great way to provide input on a product used by our institution, help build an awesome student user experience for all students, and interact with peers from all over the world.

To apply: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/student_advisory

The application deadline is March 20th.

We appreciate your participation!

Apply for the Northrop Grumman Global Externship Program

Are you an international college student studying a STEM field in the United States who wants to accelerate their future career? Do you want to build your technical skills and English communication skills? Do you want to gain hands-on experience involving a key technology or research project? Do you want to enhance your career marketability on a global scale?

The Northrop Grumman Global Externship Program offers you exactly that: it puts you on track to get started on a career that takes you places.

Learn more

Apply today

Deadline to Apply:  March 18th

Start your online application here: http://bit.ly/ApplyTFA

Right now, fewer than 10% of students from low-income communities graduate from college. All children in this country deserve an education that gives them the opportunity to realize their fullest potential. Teach For America (TFA) seeks passionate, social justice-driven seniors and graduate students from all majors and backgrounds.

Apply by March 4th (job offers go out April 25) for the Teach For America corps member position, a two year teaching commitment (ranging from pre-K to 12th grade) in one of 52 low-income communities across the country. You’ll earn a full salary (up to $51,000/year) and benefits, state teaching certification, and an optional Master’s degree. Beyond the two years, our alumni are change agents, inside and outside of schools, tackling issues in education, law, medicine and beyond.

 Who We Look For | Where & What You’ll Teach | Training & Support| How to Apply | Alumni Profiles