Stony Brook University Computer Science

SUNY Korea, NY, April, 2015    

Visual Analytics and Imaging Laboratory (VAI Lab) Computer Science Department, Stony Brook University, NY Improving the Fidelity of Contextual Data Layouts Using a Generalized Barycentric Coordinates Framework Shenghui Cheng, Klaus Mueller Abstract: Contextual layouts preserve the context of the data with the associated attributes (variables). However, their linear mapping causes errors in the layout – similar data points and variable nodes may not map to similar regions, and vice versa. In this paper, we first unify the various data layout schemes and choose the Generalized Barycentric Coordinates (GBC) plot as the standard way to describe them. Second, we propose three algorithms – distance spaced layout, iterative error reduction, and force directed adjustment – to reduce the layout error of variables to variables, data to variables and data to data, respectively. We find that the combination of these three algorithms can yield large improvements in the layout error and so achieve a more comprehensive layout. Third, we describe an interface, the GBC Error Explorer, which allows users to explore the error using a variety of visualization schemes combined with some interactions. Teaser: The interface of our system with various facilities linked together. The contectual layout is shown on the right, and a parallel coordinate display shows the raw data on the bottom. The control panel in the center allows users to control the layout's parameters. The two remaiining displays visualize different types of layout errors to inform the parameter settings. Video: Watch it to get a quick overview: https://youtu.be/UdDLfPIsPWw Paper: S. Cheng, K. Mueller, "Improving the Fidelity of Contextual Data Layouts Using a Generalized Barycentric Coordinates Framework,"Proc. Pacific Vis, pp. 295-302, Hangzhou, China, April, 2015. ppt pdf Funding: NSF grant IIS-1117132

  SUNY Korea, October, 2014 SUNY Korea students Darius Coelho, Ayush Kumar and Wonbo Shim attended the Game Jam Netherlands-Korea 2014 held at POSTECH in Pohang. They teamed up with three other POSTECH students to form 'SUNTECH'. Game jams typically tend to have a theme and a time limit, and the theme for this jam was 'Wellness and Sport' and the time limit was 48 hours. This year's Game Jam was unique as it had the participants create 'Applied-Games' (designed for a primary purpose other than pure entertainment) for the first time ever. Also various Korean companies presented their products/needs hoping that the participants would create a game that suits their needs. SUNTECH created an applied game that addressed an issue faced by the Korean company FEMTOFAB and at the same time their game tackled the common problem in Korea of people spending too much time sitting in an office chair. The issue faced by FEMTOFAB was that they have a device called HaPee that can analyze a urine sample and produce a report that is very similar to a blood report, but they needed people to drink water and visit the restroom regularly. SUNTECH's solution was an applied game combined with a notification system and included a social element as well. The notification system would ask users to drink water or go to the restroom at regular intervals of time and users would earn points for performing the activities thereby addressing the issue faced by FEMTOFAB. The users could then use these points to challenge their friends to a maze game. The maze game was kinect based and had the user perform leg and hand motions to move through a maze. Completing the maze faster than your challenger earned you bonus points and failure to attempt a challenge would make you lose points. The gesture based maze games addressed the issue of people spending too much time in a chair. The teams had to demo their game to four judges and make a 7 minute presentation as to what issues the games address and how it address those issues. After 48hr of hard work the judges rewarded SUNTECH's effort with the second place at the Game Jam and an opportunity to continue developing their mini game into a full-fledged game.

  SUNY Korea, NY, February, 2014 Bitcoin is a controversial yet technically interesting currency. Known as crypto-currency, a bitcoin can be computationally mined, where the cost for mining is (at least theoretically) tied to its worth. Bitcoins can be obtained in exchange for regular money, products, and services. Consumers can send and receive bitcoins electronically using a bitcoin wallet on a PC, mobile device, or a web app. Roger Ver, a well-known Bitcoin celebrity, came to visit SUNY Korea on July 7, 2014, and told us all about it. Roger has been a bitcoin enthusiast since its early beginnings and, as an angel investor, has helped quite a few bitcoin startup companies succeed. In his exciting 90 minute talk, he explained many of bitcoin’s concepts and advantages and also told a few lessons on entrepreneurship itself. He then demonstrated to a packed audience of stunned listeners how easy it is to use bitcoins for transferring money across the world and buying products online.

  SUNY Korea, NY, February, 2014 Over 3 months, in the Fall semester 2013, 21 SUNY Korea freshman students passionately prototyped 10 new web and smart phone app technologies that sought to bring people joy rather than frustration. This workshop showcased the fruits of their diligent work. The design projects were done as part of the SUNY Korea Human Computer Interaction (HCI) course (taught by SUNY Korea Computer Science Professor and Department Chair Klaus Mueller who comes to us from Stony Brook University, NY). In 15 minute presentations, each student or student team presented their entire HCI design pipeline – need finding, story boarding, prototyping, skeletal implementation, user testing. The event was kicked off by a wonderful keynote of well-known HCI expert – Prof. Jinwook Seo from Seoul National University. The projects included apps for smart shopping, informed dining, smart laundry scheduling, health management, digital piggy bank, mindmap, travel manager, and a music interface. A jury of 5 SUNY Korea graduate students and professors had a hard time to decide which team would win the first “Hottest New SUNY Korea HCI Talent” Award – an almost 1-to-1 replica of the famous Academy Award also known as OSCAR. After long deliberations, the “Hottest New SUNY Korea HCI Talent 2013” award winners were Youngjin Im and Nursultan Kamchybekov for their digital piggy bank app. Runner-ups were Minsoo Park and Sungkyum Park for their smart shopping app, and third place went to Phit Ahn for her smart laundry app.

Korea University students giving their 10-minite lighting talks on their research at SUNY Korea   SUNY Korea, NY, August 8, 2013 For the past six weeks SUNY Korea hosted 10 Korea University Undergrads to engage into a number of exciting research projects under the guidance of SUNY Korea computer science professors Sael Lee, David Choi, and Klaus Mueller and their PhD students. Additional guidance was provided by Korea University professor Minho Jo who also has a joint appointment with SUNY Korea. The projects spanned a set of diverse research areas. One student, Bohyung Kim, did a project on using crowdsourcing for error correction in automatic language translation. Another student, Kweonsoo Chae, presented his research project “MusiDraw” where users could control the speed of a music piece by the speed of their gestures, using a mouse interface or hand gestures translated by Microsoft Kinect. Essentially, the gamer would feel like a music conductor, controlling an orchestra with the speed and passion of his or her hand gestures. Won Ho Shin and Joo Sung Yoon wrote a dynamic programming application to predict tertiary protein structure. Dong-Hyeon Yeo outlined an interesting approach for improving one time password authentication systems by smartly using GPS information. Hyeokyoon Chang’s project was on Interference minimizing routing with users' priority in cognitive radio network. There were also very interesting projects on visual analytics, cognitive radio, and wireless body area networks. This Friday was show time – who would win one of six airplane seats to visit Stony Brook University, NY for a week. All students gave 10 minute presentations in front of their peers and three academic judges. The fast-paced contest was a firework of impressive research talks of these 10 energetic and aspiring young researchers. The judges sure had a hard time to identify the six winners. But by the time this news item is published the final six are already in the air, on their way to the USA.

         Prof. David Choi               Prof. Sael Lee                 Prof. Ilchul Yoon   SUNY Korea, NY, May 28, 2013 SUNY Korea scored not one, not two, but three MEST New Investigator Awards, for a hit rate of 100%. Please join in to congratulate Profs. Sael Lee, David Choi, and Ilchul Yoon for having accomplished this amazing feat. The feat is amazing because the acceptance rate for these prestigious grants is a mere 20%. And so the likelihood of winning a trifecta of 3/3 is less than 1%. This solid success loudly speaks for the superb quality of our young computer science department. In grant entitled ”Designing a secure and efficient distributed smart grid” Prof. Bong Jun (David) Choi aims to design secure smart grid by enhancing its reliability, stability, and security in distributed settings. In specific, he will investigate fail safe topology and recovery protocols for securing smart grid infrastructure, electric vehicle system for stabilizing and enhancing energy efficiency of the smart grid, and distributed security and privacy mechanisms for microgrids and electric vehicle system. Prof. Sael Lee’s grant “Development of computational methods for reachability-based multi-target detection and applications for adverse drug effects prediction” will develop efficient algorithms for drug-target reachability prediction and apply them in adverse drug reaction predictions. With the developed algorithms, she hopes to introduce possibility in improving the efficacy of the pre-clinical stage of drug development process. Prof. Ilchul Yoon’s research on “Investigating cooperative software testing methods” is going to investigate methods and tools to effectively test compatibility of software components on diverse user environments at reduced cost. He will improve his previous approach to sample test environments (or configurations) from a large set of feasible user configurations, and he also plans to develop a system to support testing activities for communities of developer groups.

  SUNY Korea, May 21, 2013 On Tuesday, George Hart gave a feast for both eyes and brains to an awed crowd of faculty and students. He presented and discussed examples of his amazing mathematically informed sculptures, which generally apply computer technology in their design and/or fabrication. These include works made of metal, wood, plastic, or found objects, and often use laser-cutting, plasma-cutting or 3D-printing technologies in their realization. he also showed a couple of short fabrication videos and discussed the mathematical and computer science aspects of these designs and their underlying foundations. Hart has a PhD from MIT and among many other academic appointments also was a professor at Stony Brook University, He then went on and co-founded MoMath (The Museum of Mathematics) in New York. he is now a freelance mathematical sculptor/designer. For examples of his work, see http://georgehart.com In addition, Hart is one of the organizers of the annual Bridges Conference and he will be announcing that it will be held in Seoul in August 2014. Bridges is the premiere international conference on connections between mathematics and art. Hundreds of artists, mathematicians, scientists, and educators from around the world gather each year to discuss and display mathematical art. Held in various cities and universities each year since 1998, the 2014 Bridges conference will be the first major mathematical art conference in Asia. For more information, see http://bridgesmathart.org