The people I met last year ranged from successful entrepreneurs to those just climbing the corporate ladder to those who were in more of a management position in the company. Talking with the people can also be an important connection that could help you find a job more easily when you finish at Guelph as well! The night runs from 6:30 until 8:30 pm. Here is a Facebook event you can check out for more information: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/event.php?eid=113507310606

On December 2nd and 4th 2008, Research Day for the Computer Science Department at the University of Guelph is taking place. Research Day is a day where many of the graduate and some undergraduate students present research projects in various stages. For the graduate students the projects consist of initial results and proposals for thesis documents while the undergrads present results from their research projects.

I am scheduled so far to present on December 4th at 12:30 – 12:50 pm. Update: I am now scheduled to talk December 8th at 10:00 am – 10:20 am (see below). The topic for my talk is not yet finalized however it will likely be something in the area of fair scheduling in wireless mesh networks with multiple gateways. I will report on my progress thus far in my M.Sc. and give a proposal for my remaining work in the next few months. The plan is to have the first draft of my thesis complete by February, the final draft by March and defend by the end of April.

Check back later for another post with the presentation slides and possibly some pictures from research day at Guelph.

Update: My advisor, Dr. Denko is away at a conference in New Orleans so my talk has been pushed back a couple of days. It will be on December 8th at 10:00 am if you happen to be in Guelph and would like to come and watch me give my talk . Also if you are interested my presentation slides are available at my academic website: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~jernst/research.shtml. Look for the slides on preliminary results. These are also the results I have submitted to the AINA 2009 conference.

Today I completed the listing page for all of the presentations our research group PerWin at the University of Guelph has made in the last year or so. PerWin stands for Pervasive Computing and Wireless Networking Research. The group is directed by my advisor, Dr. Mieso Denko and has several graduate students who are active research members in the group. We have given presentations on topics ranging from Wireless Mesh Networks protocols, Autonomous networks, Fair Scheduling, Load Balancing, RFID, Wireless Security and much more. We have also had special invited talks by several faculty members from various Universities around Ontario (Ryerson, UOIT).

Reynolds Building @ University of Guelph where PerWin meets regularly

Check out the schedule page here for the list of presentations, presenters and topics. There are also listings of many of the websites for the presenters which may be a good resource for people interested in our work. If you are a faculty member interested in giving a talk contact Dr. Mieso Denko at the University of Guelph.

If you are interested in any of the talks I have given, all of the powerpoint presentations are available at my Academic Website at the University of Guelph.

Not exactly related to computer science, but I thought it would be a helpful post anyways to anyone who might be an Ontario student reading this blog…

I just found out today from Guelph that full-time Ontario College and University students can apply for a textbook / technology grant worth a $100. It may not sound like much but free money is free money and the application takes all of 10 seconds online. That sounds like a pretty sweet hourly rate to me (plus I’m a broke college student myself). Here’s the link if anyone is interested: https://osap.gov.on.ca/eng/eng_osap_main.html. Just click login and look for TTG. According to the FAQ it doesn’t require any proof of financial need or any proof you’ve actually spent the money on textbooks so it’s pretty much no strings attached. For more information about it visit this link: https://osap.gov.on.ca/eng/not_secure/plan_grants_full_sepapp_ttg_12345.htm

Additionally, OGS and NSERC application deadlines are coming up so don’t forget to apply if you are a grad student (or don’t, less competition for me haha)

http://www.fields.utoronto.ca/audio/07-08/crm-fields-pims/borodin/

His lecture was quite interesting and there was a really good turnout, the room was packed. The talk was entitled: Understanding Simple Algorithms: Towards a More Systemic Study of Algorithms. One funny portion of the lecture is where he compares the idea of an algorithm to the definition of profanity by the United States courts. Of course while I listened I tried to figure out ways in which I could use the ideas in his talk in my own research.

The part of the lecture that stood out to me in this respect were the multiple pass algorithms. Perhaps this approach could be used in Wireless Mesh Networks research for making routing decisions. I’m quite sure whether this approach would be fast enough to make quick routing decisions but it could be worth a try when I manage to get some time. He mentions that this approach may be used in scheduling which is partially what I’m interested in right now since I’m working with fair scheduling and load balancing in Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs).

In general the talk gave a good background on algorithms and in particular greedy algorithms. Allan mentions how its very difficult for us to even define what a greedy algorithm is. In one situation a greedy algorithm can be very different than another situation. He talks about how you can look at what we can’t do with algorithms to figure out what we can do with them. Furthermore, in some situations we can’t even tell what we can and cannot do. Allan then went on to give alternative approaches to solving common problems such as dynamic programming, multi-pass algorithms etc.

The main point of the lecture was a framework that he proposes that uses an adversarial game to evaluate the algorithm. The framework allows us to evaluate an algorithm without having to worry about the P-NP complete problem. I guess the best way to figure out what it is about is to listen to Dr. Borodin himself via the link provided in the first bit of this.