CURRENT C-SURF FELLOWS
Martin Azizyan (2010)
Bio: Martin is from Armenia. His major is CS, specifically distributed systems, P2P applications, etc. He plans to go to graduate school after college, and to pursue an academic career after that.
Project: Phone Scope
The new generation of mobile phones, are being equipped with numerous sensors, including cameras, microphones, accelerometers, health-monitors, etc. The sensory inputs to each phone may be associated to its GPS location, and subsequently superimposed over an Internet map such as Google maps. With 1.6 billion phones in regular use, it might be feasible to zoom into any part of the world map, and perceive events of interest. For example, imagine zooming into Eiffel Tower through the mobile phone camera of some pedestrian in Paris. Imagine estimating the traffic in Manhattan by combining the accelerometer readings from a multitude of mobile phones located in that region. Imagine the ability to query tourists in a specific spot, and receive real-time audio reviews about their ongoing experiences. In other words, imagine a software telescope built on top of billions of mobile phones distributed spatially across the entire planet. This project aims to design such a system, titled PhoneScope. Designing a PhoneScope entails a variety of challenges in wireless networking, operating systems, economics, algorithms, and web development. This project will have a group of students working on the different challenges underlying PhoneScope. The solutions will finally be integrated into a complete system and launched on the Internet.
Advisor: Romit Roy Choudhury
Mentor: Justin Manweiler
Maggie Bashford (2010)
Bio: Maggie was born and raised in nearby Raleigh, NC. She is double majoring in Computer Science and Economics and is excited to be using both subjects in her C-SURF project. When not working on research, she enjoys playing the piccolo in the Duke University Marching Band and cheering on her beloved Blue Devil basketball team.
Project: Computational Issues in Markets, Elections and Game Theory
Research focuses on creating computational tools to increase the efficiency of markets and elections. The goal is to reach (compute) good outcomes using only limited communication about participants' preferences. A related topic is to create software that can behave strategically (for example, getting computers to play games such as poker).
Advisor: Vincent Conitzer
Mentor: Liad Wagman
Sophia Cui (2011)
Bio: Sophia hails from Winston-Salem, NC and is currently pursuing a BA in Computer Science with a minor in German. Her interests include visualization, graphic and motion design, and masticating Wrigley's Big Red.
Project: Visualization of Multi-scale Network Graphs
This research focuses on the design and implementation of a tool to interact with multi-scale network graphs. Many important information sets can be viewed as large, often dynamic networks – from social relationships to protein-gene interactions to internet traffic. We are working on mathematical techniques to build novel multi-scale representations of these networks which can help immensely in exploring the data to reveal relationships and generate new ideas. The goal of this project is to create a tool which allows human interaction with the network at multiple levels of resolution in an intuitive fashion.
Advisor: Rachael Brady
Mentor: Eric Monson
Frederick Ehrsam (2010)
Bio: Fred is a junior from Concord, MA pursuing a BS in Computer Science with a minor in Economics. He has a particular interest in software projects which push application boundaries such as analyzing DNA in his research or moving into new areas such as collaboration or cloud computing. In his free time, Fred likes to play golf, coach basketball, and eat constantly.
Project: Designing Nanoscale Things that Build Themselves
The progression from microtechnology to nanotechnology is important not simply because of the scaling of the physical feature sizes of electrical and computer devices from microns to nanometers but because fundamental physical properties change. These differences may enable new and exciting opportunities in the way we build computers (or design them to build themselves!) Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is an important tool in fabricating precise nanoscale structures. DNA self-assembly is a process that directs molecules to form well-defined structures based on a small set of interactions and rules that govern allowable configurations. This project will investigate aspects of DNA self-assembly and nanoscale electronic systems through a custom combination of (i) computer simulation and modeling, (ii) laboratory experimentation, and/or (iii) hardware design and implementation.
Advisor: Chris Dwyer
Mentor: Constantin Pistol
Matthew Rognlie (2010)
Bio: Matthew is a rising junior from Portland, Oregon, researching voting systems and computational game theory with Professor Vincent Conitzer. He is majoring in mathematics, computer science, and economics, and after college he plans to attend graduate school and pursue a Ph.D. His other interests include politics, sleep, and orange soda.
Project: Computational Issues in Markets, Elections, and Game Theory
Research focuses on creating computational tools to increase the efficiency of markets and elections. The goal is to reach (compute) good outcomes using only limited communication about participants' preferences. A related topic is to create software that can behave strategically (for example, getting computers to play games such as poker).
Advisor: Vincent Conitzer
Mentor: Lirong Xia
Peng Shi (2010)
Project: Computational Issues in Markets, Elections, and Game Theory Research focuses on creating computational tools to increase the efficiency of markets and elections. The goal is to reach (compute) good outcomes using only limited communication about participants' preferences. A related topic is to create software that can behave strategically (for example, getting computers to play games such as poker).
Advisor: Vincent Conitzer
Mentor: Mingyu Guo
David Stecher (2010)
Bio: Dave lives in Portland Oregon when he's not at Duke. He is a computer science major and is specifically interested in recommender systems and algorithms. His plans for after college are open.
Project: Modeling and Analysis of Social Networks
The study of social networks has a long academic history. Analytic techniques initially developed by sociologists, psychologists, and anthropologists have evolved into exploratory techniques, modeling and simulation software, and statistical methods for analyzing networks. The project involves building tools to model and analyze web-based social networks and developing collaborative filtering algorithms to use user activity and network structure to generate explicit or implicit recommendations.
Advisor: Jeffrey Forbes
Mentors: Julian (Mac) Mason and Gavin Taylor