Speakers

Kurt Mehlhorn is Professor of Computer Science at Saarland University and Member of the Scientific Council of ERC. He has also played an important role in the establishment of several research centres for Informatics in Germany. He was the driving force behind the establishment of a Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Germany, the Max Planck Institute for Informatics (MPII). Mehlhorn is managing director of the institute and heads the Department of Algorithms and Complexity. He also initiated the research center for Informatics at Dagstuhl and the European Symposium on Algorithms. He is author to several books and over 250 scientific publications, which include fundamental contributions to Data structures, computational geometry, computer algebra, parallel computing, VLSI design, computational complexity, combinatorial optimization, and graph algorithms. He has been an important figure in the development of algorithm engineering and is one of the developers of LEDA, the Library of Efficient Data types and Algorithms.

ECSS (Short) Talk / The European Research Council

The ERC is still young, it just celebrated its 10th birthday, but already a big success. I review the ERC with an emphasis on funding in Computer Science.

ECSS Talk / The Physarum Computer

The slime mold {Physarum Polycephalum} is apparently able to solve shortest path problems and to construct good Steiner networks. Nakagaki, Yamada, and Toth report about the following experiment: they built a maze, covered it by pieces of Physarum (the slime can be cut into pieces which will reunite if brought into vicinity), and then fed the slime with oatmeal at two locations. After a few hours the slime retracted to a path that follows the shortest path in the maze connecting the food sources. The authors report that they repeated the experiment with different mazes; in all experiments, Physarum retracted to the shortest path. Tero, Kobayashi, and Nakagaki (J.Theoretical Biology, 2007) propose a mathematical model for the behavior of the slime as a coupled system of differential equations and argue extensively that the model is adequate. The slime is modelled as a system of pipes whose diameter varies over time. The model is readily turned into a computer simulation. In these simulations, the network always converges to the shortest source-sink path, i.e., the diameters of the edges on the shortest path converge to one and the diameters on the edges outside the shortest path converge to zero. This holds true for any initial condition. It assumes uniqueness of the shortest path. We prove convergence for all graphs and all initial conditions. We also prove convergence of the discretization.The Physarum dynamics can also be applied to more general problems. Indeed, it can solve any positive linear program. Physarum can apparently do more than computing shortest paths. It can also build beautiful networks.No explanation of how it does it and what these networks optimize is available. The talk is based on joint work with Luca Becchetti, Vincenzo Bonifaci (Rome), Girish Varma(TIFR), Michael Dirnberger (MPI-INF), Ruben Becker (MPI-INF), Andreas Karrenbauer (MPI-INF), Pavel Kolev (MPI-INF), and Tim Mehlhorn.

Michael Kölling is a German computer scientist, best known for the development of the BlueJ and Greenfoot educational development environments and as author of introductory programming textbooks. In 2013 he received the 2013 SIGCSE Award for Outstanding Contribution to Computer Science Education for the development of the Blue programming language and environment. Kölling is the lead designer of Blue, an object-oriented programming language and integrated environment, BlueJ, and Greenfoot. All are educational development environments aimed at teaching and learning of programming. BlueJ and Greenfoot are widely used in many schools and universities. Kölling co-wrote Objects First with Java (5th edition), with David J. Barnes, and wrote "Introduction to Programming with Greenfoot" (2nd edition). At the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group of Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) 2010 conference, held in Milwaukee, WI, his work was referenced as one of the most influential tools in the history of computer science education. This paper described Kölling's work on the Blue programming language, which preceded BlueJ.

ECSS Talk / Computer Science Education – In Defence of Programming

The importance of computer science education, not only in universities, but also at school level, has been increasingly recognised in many countries in the last few years. As part of this, a common theme is the move away from teaching “only” programming to teaching computer science in a broader sense. “Computer Science is more than just programming” is an oft-repeated catchphrase. While this is perfectly true, this sentiment may be in danger of taking us too far in that direction. In this talk, I will discuss why programming should still be at the heart of early computer science teaching, how computer science may be more approachable thorough programming, the pedagogies one might use to approach this, and some examples of how this might be done.I will also discuss computer science teaching in schools more generally: What is needed to deliver excellent computer science teaching in schools, and how might we get there? I may not have answers, but I can point to some problems.

Professor Dame Wendy Hall, DBE, FRS, FREng is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton, UK, and was Dean of the Faculty of Physical Science and Engineering from 2010 to 2014. She was Head of the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) from 2002 to 2007. One of the first computer scientists to undertake serious research in multimedia and hypermedia, she has been at its forefront ever since. The influence of her work has been significant in many areas including digital libraries, the development of the Semantic Web, and the emerging research discipline of Web Science. She is now Executive Director of the Web Science Institute at Southampton. She was President of the ACM from 2008-2010, a member of the UK Prime Minister’s Council for Science and Technology from 2004-2010 and a founding member of the Scientific Council of the European Research Council. She is a member of the Global Commission on Internet Governance and the World Economic Forum’s Global Council on Digital Economy and Society. She holds many fellowships including Fellow of the Royal Society, Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and Fellow of the ACM.

ECSS Talk / Making connections across interdisciplinary boundaries: observatories and data analytics for Web Science

Over the last 25 years the Web has evolved into a critical global infrastructure. Since its emergence in the 1990s, it has exploded into hundreds of billions of pages that touch almost all aspects of modern life. Little appreciated, however, is the fact that the Web is more than the sum of its pages and it is more than its technical protocols. Vast emergent properties have arisen that are transforming society. Web Science is the study of the Web as a socio-technical system. As the Web becomes increasingly significant in all our lives, studying it from an interdisciplinary perspective becomes even more important. We are now rapidly moving into a world of data on and about the Web, which gives rise to even more opportunities and challenges. In this talk, we will explore the role of Web Science in helping us understand the origins of the Web, appreciate its current state and anticipate possible futures in order to address the critical questions that will determine how the Web evolves as a social-technical network. We will discuss the role of observatories and data analytics for the development of new methodologies for longitudinal research across interdisciplinary boundaries in Web Science.

A former teacher in elementary school, Pierre Dillenbourg graduated in educational science (University of Mons, Belgium). He started his research on learning technologies in 1984. He obtained a PhD in computer science from the University of Lancaster (UK), in the domain of artificial intelligence applications for education. He has been assistant professor at the University of Geneva. He joined EPFL in 2002. He is currently full professor in learning technologies in the School of Computer & Communication Sciences, where he is the head of the CHILI Lab: "Computer-Human Interaction for Learning & Instruction ». He is also the academic director of Center for Digital Education, which implements the MOOC strategy of EPFL. EPFL recently passed over 1.5 million MOOC registrations. He wrote a book entitled "Orchestration Graphs" that proposes a formal language for instructional design (EPFL Press). With EPFL colleagues, he recently launched the Swiss EdTech Collider, an incubator with 30+ start-ups in learning technologies.

ECSS Talk / How Computer Science contributes to Education Research ?

For many years, the collaboration between CS and education research has been about the development of new learning technologies. Over the last decade, the rise of learning analytics has broaden this collaboration, but still within the scope of computer-based and online education. However, recently learning analytics methods expanded to non-digital contexts: can we apply machine learning to estimate the level of attention in a classroom with 30 students from a few cameras, can we model the teacher behavior as a Markov chain? In education research, empirical studies have always exploited traditional statistical methods, such as ANOVAs. This naturally evolved towards computational modeling as a legitimate method for educational research. Conversely, education research raises basic challenges to data sciences. Can we tackle the cold start problem by integrating some expert knowledge acquired through former empirical studies? How to cope with the exploration-exploitation dilemma when a datapoint is a human learner ? If the teacher owns the responsibility of any decision, how can she understand how a model has been elaborated (explainable AI) ? The convergence of computational modeling and education research opens opportunities of interest for both sides.

Nuno Correia is a full professor at the Department of Computer Science of the Faculty of Science and Technology of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. He is the coordinator of the Multimodal Systems area of NOVA‐LINCS, integrating a team of 11 researchers and more than 20 doctoral students. His research interests cover several aspects of describing, processing, delivering and presenting multimedia information. He was a researcher at Interval Research, Palo Alto, CA, and a researcher at INESC, Portugal. He participated in several EU funded research projects (currently H2020 Cognitus) and evaluated national and international projects (FP7). He has worked and directed projects on augmented environments, mobile storytelling and multimedia for learning. Current work includes video archives, mobile image processing for games and other applications, multitouch and pen based interfaces for exploring art collections, medieval manuscripts and dance annotation. Nuno Correia supervised 9 doctoral theses and about 40 master theses already completed and currently supervises several doctoral and master dissertations. He is author or co‐author of more than 90 publications in journals, conferences and books. He participated in the organisation and was chair or co‐chair of several international conferences.

ECSS Talk / Interactive Systems in Cultural Heritage and Creative Industries

This talk presents interactive multimedia and multimodal systems used in diverse environments. The systems result from collaborative projects in several areas, including cultural heritage, urban history, and contemporary art and dance. Although the fields of application and contexts of use are diverse, common digital technologies are used. The technologies include new sensors, tangible and augmented interfaces and rely on multimodal information processing. The work is mainly carried out by informatics experts with domain users that help to define requirements, participate in the user experience design and provide an evaluation testbed for algorithms, tools and interfaces.

Marie-Paule Cani is a Professor of Computer Science at Ecole Polytechnique (from May 2017), on leave from Grenoble-INP & Inria. Her research interests cover both Shape Modelling and Computer Animation. She contributed over the years to a number of high level models for shapes and motion such as implicit surfaces, multi-resolution physically-based animation and hybrid representations for real-time natural scenes. Following a long lasting interest for virtual sculpture, she has been recently searching for more efficient ways to create 3D content such as combining sketch-based interfaces with procedural models expressing a priori knowledge. She received the Eurographics outstanding technical contributions award in 2011 and a Silver medal from CNRS in 2012 for this work. She was awarded an ERC advanced grant in 2011 and elected at the Academia Europaea in 2013. Marie-Paule Cani is the Technical Paper Chair of SIGGRAPH 2017. Before that, she served in the program committees of all major conferences in Computer Graphics and was program chair a number of times. She served in the steering committees of SCA, SBIM and SMI, and in the editorial board of Graphical Models, IEEE TVCG, Computer Graphics Forum, and is now associate editor of ACM Transactions of Graphics (TOG). She was an EC member of ACM SIGGRAPH from 2007 to 2011, and she represented Computer Graphics in the ACM Publication Board from 2011 to 2014. In France, she belongs to the executive board of the GDR IG-RV (Informatique Géométrique et Graphique, Réalité Virtuelle et Visualisation) and to the CA of the French chapter of Eurographics. After serving as Vice President of Eurographics from 2013, she became President of Eurographics in 2017.

ECSS Talk / Across disciplines: Towards expressive 3D modeling for visual communication

While the use of digital models and simulation has already spread in many disciplines, recent advances towards "Expressive 3D modelling" in Computer Graphics open the way to seamless interaction of scientists and engineers with their object of study. In this talk, I'll show how this Expressive modeling paradigm - based on the combination of graphical models embedding knowledge with gestural interfaces - can allow the 3D modeling, progressive refinement, animation and visual communication of a variety of models, in areas as different as soft products manufacturing, medicine, plants and ecosystem simulation, or geology.

João Claro is a faculty member in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management of the Faculdade de Engenharia of the Universidade do Porto (FEUP), and holds appointments with INESC TEC, where he is now member of the Board of Directors and heads the Centre for Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship, and with Porto Business School (PBS), where he is member of the Academic Council and heads the area of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. João Claro holds a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) from FEUP (2008), an MSc in Quantitative Methods in Management from PBS (2002), and an undergraduate degree in ECE from FEUP (1993). Prior to returning to the University, he was software engineer and project manager at Edinfor (1994-1998).

ECSS Talk / Carnegie Mellon|Portugal – an international partnership for talent, knowledge, and innovation in ICT

The Carnegie Mellon|Portugal Program is a platform for education, research and innovation that brings together Portuguese universities, research institutions and companies, and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). Its mission is to place Portugal at the forefront of innovation in key focused areas of ICT, by promoting cutting-edge research, world-class graduate education and a close collaboration with the Portuguese industry. The activities of the Program are financed by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), supported by the Council of Rectors of Portuguese Universities (CRUP), and co-financed by industry partners and by CMU. The partnership was launched in 2006, and has since established a collaborative network involving 15 Portuguese universities, represented by CRUP, four Associate Laboratories in the area of ICT and many other research institutions in Portugal, 19 CMU Departments, more than 120 companies, and over 400 faculty and senior researchers in Portugal and at CMU. Its activities are focused on: talent development, through dual degree Professional Master’s and Ph. D. Programs, a Faculty Exchange Program, and an Undergraduate Internship Program; collaborative research, through a portfolio of small exploratory projects, regular research projects, and large Entrepreneurial Research Initiatives, selected in competitive calls, and involving multiple Portuguese universities and research institutions, CMU, and companies; industry partnerships, through multiple forms of engagement, including the advanced education and collaborative research activities; and entrepreneurship support, through inRes, an entrepreneurship-in-residence initiative. This talk will describe the Program’s organization and instruments, its main achievements, and some of the key challenges and lessons learned in its design and implementation.

After obtaining a PhD in Computer Science at the University of Pisa, Roberto Di Cosmo was associate professor for almost a decade at Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, and became a Computer Science full professor at University Paris Diderot in 1999. He is currently on leave at Inria. He has been actively involved in research in theoretical computing, specifically in functional programming, parallel and distributed programming, the semantics of programming languages, type systems, rewriting and linear logic. He focus now on new scientific problems posed by the general adoption of Free Software, with a particular focus on static analysis of large software collections, that were at the core of the european reseach project Mancoosi.Following the evolution of our society under the impact of IT with great interest, he is a long term Free Software advocate, contributing to its adoption since 1998 with the best-seller Hijacking the world, seminars, articles and software. He created the Free Software thematic group of Systematic in October 2007, and since 2010 he is director of IRILL, a research structure dedicated to Free and Open Source Software quality.In 2016, he co-founded and directs Software Heritage, an initiative to build the universal archive of all the source code publicly available.

ECSS Talk / Software Heritage: building an essential facility for the digital age

Software is at the heart of our digital society and embodies a growing part of our scientific, technical and organisational knowledge, to the point that we can say it is now part of our cultural heritage. The Software Heritage project is taking over the mission of ensuring that this precious body of knowledge is properly collected, preserved over time and made available to all. By doing so Software Heritage addresses multiple needs. Societal needs, by preserving our collective technological heritage. Industrial needs, by building the largest and open software knowledge database. Scientific needs, by assembling the largest curated archive for software research, and building the infrastructure for preserving and sharing research software. Today, we are at a turning point: on one side, the founding fathers of computer technology are still around, and willing to contribute their knowledge, but only for a limited time. On the other, we seem to be at increasing risk of massive loss of source code developed by the Free and Open Source community, in particular due to code hosting sites that shut down when their popularity decreases. The ambitious goal of the Software Heritage project is to take action now, and mitigate these risks, by collecting, preserving, and sharing all available software in source code form. Together with its complete development history. Forever. Although still in early development, Software Heritage has already archived more than 3 billion unique source code files and 700 million unique commits, spanning more than 60 million projects from major software development hubs, GNU/Linux distributions, and upstream software collections. The Computer Science community has a unique role to play, tackling the scientific challenges posed by such a novel undertaking, and helping bring together all stakeholders, from individuals to companies, from public to private entities, whose engagement is needed in order to succeed in the long run.

Kashefi holds a personal chair of quantum computing at the school of Informatics, university of Edinburgh and is a CNRS researcher at LIP6,l'université Pierre et Marie Curie. She is the co-founder and patent holder for the fields of secure and verified quantum cloud computing as well as quantum networks (UK QuOxIC and UK QUISCO). She is members of the international institutions and networks (CQIQC - Canada, Li-Fi R&D Centre Edinburgh, Young Academy of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, PCQC - France, QuiSco - UK). She has is the associate director of the EPSRC Networked Quantum Information Technologies Hub in charge of applications to foster the link between the quantum hubs and computer science community. She has been awarded the personal UK EPSRC established career fellowship for her pioneering work on verification of quantum technology.

ECSS Talk / Entrapping Nature

Science is the art of decoding Nature, to develop better theory to be able to simulate and reconstruct it. However, what separates Science from any other activities is the process of verification. Experimental demonstration is the core method for approving a theory or to figure out loopholes in our understanding and to drive research towards the completion of our knowledge. Challenges arise when the required experiments are far beyond our reach due to their practical complexity (String Theory, Quantum Gravity) or to the very complex nature of the theory under investigation (Quantum Theory or Quantum Chemistry). The latter scenario has come to our attention through a computational understanding of these theories. While in most disciplines such as Biology, Economics, Geosciences, we are still figuring out a happy marriage with information processing, in Physics and particularly in Quantum Physics grandchildren are running in the back-garden. We have happily discovered that the computational capacity of the Quantum Theory is far superior to the Classical one. So much so that our classical information processing models and machines cannot attempt to simulate or even sample it. This simple fact has inspired the research community to make spectacular progress in building the "magical" quantum machines, develop applications, design new security platforms and the list goes on and on up until the current state where the verification question is hunting us down. Our grand aim is to settle this key milestone to make the translation from theory to practise possible. Without this final link the glorious power of quantum technology will not be accessible to us.