This research focuses on how society uses, values, and protects citizens? personal information. From the perspective of system design, software engineers need methods and tools to enable them to design systems that reflect those values and protect personal information, accordingly. This research examines how privacy considerations and value systems influence the design, deployment and consequences of IT. The goal is to develop concepts, tools and techniques that help IT professionals and policy makers bring policies and system requirements into better alignment. An action-oriented set of conceptual tools, including guidelines and privacy- relevant policy templates will be constructed and validated.

This proposal focuses on efforts to integrate core research and educational objectives. The research addresses important issues in the discovery, elaboration and management of system use scenarios for the specification of software requirements. The ultimate goal is to develop viable solutions for supporting the early stages of the software lifecycle by ensuring requirements coverage.

The objective of this research is to compare and contrast two object-oriented software development approaches software approaches via elaboration and software development via translation. Our investigations will compare the pros and cons of these methods and all findings will be demonstrated through non-trivial examples involving telephony features and services. Additionally, we expect to be able to show how the adoption of certain tools and approaches can lead to more rapid prototyping and automatic code generation

This research focuses on how society uses, values, and protects citizens' personal information. From the perspective of system design, software engineers need methods and tools to enable them to design systems that reflect those values and protect personal information, accordingly. This research examines how privacy considerations and value systems influence the design, deployment and consequences of IT. The goal is to develop concepts, tools and techniques that help IT professionals and policy makers bring policies and system requirements into better alignment. An action-oriented set of conceptual tools, including guidelines and privacy-relevant policy templates will be constructed and validated.

The goal of the project is to develop a rendering program that will produce computer generated images of a three dimensional human model to illustrate the effects of ultraviolet radiation on the human anatomy. This model will determine exposure by using a ray-tracing algorithm integrated with a geodesic sun-tracking calculation and a broadbank radiative transfer equation. A three dimensional representation of the human form will illustrate the results. This program will produce images to be used to build an Internet web site for dissemination of real-time surface solar radiation measurements

This project will investigate methods for navigating complex information spaces. Work will focus on a system designed to help viewers visualize, explore, and analyze large, multidimensional datasets. Detailed local displays will be combined with a high-level global overview of areas of interest within a dataset. Local views will use perceptual cues to harness the low-level human visual system. Global overviews will identify and cluster elements of interest to produce an underlying graph that: (1) support efficient navigation via graph traversal, and (2) provide an effective visualization of the areas of interest and their relationships to one another.

This project will address three issues: (1) can we harness and apply low-level human perception to the problem of visualizing large, complex, multidimensional datasets? (2) can we embed this knowledge in an AI-based system that will assist viewers in constructing perceptually-optimal visualizations in a general way to address a wide range of problem environments? (3) can results from perception be bound to stylistic properties in Impressionist painting, thereby creating a system that allows a viewer to "paint" an expressive visual representation of their data, while at the same time ensuring the result accurately portrays the underlying data values being displayed?

This project studies methods for interactive exploration of complex data spaces through the combination of textual and graphical discourse engines, a plan recognition system, and an interaction manager. Users begin by asking questions about their data. The system responds using text and graphics. Text responses are built by a discourse engine; graphical images are constructed using a perceptual visualization assistant. Plan recognition algorithms analyze queries and users' reactions to the responses they receive. This allows the system to anticipate future queries, cache relevant statistics, and guide the discourse and visualization systems during evaluation of new user queries.

The project will explore semantic theories of systems that have both non-determinism and probabilistic choice. In particular, notions of equality and approximate equality of system behaviors will be investigated. Furthermore, the effect of these notions on compositional reasoning will also be studied. The second topic of the investigation will be a thorough comparison of the semantic theories developed in this project against traditional approaches to dealing with non-determinism and probabilistic choice. Finally, practical algorithms for process minimization and for checking equality (and approximate equality) of processes will be designed and implemented in the Concurrency Workbench of New Century.

The Triangle Computer Science Distinguished Lecturer Series was started in 1995 based on a grant from ARO and is jointly administered by the Computer Science departments at Duke University, North Carolina State University and UNC Chapel Hill. The original motivation for the lecture series was to educate and inform the students at the three universities and local computer professionals about exciting new research being conducted across all areas of computer science. In the second phase of the series (during the years 1998-2001) we propose to continue with the momentum in building a truly superb educational experience for our students and faculty, and to computer professionals in the Triangle area.

Concurrent systems are difficult to build and debug. Those that have to contend with unreliable components are even harder to work with. We propose to investigate how formal methods can be used to address both logical correctness and reliability/performance constraints of concurrent systems. To that end, we propose to investigate: (a) Design languages for complex systems that contain non-deterministic and probabilistic behavior, (b) Design of a temporal-logic based requirements language and design of model-checking algorithms, and (c) Implementation of probabilistic model-checking in Concurrency Workbench.

It is by now a well accepted fact that checking designs for errors early in the software development cycle could lead to early identifcation of errors, and their correction. However, once designs have been verified there is no guarentee that software implementations implement what has been designed. In this project, we have been investigating how abstract interpretation techniques (developed in the context of compilers) can be used to abstract programs and how the ensuing abstractions can be checked against designs. The technical questions we have been dealing with are: (a) how reasonable approximations can be derived from distributed programs, and (b) what approximation techniques guarentee that results about abstractions hold of original programs.

The Center for Advanced Computing and Communication (CACC) is a membership-based industry/university cooperative research center co-located at North Carolina State University and Duke University. North Carolina State University was selected by the National Science Foundation in 1981 as a site for an industry/university cooperative research center in communications and signal processing. The center was named the Center for Communications and Signal Processing until 1994 when a second center site at Duke University was added. The CACC research goal is to create concepts, methods and tools for use in the analysis, design and implementation of advanced computer and communication systems.

It provides support for a graduate student for one year and the project will study whether and how information gathered by a to improve the detection accuracy. The main tasks of the project include network management system can be utilized by an intrusion detection system developing algorithms for anomaly detection and early sensing of intrusions.

This project proposes a novel system for rapid development and deployment of effective and cost-sensitive IDSs. Our system automates feature construction by analyzing the patterns of normal and intrusion activities computed from audit data. Detection models are constructed automatically using cost-sensitive machine learning algorithms to achieve optimal performance on the given cost metrics. Our system finds the cluster of attack signatures and normal profiles and constructs one light model for each cluster to maximize the utility of each model. A dynamically configurable group of such light models can be very effective and efficient, and resilient to IDS-related attacks

This project has three major thrusts: (1) developing a computational model of real-time multimedia explanation planning that can be employed to construct pedagogical customized, multimedia explanation plans, (2) developing a computational model of animated pedagogical agents that actively participate in a multimedia explanation, and (3) conducting formal empirical evaluations of the pedagogical effectiveness of the model of explanation generation.

Constructivist learning environments facilitate discovery-based learning through creative problem-solving experiences. The twin objectives of this work is to create a framework for animated pedagogical agents, and (2) provide a comprehensive account of the cognitive processes of students interacting with animated pedagogical agents in constructivist learning environments.

Given the centrality of explanation in science, one of the most intriguing forms of intelligent multimedia learning environments revolves around explanation. Self-explaining learning environments will enable learners to pose questions to objects and processes in 3D worlds that can dynamically generate clear cinematic and narrative explanations of their own structure, function, and causality.

The research will employ the VisionDome® maintained at the School of Design, NC State University, to simulate emergency landing fields with various amounts of structure around the periphery. Participants will be seated within a structural mockup of a typical single-engine airplane cockpit and be randomly presented with a series of trials and different landings. Participants will be asked to indicate their expected touchdown point at times during each approach and their perceived bank angle. Analyses of the passive-observer trials will be used to guide further investigation that will enable later attention/effort directed toward conditions most likely to lead to significant judgmental errors.

We will study the concept of Compartment in a networking system to handle different types of network infrastructure attacks. We particularly will develop a compartment-based network system to protect BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) routing protocol. Furthermore, we will combine Compartments with the Deciduous model to more effectively identify the intrusion sources.

The quality of service (QoS) of an application is determined by the amount of resources it receives. We are developing a method of resource allocation which is dynamic, distributed, and which considers the relative importance or priority of different applications. This method is based on competitive pricing of resources. It has been applied to congestion control, server access, and bandwidth allocation in broadcast networks. We propose to extend our theory to support reserved resources. We will investigate economic decisions about which resource provider to choose, and when to expand the resource capacity.

The next generation Internet will have mechanisms for providing Quality of Service (QoS). The standard mechanisms do not address the issues of security, or prevention of misuse. In this project, we address three new vulnerability questions with regard to QoS: (1) how to prevent "killer reservation" denial-of-service (DoS) attacks; (2) how to detect and respond to DoS attacks that are directed at the data flow; (3) how to reduce the vulnerability of resource reservation and allocation mechanisms. Our objective is to improve the survivability of the QoS mechanisms.

We propose to study a new class of error recovery techniques that focuses on eliminating error propagation. The approach is to isolate errors when they occur by preventing them from propagating. The delays in repairing data losses affect only the duration of error propagation. Our Recovery from Error Spread using Continuous Updates (RESCU) does not introduce any delay in video playout, and has potential to achieve good error resilience. Our proposed techniques, in contrast, have potential to work well with or without feedback channels, and to be scalable for multicast. Encouraging preliminary results indicate that such potential is highly realizable.

As the Internet becomes more diversified in its capabilities, it becomes more feasible to offer services that were not possible under earlier generations of Internet technologies. Realtime multimedia streaming and IP multicast are two such emerging technologies. The objective of this proposed work is to develop, verify analytically and experimentally, and implement a suite of end-to-end flow control protocols for unicast and multicast real-time streaming applications. The developed protocols are evaluated based on fairness, TCP friendliness, stability and scalability. These properties must hold regardless of the types of networks, or more specifically whether networks are symmetric or asymmetric in bandwidth and delays.

This proposal is a follow up on the previous CACC projects and the following issues have not been adequately addressed: (1) Unicast: we need to evaluate its performance under more realistic Internet environments, in particular, under a large number of on and off traffic flows. (2) Multicast: we plan to develop flow control for receiver-driven layered multicast (RLM). RLM ensures scalability and inter-receiver fairness by allowing receivers to determine their own receiving rates independently. (3) For multicast data transmission that is not amenable to layering, we plan to develop flow control techniques for sender-driven single rate multicast (SSRM).

The research focuses on programming-language support for the behavioral characterization of observable components in terms of logical finite-state machines. The objective is to develop practical language mechanisms, rigorous formal foundations, and efficient implementation techniques to support observable components and to exploit the enforceable state machines to improve the safety of component reuse. An essential technology in developing and using these components is a notion of safe substitutability that would account for the state machine and its implied two-way protocols. The research plan includes formal foundations for safe substitutability of components, and robust, efficient implementation technology in sequential and concurrent contexts.

The career development plan outlined in this proposal focuses on the integration of the research and teaching objectives of the principal investigator. The research project addresses a number of important issues in the design and interconnection of optical networks. The ultimate goal of the proposed work is to develop viable solutions for a seamless nationwide all-optical network infrastructure. The educational component includes development of graduate-level courses on all-optical networking and on internetwork architectures and protocols, integration of topics on lightwave technology in existing graduate and undergraduate introductory network courses, and active involvement of undergraduate students in network projects.

The proposed research will develop a regional optical testbed network carrying IP traffic between MCNC, UNC, NCSU, and Duke. The testbed architecture will consist of interconnected access networks. The access networks and the interconnecting network will utilize an optical single-hop architecture. Network elements consist of access nodes interconnected to a passive coupler to form a broadcast star topology. Access node implementations will utilize an extended version of the HiPer-1 optical Media Access Control protocol developed and analyzed at NCSU.

Researchers will develop and demonstrate technologies to support multicasting for Just in Time signaling protocols for optical burst switching networks. We assume that WDM swithces support multicasting at the optical layer. In other words, the switches have the ability to (1) optically split a signal arriving on any wavelength at an input port to create two or more identical copies of the signal, (2) independently switch each copy of the signal to a different output port, (3) amplify each copy of the signal to prevent degradation, and (4) (possibly) convert each copy of the signal to a different wavelength for transmission out of the switch.

Wavelength routed wide area networks will be an integral part of the future all-optical network infrastructure. It is envisioned that these networks will act as the backbone that provides the interconnection for local area lightwave sub-networks attached to them.. However, the deployment of an infrastructure that will enable large scale interconnection of optical networks raises a number of fundamental and challenging problems that require novel and innovative solutions. The research plan outlined in this proposal identifies a number of significant but open problems arising in wavelength routed environments, and presents a comprehensive and novel approach to address them.

The research is a continuing investigation of fundamental questions involving the structure and size of combinatorial families and various methods for counting and generating them. The algorithmic component of the research concerns the design of fast methods for exhaustive generation of combinatorial families as well as schemes for listing the members according to special criteria which are dictated by applications in which they arise. The mathematical component investigates open questions about classical combinatorial structures such as integer partitions, compositions, and the Boolean lattice. The interaction between the two components is significant: the algorithms are applied to study the mathematical questions; the mathematical insights lead to more efficient algorithms.

The proposed research is an investigation of fundamental questions involving the structure and size of combinatorial families and various methods for counting and generating them. Efficient algorithms and combinatorial structure go hand in hand. Insight into structure leads to more efficient algorithms which, in turn, allow a larger view of families whose size can grow exponentially.

Successful interaction relies heavily upon trust. This applies equally to electronic commerce and virtual social communities. However, figuring out who to trust and to what extent is extremely difficult in open networked information environments. Trust is a complex concept and involves aspects of competence and good nature (of the trusted party) and the risk tolerance and urgency (of the trusting party). This project studies distributed, scalable computational approaches for trust management, especially with regard to aggregate phenomena such as the emergence of subcommunities, pivots (which link different subcommunities), and the sensitivity of a community to invasion by nontrustworthy players.

The rapid and unprecedented expansion of the networking infrastructure available bandwidth is pushing the decentralization of control across the various layers of distributed computing architectures. There is more intelligence at the fringes of the network than ever before; there is also greater intelligence sprinkled throughout the network. This research project will study the ramifications of this paradigm shift in networking and telecommunications. A specific problem being studied is adaptive packet routing.

The key objective of this research project is to uncover principles that underlie the specification and verification of intelligent cooperative information systems (CISs). The proposed research project will address this challenge in the context of two major categories of applications: information search and enterprise integration. It will innovate search plan models, develop exemplar such models and define generic techniques to specify and schedule them. It will also innovate workflow coordination models, including representations for resource semantics and workflows, and develop techniques to enact coordinated workflows so that interrsource constraints are met. This project will implement design tools that incorporate the above theoretical advances.

Knowledge management is a major challenge facing users worldwide, especially within enterprises of all sizes. This project develops an approach based on multiagent systems that will enable users to find the most relevant sources of knowledge within their enterprise.

This research focuses on the concept of Ibots, interface agents that interact with software applications through the graphical user interface, in essentially the same way that human users do. The proposal will produce an environment for agent exploration and evaluation, and a model of tool use in the interface. The project will produce tools that facilitate research in A1 planning, user interface agents, and cognitive modeling. It will also give results of general interest to the agents community.

This project examines mixed-initiative planning issues in an interactive simulation of abstract physical agents. Agents generally behave in a goal-directed manner: they plan their movements, exert force on one another, cooperate in their interactions. Various scenarios establish overall goals for teams of agents, such as the destruction or containment of opposing teams, the occupation of territory, or the capture of specific targets. The problem is integrating the user's activities with those of automated planning tools, treating the whole as a joint cognitive system. Our approach relies on novel AI planning techniques and their application through a physical schema theory.

Providing cognitive models with access to human/robot interfaces can help explore the design space, provide a way to support the user, and support the development of an engineering-style iterative approach to interface design based on automatic evaluation. The most important new features we can identify are the ability to work with existing interfaces, the role of interaction, and the ability to include user models that learn. We propose to explore each of these areas, by combining ongoing work in interface design, cognitive models, and interface agents.

The theory and application of Markov chain techniques constitute a unifying theme in the application of mathematics to many problems in engineering, economics, physical science, and social science, and the numerical computation of stationary probabilities associated with large scale applications is a fundamental concern. This is particularly true in applications such as the modeling of flexible manufacturing systems, telecommunication systems, computer performance evaluation, biological systems, economic modeling and forecasting, and more generally, in applications where discrete models are used to understand and analyze the dynamics of large systems comprised of a collection of loosely coupled subsystems. This project emphasizes both the practical and theoretical aspects surrounding the application and implementation of algorithms for computing stationary probabilities.

Due to the popularity of object-oriented technology and network applications, the use of concurrent object-oriented programs is increasing significantly. The goal of the project is to develop efficient and effective techniques for analyzing and testing concurrent object-oriented programs. This project will investigate the following problems: (a) How to efficiently and effectively analyze and test a class that defines data to be shared by multiple processes? (b) How to efficiently and effectively analyze and test a set of classes that define processes communicating with each other? (c) How to perform incremental analysis and testing of a concurrent object-oriented program according to the relationships between classes in the program?

NCSU graduate student will develop a machine learning approach to linking extreme atmospheric ridging events with extreme surface temperatures, employing a Gaussian Process (GP)-based predictive analysis tool that leverages the predictive value of spatial and temporal correlations and builds on ORNL’s past success in spatial classification, temporal change prediction, and parallelizing GP for large spatiotemporal extents.

Scientific Data Management Center is a SciDAC funded center with a goal to establish an Enabling Technology Center that will provide a coordinated framework for the unification, development, deployment, and reuse of scientific data management software, including scientific workflow technologies, specifically through SDM?s Scientific Process Automation (SPA) focus area. The goal of this technology is to allow for easy and accurate interactions and flows among distributed computational, storage and application resources used in scientific discovery.

The principle goals of this project are to develop an advanced but affordable network-centric collaborative educational paradigm and environment which will increase the effectiveness of the undergraduate and graduate learning experience by facilitating and promoting rapid integration of research results into undergraduate and graduate courses and curricula. The paradigm operates in the context of an efficient state-of-the-art network-based engine that supports advanced virtual laboratory spaces, and collaborative content capture, development and delivery mechanisms. It is also very much an "appliance" along the lines white-boards and overhead projectors are.

The purpose of the Girls on Track (GoT) project is to increase Middle Grade Girls' interest in math-related careers by engaging them in computer-based mathematical explorations of urban problems in their communities. It is a joint project between North Carolina State University (Center for Research in Mathematics and Science Education and Department of Computer Science), Meredith College, Wake County Public Schools, and North Carolina Department of Public Instruction.

Initial experimental results indicate that pair-learning, whereby two students work together at one computer, improves the success and morale of the students. Students working in pairs are able to answer each other’s questions. They no longer look to the teaching staff as their sole source of technical advice; educators are no longer burdened by an onslaught of questions. Grading can be significantly reduced when two students submit one assignment. The classes are calmer; the students are more satisfied and self-sufficient. We also believe that women and minority students would especially benefit from this pedagogical approach.

eXtreme Programmers (XP) have anecdotally publicized the use of pair- programming for the development of high-quality software products. Dr. Williams quantitatively validated XP s anecdotal claims through an empirical study of advanced undergraduates at the University of Utah. She has also developed the Collaborative Software Process (CSP), which places the use of pair- programming in a disciplined software process. This grant proposes that a software development group in Eyecast, Inc. is educated in CSP. Process data will be collected by the software engineers in this group. This data will be used to analyze the effectiveness of pair-programming.

eXtreme Programmers (XP) have anecdotally publicized the use of pair- programming for the development of high-quality software products. Dr. Williams quantitatively validated XP s anecdotal claims of the benefits of pair-programming through an empirical study of undergraduates at the University of Utah. However, more evidence is necessary before large corporations are convinced of the benefits of pair-programming and are ready to embark on large-scale deployment of the technique. This grant proposes that pair programming be integrated into Nortel’s development process and that process data be collected. This data can be used to analyze the effectiveness of pair-programming in industry.

This project will investigate approaches to building a strategy generation engine as a component of a flexible trading agent that converts user preferences, auction rules, and a model of the other agents into a decisionable format. The first strategy generation engine will produce game-theoretic representations of the decision problem. For small problems, the game can be solved and an equilibrium bidding strategy selected. However, for intractable larger problems, alternate strategy generation engines will be constructed which use other decision technologies. Ideally, the agent will be able to make this decision by assessing the structure of the problem instance.

The use of virtual environments has shown success in applications ranging from education to entertainment. One limitation of these systems is that users' activities within them are over- or under-constrained. In this project, I will develop new models for the structure of user interactions within virtual worlds. Because a user's understanding of the activity in a world provides scaffolding for her own exploration, presenting the user with an environment in which action can be readily understood encourages the user to acquire and employ knowledge of the environment. This activity leads to an increased understanding of the world the environment models.