10am Wednesday 19 April, Thursday 20 April & Thursday 27 April 2006
Room: 78-420, St Lucia Campus, UQ
Speaker: Prof Tim Merrett, McGill University, Canada
Title: Topological Structures for Spatial Databases in Two and Three Dimensions
Title: Semistructure from Relations
Title: CS++: Reinventing Computer Science (for Secondary Storage)
Biography:
Professor Tim Merrett's main research work is in database, and the unification of
database and programming language concepts such as relations, functions and objects.
His group at McGill has also published new data structures and retrieval algorithms for
secondary storage. The Aldat Project at McGill is situated at the conflux of databases
and programming languages, linking the fundamental concepts of both to achieve greater
generality in principle and greater flexibility in practice.
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10am Wednesday 29 November 2006
Room: 78-420, St Lucia Campus, UQ
Speaker: Dr Kurt Akeley, Microsoft Research Asia
Title: Writing as an Intellectual Tool
Abstract:
This talk is about communication, especially written communication. But it isn't another enumeration of writing tips and techniques. Instead I'll argue that written communication is a critical part of the process of research and development. Writing well is difficult, and valuable, exactly because it requires clear thinking. Doing the hard work of organizing, clarifying, and presenting your thoughts identifies weaknesses and leads to new insights. Great papers not only report high-quality work, they are a critical component in the intellectual processes that generate such work. I hope thinking of communication in this way will help you tackle the hard work of writing with less dread; perhaps even with some enthusiasm. And I promise better research results if you do.
Biography:
Kurt Akeley is assistant managing director at Microsoft Research Asia, located in Beijing, China. His research interests include graphics system architecture, high-performance computing, and the design of displays that better accommodate human visual requirements. He joined Microsoft in July of 2004. Kurt co-founded Silicon Graphics in 1982. During his 19 years at Silicon Graphics he led the development of several high-end graphics systems, including GTX, VGX, and RealityEngine. He also led the development of OpenGL, an industry-standard programming interface to high-performance graphics hardware. His last full-time position with Silicon Graphics was senior vice president and CTO. Kurt is a named inventor on fourteen patents, is a fellow of the ACM and a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and in 1995 was the recipient of the ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award. He graduated with a BEE degree from the University of Delaware in 1980, an MSEE degree from Stanford in 1982, and a PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford in 2004.
Link to Presentation Slides
