Talk on Experience in Wall Street and Silicon Valley

Dear All,

You are welcome to attend the following talk:

Title: Experience in Wall Street and Silicon Valley
Speaker: Mr. Ooi Chok Leang
Date & time: 27/12/2011 (Tuesday), 10.30 a.m.
Venue: 6th floor, SA block, FES, UTAR KL Campus, Setapak, Kuala Lumpur.

Abstract of talk: Mr. Ooi will focus talk on his experience both on Wall Street as
well as Silicon Valley, describing how he landed a position in finance after
college, his experience thru the Credit Crisis of 2008, his move to Silicon Valley
after the financial crash, and his eventual return to New York.

Background of speaker: Ooi Chok Leang is currently Principal and Senior Project
Manager at Lab49, a technology consulting firm that builds advanced solutions for
the major investment banks and hedge funds on Wall Street. He is also Managing
Director at Agility IO, a consulting and outsourcing firm working with Silicon
Valley startups. Prior to the current roles, Chok Leang was Senior Development
Analyst at Goldman Sachs, and Assistant Vice President at Bank of America in New
York. Chok Leang also worked at a Silicon Valley startup called Loopt, where he
was a Server Development Manager. He also had the role as Chief Technology Officer
at Azap Mobile in San Francisco. Chok Leang graduated with a degree in Computer
Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin.

Seminar: Using semantic tables in XML query processing

Date: 20 Dec 2011 (Tuesday)
Time: 1pm - 2pm
Venue: 6th Floor Meeting Room, SA Block, FES, UTAR KL Campus, Kuala Lumpur.
Speaker: Prof. Dr. Ling Tok Wang, NUS, Singapore.
Title: Using semantic tables in XML query processing
Abstract: Processing a twig pattern query in XML document includes structural search and content search. Most existing algorithms only focus on structural search. They treat content nodes the same as element nodes during query processing with structural joins. Due to the high variety of contents, to mix content search and structural search suffers from management problem of contents and low performance. Another disadvantage is to find the actual values asked by a query, they have to rely on the original document. In this talk, we propose a novel algorithm Value Extraction with Relational Table (VERT) to overcome these limitations. The main technique of VERT is introducing relational tables to store document contents instead of treating them as nodes and labeling them. Tables in our algorithm are created based on semantic information of documents. As more semantics is captured, we can further optimize tables and queries to significantly enhance efficiency. Last, we show by experiments that besides solving different content problems, VERT also has superiority in performance of twig pattern query processing compared with existing algorithms.  We also extend VERT to process queries involving ID references or general queries with multiple join-linked twig patterns and queries involving grouping and aggregations.

CCIS Seminar: Image Super Resolution: Its Techniques and Applications

Dear all,

You are welcome to attend the following talk:

Date: 14 December 2011 (Wednesday)
Time: 11am - 12pm
Venue: MIMOS Lab, Ground Floor, SB Block, UTAR KL Campus, Kuala Lumpur.
Speaker: Chua Kah Keong
Title: Image Super-Resolution: Its Techinques & Applications

Abstract:
Super-resolution (SR) image reconstruction is the process of combining several low resolution (LR) images to form a High Resolution (HR) image. In this presentation, the principle of image SR and several techniques are introduced. In addition, the image SR applications and enhancement using Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) will be covered as well.

DMAS & CMS Seminar Series, 9/12/2011, Friday 11am-12pm, Level 6, West Room, SA block, Setapak Campus

==============================================================================
Department of Mathematical and Actuarial Sciences & Centre of Mathematical
Sciences Seminar Series

Date: 9 December 2011 (Friday)
Time: 11am - 12 pm
Venue: Level 6, West Room, SA block, UTAR Setapak Campus, Kuala Lumpur.
Speaker: Prof. Jeremy Levesley
Title: Radial Basis Function Approximation
===============================================================================

Dear all,

This week's DMAS & CMS talk will be on Friday, 11am-12pm. The speaker is Prof.
Jeremy Levesley from Department of Mathematics, University of Leicester, UK.


Abstract:
Radial basis functions have become an important tool for scattered data approximation, and theoretically can be used for approximation in
high dimensions. There is a very beautiful abstract theory of approximation involving so called native space (which I will not talk about). There is some interest in the finance industry in RBFs because of the possibility of high dimensional approximation and solution of partial differential equations. In this talk I will discuss some of the problems which arise with approximation with such functions, such as ill-conditioning and computation of full linear systems. I will offer some hope for the solution of these problems.

All are welcome.

Thank you very much.

Regards,
Event Committee.

Research Assistant Wanted

Research Assistant Wanted

The Department of Civil Engineering, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR), is currently looking for suitable candidates to assist in the Transportation research projects. The research projects are "Microscopic Modeling of Drivers' Merging Behavior at Roundabouts under Oversaturated Condition" by UTAR Research Fund (UTARRF) and "The Novel Development of A Dynamic In-vehicle Guidance and Navigation System in Malaysia" by Exploratory Research Grant Scheme (ERGS). The duration of the appointment is one year. We are looking for highly motivated and dedicated candidates to join us in the research work. The candidates should also keen to register with us as a postgraduate student. The monthly stipend paid to the candidates is RM 2000 (UTARRF) or RM1500 (ERGS). The expected work commencement date is 1^st Jan 2012.

 

Job Description:

·         Traffic data collection

·         Process and analyse the collected data.

·         Develop mathematical models to describe drivers' behavior or willing to pay for travel information.

·         Develop an intelligent route searching algorithm or traffic simulation model for driver's behavior.

Requirements:

1.       Candidate with Bachelor Degree in Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Mechtronics Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Physics, Applied Mathematics with Computing are welcome to apply.

2.       Candidates should have at least a 3.0 CGPA (4-point system) for their Bachelor Degree study.

3.       Candidates with computer programming knowledge are an added advantage.

4.       Candidates should register as postgraduate students (Master by Research) with UTAR.

Interested candidates, please contact me via email for the interview arrangement:

 

Dr. Khoo Hooi Ling

Assistant Professor/Head

Department of Civil Engineering

Faculty of Engineering and Science

Email: khoohl@utar.edu.my

No. Telephone: 03-41079802, Ext. 151

Work Completion Seminar: New SIFT-based Calibration Methods for Hybrid Camera System

Dear all,

You are most welcome to attend the Work Completion Seminar by Mr Mr. Low Yi Qian (Master of Engineering Science), on his research title of New SIFT-based Calibration Methods for Hybrid Camera System. Details are as follow:

Date: 25/11/2011 (Fri)
Time: 11:00am-12:00noon
Venue: 5A meeting room, 5th floor, SA Block, FES, UTAR KL Campus.
Research title: New SIFT-based Calibration Methods for Hybrid Camera System
Candidate: Low Yi Qian
Abstract:
Multi-cameras networks have an important role in surveillance systems. In traditional cameras networks mainly based on static cameras. Static camera provides low resolution and poor image quality in modeling. At the meanwhile, Pan-Tilt-Zoom (PTZ) camera is able to obtain multi-angles of views and multi-resolution information; it provides more functionality compared with static camera. In multi-camera networks, they obtain two or more different perspectives views of scene to perform calibration within one another. Traditional approach to solve this problem is by using human inputs or referenced objects to find matched correspondences among all images. The recent works by some researchers have brought remarkable increase of automation to these problems. One of the main challenges in multi-cameras calibration is to obtain an accurate and fast estimation of disparities of two different views of scene. Besides disparities, differences might be caused by occlusion of the object, specular reflection, sensor noise and various other causes.
In this project, we designed and constructed a new hybrid camera system instead of using two static cameras. More precisely, our hybrid camera system consists of a static wide angle camera and a PTZ camera. Both cameras obtain different optical elements and resolutions. We proposed a master-slave concept to represent both cameras. A static camera is master camera with wide angle view is used to monitor the environment from a distance. The images taken from the master camera will be used as reference images. When the master camera detects an object of interest, the slave camera - PTZ camera, will zoom into the region of interest (ROI). PTZ camera plays an important role at pointing towards the ROI in high resolution as well as providing different parameters of PTZ values. Then, we studied and proposed calibration methods for the hybrid camera system. In particular, Scale Invariant Features Transform (SIFT) was used to identify keypoints to perform multiple views matching. One of the major contributions of this project is to design and develop a new smart filtering technique based on the principle of trigonometry, called Trigonometry Filter Technique (TFT). TFT is used to filter the false keypoints by calculating and classifying the orientation of the images. Furthermore, TFT also increases the determination and detection rate of ROI image localization. Secondly, we proposed a novel calibration method based on multiple-image stitching approach. By stitching images (by PTZ camera), a high resolution panorama image will be created. Finally, we are able to stitch and calibrate both static master camera and PTZ camera images without the use of any object as reference. By eliminating the use of reference objects, the obtained empirical results show good performance to handle images from various kinds of angles, scaled and target uncertainties.

IEEE CAS Distinguish Lecture by Prof Magdy Bayoumi

The IEEE Circuits and Systems Society would cordially invite all to the IEEE CAS Distinguished Lecture on 15th Nov from 9am to 12pm at University Putra Malaysia. The lecture is mainly sponsored by the Circuits and Systems Society under its Distinguished Lecturer Program.

Date: 15 November 2011
Time: 9am - 12pm
Venue: Bilik Seminar Aras 2, Fakulti Kejuruteraan, Universiti Putra Malaysia
Speaker: Prof. Madgy Bayoumi
Title: Wireless Sensors Networks: Current and Future Challenges

Please book your diary for the mention time and date (free for all).

The details of the Distinguished Lecture is as below:
Distinguished Lecturer is Prof Magdy Bayoumi.
Title: Wireless Sensors Networks: Current and Future Challenges
(Abstract)
Computers, communication, and sensing technologies are converging to change the way we live, interact, and conduct business. Wireless sensor networks reflect such convergence. These networks are based on collaborative efforts of a large number of sensor nodes. They should be low-cost, low-power, and multifunction. These nodes have the capabilities of sensing, data processing, and communicating. Sensor networks have a wide range of applications, from monitoring sensors in industrial facilities to control and management of energy applications to military and security fields. Because of the special features of these networks, new network technologies are needed for cost effective, low power, and reliable communication.
These network protocols and architectures should take into consideration the special features of sensor networks such as: the large number of nodes, their failure rate, limited power, high density, etc. In this talk the impact of wireless sensor networks will be addressed, several of the design and communication issues will be discussed, and a case study of a current project of using such networks in drilling and management off-shore oil and natural gas in the gulf region will be given.

Your attendance is highly appreciate.

Many thanks.
Regards,
IEEE CAS committee

Marco Tempest: The augmented reality of techno-magic

IEEE SMC DLP: Humanized Computational Intelligence with Interactive Evolutionary Computation

You are invite to attend the IEEE SMC Malaysia Section Chapter Distinguished Lecture Seminar: Humanized Computational Intelligence with Interactive Evolutionary Computation conducted by Prof. Hideyuki TAKAGI from Kyushu University, Japan.

Date: Friday, December 09, 2011
Time: 11am – 12pm
Venue: NMES Lab, FOE, MMU Cyberjaya
Topic: Humanized Computational Intelligence with Interactive Evolutionary Computation
Speaker: Prof. Hideyuki Takagi


Your presence for this seminar will be highly appreciated.

Machine Learning Workshop

UTAR Robotic Society will be organizing a 1-day Machine Learning Workshop on 12 November 2011.

Below are the details of the workshop:

Title: Machine Learning Workshop
Speaker: Tay Yong Haur
Date: 12/11/2011 (Sat)
Time: 9am-5pm.
Venue: OSK Lab, FES, UTAR KL, Setapak, Kuala Lumpur.
Fee: RM15/person (inclusive of refreshment and lunch).

Topics covered are:
-Introduction to ML
-Introduction to Neural Networks
-Hands-on Neural Networks

Please check out the details of registration here: http://utarrobotic.blogspot.com/2011/11/machine-learning-workshop.html

Research Scholar Wanted (Kinect Project)

Research Scholar Wanted (Kinect Project)

Interested in learning and research? Interested in Kinect development? Interested in getting a postgraduate degree while doing something fun? If you answer 'Yes' to any of these questions, then you are welcome to apply for the position of Research Scholar in the research lab under Faculty of Information Technology at Multimedia University Cyberjaya campus.

Details of the project as follows:

Project Sponsor: Intel Malaysia

Starting Date: immediate 

Stipend: RM2,100 / month

Duration: 2 years (subject to review of performance at end of 1st year)

Field of research: image processing / computer vision / Kinect development / computer graphics / natural gesture interaction

 

Requirement: degree related to Computer Science / IT / Applied Maths, strong in programming (C++ preferred), strong in mathematics

 

Location: Faculty of Information Technology, Multimedia University, Cyberjaya

Project Leader: Wong Ya Ping

 

Contact:

If you are interested, please send your CV to:
        "Wong Ya Ping" <wongyaping@gmail.com>
with the subject line : [RS Application] <your name>

Thank you.

Technical Talk by NICT, Japan on Smart Grid Standardization and Wireless Technology on 1st-3rd Nov 2011

Technical Talks on Smart Grid Standardization and Wireless Technology 

(Jointly organized by IEEE ComSoc/VT Malaysia and National Institution of Information and Communication Technology (NICT), Japan)

Talk #1: Research and Development Activities in Smart Wireless Laboratory, NICT

Talk #2: IEEE Standardization Activities on Smart Grid/Utility and TV White Space

Date    : 1^st November 2011 (Tuesday)

Time    : 2.00 – 5.30PM

Venue : Bilik Taklimat, 2nd Floor, Tower Block, Engineering Complex, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Serdang, Selangor

Talk #3: Research and Development Activities in Smart Wireless Laboratory, NICT & Cognitive Radio/Software Define Radio Research Updates

Date    : 2^nd November 2011 (Wednesday)

Time    : 3.00 – 5.00PM

Venue : Auditorium, MIMOS Berhad, Technology Park Malaysia, 57000 Kuala Lumpur

Talk #4: IEEE Standardization Activities on Smart Grid/Utility and TV White Space

(Jointly organized by IEEE PES Malaysia Chapter)

Date    : 3^rd November 2011 (Thursday)

Time    : 10.00 – 11.30AM

Venue : BJ-1-005 Power Engineering Centre Uniten, University Tenaga Nasional

            (UNITEN), KM 7, Jalan Kajang-Puchong 43009 Kajang, Selangor

Biography: Dr. Hiroshi Harada 

Dr. Hiroshi Harada is the director of smart wireless laboratory at National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT). He joined the Communications Research Laboratory, Ministry of Posts and Communications, in 1995  (currently NICT). Since 1995, he has conducted research on Software Defined Radio (SDR), Cognitive Radio, Dynamic Spectrum Access Network, Smart Utility Network (SUN) and broadband wireless access systems in the VHF, TV white space, micro-wave and millimeter-wave bands. He has joined many standardization committees and forums in the United States as well as in Japan  and has fulfilled important roles for them. He is currently serving in the board of directors of Wireless Innovation Forum (formerly SDR Forum). He is the chair of IEEE DySPAN Standards Committee (formerly, IEEE SCC41 and IEEE 1900) since 2009, the vice chair of IEEE P1900.4, IEEE P802.15.4g, and TIA TR-51 since 2008, 2009, and 2011, respectively. He was the chair of the IEICE Technical Committee on Software Radio (TCSR) in 2005-2007 and the chair of Public Broadband Mobile Communication Development Committee, ARIB since 2010. He is also involved in many other activities related to telecommunications. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo, Japan, since 2005 and is the author of Simulation and Software Radio for Mobile Communications (Artech House, 2002). He has received the achievement award and fellow of IEICE in 2006 and 2009, respectively and the achievement award of ARIB and Funai Prize for Science in 2009 and 2010, respectively, on the topic of cognitive radio research and development.  

Biography: Dr. Chin-Sean Sum 

Dr. Chin-Sean Sum received his Ph.D. degree from Niigata University in 2007. He was then affiliated with the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), Japan as an expert researcher in the Smart Wireless Laboratory (SWL). He has been involved in multiple standardization activities as a project officer and an active technical contributor. In the IEEE 802.15.3c millimeter-wave wireless personal area networks (WPAN) standard, he served as the assistant technical editor and secretary of the  task  group.  He  is  the  recipient  of  the  IEEE Working Group Chairs Awards for the IEEE 802.15.3c Standard. He then started to participate in 

task groups IEEE 802.15.4g Smart Utility Networks (SUN) WPAN and IEEE 802.11af white space wireless local area networks (WLAN). In 802.15.4g, he is an active technical contributor and served as the editor of the coexistence assurance document. In 802.11af, he is an active technical contributor closely following the development of TV white space WLAN systems and related regulatory status. Currently, he is also actively involved in a new initiative group working on WPAN operating in TW white space, a group expected to be formed as IEEE 802.15.4m. Besides, he is an active contributor in other standardization  groups such as Telecommunication Industry Association (TIA) TR-51 Smart Utility Networks, IEEE 802.19 Wireless Coexistence group and 802.22 wireless regional area networks (WRAN) group. His research works can be frequently found in major journals and conferences such as the IEEE J-SAC, ICC, WCNC, Globecom, DySPAN, VTC, IEEE Communications Magazine and so on. Currently, his research interest is focused on 

MAC and PHY layer designs for TV white space and SUN systems, cognitive radio, coexistence and energy efficient mechanisms. 

FREE ADMISSION

RSVP email to nordin@ieee.org

IEEE Comsoc & VT Malaysia Chapter

Distinguish Lecture Program (DLT) Series of IEEE ComSoc & VT Malaysia - Prof Victor Leung

IEEE Distinguish Lecture Program

Co-Organized by:, IEEE Comsoc & VT Malaysia Chapter,

Faculty of Engineering & Built Environment, UKM, and School of Computer Sciences, USM

 

Talk #1         : Service and Network Convergence in Next Generation Networks

Date    :  9^th  November 2011 (Wednesday)

Time   : 10.00 – 12.00PM

Venue :  Faculty of Engineering & Built Environment, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), 43600 Bandar Bangi Bangi, Selangor Darul Ehsan, MALAYSIA

 

Talk #2         : Networking of Automobiles – Applications, Challenges and Some Recent Results

Date    : 10^th November 2011 (Thursday)

Time   :  3pm - 5pm

Venue : School of Computer Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), 11800, Penang, Malaysia

 

Biography

 

Victor C. M. Leung received the B.A.Sc. (Hons.) degree in electrical engineering from the University of British Columbia (U.B.C.) in 1977, and was awarded the APEBC Gold Medal as the head of the graduating class in the Faculty of Applied Science. He attended graduate school at U.B.C. on a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Postgraduate Scholarship and completed the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering in 1981.

 

From 1981 to 1987, Dr. Leung was a Senior Member of Technical Staff at MPR Teltech Ltd., specializing in the planning, design and analysis of satellite communication systems. In 1988, he was a Lecturer in the Department of Electronics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He returned to U.B.C. as a faculty member in 1989, where he is currently a Professor and holder of the TELUS Mobility Research Chair in Advanced Telecommunications Engineering in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is a member of the Institute for Computing, Information and Cognitive Systems at U.B.C. He also holds adjunct/guest appointments at Jilin University, Beijing Jiaotong University, South China University of Technology, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. Dr. Leung has co-authored more than 500 technical papers in international journals and conference proceedings, and several of these papers had been selected for best paper awards. His research interests are in the areas of architectural and protocol design, management algorithms and performance analysis for computer and telecommunication networks, with a current focus on wireless networks and mobile systems.

 

Dr. Leung is a registered professional engineer in the Province of British Columbia, Canada. He is a Fellow of IEEE, a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada, and a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering. He is a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Communications Society. He has served on the editorial boards of the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications – Wireless Communications Series, the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications and the IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, and is serving on the editorial boards of the IEEE Transactions on Computers, the Journal of Communications and Networks, Computer Communications, as well as several other journals. He has guest-edited several journal special issues, and served on the technical program committee of numerous international conferences. He is a General Co-chair of CSA 2011, Chinacom 2011, and MobiWorld and GCN Workshops at IEEE Infocom 2011. He chaired the TPC of the wireless networking and cognitive radio track in IEEE VTC-fall 2008. He was the General Chair of AdhocNets 2010, WC 2010, QShine 2007, and Symposium Chair for Next Generation Mobile Networks in IWCMC 2006-2008. He was a General Co-chair of BodyNets 2010, CWCN Workshop at Infocom 2010, ASIT Workshop at IEEE Globecom 2010, MobiWorld Workshop at IEEE CCNC 2010, IEEE EUC 2009 and ACM MSWiM 2006, and a TPC Vice-chair of IEEE WCNC 2005.

 

Talk #1: Service and Network Convergence in Next Generation Networks

Abstract: A common feature of contemporary wireless and wireline networks is that they provide access to or operate over IP-based networks. It is commonly agreed that next generation networks will consist of a conglomerate of access network technologies integrated by broadband IP-based core networks. Telecommunication service providers are taking advantage of the capabilities of next generation networks to offer a wide range of services to subscribers over a converged IP network regardless of the access technology.  Research and development efforts over the last few years have been focused on how to integrate and manage heterogeneous wireless/wireline access networks for a good service experience by subscribers. The presentation will review features and characteristics of converged access networks, describe the network and service architectures enabling access network convergence on the one hand and service convergence on the other, and discuss some of the technical issues that need to be addressed to provide a good service experience to subscribers. Novel solutions for selection of the best access network before connection establishment, and maintaining a connection across different access networks by vertical handoffs will be presented. Future research directions will be discussed.

 

 

Talk #2: Networking of Automobiles – Applications, Challenges and Some Recent Results

Abstract: Recent advances in wireless communication technologies are making it possible for automobiles to be integrated into the global network. Intelligent Transportation Systems with vehicles in the loop are expected to significantly improve road safety, reduce traffic congestion and cut greenhouse gas emissions. This is made possible in the USA by Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC), which employs the IEEE 802.11p standard over the 75MHz of spectrum in the 5.9 GHz band allocated by the FCC for vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications. DSRC is expected to revolutionize road transportation by making possible many real-time safety applications. However, global deployment of DSRC is not expected to materialize in the near term due to regulatory and financial challenges. In the meantime, vehicles and their passengers are increasingly equipped with different forms of wireless networking capabilities, e.g., cellular, WiFi and WiMAX. Thus there is also a growing interest in supporting applications like infotainment, travel advisory, route planning, etc., using heterogeneous wireless networks. In this presentation, I shall describe several applications that leverage the wireless communications to put vehicles in the loop. Different applicants impose different requirements on the wireless network for data routing, transfer latency, etc.  I shall review the technical challenges that need to be overcome to meet some of these requirements, and describe solutions developed in our recent research to meet these challenges. I shall conclude the presentation by discussing some future research directions.

 

 

 

 

FREE ADMISSION

RSVP email to nordin@ieee.org

IEEE Comsoc & VT Malaysia Chapter

CMS Seminar: Unfold the Secret of Multiplication (揭开乘法的神秘面纱)

==============================================================================
Department of Mathematical and Actuarial Sciences & Centre of Mathematical
Sciences Seminar Series

Date: 19 October 2011 (Wednesday)
Time: 2 - 3 pm
Venue: SD 102, FES, UTAR KL Campus, Setapak, Kuala Lumpur.
Speaker: Mr Chang Yun Fah

Title: Unfold the Secret of Multiplication (揭开乘法的神秘面纱)
===============================================================================

Dear all,

This week's DMAS & CMS talk will be on Wednesday, 2-3pm. The speaker is Mr Chang
Yun Fah from Department of Mathematical and Actuarial Sciences, UTAR.


Abstract:
对于许多学生来说，数学是一门深奥难懂的科目。面对一条条的数学公式和符号，学生们除了背死书之外就只能依靠重复练习和上补习课来补救。这种极尽痛苦的学习历程让很多学生对数学产生了焦虑。他们即使毕业后成为专业人士，但对数学的阴影终究是挥之不去。

追根究底，许多人对数学产生焦虑感多源自于数学抽象的概念和复杂的公式。但是数学教学的刻板与枯燥方式也成了捏杀学生的学习兴趣主凶之一。尤其是我国盛行的填鸭式教育，强调的是死背和重复练习已严重扭曲了因材施教的教育原则。此乃数学教育里必须去除的迷思之一。

我相信，数学的学习过程可以是生动有趣的，也并非一成不变。同样的一道数学题，往往可以有好几种的解答方式。而每一种方式都有其特征。要减少人们对数学的焦虑，就必须在教学中突出这些优美的特征，以轻松及生动的方式带出整个运算过程。

就以乘法(Multiplication)的运算为例子。许多人都是从熟背一至十二的乘法表开始，总共背诵了144个的方程式。但有多少人知道，其实我们的老祖宗比我们更聪明，他们只需要背诵78个就可以了。而如果我们懂得一些简单的数学公式，那我们要背诵的东西就会更少。

同样的道理，当孩子无法掌握学校教的那一套乘法时，老师和父母可以做些什么呢？继续强迫孩子死记硬背的把整套乘法，不管孩子能否消化；还是怒气冲冲地大骂孩子‘笨蛋’无可救药？师长们是否有想过用不同的乘法方式来教导孩子，也许效果会更好？请别把学校的那一套当作是唯一的和最好的标准。道理很简单；每个孩子好比不同的交通工具，如果是汽车，你总不能让它在水里游；换作是飞机，你也不能把它放到火车轨道行。

除了刻板的教学方式问题，近年来数学教育的发展也走向另一个让人担忧的方向，即越来越多的教育工作者和父母对快速计算(Fast Arithmetic)的迷思，总是希望孩子们能够在几秒内计算出类似题目的答案！答案正确还不够好，要‘快’才能进入神童榜。要清楚，快速计算只不过是把不同的技巧背熟再根据情况来运用而已，对于真正了解和掌握数学还差十万八千里。要快和准哪里需要这么辛苦每天拼命的练习，五支手指按一按计算机就可以了。再说，快速计算的高手也未必过得了高中数学考试，更别说成为数学家。相反地，这种讲究‘快速’的思维训练搞不好还会让孩子错过往扎实的基础下功夫。

今天的分享，不是也不可能改变以上所触及的两个数学教育的迷思。只是希望能提供一个不一样的选择让大家重新了解数学。我们会发现原来一个简单的乘法，可以有不同的演算方法；有的蛮有趣，有的很抽象，有的我明明会但从来没有好好地深入了解；有的那么容易为什么自己偏偏没想到。这种心情的起伏，能激发你更深入了解每一种方法背后的原理。

对于我来说，从今天的分享中学会多少种乘法并非最重要的。我更热切期望此分享能带来的启发：如学生们在学习课本上的东西后，自己是否能够创造出新方法和见解；老师们在教学上，能否加入一些新元素让教学更生动；父母们在亲子关系中，能否与孩子一同成长；及就业人士在工作岗位和人际关系上，是否能从不同的角度对待某件事物，而不再固执己见。 

All are welcome.

Thank you very much.

Regards,
Event Committee.

RAship on Brain Computer Interface

There is a vacancy for Research Assistant in FES, UTAR KL Campus. Please contact Prof Goh Sing Yau (gohsy@utar.edu.my) if anyone is interested.

People with locked-in syndrome/severe motor disabilities such as those afflicted with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis may be unable to communicate with the outside world. In an earlier project, the principal investigator and his colleagues have developed a Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) system to control a wheelchair using natural EEG oscillations generated by motor imagery. This method of using motor imagery is very safe, reliable and at the same time frees the mind to observe and plan future intensions while activating a wheelchair to move to the desired location.

However, for the purposes of communication such as writing a letter or communicating with another person, we will need a faster information transfer rate. This can be provided by a complementary BCI system that uses steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP). In such a system, the subject is required to look at objects (for example, that can denote the direction of movement of the curser) that oscillate at specific frequencies resulting in evoked potentials of the same frequencies that can be measured at certain locations on the scalp. The frequencies of the evoked potentials will determine the desired movement of the curser that can be used to select words in a predictive text system to form the desired phrases or sentences to communicate with the outside world.

The RA is required to participate in a research team to develop the software for the SSVEP BCI system and the predictive text algorithm and selection GUI for communication. An example of predictive text is commonly seen in hand phone sms features. O'Riordan et. al. investigated the text input methods for mobile phones. Predictive text can be complemented by "auto completion" or "auto tree" depending on context and structure of the sentence. Steffen Bickel et. al. investigates algorithms that enable the finding of meaningful subwords and phrases.

I have a personal website designed mainly for my undergraduate students but has a short description of our research. http://gohsingyau.webs.com/research.htm

References:

O'Riordan et. al. "Investigating Text Input Methods for Mobile Phones". J. Computer Sci, I (2):189-199, 2005.

Alok Aggarwal & Jeffrey S. Vitter. The Input/output Complexity of Sorting and Related Problems. Communications of the ACM, vol. 31, no. 9, pages 1116–1127, 1988.

Scott MacKenzie (2002). "KSPC (Keystrokes per Character) as a Characteristic of Text Entry Techniques". Proceedings of MobileHCI 2002.

Steffen Bickel, Peter Haider & Tobias Scheffer. Learning to Complete Sentences. In 16th European Conference on Machine Learning (ECML’05), pages 497–504, 2005.

Kuala Lumpur Innovation Forum (KLIF) 2011

Event: Kuala Lumpur Innovation Forum (KLIF) 2011

Date: 15-16 Nov 2011

Venue: Putra World Trade Centre, Kuala Lumpur

URL: www.yim.my/klif2011

Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme 2012/13

If you are interested to pursue your PhD in universities in Hong Kong, don't miss the opportunity for the PhD Fellowship Scheme available here: http://cerg1.ugc.edu.hk/hkpfs/index.html

Due dates for the application submission is on early December 2011.

UTAR Postgraduate & Professional Development Day

Dear all,

UTAR will be organizing the Postgraduate & Professional Development Day. If you or your friends are looking for opportunities to further your education, feel free to visit the event.

Date: 1 October 2011 (Saturday)
Time: 10am - 4pm
Venue: UTAR PJ Campus [map]

Details are available here:  UTAR Postgraduate and Professional Development Day Brochure

CCIS Seminar: Robust Fitting and Model Selection in Computer Vision

Dear Colleagues,
Centre for Computing and Intelligent Systems (CCIS), Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) will be organizing the following open seminar:

Date: 7 Oct 2011 (Friday)
Time: 11:30am-12.00pm
Venue: 6th Floor Meeting room, SA Block, FES,  UTAR, KL Campus, Jalan Genting Kelang, 53300 Kuala Lumpur
Speaker: Tat-Jun Chin
Title: Robust Fitting and Model Selection in Computer Vision
Abstract: One of the earliest examples of robust model fitting in Computer Vision is to detect lines and curves in images using the Hough Transform (Duda and Hart, 1972). Since then robust model fitting techniques have become part of the standard toolbox for Computer Vision researchers and practitioners, especially on geometry estimation problems where approaches like RANSAC dominate. Robustness is crucial in many cases as the data acquisition and preprocessing pipeline is inevitably imperfect, and this introduces outliers and noise into the data. A second important aspect is model selection, especially in the case of multiple structures, i.e. how many lines do we have in the image? Traditional model selection techniques dictate that the best model is the one that balances goodness of fit and model complexity. In this talk I will discuss ongoing work at The University of Adelaide to find new paradigms for robust model fitting and model selection. In particular I will report recently proposed methods that cast robust model fitting and model selection as statistical learning problems. These new methods offer the promise of more robustness and applicability to a wider range of problems.
Speaker Bio:
Dr Tat-Jun Chin is a Lecturer in the School of Computer Science at The University of Adelaide. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Systems Engineering from Monash University, and B.Eng in Mechatronics from the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM). Dr Chin's current research focusses on robust model fitting approaches for Computer Vision applications. In particular he is interested in searching for new paradigms for the fundamental underpinning of robust model fitting approaches, and to extend the applicability of robust model fitting approaches to a wider range of problems and operating conditions.


The seminar is open to all staff, students and public. Admission is free and no registration required. Please encourage your students / research counterparts to attend this seminar.

CCIS Seminar: Multimedia Forensics & Inverse Light Transport: Introduction and Open Problems

Dear Colleagues,
Centre for Computing and Intelligent Systems (CCIS), Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) will be organizing the following open seminar:

Date: 7 Oct 2011 (Friday)
Time: 11:00am-11.30am
Venue: 6th Floor Meeting room, SA Block, FES,  UTAR, KL Campus, Jalan Genting Kelang, 53300 Kuala Lumpur
Speaker: Tian-Tsong Ng
Title: Multimedia Forensics & Inverse Light Transport: Introduction and Open Problems
Abstract: Multimedia forensics arises from a question as old as photography: When is seeing is believing. Today, images and videos are as commonly exchanged and shared as are text messages when Internet was first invented. Visual content has become inseparable from our daily communications and is increasingly used as personal records or evidence in courts of law. I will introduce multimedia forensics and describe the open problems awaiting answers.
I will also briefly talk about a different research topic in computer vision and graphics known as inverse light transport. Light transport is function that maps the light sources and the images. Inverse light transport can be considered a general framework for tackling low-level computer vision problems and the research is still at its infancy. I will introduce the related early works and the open problems.
Speaker Bio:
Tian-Tsong Ng is a research scientist in Institute for Infocomm Research, Singapore. He received his B.Eng in Electrical Engineering from University of Malaya in 1998, his M.Phil. in Signal Processing from Cambridge University in 2001 and his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University in 2007. His research interest lies in computer vision, computer graphics and image forensics.
He won the Microsoft Best Student Paper Award at ACM Multimedia Conference in 2005, the John Wiley & Sons Best Paper Award at the first IEEE Workshop in Information Security and Forensics in 2009 and I2R Best Paper Award in 2010. He is a Commonwealth Scholar and an A*STAR Overseas Graduate Scholar.


The seminar is open to all staff, students and public. Admission is free and no registration required. Please encourage your students / research counterparts to attend this seminar.

Talk: Cryptography - Everywhere! - A Lecture by Prof. Kenny Paterson

Dear All,

You are invited to attend a lecture on cryptography at MIMOS:

Lecture : Cryptography - everywhere!
Speaker : Prof. Kenny Paterson (Information Security Group, Royal Holloway)
Date      : 10 October 2011
Time      : 9.30 am – 11.00 am
Venue : MIMOS Auditorium, Technology Park Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur.


Prof. Kenny Paterson is a professor in the Information Security Group at Royal Holloway, University of London,  one of the most prestigious security and cryptography groups in Europe. Since March 2010, he has been employed full-time as an EPSRC Leadership Fellow with the fellowship entitled "Cryptography: Bridging Theory and Practice".

His main area of research is Cryptography, with broader interests in Information Security and the mathematics of communications systems. Kenny completed his Ph.D. at Royal Holloway in 1993, and was then a Royal Society fellow at Institute for Signal and Information Processing at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich from 1993 to 1994. After that, he was a Lloyd's of London Tercentenary Foundation Research Fellow at Royal Holloway from 1994 to 1996. He then worked at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol from 1996 to 2001, before rejoining Royal Holloway in 2001. Kenny is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Cryptology, was program chair for Eurocrypt 2011, and consults widely to industry and governments.

We would appreciate that you response to this email to (gspoh@mimos.my) by 6 Oct 2011 if you intend to attend the lecture for us to estimate the number of audience and please feel free to share this information with your colleagues.

The 16th Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (PAKDD 2012)

PAKDD 2012: The 16th Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining
(Proceedings of the conference will be published in LNCS by Springer).

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, May 29 - June 1, 2012
Conference web site: http://pakdd2012.pakdd.org/

Important Dates Paper Submission Due: 2 October, 2011 (Sunday)
Author Notification: 30 December, 2011 (Friday)
Camera Ready Due: 22 January, 2012 (Sunday)

Conference Scope
The Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (PAKDD) is a leading international conference in the areas of data mining and knowledge discovery (KDD). It provides an international forum for researchers and industry practitioners to share their new ideas, original research results and practical development experiences from all KDD related areas, including data mining, data warehousing, machine learning, aritificial intelligence, databases, statistics, knowledge engineering, visualization, and decision-making systems. The conference calls for research papers reporting original investigation results and industrial papers reporting real data mining applications and system development experience.

Topics
The topics of relevance for the conference papers include but not limited to the following:

• Novel models and algorithms
• Clustering
• Classification
• Ranking
• Association analysis
• Anomaly detection
• Data pre-processing
• Feature extraction and selection
• Mining heterogeneous data
• Mining multi-source data
• Mining sequential data
• Mining spatial and temporal data
• Mining unstructured and semi-structured data
• Mining graph and network data
• Parallel, distributed, and high performance data mining on the cloud platform
• Privacy preserving data mining
• Mining high dimensional data
• Mining uncertain data
• Mining imbalanced data
• Mining dynamic/streaming data
• Statistical methods for data mining
• Visual data mining
• Interactive and online mining
• Mining behavioral data
• Mining multimedia data
• Mining scientific databases
• Ubiquitous knowledge discovery
• Agent-based data mining
• Mining social networks
• Financial data mining
• Fraud and risk analysis
• Security and intrusion detection
• Opinion mining and sentiment analysis
• Post-processing including quality assessment and validation
• Integration of data warehousing, OLAP and data mining
• Human, domain, organizational and social factors in data mining
• Applications to healthcare, bioinformatics, computational chemistry,
• Eco-informatics, marketing, online gaming, etc

All paper submissions will be handled electronically. Detailed instructions are provided on the conference home page.

Work Completion Seminar: Cheng Kam Ching

Your are cordially invited to the following work completion seminar:

Date: 30 September 2011 (Friday)

Time: 2:30pm-3:30pm

Venue: 5A meeting room, 5th floor, SA block,SE202 Setapak Campus, FES, UTAR, Kuala Lumpur. [map]

Admission: Free

Speaker: Cheng Kam Ching

Title: Development of Job Matching Algorithm with Collective Learning Methods
Abstract:

Hiring or job match placing the wrong job seekers to the particular job posted by the employers is a costly mistake. As it is the key to keep the job site remain competitive. The classical online recruiting applications use only simple Boolean operations comparing the basic requirement information to generate the job matched results to job seekers. Therefore, it's often claimed to be irrelevant job matched or too many "hits" [1]. Job seekers must browse through a long list of job advertisements in a given query [2]. The problem of the classical method is about the data modelling. Job seekers need to fill up massive form-based basic requirement information. The data given is too subjective to define its importance. Hence, the matching may not be good. Besides, online recruiting application must be able to discover interesting jobs for recommendation. Job seekers are more likely excited to see a range of different job types in which really match his or her working profiles and own interests. This is the area addressed by this research described in this thesis. An investigation and development of a different method of job matching algorithm was undertaken. The primary objective of this research is to offer an intelligence job matching mechanism incorporated the relevant feedback approach. Real data (job title, job descriptions and job requirements of 3000 job advertisements) from Jobstreet will be pursued with detailed analysis for the validation of the proposed method.

Talk on High Impact Research on Cloud Computing By Professor Rajkumar Buyya

Please be informed that the Department of Computer System and Technology, Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, University of Malaya is organizing a seminar with the following details:

Date: 21 September 2011 (Wednesday)
Time: 10:00-11:00
Location: DK2, FCSIT, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur. [map]
Speaker: Professor Rajkumar Buyya, The University of Melbourne, Australia; CEO, Manjrasoft Pvt Ltd, Melbourne, Australia
Title: High Impact Research on Cloud Computing: The Next Revolution in Information Technology

All are welcome to the seminar.

====================
Abstract: Computing is being transformed to a model consisting of services that are commoditised and delivered in a manner similar to utilities such as water, electricity, gas, and telephony. In such a model, users access services based on their requirements without regard to where the services are hosted. Several computing paradigms have promised to deliver this utility computing vision. Cloud computing is the most recent emerging paradigm promising to turn the vision of "computing utilities" into a reality.

Cloud computing has emerged as one of the buzzwords in the ICT industry. Several IT vendors are promising to offer storage, computation and application hosting services, and provide coverage in several continents, offering Service-Level Agreements (SLA) backed performance and uptime promises for their services. It delivers infrastructure, platform, and software (application) as services, which are made available as subscription-based services in a pay-as-you-go model to consumers.  The price that Cloud Service Providers charge can vary with time and the quality of service (QoS) expectations of consumers.

This talk (1) presents the 21st century vision of computing and identifies various IT paradigms promising to deliver the vision of computing utilities; (2) defines the architecture for creating market-oriented Clouds by leveraging technologies such as VMs; (3) provides thoughts on market-based resource management strategies that encompass both customer-driven service management and computational risk management to sustain SLA-oriented resource allocation; (4) presents Aneka, a software system for rapid development of Cloud applications and their deployment on private/public Clouds with resource provisioning driven by SLAs and user QoS requirements, (5) reports experimental results on deploying Cloud applications in engineering, gaming, and health care domains on private or public Clouds, and (6) concludes with the need for convergence of competing IT paradigms for delivering our 21st century vision along with pathways for future research.

Speaker Bio:

Dr. Rajkumar Buyya is Professor of Computer Science and Software Engineering; and Director of the Cloud Computing and Distributed Systems (CLOUDS) Laboratory at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He is also serving as the founding CEO of Manjrasoft., a spin-off company of the University, commercializing its innovations in Cloud Computing. He has authored 350 publications and four text books. He also edited several books including "Cloud Computing: Principles and Paradigms" recently published by Wiley Press, USA. He is one of the highly cited authors in computer science and software engineering worldwide.

Software technologies for Grid and Cloud computing developed under Dr. Buyya's leadership have gained rapid acceptance and are in use at several academic institutions and commercial enterprises in 40 countries around the world. Dr. Buyya has led the establishment and development of key community activities, including serving as foundation Chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Scalable Computing and five IEEE/ACM conferences. These contributions and international research leadership of Dr. Buyya are recognized through the award of "2009 IEEE Medal for Excellence in Scalable Computing" from the IEEE Computer Society, USA. Manjrasoft’s Aneka Cloud technology developed under his leadership has received "2010 Asia Pacific Frost&  Sullivan New Product Innovation Award". For further information on Dr. Buyya, please visit his cyberhome: www.buyya.com

D.A.R.E. BizStart 2011

For those who have some business idea and would like to explore the possibility to expand it, or to make some friends in the entrepreneur community, don't miss this event. There will be a number of entrepreneurs who will be sharing their past experience in the event as well.

Date: 28-29 September 2011
Venue:  Sunway Pyramid Convention Center [map]
Admission: FREE.

Tentative Agenda:

To register, log on to www.bizstart.com.my, click ‘GRAB YOUR FREE TICKET’ on the right hand column.

Google DevFest 2011 @ Kuala Lumpur

Google DevFest is an annual event for developers to learn about Google technologies and products. Since 2008, it has attracted thousands of app developers around the globe to participate in this event.

This year, Google will bring this popular DevFest event to Asia. Event at Kuala Lumpur here:

Date: 29 September 2011
Time: 9:00am - 7:00pm
Venue: UCTI College, Technology Park Malaysia, Bukit Jalil, Kuala Lumpur. [map]

	Track 1	Track 2
09:00 - 09:30	Keynote
09:30 - 10:30	Android Market for Developers (Tony Chan)
10:30 - 11:00	AM Break
11:00 - 12:00	Bleeding Edge HTML5 (Eric Bidelman)
12:00 - 13:00	Implementing Google Analytics (Vinoaj Vijeyakumaar)
13:00 - 14:00	Lunch
14:00 - 15:00	What's New and Important in Android (Tony Chan)	Displaying Large Geographic Datasets: Google Fusion Tables (Luke Mahe)
15:00 - 16:00	These Aren't the Site You're Looking For: Modern HTML5 Web Apps(Eric Bidelman)	Working Off the Grid: HTML5 Offline (Ernest Delgado)
16:00 - 16:30	PM Break
16:30 - 17:30	Insights to Drive Your Business Forward (Analytics Codelab) (Vinoaj Vijeyakumaar)	Fusion Tables (Geo Codelab) (Luke Mahe)
17:30 - 18:30	Demos
18:30 - 19:00	Q & A

Please register yourself here: https://devregsystem.appspot.com/?eid=234804

update of the event, please check out at the Google site here: http://code.google.com/events/devfests/2011/seasia.html#kualalumpur