My Research

Research

My research is seemingly diverse, but is unified by a focus on Intelligent Networked Systems in general, and Mobile Computing in particular. My major focus is in creating networking and data management techniques that will enable the next generation mobile systems. I also research issues related to personalizing the networked environment (especially the web) using mining. This research covers the broad area of Networked Systems and Artificial / Computational Intelligence. Of particular interest to me is the use of Distributed AI (Adaptive MultiAgent Systems) and soft AI (NeuroFuzzy Learning) approaches. Some of my ongoing research efforts include :

MultiAgent Systems for Mobile Computing: In the emerging world with ubiquitous ad-hoc connectivity, how can software and new applications be designed which will use these features. Will the world become a distributed "bazaar" with connected software and hardware components, services, and humans that will constantly interact and negotiate to perform tasks. This is the theme we have begun to explore in various projects being done by the Ebiquity group. We examine challenges that span from the network layers to the data management layers, and cross layer interactions are a common theme in the solutions we have come up with. In prior work, I have created agent based middleware which is mobile aware and adapts to available resources and QoS, to enable applications that were not written for a mobile world to operate under constraints of mobility. An important component of this research is providing Mobile Access to Multimedia Information sources. We are creating cooperative multiagent systems to enable location, filtering and retrieval of information. Our Disconnected Browsing project deals with these issues in the context of Web brosing. Support for this effort comes from federal NSF, DARPA, as well as industrial sources such as IBM, HP, and Aether Systems
Semantic Web, Web/Data Mining and Personalization: Personalizing the content of the web is an important challenge to reduce information overload. I am exploring techniques from robust fuzzy systems to enable mining and personalization in semi-structured data such as that on the web. I collaborate with Professor Raghu Krishnapuram on this effort, which is supported by NSF. In a related DARPA suported effort as a part of the DAML program, I am working on techniques to integrate agents and semantic web for personalization tasks. As a part of this effort, we are developing the ITTalks system

MultiAgent Systems for Ubiquitous, Networked Scientific Computing: I am working on using techniques from Computational Intelligence and Agent-based systems to aid in the effort of realizing MetaComputing or Networked computing, especially for the Scientific Computing domain. This involves creating multidisciplinary problem solving environments (MPSEs) which make the underlying neworked and distributed system transparent to the user by using a system of solver, mediator and recommendor agents. The work is developing two systems to support (PDE based) Scientific Computing - SciAgents to provide an agent oriented framework , and PYTHIA to provide recommender agents. An important component of this work is providing Ubiquitous accesss - bringing terraflops to the desktop. We investigate the issues involved in allowing resource / bandwidth constrained clients to access networked HPCC resources in the SciencePad project. This work is jointly done with Professors Elias Houstis and John Rice at Purdue's Computer Science Department.

My Ph.D. thesis explored the nature of motion correspondence process in biological systems, using relevant information from Neurobiology and Psychophysics. Later, I worked on understanding the effect of the geometry of visual space on the human ability to solve difficult problems. This work was done jointly with Prof. Zygmunt Pizlo of the Psychology department at Purdue.

Selected Professional Activities

NSF Panel Reviewer for IIS, EIA, and DUE divisions.
Associate Editor (January 99 - present), IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems
Reviewer for many conferences and journals (e.g. IEEE Trans. Knowledge and Data Engineering, IEEE Trans. Computers, IEEE Computer, IEEE Internet Computing, IEEE Trans. SMC, IEEE Trans. Neural Networks, Comm. ACM, J. Distr. and Parallel Databases)
Guest Editor (with Yelena Yesha and Vijay Atluri) VLDB Journal Special issue on the Semantic Web (to appear in 2003)
Guest Editor (with Padma Mundur), Journal of Very High Speed Networks Special Issue on Multimedia Networks (to appear in 2002)
Guest Editor (with Arvind Krishna), Journal of Very High Speed Networks Special Issue on Broadband Wireless Networks(2001).
Guest Editor (with Jin Jing), Journal of Distributed and Parallel Databases Special Issue on Mobile Data Management and Applications (June 1999)
Guest Editor (with Munindar Singh), CACM Theme section on MultiAgent systems on the Network (March 1999)
Guest Editor (with Arvind Krishna), IEEE Personal Communications Magazine Special Issue on Mobile Systems and the Web (October 1998).
Co-General Chair, MDM 2004
Program Committee, IEEE PERCOM 2003
Program Committee, MDM 2003
Program Committee, IEEE ICDE 2003
Program Committee, AAMAS Workshop on Ubiquitous Agents on embedded, wearable, and mobile devices, 2002
Program Committee, ACM Mobicom Workshop on Mobile Commerce, 2002
Program Committee, ACM SIGMOD Conference, 2002
Program Committee, IEEE Intl. Conf. Distr. Computing Systems (ICDCS) 2002
Co-Organizer, NSF Workshop on Context Aware Mobile Data Management, 2002.
Program Committee, ATAL 2001
Program Committee, IPCCC 2001
Program Co-Chair, ACM Mobicom Workshop on Mobile Commerce, 2001
Program Committee, 3^rd IEEE Intl. Conf. Mobile and Wireless Communication Networks 2001, Brazil
Program Committee, 2001 Intl. Conf. Parallel and Distributed Systems, Korea
Program Comittee, 2nd International Workshop on Wireless Networks and Mobile Computing (held with IEEE Intl Conf. Distributed Computing Systems), 2001
Tutorial on Mobile E-Commerce at 2nd ACM SigECOM Conference EC00, 2000.
Tutorial on Mobile Data Management at ACM CIKM 2000.
Program Co-Chair, Tenth IEEE Workshop on Research Issues in Data Engineering (RIDE2000)
Program Committee Member, IPCCC 2000.
Program Committee Member, 2nd International Conference on Mobile Data Management, 2001
Co-Organizer, HICSS33 Minitrack on Multi-Agent systems, Internet, and Applications.
Program Committee, Electronic Commerce and Web (EC-WEB) Conference, 2000
Co-Organizer, Panel on Mobility and Electronic Commerce, First ACM Conference of Electronic Commerce, 1999.
Program Committee Member, Fifth Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom) 99.
Program Committee Member, WIDM Workshop, ACM CIKM 1999.
Program Committee Member, Fourth Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom) 98.
Program Committee Member, AAAI 98 Workshop on Software Tools for Developing Agents.
Moderator & Organizer, Panel on Security in Mobile Systems, ACM/IEEE Mobicom '98
Presented a tutorial on Computational Intelligence & Data Mining at IEEE WCCI 1998.
Session chair (mobile databases session) at IEEE ICDE'98.
Presented a tutorial on Mobile Computing and Web at ACM Mobicom '96.
Organizer, Panel on Cooperative MultiAgent systems for the Web, CoopIS'97.
Co-Organizer and panelist, minisymposium on Electronic Textbooks, Classrooms and Labs for Education in Computational Sciences, SIAM Annual Meeting 1995
Tutorials Chair, IEEE First International Conference on Software Testing, Reliability and Quality Assurance
Member Program Committee, IEEE Intl. Conf. Tools wih AI, 1996.
Panelist, AI Tools in Human-Computer Interaction: Perspectives, Issues, and Directions, IEEE Intl. Conf. Tools with AI.
Member Program Committee, IASTED/ISMM Intl. Conf. Intelligent Information Management Systems 1996.