Speaker: Dr. Ahmed HELMY

Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Department, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL

Date: Monday, 21 May 2012
Time: 5:00 pm
Place: Hammam Lecture Hall

Abstract:

The future of social networking is in the mobile world. Future network services are expected to center around human activity and behavior. Wireless networks (including ad hoc, sensor networks and DTNs) are expected to grow significantly and accommodate higher levels of mobility and interaction. In such a highly dynamic environment, networks need to adapt efficiently (performance-wise) and gracefully (correctness and functionality-wise) to growth and dynamics in many dimensions, including behavioral and mobility patterns, on-line activity and load. Understanding and realistically modeling this multi-dimensional space is essential to the design and evaluation of efficient protocols and services of the future Internet.
This level of understanding to drive the modeling and protocol design shall be developed using data-driven paradigm. The design philosophy for the proposed paradigm is unique in that it begins by intensive analysis of measurements from the target contexts, which then drive the modeling, protocol and service design through a systematic framework, called TRACE. Components of TRACE include: 1. Tracing and monitoring of behavior, 2. Representing and Analyzing the data, 3. Characterizing behavioral profiles using data mining and clustering techniques, and finally 4. Employing the understanding and insight attained into developing realistic models of mobile user behavior, and designing efficient protocols and services for future mobile societies.
Tracing at a large scale represents the next frontier for sensor networks (sensing the human society). Our latest progress in that field (MobiLib) shall be presented, along with data mining and machine learning tools to meaningfully analyze the data. Several challenges will be presented and novel use of clustering algorithms will be provided. Major contributions to modeling of human mobility (the time variant community model, TVC) will also be discussed.
Finally, insights developed through analysis, mining and modeling will be utilized to introduce and design a novel communication paradigm, called profile-cast, to support new classes of service for interest-aware routing and dissemination of information, queries and resource discovery, trust and participatory sensing (crowd sourcing) in future mobile networks. Unlike conventional - unicast, multicast or directory based - paradigms, the proposed paradigm infers user interest using implicit behavioral profiling via self-monitoring and mining techniques. In order to capture interest, a spatio-temporal representation is introduced to capture users behavioral-space. Users can then identify similarity of interest based on their position in such space.
The proposed profile-cast paradigm will act as enabler to new classes of service, ranging from mobile social networking, and navigation of mobile societies and spaces, to computational health care and education, among others. The ideas of similarity-based support groups will be specifically highlighted for potential applications in disease-self management, collaborative education, and emergency response.

Biography:

Dr. Ahmed Helmy is an Associate Professor at the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Department at the University of Florida (UF). He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science 1999 from the University of Southern California (USC), M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering (EE) 1995 from USC, M.Sc. in Engineering Mathematics in 1994 and B.Sc. in Electronics and Communications Engineering 1992 from Cairo University, Egypt. He was a key researcher in the Network Simulator NS-2 and Protocol-Independent Multicast (PIM) projects at USC/ISI from 1995 to 1999. Before joining UF in 2006, he was on the Electrical Engineering-Systems Department faculty at USC starting Fall 1999, where he founded and directed the Wireless and Sensor Networks Labs.
In 2002, he received the NSF CAREER Award for his research on resource discovery and mobility modeling in large-scale wireless networks (MARS). In 2000 he received the Zumberge Award, and in 2002 he received the best paper award from the IEEE/IFIP MMNS Conference. In 2003 he was the Electrical Engineering nominee for the USC Engineering Jr. Faculty Research Award, and a nominee for the Sloan Fellowship. In 2004 and 2005 he got the best faculty merit ranking at the Electrical Engineering department at USC. He was a winner in the ACM MobiCom 2007, a finalist in 2008 SRC competitions, and a 2nd place winner in ACM MobiCom WiNTECH demo competition 2010. He is leading (or has led) several NSF funded projects including MARS, STRESS, ACQUIRE and AWARE.
His research interests include design, analysis and measurement of wireless ad hoc, sensor and mobile social networks, mobility modeling, multicast protocols, IP mobility and network simulation. He has published over 150 journal articles, conference papers and posters, book chapters, IETF RFCs and Internet drafts. His research is (or has been) supported by grants from NSF, Intel, Cisco, DARPA, NASA, Nortel, HP, Pratt & Whitney, Siemens and SGI.
Dr. Helmy is an area editor of the Ad hoc Networks Journal - ElSevier (since 2004), and an area editor of the IEEE Computer (since 2010). He is serving (or has served as) the program co-chair for ACM MSWiM 2011, and ACM MobiCom CHANTS workshop 2011, co-chair of AdhocNets 2011, honorary program chair of IEEE/ACM IWCMC 2011, general chair of IWCMC 2010, vice-chair of IEEE MASS 2010, plenary panel chair of IEEE Globecom 2010, co-chair of IEEE Infocom Global Internet (GI) workshop 2008, and IFIP/IEEE MMNS 2006, vice-chair for IEEE ICPADS 2006, IEEE HiPC 2007, and local & poster chair for IEEE ICNP 2008 and 2009. He is ACM SIGMOBILE workshop coordination chair (for MobiCom, Mobihoc, Mobisys, Sensys) (since 2006). He has served on numerous committees of IEEE and ACM conferences on networks. He is a member of IEEE (Computer and Communications Societies) and ACM (Sigmobile and Sigcomm Groups).