LUMS Does It Again - Microsoft Pakistan’s Imagine Cup 2008
Submitted on: May 22, 2008
A team of Sophomore CS majors, working under Dr. Jahangir Ikram, won the Imagine Cup organized by Microsoft Pakistan, once again proving the quality and creativity of the CS undergrads. Microsoft held the Pakistan rounds of the Imagine Cup software competition at FAST - National University, Karachi. LUMS was represented by the Team VIEW, which consisted of Amer Tahir, Junaid Shafqat Paracha, Hasanat Kazmi and Farrukh Jawed. Incidentally Team VIEW was the youngest team ever to win the imagine cup and they were also the youngest team present at the Karachi Finals.
Microsoft Imagine Cup (http://www.imaginecup.com) is Microsoft's annual international IT competition, and is one of the most prestigious student competitions in the world. Every year the students are given a new theme to work on. This time the theme was "Imagine a world where technology enables a sustainable environment". The Pakistan version of the competition was aimed at selecting ONE team which would represent Pakistan at the Imagine Cup finals in Paris in July.This is the second time in a row that LUMS will be going to the Imagine Cup finals and we wish Team VIEW the best of luck and pray that they bring the trophy cup to LUMS and Pakistan.
So what exactly is VIEW?
Environmental degradation is one of the biggest problems humanity currently faces. We are beginning to realize that excess pollution in any one place threatens our entire planet. Therefore everyone on the planet has a right to know, and a responsibility to control, the level of this threat that poisons our environment. Given that a large proportion of humanity lives in urban areas, it is important that urban environmental degradation is understood and curtailed. Acquiring the vast amounts of data that define urban pollution and getting people involved in the process is a major challenge; collecting data from the entire planet is a very intimidating idea and the cost of the infrastructure and human resources required for such a project would be exorbitantly high. Moreover, in developing nations, where it is difficult to implement legislation and enforce that legislation through regular monitoring, a cheap and effective monitoring solution is required. This is where the volunteer internet-based environment watch (VIEW) comes in. The project VIEW is an innovative take against the urban pollution problem using a combination of software, a social network of volunteers, and the Internet. The goal of the project is to provide an autonomous, low-cost urban air pollution monitoring infrastructure. The software would analyze the data that is collected by the volunteers which comes from the Data Acquisition Devices (DAD). The software would provide a complete and comprehensive visual (maps), statistical (reports) and graphical (trend graphs) analysis. The software would also keep a record in its archive, which would be useful in not only giving the past situation of the monitored area, but would also be useful in the future planning and development of that locality.
CS Faculty Member’s Paper Awarded the Best Paper Award at PERCOM
Submitted on: March 19, 2008
A paper co-authored by Dr. Umar Saif and students and colleagues at MIT (based on their work from Project Oxygen) has been awarded the best paper award at IEEE Percom'08! This award, called the Mark Weiser Award, is the highest recognition for a researcher in the field of Pervasive Computing.
Percom is ranked in the A+ category in the CORE list (widely used for ranking conferences in CS); as the premier conference in pervasive computing, percom had an acceptance rate of ~11% this year. An extended version of the paper will appear as an invited paper in the Pervasive and Mobile Computing Journal later this year (PMC).
The system was also featured in the following BBC article: http://www.pervasive-cmi.csail.mit.edu/news/3583479.stm.html
A copy of the paper is available at: http://www.cag.csail.mit.edu/~umar/publications/percom08-goals-web.pdf
Poor Man's Broadband: CS Research Featured in New Scientist
Submitted on: November 17, 2007
The New Scientist magazine recently interviewed Dr. Umar Saif for his research on "Poor Man's Broadband". The article appeared in the 17th November 2007 issue of the New Scientist. Since 1956 New Scientist has been keeping its readers up to date with the latest science and technology news from around the world. With a network of correspondents and seven editorial offices worldwide they have a global reach that no other science magazine can match. We are lead to believe that this is the first time research done in Pakistan has been covered by a major international technology magazine such as New Scientist.
The "Poor Man's Broadband" project, funded by Microsoft Research's Digital Inclusion Grant, has resulted in a modified version of a p2p system (BitTorrent) designed to bypass the "bottleneck of the Internet" in the developing-world. The system employs direct point-to-point POTS connections to exchange data at the maximum speed afforded by a modem.
For more information regarding the project visit: http://newt.lums.edu.pk/index.php/projects/poor-mans-broadband
Back to topAnnual Faculty Awards Announced
Submitted on: October 25, 2007
Dr Arif Zaman, member of the Dean's Council, today announced the annual CS faculty awards for high achievement. Starting last year, these awards are announced annually to acknowledge the top-performing faculty members in the three areas of research, teaching and contribution to the department.
This year's Research Award was shared by Drs Zartash Uzmi and Nabil Mustafa. In an email to the faculty, Dr Zaman explained that the quality of research publications, funding and related contributions over the year were considered in deciding the winners.
The Teaching Award, based on teaching load and student evaluations, was shared by Drs Ashraf Iqbal and Sohaib Khan. The Contribution Award, which acknowledges overall contribution to the department and its impact, was awarded to Dr Shahid Masud.
"These awards are important to recognize the outstanding achievements and contributions of our faculty members", said Dr Shafay Shamail, Head of the CS Department. The committee which decided the awards consisted of the Vice Chancellor Dr Zahoor Hassan, Dr Arif Zaman and Dr Shafay Shamail.
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