PhD Dissertation Defense

Amplified Quantum Transforms

David J. Cornwell

10:00am-12:00pm, 26 March 2014, ITE346

In this work we investigate a new quantum algorithm called the Amplified Quantum Fourier Transform (Amplified-QFT) to solve the Local Period Problem where there is an Oracle with a periodic subset and we wish to recover its period. This algorithm uses parts of the famous Grover’s quantum search algorithm to amplify the amplitudes on the subset, followed by the equally famous Shor’s quantum algorithm for recovering the period. We compare the Amplified-QFT algorithm against the Quantum Fourier Transform (QFT) and Quantum Hidden Subgroup (QHS) algorithms and calculate the probabilities of success for all three algorithms. We show that the Amplified-QFT algorithm is on average, quadratically faster than either the QFT or QHS algorithms. We also investigate two more general settings: a) where the QFT is replaced by a general unitary operator U in the Amplified-QFT algorithm and b) where Grover’s algorithm is replaced by a general amplification procedure in the Amplified-QFT algorithm.

We also investigate this algorithm when a random Error Stream affects the Oracle, which involves calculating expectations and variances over a random set. We calculate the probabilities of success in this case. Further, we find an Uncertainty Principle for the Amplified-QFT algorithm. We also identify a decision problem, the Constant or Balanced Signal Decision Problem, which can be solved by using the one dimensional Amplified Haar Wavelet Transform. This decision problem is a generalization of the Deutsch-Josza problem.

Committee: Drs. S. Lomonaco (CSEE), Chair and advisor; T. Armstrong (Math), Co-advisor and Reader; Dr. Y. Shih (Physics), Reader; Dr. F. Potra (Math) and Dr. M. Gowda (Math)

Google Code Jam 2014 Registration is open and the qualification round starts on Friday, April 11, 2014. Google Code Jam is an international programming competition hosted and administered by Google. The competition began in 2003 as a means to identify top engineering talent for potential employment at Google.

The competition consists of a set of algorithmic problems which must be solved in a fixed amount of time. Competitors may use any programming language and development environment to obtain their solutions. More than 45,000 coders registered to compete last year and the winner, Ivan Miatselski won the $15,000 grand prize.

If you are interested in finding out more, see the Google Code Jam quick start guide and try some of the practice problems from past competitions. The first qualification round starts on April 11 and the finals will take place in Los Angeles on August 15.

The UMBC ACM Student Chapter will kick off the Spring Hi-Tea series this week at 3:00pm on Friday, February 20. Hi Tea is a student-run social event held (nearly) every Friday from 3:00 to 3:30 in the third floor hallway of the ITE building outside the CSEE Department suite (325 ITE). All students, staff, faculty and friends of the CSEE Department are welcome to attend. Each week, a group of students will plan and assemble simple refreshments for the event. See our photo sets for pictures of past Hi-Tea events.

This week the event host is the IEEE Student Branch and next week it will be the Ebiquity Research Group.

This time we are changing the competition model to bring in more participants and give away more prizes. We are also modifying the judging process to bring in more votes from the faculty, staff and students who are attending the event. We will continue to have faculty and/or staff judges at the same time, that would help us find a right balance for the judging process. Although the competition rules remain the same, we are now going to have four winners and instead of a knockout tournament format we will have points based ranking format. Here are the rules:

• Form groups of one to three members. Teams do not have to have all members from the same lab. So feel free to form a group with any of your friends from the CSEE Department.
• Create a name for your team or use your lab’s name.
• The winning team will be chosen from a weighted combination of points given by judges and attendees.
• Each week one or more teams may participate. All of them would get points on the judging criteria from the judges and attendees.
• Points obtained through the semester would be ranked and the top four team would receive the prizes.
• Each team should limit their presentation to $25. Each team MUST save their receipts to obtain their reimbursement. We will inform you how to get the reimbursement.
• Teams will be judged on creativity, presentation, and budget planning. It is preferred that you list how you managed your expenses for the judges to verify limit-to-$25 rule.
• The Hi-Tea competition will proceed through the semester and at the end of the semester the winners would be announced.

For questions, comments, and registration, send email to one of the Hi-Tea committee members: Genaro Hernandez Jr. (), Primal Pappachan () or Sunil Gandhi ().

UMBC-Shady Groves Cybersecurity Graduate Programs virtual information session will be held from 6:30 to 7:30 on Wednesday, 2 April 2014. The session will provide an overview of the cybersecurity programs innovative curriculum and practice-oriented instruction, designed for working professionals. Participants will also learn how a graduate degree can help advance their career in the cybersecurity industry. If you are interested in attending, please RSVP online.

UMBC offers a variety of masters degree and certificate options. Our cybersecurity graduate programs leverage a students experience toward a range of opportunities within the cybersecurity profession. UMBC’s in-person cybersecurity programs are designed to prepare computer science, information systems, and other experienced professionals to fill management and leadership roles in cybersecurity and cyber operations.

UMBC is uniquely positioned to provide education and training that respond to the states need for qualified technical professionals in the cybersecurity field. UMBC is certified as a Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education (CAE) as well as a Center of Academic Excellence in Research (CAE-R) sponsored by the National Security Agency and Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

CSEE Ph.D. student Omar Shehab received a travel grant to present his research, UNKNOTTING as a k-local Hamiltonian problem, at the 2014 Quantum Information Processing conference, which will be held early in February in Barcelona, Spain. Later in February he will also attend the Workshop on Quantum Games and Protocols at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing, UC Berkeley.

Omar’s research include adiabatic quantum Hamiltonian complexity, quantum computational simulation of topology and use of quantum optics to understand device independent cryptography. His work on quantum computing is done in collaboration with his mentor, CSEE Professor Samuel Lomonaco.

Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Ph.D. Dissertation Defense

Multi-Modal Saliency Fusion for Illustrative Image Enhancement

Christopher J. Morris

10:30-12:30, Wednesday, 15 January 2013, ITE 365 & 352

Digitally manipulated or augmented images are increasingly prevalent. Multisensor systems produce augmented images that integrate data into a single context. Mixed-reality images are generated from insertion of computer generated objects into a natural scene. Digital processing for application-specific tasks (e.g., compression or network transmission) can create images distorted with processing artifacts. Digital image augmentation can lead to the inclusion of artifacts that influence the perception of the image.

Visual cues (e.g., depth or size cues) may no longer be perceptually consistent in an augmented image. A feature deemed important in its local context may no longer be in the broader integrated context. Inserted synthetic objects may not possess the appropriate visual cues for proper perception of the overall scene. Finer cues that distinguish critical features may be lost in compressed images. Enhancing augmented images to add or restore visual cues can improve the image’s perceptibility.

This dissertation presents a framework for illustrating images to enhance critical features. The enhancements improve the perception and comprehension of the augmented image. The framework uses a linear combination of image (2D), surface topology (3D), and task based saliency measures to identify the critical features in the image. The use of multi-modal saliency allows the visualization designer to adjust the definition of critical features based on the attributes of the scene and the task at hand. Upon identification, the features are enhanced using a non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) deferred illustration technique. The enhancements, inspired by an analysis of artists’ techniques, bolster the features’ perceptual cues.

To measure the amount of similar salient features between the enhanced image and the original image, the framework describes the Saliency Similarity Metric (SSM). The SSM is feedback with which to make informed decisions to tune the visualization. The benefits of illustrative enhancement are analyzed using objective and subjective evaluations. Using conventional metrics, illustrative enhancements improve the perceptual image quality of images distorted by noise or compression artifacts. User survey results reveal that enhancements must be carefully applied for perceptual improvement. The framework can be effectively utilized in mobile rendering, augmented reality, and sensor fusion applications.

Committee: Drs. Penny Rheingans (chair), Dan Bailey, Jian Chen, Thomas Jackman (Desert Research Institute), Anupam Joshi and Marc Olano

Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Ph.D. Dissertation Proposal

Functional Reference Ontology Development: a Design Pattern Approach

Yunsu Lee

1:00pm Friday, January 10, 2014, ITE325b, UMBC

The next generation of smart manufacturing systems will be developed by composing advanced manufacturing components and IT services introducing new technologies. These new technologies can lead to dramatic improvements in the ability to monitor, control, and optimize all aspects of manufacturing. The ability to compose advanced manufacturing components and IT services enhances agility, resiliency, and productivity of a manufacturing system. In order to make the composition possible, functional knowledge of manufacturing components and IT services should be captured and shared explicitly. Recent researches have shown that a semantically precise and rich reference functional ontology enables effective composition. However, since domains of factories and production networks are large, evolving, and heterogeneous, developing a reference functional ontology is a challenging task. Specifically, conceptual functionality modeling that characterizes various features of manufacturing components and IT services at different levels of abstraction is a difficult task. Even if the reference functional ontology is developed successfully, there will certainly be interoperability issues between the reference functional ontology and local proprietary information models. Firstly, the conceptual conflict issues may arise primarily from the fact that the reference functional ontology does not reflect actual users’ or providers’ conceptualizations. Secondly, structural conflict issues may arise from diverse modeling choices in local, proprietary information models.

The objective of our research is to assess utility of design patterns in addressing the issues in the reference functional ontology development, specifically OWL ontology design patterns (ODPs). To achieve the objective, we will assess inductive approaches to identifying the ODPs, and explore development of a methodology for resolving structural differences between the reference functional ontology and local proprietary information models. The key potential contributions of this work include 1) new method to identify information patterns of functionalities in manufacturing components and IT services, 2) new inductive ODP development process which starts with the pattern definition of the specific functionality concepts, with subsequent grouping of these patterns into more general patterns, and 3) ODP-based ontology transformation to resolve structural conflicts between the reference functional ontology and local proprietary information models.

Committee: Drs. Yun Peng (chair), Tim Finin, Yelena Yesha, Milton Halem, Nenad Ivezic (NIST) and Boonserm Kulvatunyou (NIST)

UMBC’s ACM student chapter has a new website that will be used to announce its activities and events as well as news about computing related opportunities and resources. The chapter is open to both undergraduate and graduate students interested in computing from all majors. Joining is free and is a great way to meet other students interested in computing and to participate in activities that will help you grow as a professional.

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, is the the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society. It provides members with resources that advance computing both as a science and a profession. UMBC’s chapter meetings are open to all undergraduate and graduate students of any major. While you do not need to join ACM to be a part of the local chapter, the annual membership dues for students is only $19, heavily discounted from the non-student rate. See the ACM site for more information on student membership and its benefits.

For more information contact us at acmofficers AT lists.umbc.edu.

M.S. Thesis Defense
Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Hyperglycemic challenge and distribution of

adipose tissue in Non-human primates using fMRI

Tanmay A. Kulkarni

11:30-1:30 Monday, 2 December 2013, ITE 234

Blood glucose levels regulate the rate of insulin secretion, which is the body’s mechanism for preventing excessive elevation in blood glucose. Impaired glucose metabolism and insulin resistance have been linked to excess body fat composition. The thesis focuses on the development of an imaging sequence and image analysis steps for performing body composition analysis based on 3D imaging of abdominal adipose tissue in a large nonhuman primate, baboon, and using segmentation approaches to calculate regional distribution of adipose tissue within the abdominal cavity. In addition, a data-driven analysis approach is used to correlate the total abdominal fat composition with serum glucose response to a hyperglycemic challenge. Five female baboons were fasted for 16 hours prior to 90 minute body imaging experiment that consisted of a 20-min baseline, followed by a bolus infusion of glucose (500mg/kg). The blood glucose was sampled at regular intervals. The total compositions of the muscle, visceral and subcutaneous adipose tissue were estimated in all five baboons. We found that adipose tissue composition is associated with the fluctuations in glucose responses as measured by IVGTT of a non-human primate. Mean (SD) values of body weight, and muscle, visceral, and subcutaneous adipose are 26.7 ± 2.21 kg, 0.79 ± 0.22 kg, 1.18 ± 0.27 kg, and 1.39 ± 0.75 kg, respectively. The glucose responses were positively correlated with body weight, visceral and muscle fat (p < 0.005). Polynomial regression analysis showed that body weight, visceral and muscle were significant predictors of serum glucose responses. (p < 0.001). These results indicate the similarity between humans and baboons with respect to glucose metabolism and strengthen the utility of baboon for biomedical research.

Committee: Drs. Gymama Slaughter (Chair), Mohamed Younis and Joel Morris

CRA-Women is accepting applications for the 2014 Graduate Cohort for Women. Cohort activities will kick off with a workshop 11-12 April 2014 in Santa Clara, CA. This workshop is the cornerstone of CRA-W’s efforts to increase the ranks of senior women in computing by building and mentoring nationwide communities of women during their graduate studies.

Women students in their first, second, and third year of graduate school in computer science and engineering or a closely related field, who are studying at a U.S. or Canadian institution. Travel expenses, meals and lodging will be provided for students chosen to participate in this program.

At the Grad Cohort Workshop, women graduate students in their first year of graduate school will be welcomed into the community of computing researchers and professionals by providing them with a broad range of strategies and role models. Strategies and mentoring for students in their second and third years of graduate school will also be provided.

All of the students will meet for two days with ~20 senior computing researchers and professionals who will share pertinent information on graduate school survival skills, as well as more personal information and insights into their experiences. The rewards of a research career will be emphasized. This workshop will include a mix of formal presentations and informal discussions and social events. Through the workshop, students will be able to build mentoring relationships and develop peer networks that will form the basis for ongoing activities during their graduate careers. Also, participants will be able to network with our generous sponsors to learn about career and internship opportunities they have available.

See http://bit.ly/crawgcw for more information about the Grad Cohort program. Apply by December 4, 2013.