The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Open-source software, privacy laws, compliance: examining developers needs

Speaker: Dr.-Ing. Georgia Kapitsaki Affiliation: University of Cyprus, Cyprus Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Monday, April 27, 2026 Time: 15:00-16:00 EEST Host: Prof. Yanos Sazeides (yanos-AT-ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php#cs.ucy.2026.kapitsaki

Abstract:
Software engineers need to deal with various issues when working with and contributing to open-source software, while the software systems they create need to comply to data privacy regulations in the framework of general regulatory compliance. The talk will focus on the presentation of research works that are examining developers’ needs in the areas of open-source software, its licensing, and on data privacy compliance, considering popular laws such as the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). The talk will most specifically present empirical works that explore how questions and answers from Stack Exchange sites (e.g. Software Engineering site) can be used to investigate the questions developers pose when dealing with licensing issues in open-source software, the main topics of questions, as well as concerns they have regarding open-source software in general. Furthermore, the talk will discuss how GitHub development artifacts, mainly repository commits and issues, can be used to understand the impact of data privacy laws in software development practices and repository adaptations in the open-source software community, and the main challenges developers discuss in this context. The analysis of repository commits relevant to popular data privacy laws will be presented, along with a categorization of concerns found in GitHub issues. Moreover, the talk will briefly present various tools that tackle some of the above areas to assist software engineering activities. The talk will be concluded with ongoing research and an outline of future research agenda.

Short Bio:
Georgia Kapitsaki is an Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science, University of Cyprus. She received her PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens. Before joining UCY, she had worked as a software engineer in Ericsson Group (Germany) as a research associate at NTUA (Greece), and as a laboratory assistant at the Technical Institute of Piraeus (Greece). As faculty at UCY, she coordinated and has been the principal investigator of national and EU funded research projects (e.g. Support4Resilience, SocioCoast, CYberSafetyV). She has been involved in the organization of international conferences (e.g. SANER 2026, ISD 2025, ICSME 2022) and has been serving as member of the program committee of international conferences (e.g. FSE 2026, MSR 2026, SAC 2026, ESEM 2025, ICWS 2025, SANER 2024). She is a member of the editorial board of Springer Software Quality journal, ERCIM News, and Applied Computing and Intelligence. She has published over 100 papers in peer-reviewed journals, and scientific conferences and workshops. She is on the board of directors of GFOSS Open Technologies Alliance. Her research interests include Software Engineering, Software Reuse, and Privacy Enhancing Technologies.

Note:
This colloquium is part of the speaker's procedure for evaluation and promotion from Associate Professor to Full Professor.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://groups.google.com/g/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2026.kapitsaki.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Reliable Problem Solving via Neuro-symbolic integration of LLMs with Symbolic Argumentation

Speaker: Prof. Antonis C. Kakas Affiliation: University of Cyprus, Cyprus Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Tuesday, April 21, 2026 Time: 11:00-12:00 EET Host: Prof. Yiorgos Chrysanthou (yiorgos-AT-ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php#cs.ucy.2026.kakas

Abstract:
In modern AI the aim of an AI system is to address the problem requirements directly from the natural language description of the problem. Clearly, a problem specification is expressed under human reasoning and hence a problem solving system would be advantageous if it could also operate under a formalism that is close to human reasoning. The recent development of Large Language Models (LLMs) offers such a possibility as these systems appear to handle natural language in a human-like fashion. But their reliability is under question as is their ability to reason underneath their process of constructing well-formed sentences in order to explain and argue for their solutions to problems. The question the arises: do we develop and train LLMs as reasoners or do we connect these to other formal (symbolic) reasoners who do not suffer from the above shortcomings? In this talk, we will present a neuro-symbolic framework, based on the integration of the Natural Language capabilities of LLMs with Argumentation-based Reasoning. In this approach, instead of the LLM carrying out the reasoning, this is delegated to COGNICA, a Cognitive Argumentation system, which carries out the reasoning within a Controlled Natural Language. Specifically, LLM-COGNICA is a hybrid neural-symbolic framework for reasoning under a decision policy specified within Natural Language and executed via Explainable Argumentation. This offers the reliability of formal problem solving and allows the human developer and problem solver to be in control of the system development process. The talk will present the Argumentation foundations and Argumentation Technology underlying the neuro-symbolic integration of the LLM-COGNICA framework and describe how this can be employed to build reliable real-life application systems.

Short Bio:
Antonis C. Kakas is a professor (emeritus) at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Cyprus. He studied Mathematics at Imperial College, London and then obtained his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from the same college in 1984. His interest in Computing and AI started in 1989 under the group of Professor R.A. Kowalski. Since then, his research has concentrated on computational logic in AI with particular interest in argumentation, abduction and induction and their application to machine learning and cognitive systems. He has co-developed at the UCY several research AI systems, including the argumentation system of GORGIAS which has been applied to a wide range of problems in multi-agent systems and cognitive agents. With others he has proposed, Argumentation Logic, as a logic that offers a foundation for Human-centric and Explainable AI. With his students and collaborators, he is developing two new systems, LLM-COGNICA and ArgEML, to support the development of Cognitive Agentic AI and Explainable Machine Learning. He has recently co-founded a start-up company in Paris, called Argument Theory, which offers solutions to real- life application decision taking problems based on its rAIson platform of ΑΙ argumentation technology.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://groups.google.com/g/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2026.kakas.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Termination Analysis of Symbolic Reasoning

Speaker: Dr. Andreas Pieris Affiliation: University of Cyprus, Cyprus Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Thursday, March 05, 2026 Time: 11:00-12:00 EET Host: Prof. Demetris Zeinalipour (dzeina-AT-ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php#cs.ucy.2026.pieris

Abstract:
Symbolic reasoning is a well-established AI method of manipulating symbols and abstract representations to draw new conclusions. It involves using structured knowledge, such as databases and rules, to perform logical operations and derive new information, which is then used according to the needs of the underlying application, e.g., providing more complete answers to user queries. A key challenge though when reasoning with logical rules is non-termination. Indeed, the majority of the practically important rule-based reasoning languages designed over the years by the Knowledge Representation community, although they strike a good balance between expressiveness and computational complexity of the relevant reasoning services, do not guarantee the termination of reasoning. This is because of the following two factors: the recursive nature of logical rules and their ability to infer new implicit objects. This leads to the fundamental problem of termination analysis of reasoning: given a set logical rules, is it the case that reasoning terminates on every input database (or on a particular database of interest)? The goal of this talk is to illustrate the technical challenges underlying the above problem when focusing on existential rules, that is, logical rules of the form "if some data facts are true, then some other data facts are also true", which have found numerous applications over the years in databases and knowledge representation and reasoning. We will further discuss how those challenges can be attacked and what are the interesting open problems that are waiting to be tackled.

Short Bio:
Andreas Pieris is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus. Prior to this, he has worked at the University of Edinburgh (Associate and Assistant Professor), the Vienna University of Technology (Postdoctoral Researcher), and the University of Oxford (Postdoctoral Researcher). He earned a D.Phil. in Computer Science from the University of Oxford in 2011. His research interests are database theory with emphasis on knowledge-enriched and uncertain data, knowledge representation and reasoning, and logic in computer science. He has published numerous papers, most of them in leading international conferences and journals. He is the recipient of the Ray Reiter Best Paper Award at the 22nd International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR2025). He has served on the program committees of international conferences and workshops, including the top-tier database and AI conferences. He has also served as one of the general chairs of the 25th Joint International Conference on Extending Database Technology and Database Theory (EDBT/ICDT 2022) and as the general chair of the 16th Reasoning Web Summer School (RW2020).

Note:
This colloquium is part of the speaker's procedure for evaluation and promotion from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://groups.google.com/g/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2026.pieris.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

On the (multimodal) disinformation detection and beyond

Speaker: Prof. Paolo Rosso Affiliation: Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Friday, December 19, 2025 Time: 11:00-12:00 EET Host: Prof. Marios Dikaiakos (mdd-AT-ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php#cs.ucy.2025.rosso

Abstract:
Harmful information in social media, both disinformation and hate speech, is pervasive. In this talk I will mainly focus on disinformation and how this problem is perceived and addressed at EU level, being disinformation campaigns (often from abroad) considered as a form of information warfare and an attempt to create polarization in our democracies. In conspiracy theories, causal explanations of significant events are presented as a result of cover plots orchestrated by secret powerful and malicious groups. It is particularly important not to confuse critical and conspiracy narratives in order to avoid the high risk of pushing critical people towards conspiracy communities. I will briefly describe the challenge that we organized with messages of Telegram where, apart from distinguishing between conspiracy theories and critical thinking narratives, the goal was to recognize elements of oppositional thinking (agents, objectives, effects, victims, campaigners, facilitators). We have addressed disinformation detection from a multimodal perspective analyzing posts in X and videos in TikTok during the DANA devastating floods in Valencia one year ago. Emotion analysis revealed that disinformation on X is mainly associated with increased sadness and fear, while on TikTok, it correlates with higher levels of anger and disgust. Last, I will briefly comment on sexism, the subtle form of hate speech when the targets are women, and the challenge we have been organizing since 2021 on sexism identification, also in memes and videos of TikTok. Recently, we addressed the problem integrating sensor data into AI models.

Short Bio:
Paolo Rosso is Full Professor at the Universitat Politècnica de València, where he is also a member of the Pattern Recognition and Human Language Technology (PRHLT) research center. His research interests are focused on Artificial Intelligence and concretely on Natural Language Processing and Multimodality: Detection of Disinformation, Hate Speech and Sexism in social media texts, memes and videos. He has been the PI of several national and international research projects funded by EC, US Army Research Office, Qatar National Research Fund, and Vodafone Spain addressing for instance topics such as the detection of fake news, conspiracy theories and hate speech. He has published 60+ articles in journals and 400+ articles in conferences and workshops; he has an H-index of 80 (source: Google Scholar) and he is in the ranking of the top scientists in Spain.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://groups.google.com/g/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2025.rosso.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Distinguished FPAS Lecture Series entitled:

Runtime Intelligence in Data Management: Harnessing the Power of AI and Modern Hardware

Speaker: Prof. Anastasia Ailamaki Affiliation: École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland Category: Distinguished FPAS Lecture Series Location: Amphitheatre B108, Anastasios G. Leventis University House, University of Cyprus (directions) Date: Monday, June 30, 2025 Time: 18:00-19:00 EEST Host: Prof. Demetris Zeinalipour (dzeina-AT-ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php#cs.ucy.2025.ailamaki

Abstract:
Data management systems need to be redesigned due to: (a) the increased compute and memory needs of AI applications; and (b) increasingly heterogeneous hardware platforms. The decades-old assumptions upon which traditional data management systems are designed are obsolete because of increased runtime requirements. This talk explores the fundamental challenges and opportunities from the synergy of database and AI technologies, which enables systems that learn from their workload and environment to make intelligent, real-time decisions. Furthermore, we'll examine how the growing variety in computer hardware, from specialized processors to complex memory hierarchies, necessitates this shift towards adaptive systems. Finally, this talk will argue that runtime intelligence is a critical design principle for the future of data-intensive research and applications across all scientific disciplines.

Short Bio:
Anastasia Ailamaki is a Professor of Computer and Communication Sciences at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), a visiting researcher at Google, and the co-founder and Chair of the Board of Directors of RAW Labs SA, a Swiss company developing systems to analyze heterogeneous big data from multiple sources efficiently. She earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2000. She has received the 2019 ACM SIGMOD Edgar F. Codd Innovations Award and the 2020 VLDB Women in Database Research Award. She is also the recipient of an ERC Consolidator Award (2013), the Finmeccanica endowed chair from the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon (2007), a European Young Investigator Award from the European Science Foundation (2007), an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (2005), an NSF CAREER award (2002), twelve best-paper awards and three Test-of-Time prizes at international scientific conferences. She has received the 2018 Nemitsas Prize in Computer Science by the President of Cyprus and the 2021 ARGO Innovation Award by the President of the Hellenic Republic. She is an ACM fellow, an IEEE fellow, a member of the Academia Europaea, and an elected member of the Swiss, the Belgian, the Greek, and the Cypriot National Research Councils.

Note:
The lecture will be given in English and is open to the public, but a reservation is necessary. Registration URL: http://tiny.cc/3rql001 A reception will follow. Contact: Εmail: fpas@ucy.ac.cy https://www.ucy.ac.cy/fpas/

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://groups.google.com/g/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2025.ailamaki.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Distributed Intelligence at the Edge: Reimagining 5G and 6G Communication Architectures

Speaker: Dr. Vasos Vassiliou Affiliation: University of Cyprus, Cyprus Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Friday, June 13, 2025 Time: 12:00-13:00 EEST Host: Prof. Constantinos Pattichis (pattichi-AT-ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php#cs.ucy.2025.vassiliou

Abstract:
The vision of next-generation wireless networks demands a fundamental architectural shift—away from centralized control and fixed infrastructure, toward decentralized, intelligent, and adaptive systems. In this talk, I present a research trajectory that converges around three interlinked pillars: Distributed Artificial Intelligence, User Equipment as Virtual Base Stations (UE-VBS), and AI-driven Network Optimization. Starting from the core concept of UE-VBS, I outline how smartphones and end-user devices can be transformed into temporary, intelligent infrastructure nodes. The resulting architecture significantly reduces infrastructure costs, improves spectral efficiency, and introduces a new layer of programmability to mobile networks. Building on this, I present recent innovations in Distributed AI frameworks that empower localized decision-making in scenarios such as device-to-device communication, edge caching, and power-aware nano-grid control. These frameworks integrate unsupervised clustering, supervised classification, and reinforcement learning to offer real-time, self-organizing optimization of communication and resource allocation. Together, these contributions articulate a cohesive vision of distributed intelligence at the edge—a foundational shift required to meet the scalability, efficiency, and flexibility goals of 6G and beyond.

Short Bio:
Dr. Vasos Vassiliou is an Associate Professor of Computer and Communication Networks at the University of Cyprus and the Director of the Networks Research Laboratory. He is also a founding member of the CYENS Center of Excellence, where he leads the Smart Networked Systems Multidisciplinary Research Group. Dr. Vassiliou holds a Ph.D. from the Georgia institute of Technology, Atlanta, Geogia, USA with specialization in Telecommunications and Mobile Network protocols. He has published more than 150 technical articles and scientific papers in the general area of Communications and Computer networks. His research interests include Next Generation Network Architectures, Mobile Protocols, Mobile Networks, Wireless Communications, QoS, and Traffic Engineering for computer and telecommunication networks. Dr. Vassiliou is a Senior Member of IEEE and ACM, and participates in the Editorial Boards of several journals, including the Journal of Computer Communication (Elsevier) and the Technical Program Committees of several conferences, such as Globecom, ICC, WCNC, PIMRC, DCOSS and MedComNet.

Note:
This colloquium is part of the speaker's procedure for evaluation and promotion from Associate Professor to Professor.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://groups.google.com/g/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2025.vassiliou.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Proportionality in Spatial Keyword Search

Speaker: Dr. George Fakas Affiliation: Uppsala University, Sweden Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Friday, May 9, 2025 Time: 15:00-16:00 EET Host: Demetris Zeinalipour (dzeina-AT-ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php#cs.ucy.2025.fakas

Abstract:
More often than not, spatial objects are associated with some context, in the form of text, descriptive tags (e.g. points of interest, flickr photos), or linked entities in semantic graphs (e.g. Yago2, DBpedia). Hence, location-based retrieval should be extended to consider not only the locations but also the context of the objects, especially when the retrieved objects are too many and the query result is overwhelming. In this paper, we study the problem of selecting a subset of the query result, which is the most representative. We argue that objects with similar context and nearby locations should proportionally be represented in the selection. Proportionality dictates the pairwise comparison of all retrieved objects and hence bears a high cost. We propose novel algorithms which greatly reduce the cost of proportional object selection in practice. Extensive empirical studies on real datasets show that our algorithms are effective and efficient. A user evaluation verifies that proportional selection is more preferable than random selection and selection based on object diversification.

Short Bio:
George Fakas is an Associate Professor (Docent) at the Department of Information Technology, Uppsala University. Before joining Uppsala University, he worked as a Research Fellow at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (with Prof. Dimitris Papadias), Hong Kong University (with Prof. Nikos Mamoulis), EPFL (Lausanne, Switzerland), UMIST (Manchester, UK), University of Cyprus (Cyprus). He also worked as a Senior Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University (UK). He has published papers in influential conferences and journals of data management, including SIGMOD, PVLDB, ACM TODS, VLDB Journal, IEEE TKDE, DKE, etc. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1998, his M.Phil. in 1996 and his B.Sc. in Computation in 1995; all from the Department of Computation, UMIST, Manchester, UK. His research interests include (1) big data; (2) keyword search and ranking on (semi) structure data and (attributed) graphs; (3) web search; (4) online (geo) social networks.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://groups.google.com/g/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2025.fakas.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

HoloCIM: A Virtualized Holographic Cloud Ising Machine

Speaker: Dr. Symeon Tsintzos Affiliation: QUBITECH LTD, Cyprus Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Friday, April 11, 2025 Time: 13:30-14:30 Cyprus Time (EEST) Host: Dr. George Pallis (gpallis-AT-ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php#cs.ucy.2025.tsintzos

Abstract:
The HoloCIM project introduces a novel spatial photonic Ising Machine (SPIM) platform designed to tackle complex combinatorial optimization problems (COPs) with unprecedented efficiency. By exploiting cutting-edge techniques in holography and nonlinear photonics, HoloCIM seeks to overcome the limitations of traditional digital computing through a scalable, analog hardware approach. As interest grows in alternative computing paradigms—from quantum to neuromorphic systems—SPIMs emerge as a compelling solution, offering a balance of physical interpretability, speed, and energy efficiency. The project spans the complete development pipeline—from the experimental realization of spatial light modulation and photonic interaction schemes, to the design and implementation of control software libraries tailored for optimization tasks. In addition, HoloCIM is building a user-friendly online portal to provide remote access to the system, enabling researchers and industrial users to run optimization problems on demand. This talk will present the key technological components of the platform, its current development status, and the potential for broad scientific and commercial applications.

Short Bio:
Dr. Symeon Tsintzos is the technical director of the Photonic and Quantum Technologies department of UBITECH. He earned his degree in Physics from the Department of Physics at the University of Patras in 2003. In 2006, he completed his Master's in Microelectronics and Optoelectronics from the Department of Physics at the University of Crete and obtained his Ph.D. in 2010 from the Department of Materials Science and Technology at the same university. His doctoral research focused on the design and fabrication of polaritonic light-emitting diodes (LEDs). He worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Foundation for Research & Technology – Hellas (Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser) and at the Center for Quantum Complexity and Nanotechnology of Crete. He was a visiting researcher at the Nano-photonics Group at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge and the Ioffe Physical and Technical Institute in St. Petersburg. His scientific work spans various fields of polariton physics and semiconductor technologies, including polaritonic lasers, transistors, switches, random number generators, analog photonic simulators, photonic machine learning systems, and the fabrication of cryptographic electronic and optical devices (PUFs), as well as the design of quantum optical circuits and single-photon emission sources. He has participated in numerous research projects funded by both European and national resources, serving as a technical director in three of them. His research output includes over 40 publications in peer-reviewed journals, with numerous 1,909 citations to his work.

Zoom/Teams: https://ucy.zoom.us/j/67814833871?pwd=utFexKawb5mkHOqWBXh2tw3UHaxRyz.1

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://groups.google.com/g/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2025.tsintzos.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Architecting Efficient Datacenter Systems

Speaker: Dr. Haris Volos Affiliation: University of Cyprus, Cyprus Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Wednesday, March 26, 2025 Time: 18:30-19:30 EET Host: Prof. Demetris Zeinalipour (dzeina-AT-ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php#cs.ucy.2025.volos

Abstract:
As digital services, including e-commerce, social media, and streaming platforms, become increasingly integral to society and the economy, the demand for computing continues to grow. This growing demand places significant pressure on datacenters, the backbone of digital infrastructure, making it crucial to enhance their efficiency for sustainable growth. In this talk, we will present our efforts to improve the energy efficiency of processors and memory in datacenters. To enhance processor efficiency, we will introduce a novel deep sleep state architecture designed specifically for datacenter server processors handling latency-sensitive applications. To optimize memory efficiency, we will examine a datacentric design leveraging a heterogeneous memory architecture that integrates DRAM and non-volatile memory. Finally, we will outline our current and future research plans.

Short Bio:
Haris Volos is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus. Previously, he worked at Google and Hewlett Packard Labs. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Sciences from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens. His research focuses on computer architecture, with emphasis on the interaction between hardware architecture and systems software. Along with his group and collaborators, he has been publishing in leading computing system conference and journals, received an IEEE MICRO Top Picks award and the NVMW Persistent Impact Prize, and been granted eleven US patents. He serves as an associate editor of the ACM Transactions on Storage (TOS).

Note:
This colloquium is part of the speaker's procedure for evaluation and promotion from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor. To participate remotely, please follow the Zoom URL.

Zoom/Teams: https://ucy.zoom.us/j/69159489017?pwd=qNXGYkMPAG72S6aZTzeV84Wg3yFG7w.1

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://groups.google.com/g/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2025.volos.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Human-AI Interaction for the Future of Work

Speaker: Dr. Marios Constantinides Affiliation: CYENS Centre of Excellence, Cyprus Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Thursday, March 20, 2025 Time: 19:15-20:15 EET Host: Prof. Yannis Dimopoulos (yannis-AT-ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php#cs.ucy.2025.constantinides

Abstract:
In this talk, I will present a series of projects that aim at augmenting workplace experience through AI tools that not only improve employees' productivity, but also account for their emotional and psychological experience. Taking meetings as a common workplace activity, I will demonstrate how the use of mobile and wearable sensing technologies allows us to tap into employees' emotional states, assess their environment, and understand communication patterns that impact their experience. As these technologies have already been (or are likely to be) introduced in the workplace, it is of equal importance to understand their ethical considerations. I will conclude the talk by providing a framework for identifying morally wrong workplace technologies and, more broadly, for developing AI tools in a responsible way.

Short Bio:
Dr. Marios Constantinides is a senior research scientist at the CYENS Centre of Excellence, Cyprus, an honorary lecturer at University College London (UCL), UK, and a special teaching scientist at University of Cyprus. He brings over six years of industrial research experience, having held positions at Nokia Bell Labs in Cambridge, UK, and Telefónica in Barcelona, Spain. He was also a research fellow at the University of Cambridge. His research interests revolve around human-computer interaction (HCI), ubiquitous computing, software engineering, machine learning (ML), data science, and responsible AI. Specifically, he works in the area of human-centered AI, leveraging mobile- and wearable-sensing with the aim of building technologies that augment the ways people interact and communicate in a responsible way. Marios holds a PhD from UCL, where his work intersected HCI and ML, as well as a MSc in Software Systems Engineering from the same institution, and a BSc in Computer Science from University of Cyprus. His research has been published in leading HCI conferences and general science journals, and his projects have received international media coverage, featuring in outlets such as the BBC, the Economist, the Times, and Fast Company.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://groups.google.com/g/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2025.constantinides.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Internet Computing Evolution: Tools and Applications

Speaker: Dr. George Pallis Affiliation: University of Cyprus, Cyprus Category: Colloquium Location: Online through Teams (directions) Date: Friday, February 7, 2025 Time: 17:00-18:00 EET Host: Prof. George Papadopoulos (george-AT-ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php#cs.ucy.2025.pallis

Abstract:
The rapid evolution of Internet computing has catalyzed transformative advancements across the IoT-Edge-Fog-Cloud continuum and big data analytics, unlocking innovative applications across diverse domains. The first part of the talk will introduce state-of-the-art tools designed for rapid prototyping, benchmarking, and emulation of cloud and edge/fog applications. Specifically, we will present awarded frameworks such as Fogify for fog computing emulation, 5G-Slicer for simulating edge applications over 5G network slices, BenchPilot for reproducible benchmarking in edge micro-data centers, and FedBed for federated learning benchmarking across edge testbeds.The second part of the talk will highlight the role of AI-driven big data analytics in addressing the growing challenges of information dysfunction, including disinformation, hate speech, and societal polarization. We will showcase advanced open-source frameworks like Check-It, DETECT, MANDOLA, POLAR, and PARALLAX, which leverage natural language processing to analyze, detect, and mitigate the impact of information dysfunction. These tools provide actionable insights into the spread and influence of harmful content, enabling more informed strategies to combat information dysfunction and foster digital resilience. Finally, the concluding part of the talk will present two novel applications in the realm of Internet computing and data science. The first utilizes facial analysis and sentiment analysis to gain insights into entrepreneurial success and investor behavior, while the second explores how human mobility data can be leveraged to promote physical activity and improve public health outcomes.

Short Bio:
George Pallis received his BSc (2001) and Ph.D. (2006) degree in Department of Informatics of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece). Currently, he is associate professor at the Computer Science Department, University of Cyprus and Associate Director of Laboratory of Internet Computing. His research interests include Distributed and Internet Computing with particular focus on Big Data Analytics, and Cloud/Edge/Fog Computing. Dr. Pallis is one of the founders and programme directors of the Data Science Master programme at University of Cyprus. He is principal institutional investigator in research projects funded by EC, Research Promotion Foundation in Cyprus, and industry (e.g., Google) and has totally attracted more than 5.5M euro. Dr. Pallis has published over 100 papers in international journals (e.g., IEEE TKDE, IEEE TCC, IEEE TSC, ACM TOIT, Scientific Reports etc), magazines (e.g., CACM, IEEE Internet Computing) and conferences (e.g., INFOCOM, IPDPS, ICDCS, SEC, IoTDi, ICWSM, BIG DATA etc) and he is contribut information dysfunction or of two international DIN (German Institute for Standardization) standards. His papers have been cited more than 5600 times with h-index 29 (Source: Google Scholar). Dr. Pallis has served as PC-Co-chair of CloudCom 2018 and CCGrid 2019 and General chair of IEEE/ACM SEC 2024 and General co-chair of IEEE IC2E. Dr. Pallis has also served in numerous Program and Organization Committees for international conferences (WWW, ICDCS, CONEXT, BIG DATA etc.) and he received the best paper awards in IEEE CloudCom 2024, IEEE/ACM UCC 2023, IEEE IoTDi 2022, IEEE ISCC 2022, IEEE BIG DATA 2016, ICSOC 2014 and the best demo award in the ACM/IEEE Symposium on Edge Computing. In 2019, Dr. Pallis served as guest editor for the edge computing special issue on the prestigious Proceedings of the IEEE journal. Dr Pallis is appeared in the World’s Top 2% Scientists list published by Stanford University and he is golden core member of IEEE Computer Society. He was Editor in Chief (EIC) in the IEEE Internet Computing magazine (2019-2023) and Associate Editor in the IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing. Currently, he is EIC Emeritus in the IEEE Internet Computing magazine, and Associate Editor in the Computing Journal (Springer).

Note:
This colloquium is part of the speaker's procedure for evaluation and promotion from Associate Professor to Professor. Teams URL: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_NGI1NzU5NTAtNmJlMi00NDE3LWFhMzUtM2FmNjk4MzI0NzBh%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%228dd1e6b4-8dac-408e-8d8d-6753e9800530%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22bf290ded-2838-41ff-8a0f-3491900a4e07%22%7d

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://groups.google.com/g/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2025.pallis.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

People, Environments, Sensors: Cyber Opportunities for Exploring Human Mobilities

Speaker: Prof. Christophe Claramunt Affiliation: Arts et Métiers ParisTech and École Navale, France Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Wednesday, 3 July 2024 Time: 16:00-17:00 EET Host: Prof. Demetris Zeinalipour (dzeina-AT-ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php#cs.ucy.2024.claramunt

Abstract:
Cyberspace is an open, global, unregulated, and virtual area of decentralized human activities, social interactions, and application services in the information space transmitted by sensors and Internet communication channels, and supported by cyber infrastructures. Cyberspace data, whether voluntarily or involuntarily created at unprecedented rates of dissemination, originates from a variety of user communities, ranging from experts to the general public, and different supports from social media to mobile users, but are not always well structured because they are most often not generated for further manipulation. Hence, new ideas and frameworks must be developed to reflect the spatial and temporal structures that emerge. The talk will introduce a series of theoretical, conceptual, methodological, and computational advances and contributions of this digital revolution to the study of mobility patterns in urban and regional environments. I will also discuss with the audience a few key implications of this emerging cyberspace and some of the upcoming research challenges.

Short Bio:
Christophe Claramunt is a professor in computer science at the Naval Academy Research Institute in France. His research is oriented towards theoretical aspects of geographical information science, including spatiotemporal models and theories, semantic and cognitive-based GIS; WEB, wireless and GIS systems, and their application to maritime and urban environments. He is an associate editor of the International Journal of Geographical Information Science (IJGIS) and serves on the editorial boards of several area journals (CEUS, JOSIS, JLBS, IJAIS, GIS, IJAEIS) and conferences/workshops (COSIT, SeCoGIS, ACMGIS, SC, SDH, WEBIST, STAMI and ISA). He is currently chairing the European Graduate School for the Blue Planet: https://isblue.fr/en/. More at: http://christophe.claramunt.free.fr/

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://groups.google.com/g/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2024.claramunt.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Cutting-edge Technologies in the World of Performing Arts: The challenges in digitization and synthesis

Speaker: Dr. Andreas Aristidou Affiliation: University of Cyprus, Cyprus Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Friday, June 7, 2024 Time: 17.00-18.00 EET Host: Prof. Yanos Sazeides (yanos-AT-ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php#cs.ucy.2024.aristidou

Abstract:
In this presentation, I will explore the integration of cutting-edge technologies in the performing arts, highlighting the innovative work at the Graphics and Extended Reality Lab. We will focus on data acquisition and motion analysis techniques, showcasing recent advancements in deep learning for multimodal synthesis and generative models for dance creation. These advancements address the limitations and challenges in this field. Additionally, I will discuss various applications developed within our lab, emphasizing the importance of digitizing and visualizing performing arts for accessibility, cultural preservation, and education. The digitization of performing arts is crucial for making art more accessible and preserving cultural heritage, despite challenges like the loss of live experience and technical obstacles in maintaining authenticity. The presentation will delve into the project PREMIERE, which aims to modernize performing arts through advanced digital technologies, supporting the entire lifecycle of performances from production to audience engagement. We will examine data acquisition methods, including the use of motion capture technology and the development of a publicly accessible digital dance library, and address challenges in capturing complex movements, particularly with traditional costumes. The presentation will cover the design of algorithms for motion analysis and style transfer, inspired by the Laban Movement Analysis system, to capture both the content and nuance of human motion. Further, I will discuss the implementation of deep learning algorithms for motion synthesis and analysis, including the use of 3D Convolutional Neural Networks, content-aware music-driven models, and generative models like GANs and diffusion models. These models enable the creation of realistic and dynamic character animations, enhancing the realism and narrative depth of digital performances. Applications in virtual reality (VR) for dance education and entertainment will be presented, showcasing the development of interactive learning platforms and the use of monocular cameras for pose reconstruction and real-time interaction with performances. The presentation will conclude with a discussion on the open challenges and future directions in digitizing performing arts, including the creation of interacting performers, responsive digital audiences, and advancements in XR and hologram technologies.

Short Bio:
Andreas Aristidou is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science, University of Cyprus, member of the Graphics & Extended Reality Lab, and a Research Fellow at the CYENS Centre of Excellence with special interest in computer graphics and character animation. He completed his PhD as a Cambridge European Trust fellow at the University of Cambridge and holds an MSc in Mobile and Personal Communications from King’s College London, where he graduated with honors. Dr. Aristidou also obtained a BSc in Informatics and Telecommunications from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He previously worked as a research fellow at Shandong University (China), IDC Herzliya (Israel), and the University of Cyprus, and participated in a number of EU funded projects. He is currently on the editorial board of The Visual Computer (TVC) and Heritage journals, and is a guest editor for the Frontiers in Virtual Reality and Advances in Applied Clifford Algebras (AACA) journals. He is a senior member of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM, SM from 2020), the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE, SM from 2019), and Eurographics. He has received numerous fellowships, distinctions, and research grants from highly competitive local, EU, and international agencies. His main research interests lie in the broader field of computer graphics, extended reality, and vision, with a specialization in character animation and virtual humans. He employs various techniques, including motion capture, inverse kinematics, behavioral analysis, and machine learning, encompassing deep learning, generative models, and reinforcement learning. He is also actively involved in research related to digital heritage (intangible cultural creations), VR/AR/XR environments, and applications of conformal geometric algebra in graphics. He has published over 50 articles in top-tier international journals and conferences and has been the principal investigator on various projects funded by the European Union. Additionally, he collaborates with the creative industry and AI companies to design innovative algorithms for motion and character synthesis and analysis.

Note:
This colloquium is part of the speaker's procedure for evaluation and promotion from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://groups.google.com/g/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2024.aristidou.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

DAG-based Efficient Parallel Scheduler for Blockchains: Hyperledger Sawtooth as a Case Study

Speaker: Prof. Sathya Peri Affiliation: Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, India Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Monday, 13 May 2024 Time: 12:00-13:00 EEST Host: Prof. Chryssis Georgiou (chryssis-AT-ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php#cs.ucy.2024.peri

Abstract:
Blockchain technology is a distributed, decentralized, and immutable ledger system. It is the platform of choice for managing smart contract transactions (SCTs). Smart contracts are pieces of code that capture business agreements between interested parties and are commonly implemented using blockchains. A block in a blockchain contains a set of transactions representing changes to the system and a hash of the previous block. The SCTs are executed multiple times during the block production and validation phases across the network. In most of the existing blockchains, transactions are executed sequentially. In this work, we propose a parallel direct acyclic graph (DAG) based scheduler module for concurrent execution of SCTs. This module can be seamlessly integrated into the blockchain framework, and the SCTs in a block can be executed efficiently, resulting in higher throughput. The dependencies among the SCTs of a block are represented as a DAG data structure which enables parallel execution of the SCTs. Further-more, the DAG data structure is shared with block validators, allowing resource conservation for DAG creation across the network. To ensure secure parallel execution, we design a secure validator capable of validating and identifying incorrect DAGs shared by malicious block producers. For evaluation, our framework is implemented in Hyperledger Sawtooth V1.2.6. The performance across multiple smart contract applications is measured for the various schedulers. We observed that our proposed executor exhibits a 1.58 times performance improvement on average over serial execution.

Short Bio:
Dr. Sathya Peri is currently a Professor in CSE Department of IIT Hyderabad (IITH). His research interests broadly comprise of parallel and distributed systems. One of the areas he looks in efficient ways to parallelize using Software Transactional Memory Systems (STMs) while also exploring lock-free & wait-free algorithms. In the context of distributed systems, his interest includes Blockchain and Peer-to-Peer Systems. He is currently working on improving the efficiency of Smart Contract Execution in Blockchains Systems. More at: https://people.iith.ac.in/sathya_p/

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://groups.google.com/g/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2024.peri.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Distinguished FPAS Lecture Series entitled:

Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Ignorance

Speaker: Prof. Georg Gottlob Affiliation: University of Oxford, UK Category: Distinguished FPAS Lecture Series Location: Amphitheatre B108, Anastasios G. Leventis University House, University of Cyprus (directions) Date: Friday, December 08, 2023 Time: 18:00-19:00 EET Host: Prof. Demetris Zeinalipour (dzeina-AT-ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php#cs.ucy.2023.gottlob

Abstract:
This presentation first delves into the division between the two primary branches of AI research: symbolic AI, which predominantly focuses on knowledge representation and logical reasoning, and sub-symbolic AI, primarily centered on machine learning employing neural networks. We will explore both the notable accomplishments and the challenges encountered in each of these approaches. We will provide instances where traditional deep learning encounters limitations, and we will elucidate significant obstacles in achieving automated symbolic reasoning. We will then discuss the recent groundbreaking advancements in generative AI, driven by language models such as ChatGPT. We will showcase instances where these models excel and, conversely, where they exhibit shortcomings and produce erroneous information. We will identify and illustrate four key reasons for potential failures in language models, which include (i) information loss due to data compression, (ii) training bias, (iii) the incorporation of incorrect external data, and (iv) the misordering of results. Lastly, we will touch upon the Chat2Data project, which endeavors to leverage language models for the automated verification and enhancement of relational databases, all while mitigating the pitfalls mentioned earlier (i)-(iv).

Short Bio:
Georg Gottlob is a Royal Society Research Professor and a Professor of Informatics at Oxford University, and an Adjunct Professor at TU Wien. At Oxford he is a Fellow of St John's College. His interests include knowledge representation, logic and complexity, and database and Web querying. He has received various awards, among which the Wittgenstein Award (Austria) and the Ada Lovelace Medal (UK), and, jointly with co-authors the Alonzo Church Award. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, of the Austrian and German National Academies of Science, and of the Academia Europaea. He was a founder of Lixto, a company specialised in semi-automatic web data extraction which was acquired by McKinsey in 2013. Gottlob was awarded an ERC Advanced Investigator's Grant for the project "DIADEM: Domain-centric Intelligent Automated Data Extraction Methodology". Based on the results of this project, he co-founded Wrapidity Ltd, a company that specialised in fully automated web data extraction, which was acquired in 2016 by Meltwater. He was also a co-founder of the currently active company DLVSystem and of DeepReason.AI Ltd, which is a second company recently acquired by Meltwater.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://groups.google.com/g/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2023.gottlob.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Vision-based robotic perception: are we there yet?

Speaker: Prof. Dr. Margarita Chli Affiliation: University of Cyprus, Cyprus Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Tuesday, December 5, 2023 Time: 11:00-12:00 EET Host: Prof. Demetris Zeinalipour (dzeina-AT-ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php#cs.ucy.2023.chli

Abstract:
As vision plays a key role in how we interpret a situation, developing vision-based perception for robots promises to be a big step towards robotic navigation and intelligence, with a tremendous impact on automating robot navigation. This talk will discuss our recent progress in this area at the Vision for Robotics Lab of ETH Zurich and the University of Cyprus (http://www.v4rl.com), and some of the biggest challenges we are faced with.

Short Bio:
Margarita Chli is a Professor in Robotic Vision and director of the Vision for Robotics Lab, at the University of Cyprus and ETH Zurich. Her work has contributed to the first vision-based autonomous flight of a small helicopter and the demonstration of collaborative robotic perception for a small swarm of drones. Margarita has given invited keynotes at the World Economic Forum in Davos, TEDx, and ICRA, while she was featured in Robohub's 2016 list of "25 women in Robotics you need to know about". In 2023 she won the ERC Consolidator Grant, one of the most prestigious grants in Europe for blue-sky research, to grow her team at the University of Cyprus to research advanced robotic perception.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://groups.google.com/g/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2023.chli.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Computational Problems in Team Formation

Speaker: Prof. Evimaria Terzi Affiliation: University of Boston, USA Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Thursday, October 5, 2023 Time: 11:00-12:00 EET Host: Dr. George Pallis (gpallis-AT-ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php#cs.ucy.2023.terzi

Abstract:
Team formation is the problem of identifying a team of experts that can successfully perform a task. Different definitions of ``success” and different assumptions regarding the availability of experts give rise to different computational problems. In this talk, we will review different formulations of team formation problems as they have evolved over the years. Then, we will focus on our recent work on the topic as it relates to interesting computational problems such as parameter-free optimization and regret minimization of submodular functions. We will also review some research directions we currently explore and their applications to real-life settings.

Short Bio:
Evimaria Terzi is a professor at the Department of Computer Science at Boston University (BU). She is also a founding faculty member of the Faculty of Computing and Data Sciences at BU. Before joining BU in 2009, she was a Research Staff Member at IBM Almaden Research Center. She got her PhD from the University of Helsinki in 2007 working under the supervision of Heikki Mannila. Evimaria works in the general area of algorithmic data mining with emphasis on social networks, team formation, urban informatics and recommender systems. She has published more than 50 papers in premier conferences in data mining and data management (SIGKDD, SIGMOD, VLDB, WSDM, WWW, SDM). She has received multiple NSF awards including the NSF CAREER award (2012), the Microsoft Faculty Fellowship (2010) and numerous gifts from companies such as Google, Yahoo and Nokia. Evimaria has been the primary advisor of 7 graduated PhD students (4 female) and has supervised 2 post-docs. Her advisees are either faculty members or they are working in companies such as Meta, Amazon, Twitter and Apple. Evimaria has also acted as a research advisor of numerous undergraduates. In the past, Evimaria has been a visiting researcher at Microsoft Research, Sapienza University of Rome and Aalto University. She has been the PC co-chair for ACM SIGKDD 2019, Siam Data Mining (SDM) 2021, and WSDM 2023. At BU, Evimaria is collaborating with BUSpark in order to apply her work on team formation in teams formed in large data-science classes at BU as well as hackathons organized in the Boston area.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://groups.google.com/g/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2023.terzi.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Unveiling the Power and Limitations of Unsupervised Node Embeddings

Speaker: Dr. Charalampos Tsourakakis Affiliation: Boston University, USA Category: Colloquium Location: Amphitheater LRC 012, 'Stelios Ioannou' Library, University of Cyprus, 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus & ZOOM (registration necessary) (directions) Date: Friday, June 9, 2023 Time: 11:00-12:00 EEST Host: Dr. Demetris Zeinalipour (dzeina-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2023.tsourakakis

Abstract:
Node embeddings, an emerging field at the intersection of network analysis and machine learning, have revolutionized the way we understand and analyze complex networks. Node embedding methods represent nodes in a network as low-dimensional vectors in a continuous space by leveraging techniques such as random walks, and deep learning architectures. During this talk, I will delve into fundamental questions related to the power and limitations of node embeddings. What information is encoded by popular node embedding methods such as DeepWalk and node2vec? How does this information correlate with performance in downstream machine learning tasks? Can we invert node embedding to approximately or exactly recover the input graph? We answer these questions and we also show that low dimensional embeddings can provably capture important properties of real-world complex networks. We also study the power of edge independent random graph models (e.g., NetGAN or other generative models that model the likelihood of an edge based on the proximity of its embedded endpoints) with respect to their ability to generate graphs that are rich in triangles, a hallmark property of many real-world networks. We prove foundational limitations of such models and we propose a novel hierarchy of models that are progressively more powerful.

Short Bio:
Charalampos Tsourakakis is an Assistant Professor in Computer Science at Boston University and a research associate at Harvard. Dr. Tsourakakis obtained his PhD in Algorithms, Combinatorics and Optimization at Carnegie Mellon under the supervision of Alan Frieze, was a postdoctoral fellow at Brown University and Harvard under the supervision of Eli Upfal and Michael Mitzenmacher, respectively. Before joining Boston University, he worked as a researcher in the Google Brain team. He has received the 10-year highest impact paper award from IEEE, has won a best paper award in IEEE Data Mining, has delivered three tutorials in the ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, and has designed two graph mining libraries for large-scale graph mining, one of which has been officially included in Windows Azure. His research focuses on large-scale graph mining, and machine learning.

Note:
Joint works with Sudhanshu Chanpuriya, Cameron Musco, Konstantinos Sotiropoulos

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://groups.google.com/g/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2023.tsourakakis.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

The Future of Computing Industry: Trends, Challenges and Opportunities

Speaker: Dr. Wang Zhe Affiliation: Huawei Zurich Research Center, Switzerland Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Tuesday, May 30, 2023 Time: 10:00-11:00 EET Host: Prof. Yanos Sazeides (yanos-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2023.zhe

Abstract:
Computing industry is one of the most dynamic and influential sectors in the world, driving innovation and transformation in various domains and fields. However, it faces many challenges and uncertainties in the face of rapid technological changes, ever-increasing demands of computing power by emerging applications, and evolving customer needs and expectations, such as the slowdown of Moore's Law and Dennard Scaling, the prevalence of large AI models. How can we anticipate and respond to these challenges and opportunities, and shape the future of computing industry in a positive and responsible way? In this talk, I will first give an overview about Huawei's existing technology and product in computing domain, ranging from low-level computing processors to the system-level solutions, and then share some of the current trends, challenges and opportunities in computing industry, based on our company’s experience and vision.

Short Bio:
Dr. Wang Zhe is currently the Assistant Director in the Computing System Lab of the Huawei Zurich Research Center. He joined Huawei in 2017 as a research engineer right after getting the PhD Degree from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology majoring in Electronic and Computer Engineering. Before he took the position in Zurich Lab, he worked in the architecture and development team of many processor products, such as the server-level processor Kunpeng920, NPU processor Ascend910. His research and development interests span across multiple aspects of computing systems, especially on computer architecture, energy-efficient computing, and emerging computing paradigms and applications.

Note:
This seminar is jointly organized by the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://groups.google.com/g/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2023.zhe.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Algorithms and Systems for the IoT Data Revolution

Speaker: Dr. Demetris Zeinalipour Affiliation: University of Cyprus, Cyprus Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus & Zoom (directions) Date: Thursday, February 16, 2023 Time: 11:00-12:00 EET Host: Prof. Marios Mavronicolas (mavronic-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2023.zeinalipour

Abstract:
Internet-of-Things (IoT) describes physical objects with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet. These objects are projected to outpace the number of humans on the Internet, namely, by 2030 there will be 8.6B humans according to UN DESA and over 500B IoT devices according to Cisco. Huawei predicts that this will create yottabytes (YB) of machine-generated spatio-temporal data every year requiring a complete rethink on how we collect and store data, how we process it in a timely manner and how we generate value and utility out of it. In this talk, I will present three pillars of IoT data management research in the scope of systems related to indoor localization, telecommunication big data and smart spaces. I will start out with the presentation of data-driven localization algorithms for mobile devices in systems with: (i) no telecommunication infrastructure; (ii) disconnected handheld operation; and (iii) inherent privacy constraints of users. I will proceed with the presentation of data decaying operators for telco big data systems, which abstract IoT influx data into compact machine learning models that can be stored and queried when necessary. I will conclude with scheduling operators of IoT devices inside smart spaces to reduce the environmental impact of human activity. I will conclude with an outlook to my current and future research agenda.

Short Bio:
Demetris Zeinalipour is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus, where he leads the Data Management Systems Laboratory (DMSL). His primary research interests include Data Management in Computer Systems and Networks, particularly Mobile, Sensor and Spatio-Temporal Data Management; Big Data Management in Parallel and Distributed Architectures; Network, Blockchain and Telco Data Management; Crowd, Web 2.0 and Indoor Data Management; Data Privacy Management; Data Management for Sustainability. He holds a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Computer Science and Engineering from University of California - Riverside, CA, USA and a B.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Cyprus. Before his current appointment, he served the University of Cyprus as an Assistant Professor and Lecturer but also the Open University of Cyprus as a Lecturer. He has held visiting research appointments at Akamai Technologies, Cambridge, MA, USA, the University of Athens, Greece, the University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA, and the Max Planck Institute for Informatics, Saarbrücken, Germany. He is a Humboldt Fellow, Marie-Curie Fellow, an ACM Distinguished Speaker (2017-2020), a Senior Member of ACM, a Senior Member of IEEE and a Member of USENIX. He serves on the editorial board of Distributed and Parallel Databases (Elsevier), Big Data Research (Springer), SI Editor for ACM Transactions on Spatial Algorithms and Systems (ACM), and is an independent evaluator for the European Commission (Marie Skłodowska-Curie and COST actions), the Hong Kong Research Grants Council and the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation. His h-index is 31, has over 150 articles with over 3950 citations, has an Erdös number of 3, was awarded 12 international awards and honors (IEEE-MDM18, IEEE-MDM17, ACMD17, ACMS16, IEEES16, HUMBOLDT16, ACM-IEEE-IPSN14, EVARILOS14, APPCAMPUS13, IEEE-MDM12, MC07, CIC06) and delivered over 40 invited talks. He was General Co-Chair for 4 conferences/workshops (IEEE MDM22, EDBTICDT21, VLDB's DMSN11, ACM MobiDE10) and Program Co-Chair for 8 conferences/workshops (IEEE-MDM19, IEEE-MDM10, IEEE-ALIAS19, IEEE-MUSICAL16, IEEE-HuMoComP15, HDMS18, VLDB-DMSN10, ACM-MobiDE09). He has participated in over 20 projects funded by the US National Science Foundation, by the European Commission, the Cyprus Research Promotion Foundation, the Univ. of Cyprus, the Open University of Cyprus and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany. Finally, he has also been involved in industrial research and development projects (e.g., France, Finland, India, Taiwan and Cyprus) and has technically led several open-source mobile data management services (e.g., Anyplace, VGATE, Rayzit and Smartlab) reaching thousands of users worldwide. He served the Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FPAS) Board for two terms as an elected departmental representative (2019-2022) and is currently an elected member of the University of Cyprus Senate. For more information please visit: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/~dzeina/ or the DMSL website: https://dmsl.cs.ucy.ac.cy/

Note:
This colloquium is part of the speaker's procedure for evaluation and promotion from Associate Professor to Professor. Participating remotely is possible through Zoom but requires registration: Link https://ucy.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAkceCgqDkrGNS1e4Ng7vxI0SJlnkMbl8jj#/registration

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://groups.google.com/g/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2023.zeinalipour.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Architecting a CPU for Performance, Power and Reliability

Speaker: Dr. Yiannakis Sazeides Affiliation: University of Cyprus, Cyprus Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Friday, December 9, 2022 Time: 10:00-11:00 EET Host: Prof. Constantinos Pattichis (pattichi-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2022.sazeides

Abstract:
The design of a CPUs is an intertwined cost-benefit optimization problem aiming to maximize performance while meeting power, reliability and time-to market constraints in an ever changing technological landscape and expanding application space. In this presentation we will overview our efforts aiming to address challenges confronting both individual and combined aspects of the above problem. Particular emphasis will be given to three vectors of research, methods for detecting and correcting errors in hardware, a technique and its uses for detecting the first order resonance frequency of a power delivery network, and a model and its uses for the Total-Cost-of-Ownership of a Data center. The talk will also outline our current and future research plans.

Short Bio:
Yiannakis Sazeides is an Associate Professor with the Department of Computer Science at University of Cyprus. His research interests lie in the area of Computer Architecture. Together with his group and collaborators he has been publishing at top-tier conference and journals, received four best paper awards and granted five patents. His team has received research funding from various sources. He spent a yearlong sabbatical with the Intel core team during 2015-2016. He serves as an IEEE Computer Architecture Letters (CAL) associate editor and is a member of the ACM/IEEE CS TCCA Outstanding Dissertation Award Committee. He also serves regularly in the organization and program committees of conferences in his research area.

Note:
This colloquium is part of the speaker's procedure for evaluation and promotion from Associate Professor to Professor.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://groups.google.com/g/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2022.sazeides.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Power Flow Control Solutions for Demand Side Management using Power Flow Coloring

Speaker: Dr. Saher Javaid Affiliation: Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST), Japan Category: Colloquium Location: Room 202, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Wednesday, November 30, 2022 Time: 11:00-12:00 EET Host: Prof. Andreas Pitsillides (cspitsil-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2022.javaid

Abstract:
Power flow control is essential to avoid energy wastage, power blackouts, and to reduce power imbalance issues. This is becoming difficult, due to the inability to match fluctuating renewable generation and the dynamic power demand. The concept of Power Flow Coloring (PFC) is proposed which attaches a unique identification (ID) to each power flow between a pair of a power source and a power load. Based on PFC, a cooperative distributed power flow control is introduced which accommodates the effects of power fluctuations of distributed energy resources and power loads. However, due to power limitations of devices, the capacity of storage devices, and power flow channels, the power balance may not be achieved. Therefore, system conditions are proposed which provide guidelines for a power flow system to continue safe operation against power fluctuations.

Short Bio:
Saher Javaid received B.CS (Bachelor of Computer Science) and M.Sc. (Master of Science in Information Technology) from Allama Iqbal Open University in 2005 and University of the Punjab, Pakistan in 2010, respectively. She received her Ph.D. degree in Information Science from Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST), Japan in 2014. She was a visiting lecturer at University of the Punjab in Pakistan. She also worked as visiting lecturer at University of Education in Pakistan. During 2014-2017, she gained employment at the Department of Intelligence Science and Technology, Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University as an Assistant Professor within the context of the i-Energy (Informationization of e-power flows by integrating information and e-power networks) project. Since 2017, she has been working at Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST) as an assistant professor. Her research interests include distributed sensing and control, energy on demand, power flow coloring, and smart energy management system. She has published 40+ peer-reviewed papers on realizing efficient and versatile energy management systems for future homes, buildings, local communities, and micro-grid.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://groups.google.com/g/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2022.javaid.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Building an Inclusive Pedestrian Path Recommendation System

Speaker: Prof. Panos K. Chrysanthis Affiliation: University of Pittsburgh, USA Category: Colloquium Location: Hybrid Talk: Zoom + Room 109, ΧΩΔ-01 Building, 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Friday, November 18, 2022 Time: 09.00-10.00 EET Host: Dr. Demetris Zeinalipour (dzeina-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2022.chrysanthis

Abstract:
Context-awareness is essential to maximize the utility of the computer systems and applications which an individual interacts with. For example, a context-aware path recommendation system can provide recommendations that are robust to a wide range of constraints of great importance to many user groups. For instance, outdoor paths are not preferred during inclement weather and indoor paths with many steps and narrow staircases need to be avoided when carrying or moving heavy objects. As the examples suggest, context is subjective and while these systems can provide utility for many users under several scenarios, benefiting users from all backgrounds requires holistic thinking about their design. In this talk, we will share our experience in developing CAPRIO, our indoor-outdoor path recommendation system, to provide inclusive utility, i.e., providing equal service and value to all users from all backgrounds. To achieve inclusive utility, we recognized that user preferences enable the building of a more accurate model of the type of paths users wish to take based on their abilities rather than their disabilities. We will also present how users’ preferences are utilized by ASTRO, one of CAPRIO's A*-based path finding algorithms, and how these preferences are extracted in a non-intrusive dialog using a chatbot.

Short Bio:
Dr. Panos K. Chrysanthis is a Professor of Computer Science and the Founder and Director of the Advanced Data Management Technologies Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt). He is also an adjunct Professor at Carnegie Mellon University and at the University of Cyprus. His research interests lie within the areas of data management (big data, databases & data streams), data analytics and visualization, distributed & mobile computing, and the Internet of Things (IoT). His scientific contributions in principles, algorithms and prototypes have been documented in more than 50 papers in top journals and 175 prestigious, peer-reviewed conferences and workshops. His publication record includes a book and more than 30 editorials and book chapters. Prof. Chrysanthis was one of the first two recipients of prestigious NSF CAREER award (2015) in the area of data management for his investigation on the management of data for mobile and wireless computing. In 2010, he was recognized as an ACM Distinguished Scientist and in 2022, as an IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Contributor (inaugural class). In 2015, he received the University of Pittsburgh's Provost Award for Excellence in Mentoring (doctoral students), and in 2019, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, College of Information and Computer Science Award for Outstanding Achievements in Education (2019). He was honored with seven Computer Science teaching awards and Visiting Professorships of the University of Diaspora at the University of Cyprus. The impact of his work is evident in his appointment to the editorial board of several top-tier journals, and professional executive boards and steering committees, his selection as a General and Program Chair of premier conferences and workshops, and his invitations as a keynote speaker in various meetings. He is also actively involved in the DEI and sustainability efforts of the database research community, organized the DEI's inaugural activities at EDBT 2021, served as DEI Chair for six conferences, and serves as the coordinator of DEI Media.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://groups.google.com/g/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2022.chrysanthis.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Game of Domains Season 1: The Accelerators are coming!

Speaker: Prof. Pedro Trancoso Affiliation: Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Monday, July 11, 2022 Time: 10:00-11:00 EEST Host: Dr. Haris Volos (hvolos01-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2022.trancoso

Abstract:
For a long time, applications have relied on general-purpose processors for their execution. Their increasing demands were met with the improvement in technology predicted by Moore’s Law. Nevertheless, the technology gains are diminishing and at the same time the diversity and increasing demands of the applications lead to the fact that the one-size-fits-all approach has reached its limits. As such, more efficient and powerful solutions focus on the development of different computer architectures for different application domains. While the number of domain specific architectures, also known as accelerators, available in the market is increasing significantly, there are still many challenges and open questions! In this presentation I will outline the current research of our team – The Accelerators – on this first phase of the different projects we are participating. The work focuses on the design of efficient, scalable, and flexible architectures for different domains with a special emphasis on deep learning and quantum computer simulation. We are looking at solutions that exploit the use of hardware-software co-design approach for efficiency, reconfigurable computing for flexibility, and processing-in-memory for scalability. I will briefly present the projects we are involved with as well as our latest research results and future directions.

Short Bio:
Pedro Trancoso is a Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering of the Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. He has an engineering degree from Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal (1993) and a MSc and PhD (1998) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, U.S.A. Before joining Chalmers, he was an Associate Professor at the University of Cyprus from 2002 to 2017. His research interests are in computer architecture (memory hierarchy, multicore processors, reconfigurable computing, and energy efficiency) with main focus on the hardware acceleration for emerging applications such as machine learning. He has published more than 80 papers in the topics above in international journals and conferences. He is currently actively collaborating in four EU research projects (VEDLIoT, eProcessor, and EPI SGA2), two Swedish research projects (PRIDE and QuantumStack) and one EU Masters project (EUMaster4HPC). He is also the director of the Masters programme on High-Performance Computer systems (MPHPC) at Chalmers since its start in 2019.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://groups.google.com/g/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2022.trancoso.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Proportionality in Spatial Keyword Search

Speaker: Dr. George Fakas Affiliation: Uppsala University, Sweden Category: Colloquium Location: Zoom (with Registration), URL: https://ucy.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJclcOmqrT0qHtGG5pm3rQ-nBivUIdLE3Feb (directions) Date: Friday, February 4, 2022 Time: 16:00-17:00 EET Host: Prof. Marios Dikaiakos (mdd-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2022.fakas

Abstract:
More often than not, spatial objects are associated with some context, in the form of text, descriptive tags (e.g. points of interest, flickr photos), or linked entities in semantic graphs (e.g. Yago2, DBpedia). Hence, location-based retrieval should be extended to consider not only the locations but also the context of the objects, especially when the retrieved objects are too many and the query result is overwhelming. In this paper, we study the problem of selecting a subset of the query result, which is the most representative. We argue that objects with similar context and nearby locations should proportionally be represented in the selection. Proportionality dictates the pairwise comparison of all retrieved objects and hence bears a high cost. We propose novel algorithms which greatly reduce the cost of proportional object selection in practice. Extensive empirical studies on real datasets show that our algorithms are effective and efficient. A user evaluation verifies that proportional selection is more preferable than random selection and selection based on object diversification.

Short Bio:
George Fakas is an Associate Professor (Docent) at the Department of Information Technology, Uppsala University. He is currently leading the Uppsala DataBase Laboratory (UDBL) within the Department of Information Technology. Before joining Uppsala University, he worked as a Research Fellow at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (with Prof. Dimitris Papadias), Hong Kong University (with Prof. Nikos Mamoulis), EPFL (Lausanne, Switzerland), UMIST (Manchester, UK), University of Cyprus (Cyprus). He also worked as a Senior Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University (UK). He has published papers in the most influential conferences and journals of data management, including SIGMOD, PVLDB, VLDB Journal, IEEE TKDE, DKE, etc. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1998, his M.Phil. in 1996 and his B.Sc. in Computation in 1995; all from the Department of Computation, UMIST, Manchester, UK. His research interests include big data, keyword search and ranking on (semi) structure data and (attributed) graphs. web search, online (geo) social networks.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2022.fakas.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Securing Modern Systems through Hardening

Speaker: Dr. Elias Athanasopoulos Affiliation: University of Cyprus, Cyprus Category: Colloquium Location: Zoom (with Registration), URL https://ucy.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMof-mvpz8tGdFFrK4Mex9lIrqhwouDbYpP (directions) Date: Wednesday, January 26, 2022 Time: 15:00-16:00 EET Host: Prof. Marios Dikaiakos (mdd-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2022.athanasopoulos

Abstract:
The evolution of computer systems has changed radically our everyday lives. Unfortunately, despite the many technological advances, computer systems remain vulnerable to attacks. The vulnerabilities are often connected to the systems’ intrinsic mechanics and not to human mistakes. Offering protection to such vulnerable systems is key for enabling their functionality safely. In this talk, I will first introduce the basic principle of countering attacks through hardening. In essence, I will discuss how hardening, compared to traditional security approaches, moves the focus from repairing the vulnerabilities to reducing the benefit of attackers. Second, I will discuss how systems can be hardened against attacks. For this, I will elaborate on how hardening can transform vulnerable systems to withstand exploits or even entire compromising. Finally, I will discuss how the attack surface can be further explored, despite hardening in place. In the entire talk, for demonstrating the real applications of hardening, I will use two major attack domains: (a) software exploitation and (b) database leaks.

Short Bio:
Elias Athanasopoulos is an assistant professor in Computer Science with the University of Cyprus. He received his BSc in Physics from the University of Athens and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Crete. Before joining University of Cyprus, he was an assistant professor with Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and member of VUSec. Elias was a Microsoft Research PhD Scholar, as well as a Marie Curie fellow with Columbia University and FORTH. His research interests are system security and privacy. He has several publications in all major systems and system security conferences and journals, such as IEEE Security and Privacy (Oakland) and IEEE European Security and Privacy, ACM CCS, Usenix Security and ATC, NDSS, EuroSys, and ACM TOPS.

Note:
This colloquium is part of the speaker's procedure for evaluation and promotion from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2022.athanasopoulos.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Distributed Ledger Objects: Formalization, Implementation and Applications

Speaker: Dr. Chryssis Georgiou Affiliation: University of Cyprus, Cyprus Category: Colloquium Location: Zoom (with Registration), URL https://ucy.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEodeGtqjMqHNUHb7J594oxL2rYHizue6zb (directions) Date: Tuesday, November 9, 2021 Time: 10:00-11:15 EET Host: Prof. Andreas Pitsillides (cspitsil-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2021.georgiou

Abstract:
There is no doubt that cryptocurrencies and (public or private) distributed ledgers (blockchains) have the potential to impact our society. However, most experts do not clearly differentiate between the coin, the ledger that supports it, and the service both provide. Instead they get very technical, talking about the cryptographic mechanisms involved, the mining used to maintain the ledger or the smart contract technology. Moreover, when they are asked for details, it is often the case that there is no formal specification of the protocols, algorithms, and the service provided; in many cases “the code is the spec”. In this talk I will overview recent attempts in formalizing the properties of distributed ledgers from a distributed computing point of view. In particular, I will first define the notion of a ledger object as a sequence of records, and provide the operations and properties that such an object should support. Implementing a ledger object on top of (possibly geographically dispersed) computing devices gives rise to the Distributed Ledger Object (DLO). Distribution introduces challenges on the consistency of the ledger in each participant. I will present a DLO implementation that provides linearizable consistency guarantees in a distributed asynchronous setting in which both servers (that maintain the ledger object) and clients (that access the object) are prone to Byzantine (malicious) failures; the implementation uses an Atomic Broadcast service. As an application of the formalism I will introduce the Atomic Appends problem, which emerges when the exchange of digital assets between multiple clients may involve appending multiple records to distinct ledgers (DLOs) in an atomic way. This abstracts the emerging problem of blockchain interconnection. Building on the DLO implementation, I will present an algorithmic solution for the Atomic Appends problem under an asynchronous distributed setting where both clients and the servers may be Byzantine. Finally, I will introduce the notion of the Distributed Grow-only Set Object (DSO) and demonstrate how eventually consistent DSOs can be used to obtain consensus-free solutions to the Atomic Appends problem.

Short Bio:
Chryssis Georgiou is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus. He holds a Ph.D. (December 2003) and M.Sc. (May 2002) in Computer Science & Engineering from the University of Connecticut and a B.Sc. (June 1998) in Mathematics from the University of Cyprus. His research interests span the Theory and Practice of Fault-tolerant Distributed Computing with a focus on Algorithm Design and Analysis. Recent research topics include the Specification and Implementation of Distributed Ledgers, the Design and Implementation of Fault-tolerant and Strongly Consistent Distributed Storage Systems, the Design and Analysis of Self-stabilizing Distributed Systems and the Application of Machine Learning in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. He has published more than 100 articles in journals and peer-reviewed conference proceedings in his area of study and he has co-authored two books on Robust Distributed Cooperative Computing. A book he had co-edited on the Principles of Blockchain Systems has just been published. He has served on several Program Committees of conferences in Distributed and Parallel Computing and on the Steering Committees of DISC (2008-2010, 2010-2012) and ACM PODC (2013- 2015). He was recently elected to serve for a three-year term as the Steering Committee Chair of ACM PODC (2021-2024). In 2015 he served as the General Chair of PODC 2015, and in 2017 as the Track Program Committee co-Chair (Stabilizing Systems: Theory and Practice Track) of SSS 2017. In 2018, 2019 and 2021 he was the General co-Chair of the workshops ApPLIED 2018, 2019, and 2021 (co-located with PODC 2018, DISC 2019, and PODC 2021 respectively), while in 2020 he co-chaired the PC committee of NETYS 2020. As of January 2018, he is on the Editorial Board of Information Processing Letters (subject area: Distributed Computing). His research has been funded by the University of Cyprus, the Cyprus Research and Innovation Foundation, and the European Commission. More information at: www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/~chryssis .

Note:
This colloquium is part of the speaker's procedure for evaluation and promotion from Associate Professor to Professor.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2021.georgiou.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

From the Internet hourglass architecture, to the mouse brain, and to deep learning

Speaker: Prof. Constantine Dovrolis Affiliation: Georgia Institute of Technology, USA Category: Colloquium Location: Amphitheater 012, 'Stelios Ioannou' Library, University of Cyprus and Zoom (https://ucy.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwkd--pqzgpH9A0K5aG-GD4pF18dDea6A0e) (directions) Date: Tuesday, October 26, 2021 Time: 16:30-17:30 EET Host: Dr. Demetris Zeinalipour (dzeina-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2021.dovrolis

Abstract:
Complex systems, both living and artificial, can often be represented as large and dynamic graphs. Network science is a discipline that investigates the topology and dynamics of such graphs aiming to understand the architecture, function and evolution of the underlying systems. This presentation will discuss how our group has utilized network science in three seemingly different areas with common architectural constraints and objectives: 1. The hourglass organization of evolving hierarchical dependencies, 2. Multi-sensory integration in the mammalian brain, 3. The design of sparse deep neural networks that can learn fast and generalize well. The talk is designed for a general CS/EE audience with no prior background in network science, neuroscience or deep learning.

Short Bio:
Dr. Constantine Dovrolis is a Professor at the School of Computer Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). He is a graduate of the Technical University of Crete (Engr.Dipl. 1995), University of Rochester (M.S. 1996), and University of Wisconsin-Madison (Ph.D. 2000). His research combines Network Science, Data Mining and Machine Learning with applications in climate science, biology, neuroscience, sociology and machine learning. More recently, his group has been focusing on neuro-inspired architectures for machine learning based on what is currently known about the structure of brain networks.

Note:
Participants need to have a valid safe pass and wear a mask for the entire event.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2021.dovrolis.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Incremental, Distributed, and Concurrent Service Coordination for Reliable and Deterministic Systems-of-Systems

Speaker: Dr. Ala' Khalifeh Affiliation: German Jordanian University, Jordan Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Tuesday, September 21, 2021 Time: 18:00-19:00 EET Host: Dr. Vasos Vassiliou (vasosv-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2021.khalifeh

Abstract:
Systems-of-systems (SoS) are gaining increasing attention for the realization of safety-relevant applications with reliability and real-time requirements, by coordinating autonomous constituent systems from different application areas. For a given application that is initiated at a constituent system, the provision and use of services between constituent systems must be coordinated. This involves identifying constituent systems that can provide the services, optimizing the use of the services driven by extra-functional properties, performing admission control for service provision, reserving resources for provided services, and recursively using services from subcontracted constituent systems to realize service provisions. In this talk, new conceptual models with service provisioning for reliable and deterministic SoS applications, as well as distributed algorithms for the discovery, optimized selection, and admission of service provisions are discussed.

Short Bio:
Ala’ Khalifeh received the PhD degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of California, Irvine -USA in 2010. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Communication Engineering department at the German Jordanian University and the department chair. Dr. Khalifeh is the recipient of the Fulbright scholarship (2005-2007) sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the United States Department of State and the University of California Pedagogical fellowship for his excellent teaching and leadership skills. He has received numerous academic and technical awards such as: The Young AFCEA 40 Under 40 winners. The German Jordanian University award for the industrial relationship Jul 2016 and the German Jordanian University Excellence in Research Award, Sep 2015. His research is in communications technology, signal processing, and networking with particular emphasis on optimal resource allocations for multimedia transmission over wired and wireless networks, VoIP, E-health applications, speech, video and audio signal processing.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2021.khalifeh.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

CovidReduce Project – Pragmatic Lessons and Deployable Tools

Speaker: Prof. Panos K. Chrysanthis Affiliation: University of Pittsburgh, USA Category: Colloquium Location: Hybrid Event: Speaker will be at UCY but Participants need to connect over Zoom (Registration Necessary): https://ucy.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEqc-6qqjMiHdavfm6lvlWFMbDlBaQTKr4a (directions) Date: Friday, July 16, 2021 Time: 10.00-11.00 EET Host: Demetris Zeinalipour (dzeina-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2021.chrysanthis

Abstract:
CovidReduce (Covidreduce.org) is a project at the University of Pittsburgh that aims to help the public to reduce personal infection risk of COVID-19 through education and tools. In the first part of this talk, we will present its four programs of Education, Mask Tester/Fit Monitor, Scenario Analysis, and Health Monitor. In the second part, we will focus on the last two programs and in particular the HealthDist app (healthdist.org/), which utilizes the context (e.g., weather conditions), location (e.g., crowded areas), and user's preferences to support safe mobility. HealthDist is the first app enabling contact avoidance in addition to contact tracing in a privacy preserving manner.

Short Bio:
Panos K. Chrysanthis is a professor of computer science and the founding director of the Advanced Data Management Technologies Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh. He is also an adjunct professor at Carnegie-Mellon University and at the University of Cyprus. His research interests lie within the areas of data management (big data, databases, data Streams & sensor networks, data analytics and visualization), and distributed, mobile and ubiquitous computing. He received the US National Science Foundation CAREER Award (1995), Pitt's Provost Award in Excellence in Mentoring (2015), and UMass Outstanding Award in Education (2019). He is an ACM distinguished scientist and a senior member of the IEEE. He received the BS degree from the University of Athens, Greece, and the MS and PhD degrees from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2021.chrysanthis.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Formal Approaches to System Modelling and Verification

Speaker: Dr. Anna Philippou Affiliation: University of Cyprus, Cyprus Category: Colloquium Location: Zoom (with Registration), http://tiny.cc/ssyqtz (directions) Date: Wednesday, March 10, 2021 Time: 10:15-11:15 EET Host: Prof. Elpida Keravnou Papailiou (elpida-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2021.philippou

Abstract:
In this talk we will review approaches and results towards formally modeling and reasoning about different classes of distributed systems. The first part of the talk will focus on a framework for reversible computation. Reversible computation is an unconventional form of computing, which allows execution to proceed both in the forward as well as the reverse direction. It has been attracting increasing attention as on the one hand it promises low-power computation and, on the other hand, it is inherent or of interest in a variety of applications. In this part of the talk we will present a reversible approach to Petri nets, a graphical mathematical language for the specification and verification of discrete-event systems, that supports both causal and out-of-causal order reversibility, as well as mechanisms for controlling when reversibility is applied. The formalism can be used to model a wide variety of reversible systems ranging from biochemical reactions to applications from wireless communications. The second part of the talk will focus on the concept of privacy and the challenge of developing software systems that conform to privacy requirements. In particular, we will present a formalism based on the pi-calculus for studying privacy in information systems. The formalism is accompanied by a policy language for expressing privacy policies and a type system for statically checking that a model conforms to an associated privacy policy. Recent work on capturing GDPR requirements in the framework, such as the notion of purpose, will also be discussed. The talk will conclude with a report of a recent experience on the design and development of a programmable metasurface, ensuring the rigor and the correctness of the proposed solutions with the aid of formal methods.

Short Bio:
Anna Philippou is an Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science, University of Cyprus, and a co-founder of the Laboratory of Foundations of Computing Systems and Theoretical Computer Science. She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science (1997) and an M.Sc. in Parallel Computers and Computation (1993) both from the University of Warwick, UK, and a B.A. in Mathematics and Computation (1992), from the University of Oxford, UK. Before joining the Department of Computer Science, University of Cyprus, she worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, USA (1997-1998), and as a Teaching Assistant at the University of Warwick, UK (1993-1996). Her research interests lie in fields of Concurrency Theory and Formal Methods.

Note:
This colloquium is part of the speaker's procedure for evaluation and promotion from Associate Professor to Professor.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2021.philippou.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Towards appropriate use of software and data

Speaker: Dr.-Ing. Georgia Kapitsaki Affiliation: University of Cyprus, Cyprus Category: Colloquium Location: Google Meet, https://meet.google.com/tsn-fskw-nra (directions) Date: Friday, September 11, 2020 Time: 10.30-11.30 EET Host: Prof. Constantinos Pattichis (pattichi-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2020.kapitsaki

Abstract:
Software and data need to be used in an appropriate way, so that the intellectual property of the software creators and the data privacy of the end users are preserved. On the one hand, using open source software requires special care, as open source software is licensed under specific licenses that define how the software can be used and what is prohibited. On the other hand, when creating software and services, it is vital to define which data are used by the service provider and any third parties to ensure that users are well informed in respect to the privacy of their data. This talk will focus on the above areas, organized in two parts: 1) understanding the conditions under which open software can be used and how, and 2) defining how user data are expected to be used in services, contributing to privacy protection. In the first part, three approaches for modeling open source licensing, extracting license terms from license text (FOSS-LTE) and for recommending licenses to software engineers (findOSSLicense) will be presented, whereas in the second part, an approach for modeling service needs concerning data use will be presented (Linked USDL Privacy). The talk will be concluded with an outline of future research agenda.

Short Bio:
Georgia M. Kapitsaki is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science, UCY. She received her Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering of National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) in 2009, her M.Sc. in Technoeconomical Systems and her Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering. She has worked as a research associate at NTUA, as a laboratory assistant at the Technical Institute of Piraeus, and as a telecommunications engineer and a software engineer in the industry in Germany. She has worked on European research projects (e.g. PaaSage, VALS), and has been the principal investigator of national and EU funded research projects (e.g. CYberSafety, TAMIT). She has been involved in the organization of international conferences (e.g. program co-chair ICSR 2016, tutorials chair SAC 2019). She has served as member of the program committee of international conferences (e.g. WISE 2020, ICWS 2020, ENASE 2020). She has published over 60 papers in peer-reviewed journals, and scientific conferences and workshops. She has received the best paper award in ICSR 2015 and in the doctoral symposium of MODELS 2008. Her research interests include Software Engineering, Open source software and reuse, Privacy Enhancing Technologies and Context-aware Applications.

Note:
This colloquium is part of the speaker's procedure for evaluation and promotion from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2020.kapitsaki.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Toward Interpretable Recommender Systems

Speaker: Prof. Michalis Vlachos Affiliation: University of Lausanne, Switzerland Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Thursday, January 16, 2020 Time: 11:00-12:00 EET Host: Dr. Demetris Zeinalipour (dzeina-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2020.vlachos

Abstract:
With the advent of Big Data, we can learn more about our clients, and we can create 360-degree views which help better understand their needs and their pain points. In this talk, I will describe the building of a business-to-business (B2B) recommendation engine that predicts the interest of clients in products using both proprietary and public data sources. For such a system, interpretability of the predicted action is particularly important, because generated recommendations will be furnished to the salesperson responsible for the client account. We address interpretability by transforming the recommendation problem into an instance of an overlapping co-clustering problem. With the use of GPUs, we can also significantly reduce the training of the recommendation engine from hours to only a few seconds, converting time-consuming analytics processes into totally interactive sessions for the Data Scientists. Finally, I will present how the results of the recommendation engine can be coupled with a Natural Language interface to provide an easy-to-use search platform.

Short Bio:
Michalis Vlachos is a Professor with the Faculty of Business and Economics (HEC) at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Previously, he worked at IBM Research in Zurich., and at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, NY. He has also visited Microsoft Research. His research interests span the areas of business analytics, data mining and recommender systems. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Riverside, and an MBA from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Vlachos has authored 100+ publications and holds over 20 granted or filed patents. For his work at IBM, he has received seven Technical Accomplishment Awards and five Invention Plateau Awards. He has been a recipient of two best-paper awards, a Fulbright Scholarship and a Marie-Curie International Reintegration Grant. He has been awarded an ERC grant on the topic "Exact Mining from InExact Data." He is an ACM Distinguished Speaker and a Senior Member of the IEEE.

Note:
Video Recording: This presentation will be recorded and available after the presentation through the "Multimedia file" URL below.

Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYV_M1rgFK0

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2020.vlachos.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Optimal learning of joint alignments

Speaker: Dr. Charalampos E. Tsourakakis Affiliation: Boston University, USA Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 Time: 10:00-11:00 EET Host: Dr. Demetris Zeinalipour (dzeina-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2019.tsourakakis

Abstract:
We consider the following problem, which is useful in applications such as joint image and shape alignment. The goal is to recover n discrete variables $g_i \in \{0, \ldots, k-1\}$ (up to some global offset) given noisy observations of a set of their pairwise differences $\{g_i - g_j \bmod k\}$; specifically, with probability $\frac{1}{k}+\delta$ for some $\delta > 0$ one obtains the correct answer, and with the remaining probability one obtains a uniformly random incorrect answer. We consider a learning-based formulation where one can perform a query to observe a pairwise difference, and the goal is to perform as few queries as possible while obtaining the exact joint alignment. We provide an easy-to-implement, time efficient algorithm that performs $O(n \lg n/\delta^2 k)$ queries, and recovers the joint alignment with high probability. We also show that our algorithm is optimal. This work improves significantly work of Chen and Candes, who view the problem as a constrained principal components analysis problem that can be solved using the power method. Our approach is simpler both in the algorithm and the analysis, and provides additional insights into the problem structure. Finally, experimentally our algorithm performs well compared to the algorithm of Chen and Candes both in terms of accuracy and running time. Joint work with Kasper Green Larsen and Michael Mitzenmacher

Short Bio:
Babis Tsourakakis is an assistant professor in computer science at Boston University and a research associate at Harvard. Tsourakakis obtained his PhD in Algorithms, Combinatorics and Optimization at Carnegie Mellon under the supervision of Alan Frieze, was a postdoctoral fellow at Brown University and Harvard under the supervision of Eli Upfal and Michael Mitzenmacher respectively. Before joining Boston University, he worked as a researcher in the Google Brain team. He won a best paper award in IEEE Data Mining, has delivered three tutorials in the ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, and has designed two graph mining libraries for large-scale graph mining, one of which has been officially included in Windows Azure. His research focuses on large-scale graph mining, and machine learning.

Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_JL8CBn2_E&t=56s

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2019.tsourakakis.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Artificial Intelligence Research for Real World Challenges

Speaker: Prof. Grigoris Antoniou Affiliation: University of Huddersfield, UK Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Tuesday, November 26, 2019 Time: 11:00-12:00 EET Host: Prof. Elpida Keravnou Papailiou (elpida-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2019.antoniou

Abstract:
Data originating from the Web, sensor networks and social media result in increasingly huge datasets. The so called Big Data creates new opportunities for advanced applications in domains ranging from smart cities to intelligent healthcare, hence the increasing interest in academia and industry. Usually Big Data is associated with machine learning/data mining. This talk will argue that semantic and knowledge technologies have an important role to play. Traditionally, reasoning approaches have mostly focused on complex knowledge structures/programs and centralized in-memory data, so the question arises whether and how they can be adapted to scale sufficiently to meet the Big Data challenges. A number of open research challenges in the area will be discussed, as well as possible applications in the legal domain. Then we will turn our attention to the area of mental health, a key healthcare challenge in worldwide. We will present results around applying machine learning to two specific areas of mental health: assessment of suicide risk, and diagnosis of ADHD in adults. In close collaboration with domain experts, relevant clinical data was analysed to develop predictive models. In contrast to most works of applying AI to healthcare (a) we relied on clinical data currently collected, so as not to increase the burden on healthcare systems; (b) we developed locally adapted models as clinical decision making may be different in London, Brisbane or Nicosia in view of geographical, social and cultural differences. Issues around explainability will also be discussed.

Short Bio:
Grigoris Antoniou is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Huddersfield, UK. Previously he has held professorial appointments at the University of Crete (where he was also Head of the Information Systems Laboratory at FORTH-ICS, the top-rated research institute in Greece), Griffith University, Australia, and the University of Bremen, Germany. His research interests lie in semantic technologies, particularly knowledge representation and reasoning and semantics for big data, and its application to ambient intelligence, e-health, and transportation. He has published over 200 technical papers in scientific journals and conferences. He is author of three books with international publishers (MIT Press, Addison-Wesley); his book "A Semantic Web Primer" is internationally the standard textbook in the area, and has been translated to Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Spanish and Greek. His research has attracted over 10.000 citations. He is member of editorial boards of journals including Artificial Intelligence Journal, has organised a number of conferences and workshops (including leadership positions at ESWC 2010 and 2011), and has served in numerous programme committees. He has led a number of national and international research projects, and has participated in many more. He is Fellow of the European Association for Artificial Intelligence.

Note:
Recording: This presentation will be available after the talk through the "Multimedia file" URL below.

Multimedia File Available:
 Multimedia File

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2019.antoniou.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Thinking Spatial

Speaker: Prof. Mohamed F. Mokbel Affiliation: QCRI, Qatar and University of Minnesota - Twin Cities, USA Category: Colloquium Location: Amphitheater 012, 'Stelios Ioannou' Library, University of Cyprus (directions) Date: Friday, November 22, 2019 Time: 09:15-10:15 EET Host: Dr. Demetris Zeinalipour (dzeina-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2019.mokbel

Abstract:
The need to manage and analyze spatial data is hampered by the lack of specialized systems to support such data. System builders mostly build general-purpose systems that are generic enough to handle any kind of attributes. Whenever there is a pressing need for spatial data support, it is considered as an afterthought problem that can be addressed by adding new data types, extensions, or spatial cartridges to existing systems. This talk advocates for dealing with spatial data as first class citizens, and for always thinking spatially whenever it comes to system design. This is well justified by the proliferation of location-based applications that are mainly relying on spatial data. The talk will go through various system designs and show how they would be different if we have designed them while thinking spatially. Examples of these systems include big data systems, machine learning, recommender systems, and crowdsourcing

Short Bio:
Mohamed Mokbel (PhD, Purdue University, MSc, BSc, Alexandria University) is Chief Scientist at Qatar Computing Research Institute and a Professor at University of Minnesota. His current research interests focus on systems and machine learning techniques for big spatial data and applications. Mohamed is an ACM Distinguished Scientist. His research work has been recognized by the VLDB 10-years Best Paper Award, four conference Best Paper Awards, and the NSF CAREER Award. Mohamed is the past elected Chair of ACM SIGPATIAL, current Editor-in-Chief for Distributed and Parallel Databases Journal, and on the editorial board of ACM Books, ACM TODS, VLDB Journal, ACM TSAS, and GeoInformatica journals. He has served as PC Vice Chair of ACM SIGMOD and PC Co-Chair for ACM SIGSPATIAL and IEEE MDM.

Note:
Youtube Livestreaming: This presentation will be streamed in real time through Youtube and the recording will be available after the talk through the "Multimedia file" URL below.

Recording: https://youtu.be/-IMLVQhFC24

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2019.mokbel.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

A Wakeup Call: Databases in an Untrusted Universe

Speaker: Prof. Amr El Abbadi Affiliation: University of California - Santa Barbara, USA Category: Colloquium Location: Amphitheater 012, 'Stelios Ioannou' Library, University of Cyprus (directions) Date: Thursday, November 14, 2019 Time: 09:15-10:15 EET Host: Dr. Demetris Zeinalipour (dzeina-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2019.abbadi

Abstract:
Once upon a time databases were structured, one size fit all and they resided on machines that were trustworthy and even when they failed, they simply crashed. This era has come and gone as eloquently stated by Mike Stonebraker. We now have key-value stores, graph databases, text databases, and a myriad of unstructured data repositories. However, we, as a database community still cling to our 20th century belief that databases always reside on trustworthy, honest servers. This notion has been challenged and abandoned by many other Computer Science communities, most notably the security and the distributed systems communities. The rise of the cloud computing paradigm as well as the rapid popularity of blockchains demand a rethinking of our naïve, comfortable beliefs in an ideal benign infrastructure. In the cloud, clients store their sensitive data in remote servers owned and operated by cloud providers. The Security and Crypto Communities have made significant inroads to protect both data and access privacy from malicious untrusted storage providers using encryption and oblivious data stores. The Distributed Systems and the Systems Communities have developed consensus protocols to ensure the fault-tolerant maintenance of data residing on untrusted, malicious infrastructure. However, these solutions face significant scalability and performance challenges when incorporated in large scale data repositories. Novel database design needs to directly address the natural tension between performance, fault-tolerance and trustworthiness. This is a perfect setting for the database community to lead and guide. In this talk, I will discuss the state of the art in terms of data management in malicious, untrusted settings, its limitations and potential approaches to mitigate these shortcomings. As examples, I will use cloud and distributed databases that reside on untrustworthy malicious infrastructure and discuss specific approaches for standard database problems like commitment and replication. I will also explore blockchains, which can be viewed as asset management databases in untrusted infrastructures.

Short Bio:
Amr El Abbadi is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received his B. Eng. from Alexandria University, Egypt, and his Ph.D. from Cornell University. His research interests are in the fields of fault-tolerant distributed systems and databases, focusing recently on Cloud data management and blockchain based systems. Prof. El Abbadi is an ACM Fellow, AAAS Fellow, and IEEE Fellow. He was Chair of the Computer Science Department at UCSB from 2007 to 2011. He has served as a journal editor for several database journals, including, The VLDB Journal, IEEE Transactions on Computers and The Computer Journal. He has been Program Chair for multiple database and distributed systems conferences. He currently serves on the executive committee of the IEEE Technical Committee on Data Engineering (TCDE) and was a board member of the VLDB Endowment from 2002 to 2008. In 2007, Prof. El Abbadi received the UCSB Senate Outstanding Mentorship Award for his excellence in mentoring graduate students. In 2013, his student, Sudipto Das received the SIGMOD Jim Gray Doctoral Dissertation Award. Prof. El Abbadi is also a co-recipient of the Test of Time Award at EDBT/ICDT 2015. He has published over 300 articles in databases and distributed systems and has supervised over 35 PhD students.

Note:
This is a joint work with Divy Agrawal, Mohammad Amiri, Sujaya Maiyya, Victor Zakhary. Youtube Livestreaming: This presentation will be streamed in real time through Youtube and the recording will be available after the talk through the "Multimedia file" URL below.

Recording: https://youtu.be/8sNmwVjcSl0

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2019.abbadi.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Building a Trillion Sensors IoT: From Sensors to Servers

Speaker: Dr. Shidhartha Das Affiliation: Arm Research Cambridge, UK Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Thursday, November 7, 2019 Time: 10:00-11:00 EET Host: Dr. Yanos Sazeides (yanos-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2019.das

Abstract:
The Internet of Things (IoT) powered by a multitude of interconnected computing devices will make the future of computing pervasive and ubiquitous. Sensors lie at the heart of the IoT acting as the interface between the physical world that we interact and the digital world that we compute with. Applications enabled by the IoT rely upon provisioning of services and analytics through a hierarchy of sensor-nodes that then relay useful information to the cloud for further processing. In this talk, we argue that the design of an energy-efficient IoT is necessarily underpinned by efficiency gains accrued across the entire computing stack – from sensors to server-systems. At the high-end, we make the argument that effectively managing design margins is crucial to delivering energy-efficient computation in an era where efficiency gains through Moore’s Law scaling has effectively stalled. We focus on on-chip sensors and how by sensing their own operating environments, chips can automatically adapt and tune themselves to efficient operating points. We also briefly discuss a novel approach to characterizing computing platforms, based on radiated EM spectra, developed in collaboration with University of Cyprus. At the low-end of the computing spectrum, we make the case that truly ubiquitous computation can be achieved by embedding greater computational capabilities in power-constrained sensor-nodes. To this end, we examine how emerging devices (particularly, non-volatile memory technologies) can be harnessed to accelerate machine-learning algorithms with orders-of-magnitude improvements in energy-efficiency. Finally, we conclude the talk with an observation that future improvements in computational efficiency will stem from a co-design approach where process-technology innovations are effectively combined with innovative circuits and system design.

Short Bio:
Shidhartha Das is a Senior Principal Research Engineer in Arm Research, based in Cambridge, UK. Dr. Das received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. from University of Michigan in 2003 and 2009, respectively. His research interests include emerging non-volatile memory technologies, micro-architectural and circuit design for variation measurement and mitigation, on-chip power delivery and VLSI architectures for digital signal processing (DSP) accelerators. Dr. Das holds 46 US granted patents and is the inventor on several more that are pending. He is the recipient of the Arm “Patent Cube” in 2017 and the Arm “Inventor of the Year” award in 2016 for his contributions to emerging non-volatile memory technologies. Dr. Das is the recipient of multiple best-paper awards (CAL 2017, ISLPED 2015, SAME 2010, MICRO 2003), best-paper nominations (ISLPED 2015) and the Microprocessor Review Analysts’ Choice Award in Innovation in 2007. Dr. Das has served as a Guest-Editor for the Journal of Solid-State Circuits (JSSC) and Associate-Editor for IEEE Solid-State Circuits Letters (SSCL). He serves on the Technical Program Committee of ESSCIRC and the ISSCC Students Research Preview Committee.

Note:
The colloquium is jointly organized by the Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Cyprus.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2019.das.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Vertical workflows: Service Orchestration Across Cloud & Edge Resources

Speaker: Prof. Omer F. Rana Affiliation: Cardiff University, UK Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Wednesday, November 6, 2019 Time: 10:00-11:00 EET Host: Prof. Yannis Dimopoulos (yannis-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2019.rana

Abstract:
Many Internet of Things (IoT) applications today involve data capture from sensors that are close to the phenomenon being measured, with such data subsequently being transmitted to Cloud data centers for analysis and storage. Currently devices used for data capture often differ from those that are used to subsequently carry out analysis on such data. Increasing availability of storage and processing devices closer to the data capture device, perhaps over a one-hop network connection or even directly connected to the IoT device itself, requires more efficient allocation of processing across such edge devices and data centers. Scalability in this context needs to consider both cloud resources and initial processing on edge resources closer to the user. We refer to these as "vertical workflows" – i.e. workflows (a combined set of services) which are enacted across resources that can vary in: (i) type and behaviour; (ii) processing and storage capacity; (iii) latency and security profiles. Understanding how a workflow can be enacted across these resource types is outlined, motivated through multiple application scenarios. The overall objective considered is the completion of the workflow within some deadline constraint, but with flexibility on where data processing is carried out.

Short Bio:
Omer F. Rana is Professor of Performance Engineering at Cardiff University, with research interests in high performance distributed computing, data analysis/mining and multi-agent systems. He was formerly the deputy director of the Welsh eScience Centre and had the opportunity to interact with a number of computational scientists across Cardiff University and the UK. He is a fellow of Cardiff University's multi-disciplinary "Data Innovation" Research Institute. Rana has contributed to specification and standardisation activities via the Open Grid Forum and worked as a software developer with London-based Marshall Bio-Technology Limited prior to joining Cardiff University, where he developed specialist software to support biotech instrumentation. He also contributed to public understanding of science, via the Wellcome Trust funded "Science Line", in collaboration with BBC and Channel 4. Rana holds a PhD in "Neural Computing and Parallel Architectures" from Imperial College (London Univ.), an MSc in Microelectronics (Univ. of Southampton) and a BEng in Information Systems Eng. from Imperial College (London Univ.). He serves on the editorial boards (as Associate Editor) of IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, (formerly) IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing, IEEE Cloud Computing magazine and ACM Transactions on Internet Technology. He is a founding-member and associate editor of ACM Transactions on Autonomous & Adaptive Systems.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2019.rana.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Data Stream Processing and Querying at the Edge

Speaker: Dr. George Pallis Affiliation: University of Cyprus, Cyprus Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Tuesday, November 5, 2019 Time: 10:00-11:00 EET Host: Prof. Yannis Dimopoulos (yannis-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2019.pallis

Abstract:
With the rapid integration of massive amounts of data and proliferation of new devices (e.g., smart mobile devices, drones, Internet-of-Things (IoT), etc.), today’s network system infrastructures are being stretched to their limits. Although edge computing brings the computation closer to both delay-sensitive services and interested users, the challenges restricting the cloud model still remain. In addition, as the plethora of data generated across connected devices continues to vastly increase, the need to query the “edge” so as to derive in-time analytic insights is more evident than ever. In this talk, I will present three novel adaptive monitoring frameworks and a query-driven framework for streaming analytics in edge computing deployments. First, I will present the AdaM framework, which dynamically adjusts the monitoring intensity and the amount of data disseminated through the network based on a runtime estimation model capturing the current data evolution and variability. By accomplishing this, energy consumption and data volume are reduced, allowing IoT devices to preserve battery and ease processing at data consuming services, while still preserving accuracy. Then, I will present the ADMin framework. Rather than transmitting the entire stream, ADMin favors sending updates for its estimation model from which values can be inferred, triggering dissemination only when shifts in the stream evolution are detected. This is achieved by efficiently adapting the rate at which IoT devices disseminate monitoring streams based on run-time knowledge of the stream evolution, variability and seasonal behavior. The third framework that I will present is called ATMoN and focuses on dynamic networks. Specifically, ATMoN framework dynamically adjusts the temporal granularity graph metrics which are computed based on runtime knowledge captured by a low-cost probabilistic learning model approximating both the metric stream evolution and the runtime volatility of the graph topology. This computationally offloads graph processing engines and eases the communication overhead in edge computing networks where the wealth of data dissemination is plentiful. Next, I will present the StreamSight which is a novel framework that provides a rich and declarative query model abstraction for expressing complex analytics on monitoring data streams and then dynamically compiling these queries into stream processing jobs for continuous execution on distributed processing engines. Finally, I will conclude the talk with an overview to our current and future research agenda.

Short Bio:
George Pallis received his BSc (2001) and Ph.D. (2006) degree in Department of Informatics of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece). Currently, he is assistant professor at the Computer Science Department, University of Cyprus and Associate Director of Laboratory of Internet Computing. Previously, he was lecturer and Marie-Curie fellow at the Computer Science Department, University of Cyprus. His research interests include Cloud computing with focus on Cloud elasticity and monitoring, Edge Computing and Big Data Analytics. He is principal institutional investigator in research projects funded by EC, Research Promotion Foundation in Cyprus, and industry (e.g., Google) and has totally attracted more than 4.5M euro. Dr. Pallis has published over 70 papers in international journals (e.g., IEEE TKDE, IEEE TCC, IEEE TSC, ACM TOIT etc), magazines (e.g., CACM, IEEE Internet Computing) and conferences (e.g., INFOCOM, IPDPS, ICDCS, IEEE BIG DATA etc) and he is contributor of two international DIN (German Institute for Standardization) standards. His papers have been cited more than 3600 times. Dr. Pallis has served as PC-Co-chair of CloudCom 2018 and CCGrid 2019. Dr. Pallis has also served in numerous Program and Organization Committees for international conferences (WWW, ICDCS, etc) and he received the best paper awards in the IEEE Big Data Conference (IEEE BIG DATA 2016) and the International Conference on Service-Oriented Computing (ICSOC 2014). In 2019, Dr. Pallis served as guest editor for the edge computing special issue on the prestigious Proceedings of the IEEE journal. He is Editor in Chief in the IEEE Internet Computing magazine, Associate Editor in the IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing and Associate Editor in the Computing Journal (Springer).

Note:
This colloquium is part of the speaker's procedure for evaluation and promotion from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2019.pallis.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Towards secure control of cyber-physical systems

Speaker: Prof. Nacim Ramdani Affiliation: University of Orléans, France Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Wednesday, October 2, 2019 Time: 10:00-11:00 EET Host: Dr. Demetris Zeinalipour (dzeina-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) and Prof. Constantinos Pattichis (pattichi-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2019.ramdani

Abstract:
Autonomous robots and most today’s critical infrastructures are cyber-physical systems (CPS) that operate in highly networked environments as they need to communicate remotely with control and management systems. This feature makes them more vulnerable to cyber-attacks. For instance, a scenario of importance is posed by a malicious adversary that can arbitrarily corrupt the measurements of a subset of (remote) sensors in the CPS. Because sensor measurements data are used to generate control commands, corrupted measurements data will lead to corrupted commands, thus critically affecting the behaviour of the CPS. From a control theory perspective, one needs to develop algorithms and architectures for the detection of cyber-attacks on either sensors or actuators, and the mitigation of their impact on the resilience and the overall performance of the CPS. State-of-the-art methods often consider active attack detection, control algorithms that work directly with encrypted sensor data, or secure state estimation methods that show resilience when sensors are under cyber-attacks. In this talk, first, I will briefly review recent literature on cyber-security from the perspective of control theory. Then, I will describe our approach to secure state estimation, a secure interval state estimator for linear continuous-time systems with discrete-time measurements subject to both bounded-error noise and cyber-attacks. The interval state estimator is modelled as an impulsive system, where impulsive corrections are made periodically using measurement. The approach includes a new selection strategy that can endow the state estimation with resiliency to attacks, when assuming that only a subset of the whole set of sensors can be attacked although this subset is unknown a priori. The approach will be illustrated in simulation with robot navigation under cyber-attack.

Short Bio:
Nacim Ramdani received the Engineer degree from Ecole Centrale de Paris, France, in 1990, the Ph.D. degree from the University Paris-Est Creteil, France, in 1994 and the Habilitation in 2005. Since September 2010, he has been a Full Professor at the University of Orleans (IUT de Bourges) affiliated with the Laboratoire PRISME EA 4229 University of Orleans - INSA Centre Val de Loire. He has been the head of the Robotics and ICT group within the Laboratoire PRISME since 2018. From 1996 to 2010, he was Associate Professor with the University Paris-Est Creteil. He was affiliated with the LIRMM CNRS Montpellier during 2005-2010 and also on secondment with the INRIA during 2007-2009. He is the co-Chair of the workgroup group on Verification and Synthesis of Cyber-Physical Systems within the French research group on Automatic Control (GDR MACS). His current research interests revolve around correct-by-construction synthesis of cyber-physical and autonomous systems in presence of uncertainty, faults or cyber-attacks. He works mainly on interval observers, set-membership state estimation, and data fusion techniques, with applications to healthcare, autonomous robotics, smart homes and smart grids. Personal webpage: https://agora.bourges.univ-orleans.fr/ramdani/

Note:
The colloquium is co-organized with the IEEE Signal Processing Society - Cyprus Chapter

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2019.ramdani.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Resource management in heterogeneous large scale communication systems

Speaker: Dr. Marilia Curado Affiliation: University of Coimbra, Portugal Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Wednesday, September 11, 2019 Time: 12:00-13:00 EET Host: Prof. Andreas Pitsillides (cspitsil-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2019.curado

Abstract:
The performance of communication systems is being challenged by the diversity of devices, technologies, and architectures, as well as emerging applications requirements. In particular, latency, energy, and resilience within dense and heterogeneous environments are conflicting objectives which raise important research problems. This talk will present an overview of R&D projects comprising academy and industry partners which are targeting resource management within the Internet of Things and 5G ecosystems.

Short Bio:
Marilia Curado is an Associate Professor with Habilitation at the Department of Informatics Engineering of the University of Coimbra, Portugal, from where she got a PhD in Informatics Engineering on the subject of Quality of Service Routing, in 2005. She is the coordinator of the Masters on Informatics Engineering. Her research interests are Quality of Service, Energy efficiency, Internet of Things, Mobility, and Cloud Systems. She is the coordinator of the Laboratory of Communications and Telematics of the Centre for Informatics and Systems of the University of Coimbra. She has been general and TPC chair of several conferences and belongs to the editorial board of Elsevier Computer Networks, Computer Communications, Wiley Transactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technologies and Internet Technology Letters. She has participated in several national projects and international projects such as IST FP6 Integrated Projects, EuQoS and WEIRD, ICT FP7 STREPs MICIE, GINSENG, COCKPIT and H2020 ATENA, EU-Brasil BIGSEA and POSEIDON. She acts regularly as an evaluator for EU projects and proposals.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2019.curado.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

ViewSeeker: An Interactive View Recommendation Tool

Speaker: Prof. Panos K. Chrysanthis Affiliation: University of Pittsburgh, USA Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Friday, June 7, 2019 Time: 11.00-12.00 EET Host: Dr. Demetris Zeinalipour (dzeina-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2019.chrysanthis

Abstract:
View recommendation has emerged as a powerful tool to assist data analysts in exploring and understanding big data. Existing view recommendation approaches proposed a variety of utility functions in selecting useful views. Even though each utility function might be suitable for specific scenarios, identifying the most appropriate ones along with their tunable parameters, which represent the user’s intention during an exploration, is a challenge for both expert and non-expert users. In this talk we will present the first attempt towards interactive view recommendation by automatically discovering the most appropriate view utility functions in an exploration based on the user’s preferences. In particular, our proposed ViewSeeker uses a novel active learning method to discover the view utility function by interactively refining the set of k view recommendations. The effectiveness and efficiency of ViewSeeker was experimentally evaluated using both synthetic and real data sets.

Short Bio:
Panos K. Chrysanthis is a Professor of Computer Science and the founding director of the Advanced Data Management Technologies Laboratory in the School of Computing and Information at the University of Pittsburgh. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the Carnegie Mellon University and University of Cyprus. His research interests lie at the intersection of data management (Big Data, Databases, Data Streams & Sensor networks), distributed & mobile computing, operating and real-time systems. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award for his pioneer work on mobile data management, an ACM Distinguished Scientist and a Senior Member of IEEE. He is also a recipient of the University of Pittsburgh Provost Award for Excellence in Mentoring (doctoral students) and the Alumni Outstanding Achievement in Education Award from UMass College of Information and Computer Sciences. He is currently the Special Issues Coordinator for the Distributed and Parallel Databases Journal and on the editorial board of several journals, and has repeatedly served as a program committee chair and member in all major data management conferences. He earned his BS degree from the University of Athens, Greece and his MS and PhD degrees from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2019.chrysanthis.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Performance Control, Reliability and Security in Wireless Sensor Networks and the Internet of Things

Speaker: Dr. Vasos Vassiliou Affiliation: University of Cyprus, Cyprus Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Tuesday, June 11, 2019 Time: 11:30-12:30 EET Host: Prof. Constantinos Pattichis (pattichi-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2019.vassiliou

Abstract:
The Internet of Things (IoT) concept has gained considerable importance in industry and academia in the last few years. The possibility of interconnecting a huge number of sensors and other devices allows the creation of various new applications. This is possible thanks to the advances in device technologies and communication protocols, which enable such interconnections. We consider Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) as a subset of the IoT, representing the type of networks that rely on mesh topologies and multi-hop communication. The communication pattern of many nodes transmitting data to one sink/gateway node poses unique challenges. Application or device misbehaviour at the protocol or network level can diminish or totally eliminate a network's capacity to perform its intended function. This talk will initially present a line of research that addresses performance control in WSNs by analysing causes of overload (usually congestion) and proposes three solutions based on alternative path creation. We will continue by identifying other parameters affecting reliability and we will devote considerable time discussing ways of detecting network-layer routing problems and other faults in WSNs and IoT networks. The talk will also present our current activities towards fault recovery using mobile node solutions.

Short Bio:
Dr. Vasos Vassiliou is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Cyprus where he is co-directing the Networks Research Laboratory. He is also the Team Leader of the Smart Networked Systems Research Group at the newly established Centre on Interactive Media, Smart Systems and emerging Technologies (RISE). Dr. Vassiliou serves as the Chair of the Board of Directors of CYNET, the National Research and Educational Network. He completed his undergraduate studies at the Higher Technical Institute (H.N.D in Electrical Engineering, 1993) and the University of South Florida (B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering, 1997) and his postgraduate studies at the Georgia Institute of Technology (M.Sc. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, 1999, Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, 2002). His research interests lie in the areas of Protocol Design and Performance Control aspects of Networks; in particular: Internet of Things, Security, Mobility Management, QoS Adaptation and Control, and Resource Allocation and Management Techniques.

Note:
This colloquium is part of the speaker's procedure for evaluation and promotion from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2019.vassiliou.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

HIFUN – A High Level Functional Language for Big Data Analytics

Speaker: Prof. Nicolas Spyratos Affiliation: Université Paris-Sud (Paris-Saclay), France Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Wednesday, May 29, 2019 Time: 12:00-13:00 EET Host: Prof. Antonis Kakas (antonis-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2019.spyratos

Abstract:
We present HIFUN, a high level query language for defining analytic queries, independently of how these queries are evaluated. We use four operations on functions, namely composition, pairing, function restriction and Cartesian product projection. These operations combine functions to create HIFUN queries in much the same way as the operations of the relational algebra combine relations to create algebraic queries. The contributions of this work are: (a) the definition of a formal framework in which to study analytic queries in the abstract; (b) the encoding of HIFUN queries either as Map Reduce jobs or as SQL group-by queries; and (c) the definition of a formal method for rewriting HIFUN queries and its mapping to rewriting Map Reduce jobs and SQL group-by queries.

Short Bio:
Nicolas Spyratos is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Paris-South, Scientific Advisor of the Japan Science and Technology agency (JST) and member of the National Council of Research and Innovation of Greece. Prior assignments include being full professor of Computer Science at the University of Paris-South (1983-2011), Researcher at INRIA and then scientific advisor (1976-1985) and researcher at the Canadian Bell-Labs (1974-1976). His research interests include database theory, conceptual modeling, digital libraries and more recently data analytics. He has published extensively in international journals and conferences in these areas of research.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2019.spyratos.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Online user tracking and personal data leakage in the big data era

Speaker: Dr. Nicolas Kourtelis Affiliation: Telefonica R&D, Spain Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Thursday, May 23, 2019 Time: 12:00-13:00 EET Host: Dr. George Pallis (gpallis-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2019.kourtelis

Abstract:
In this talk, I will review our recent efforts to study the tracking of online users and leakage of online users' private data on the web via different advertising protocols such as the real-time bidding, cookie synchronization and cross-device tracking. Extracted from a large corpus of mobile user web activity, several findings will be presented, including what type of personal data are exposed, entities involved, factors influencing the intensity of leakage, etc. Based on these studies, I will also cover our recent efforts to improve online user awareness for such privacy leakages with practical web tools such as YourAdvalue and EyeWnder. Furthermore, an analysis of a large dataset of network activity logs of mobile users will be presented, in an effort to assess the potential of identity leakage of mobile users. In particular, spatio-temporal fingerprints are built on the network activity data, which can then be used to de-anonymize network users in time and space. We discuss factors influencing the potential leak and ways to reduce it.

Short Bio:
Dr. Nicolas Kourtellis is a Researcher in the Telefonica R&D team, in Barcelona. Previously he was a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Web Mining Research Group at Yahoo Labs, in Barcelona. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of South Florida (2012), a MSc in Computer Science from the University of South Florida (2008), and a BSc in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece (2006). His primary interests lie 1) in the web transparency, user online privacy, leakage of personal data to the online advertising ecosystem and other entities, 2) analysis and characterization of online user behavior, with respect to different dimensions such as: abusive, hateful, aggressive and bullying behavior, fake news propagation, fringe online communities, etc., 3) system design for streaming data analysis and graph mining on distributed streaming processing engines. He has published more than 60 papers, and presented his work in top academic conferences and journals such as IEEE TKDE, IEEE TPDS, IEEE ICDE, ACM KDD, ACM WWW, ACM IMC, ACM/IFIP/USENIX Middleware, etc., as well as industry-oriented conferences such as Apache BigData in Europe and N. America. He has served in many program committees of top conferences and journals (e.g., WWW, KDD, CIKM, ACM TKDD, IEEE TKDE, IEEE TPDS, etc.).

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2019.kourtelis.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Risk averse graph mining

Speaker: Dr. Charalampos Tsourakakis Affiliation: Boston University, USA Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Friday, May 10, 2019 Time: 12:00-13:00 EET Host: Dr. George Pallis (gpallis-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2019.tsourakakis

Abstract:
Uncertain graphs model various important real-world settings, ranging from influence maximization, and entity resolution to protein interactions, and kidney exchanges. Mining such graphs poses significant challenges. Simple graph queries on deterministic graphs may become NP-hard, or even #P-complete on uncertain graphs, and furthermore even if we could find the optimal solutions in expectation, these may involve significant risk. In this talk we will present recent contributions to finding risk-averse (i) maximum matchings in uncertain graphs, (ii) dense subgraphs. Our algorithmic primitives in contrast to existing risk averse algorithmic approaches are time-, and space- efficient, and come with solid approximation guarantees. We evaluate our methods on a variety of real-world uncertain graphs where we observe interesting trade-offs between risk and reward.

Short Bio:
Charalampos Tsourakakis is an assistant professor in computer science at Boston University and a research associate at Harvard. Dr. Tsourakakis obtained his PhD in Algorithms, Combinatorics and Optimization at Carnegie Mellon under the supervision of Alan Frieze, was a postdoctoral fellow at Brown University and Harvard under the supervision of Eli Upfal and Michael Mitzenmacher respectively. Before joining Boston University, he worked as a researcher in the Google Brain team. He has received the 10-year highest impact paper award from IEEE, has won a best paper award in IEEE Data Mining, has delivered three tutorials in the ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, and has designed two graph mining libraries for large-scale graph mining, one of which has been officially included in Windows Azure. His research focuses on large-scale graph mining, and machine learning.

Note:
Joint work with Tianyi Chen (Boston University), Johnson Lam (Boston University), Shreyas Sekar (Harvard), Naonori Kakimura (Keio University) and Jakub Pachocki (OpenAI).

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2019.tsourakakis.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Data is a Social Butterfly

Speaker: Dr. Mirella M. Moro Affiliation: Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Friday, April 12, 2019 Time: 11:00-12:00 EET Host: Dr. Demetris Zeinalipour (dzeina-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2019.moro

Abstract:
One crucial task of any Databases research or application is to process data and provide relevant information. This talk focuses on a different perspective of data: its social information. It considers social data from professional networks and what kind of information we can find out the networks and their participants.

Short Bio:
Mirella M. Moro is associate professor at the Computer Science department at UFMG (Belo Horizonte, Brazil). She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science (University of California Riverside - UCR), and MSc and BSc in Computer Science as well (UFRGS, Brazil). She was a member of the ACM Education Council (2012-2018) and the Education Director of SBC (Brazilian Computer Society, 2009-2015). Her research interests include social networks analysis, query optimization, and hybrid database modeling. She is also an advocate for increasing women participation in Computer Science.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2019.moro.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Distributed Programming using Multiparty Session Types in Go

Speaker: Prof. Nobuko Yoshida Affiliation: Imperial College London, UK Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Monday, March 4, 2019 Time: 11:00-12:00 EET Host: Dr. Anna Philippou (annap-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2019.yoshida

Abstract:
In this talk I will present a programming framework for static specification and safe programming of message passing protocols where the number and kinds of participants are dynamically instantiated. Our framework is based on Multiparty Session Types (MPST), extended to support parameterised protocols with indexed roles - where the number of roles is known only at run time. Our framework statically infers the different kinds of participants induced by a protocol definition as role variants, and produces decoupled endpoint projections of the protocol onto each participant. This enables communication-safe, deadlock-free programming of the parameterised endpoint in distributed settings: each endpoint can be implemented (and verified) separately by different programmers/technique/languages. We implemented our framework with Scribble-Go, a tool chain for programming such role-parametric protocols in the mainstream programming language of Go. We generate API families of lightweight, protocol- and variant-specific type wrappers for I/O. The API ensures a well-typed Go endpoint program (by native Go type checking) will perform only the compliant I/O actions wrt to the source protocol. We leverage the abstractions of MPST to support the specification of Go applications involving multiple channels, possibly over mixed transport, and channel passing via a unified programming interface. We evaluate the applicability and runt-time performance of our generated API using microbenchmarks and real-world applications.

Short Bio:
Nobuko Yoshida is Professor of Computing at Imperial College London. Last 10 years, her main research interests are theories and applications of protocols specifications and verifications. She introduced multiparty session types [ POPL’08, JACM ] which received Most Influential POPL Paper Award in 2018 (judged by its influence over the last decade). This work enlarged the community and widened the scope of applications of session types, e.g. runtime monitoring based on Scribble (co-developed with Red Hat) has been deployed to other projects such as cyberinfrastructure in the US Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI); and widened the scope of her research areas. She was awarded CNRS and JSSP visiting fellowships and visiting professorships at Paris VI and Paris VII. She is an editor of ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, Mathematical Structures in Computer Science, Journal of Logical Algebraic Methods in Programming, and the chief editor of The Computer-aided Verification and Concurrency Column for EATCS Bulletin. Her current industry partners include: Cognizant, Estafet, J.P. Morgan, Red Hat, Weaveworks, November Group, ABB, EDF Energy, Xilinx, EPCC Ltd, Codeplay Software Ltd and Mexeler

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2019.yoshida.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Underwater Communication Challenges in the Next Decade

Speaker: Prof. Ian F. Akyildiz Affiliation: Georgia Institute of Technology, USA Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Monday, January 28, 2019 Time: 12:00-13:00 EET Host: Dr. Anna Philippou (annap-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) and Prof. Andreas Pitsillides (cspitsil-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2019.akyildiz

Abstract:
Underwater communication systems have drawn the attention of the research community in the last 15 years. This growing interest can largely be attributed to new civil and military applications enabled by large-scale networks of underwater devices (e.g., underwater static sensors, unmanned autonomous vehicles (AUVs), and autonomous robots), which can retrieve information from the aquatic and marine environment, perform in-network processing on the extracted data, and transmit the collected information to remote locations. Although many solutions have been introduced the last 1.5 decades many grand challenges such as low data rates, long latency, still exist. In this talk there will be a look into the next decade and further challenges and possible solutions will be presented.

Short Bio:
I.F. AKYILDIZ is the Ken Byers Chair Professor with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Director of the Broadband Wireless Networking Laboratory and Chair of the Telecommunications Group. Dr. Akyildiz is also Megagrant winner in Russia. He is Megagrant lead researcher at the Institute for Information Transmission Problems, Kharckevich Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, Russia since January 2018. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Computer Networks (Elsevier) Journal since 2000 and the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Ad Hoc Networks Journal (2003) both published by Elsevier. Dr. Akyildiz is an IEEE FELLOW (1996) and an ACM FELLOW (1997). He received numerous awards from IEEE and ACM. Due to Google scholar, his papers received over 105+K citations and his h-index is 115 as of October 2018. His current research interests are in Underwater Communication, Internet of xThings, 5G Wireless Systems, Software Defined Networking, Nano-Scale Communications.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2019.akyildiz.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

On the quest of understanding the brain: from neural coding to self-control behaviour

Speaker: Dr. Chris Christodoulou Affiliation: University of Cyprus, Cyprus Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Friday, January 25, 2019 Time: 9.30-10.30 EET Host: Prof. Constantinos Pattichis (pattichi-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2019.christodoulou

Abstract:
In the quest of understanding the brain we have to investigate it at all levels: from the behaviours we are capable of, to the synapses, neurons and local neuronal circuits. In the latter, which is a bottom up approach, one fundamental problem is to understand how neurons code information, which could provide a basis for the analytical evaluation of the brain's information processing capability. In the former, which is a top down approach, self-control is an irrational behaviour worth investigating and understanding. This talk will touch both on aspects of neural coding and of modelling self-control behaviour. Natural cortical neuron responses have been found to be highly irregular at high firing rates, which is incosistent with temporal integration of random postsynaptic potentials. This gave rise to two conflicting possible explanations on the nature of the neural code: is it based on rate encoding or is it based on precise processing of coincident presynaptic events? Moreover, another issue which arose was to identify what determines the highly variable firing observed in neurons. This part of the talk will address the latter with a reference to the possible functional role of high firing irregularity to learning optimisation. It will also discuss possible ways to address the neuronal coding controversy through: (i) a measure, based on the membrane potential slope prior to firing, inferring the relative contribution of coincidence detection and temporal integration to the firing of spikes of a simple neuron model and (ii) with a reference to a spike-based measure based on the discrete reverse correlation. Self-control can be defined as choosing a large delayed reward, while precommitment is the making of a choice with the specific aim of denying oneself future choices. Problems in exercising self control, suggest a conflict between cognition and motivation, which has been linked to competition between higher and lower brain functions or different value systems in the brain; in particular, parts of the limbic system are preferentially activated by decisions involving instant rewards, whereas regions of the prefrontal cortex are engaged uniformly by intertemporal choices irrespective of delay. This premise of an internal process model lead to a behaviour model being proposed, based on which we designed and implemented a computational model of self-control. This part of the talk will present this model and its results, highlighting its generality to multiagent reinforcement learning tasks and finish by an attempt to relate self-control behaviour with consciousness.

Short Bio:
Chris Christodoulou received a BEng degree in Electronic Engineering from Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London (1991) and a PhD in Computational Neuroscience/Neural Networks from King's College, University of London (1997). He also holds a BA degree in German from Birkbeck College, University of London (2008). He worked as a Postgraduate Research Assistant (1991-1995) and a Postdoctoral Research Associate (1995-1997) at the Centre for Neural Networks, King's College, University of London. He joined Birkbeck College, University of London as a Lecturer in 1997 where he worked till 2005 and was also a Visiting Research Fellow at King's College (1997-2001). Currently, he is an Associate Professor at the University of Cyprus after joining in 2005. Since 2005 he is also a Visiting Research Fellow at Birkbeck College. Chris' research interests focus on Computational Neuroscience as well as on Neural Networks.

Note:
This colloquium is part of the speaker's procedure for evaluation and promotion from Associate Professor to Professor.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2019.christodoulou.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Ubiquitous Indoor Spatial Awareness on a Worldwide Scale

Speaker: Prof. Moustafa Youssef Affiliation: Alexandria University and Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology (E-JUST), Egypt Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Wednesday, December 5, 2018 Time: 11:00-12:00 EET Host: Dr. Demetris Zeinalipour (dzeina-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2018.youssef

Abstract:
While a remarkable effort has been put in developing indoor spatial awareness systems, they are still isolated efforts that are tailored to specific deployments. A truly ubiquitous indoor spatial awareness system is envisioned to be deployed on a large scale worldwide, with minimum overhead, and to work with the heterogeneous IoT devices. Such a system will enable a wide set of new applications including worldwide seamless direction finding between indoor locations, anywhere anytime health monitoring, enhanced first responders' safety, and providing richer context for indoor mobile computing applications. In this talk, we describe our vision and work towards achieving ubiquitous indoor spatial awareness systems as well as the open challenges that need to be address to materialize this dream.

Short Bio:
Moustafa Youssef is a professor at Alexandria University and Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology (E-JUST) and founder & director of the Wireless Research Center of Excellence, Egypt. His research interests include mobile wireless networks, mobile computing, location determination technologies, pervasive computing, and network security. He has tens of issued and pending patents. He is the Lead Guest Editor of the upcoming IEEE Computer Special Issue on Transformative Technologies, an Associate Editor for ACM TSAS, served as an Area Editor of ACM MC2R as well as on the organizing and technical committees of numerous prestigious conferences. He is the recipient of the 2003 University of Maryland Invention of the Year award, the 2010 TWAS-AAS-Microsoft Award for Young Scientists, the 2013 and 2014 COMESA Innovation Award, the 2013 ACM SIGSpatial GIS Conference Best Paper Award, the 2017 Egyptian State Award, multiple Google Research Awards, among many others. He is an ACM Distinguished Speaker and an ACM Distinguished Scientist.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2018.youssef.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Synthesis and analysis of concurrent processes in step semantics

Speaker: Dr. Lukasz Mikulski Affiliation: Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Friday, September 28, 2018 Time: 11:00-12:00 EET Host: Dr. Anna Philippou (annap-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2018.mikulski

Abstract:
In the classical Mazurkiewicz trace approach the behavior of a concurrent system is described in terms of sequential observations that differ only with respect to their ordering of independent actions. I will discuss an extension of the trace model to the case that actions can be observed as occurring simultaneously. Thus observations are sequences of steps, i.e., sets of actions. This leads to a step trace model based on two relations between events: simultaneity, sequentialisability. Whereas the underlying causal structures of traces are based on dependencies between actions leading to a partial order interpretation, more general causal structures are needed to describe the invariant relationships between the action occurrences in a step trace. I will present a complete picture including dependence structures extending dependence graphs, and a characterization of step traces in terms of invariant order structures together with some initial results in their automatic synthesis and interesting subclasses.

Short Bio:
Lukasz Mikulski received M.S. in computer science and M.S. in mathematics from Nicolaus Copernicus Univesrity in Torun (Poland), and Ph.D. in computer science from Warsaw University (Poland). He is working as an Assistant Professor (pol. adiunkt) in Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun. He is also a guest member of staff in Newcastle University (UK). He was a manager of the grant founded by Polish National Science Center "New methods of comprehensive analysis of concurrent computing systems". The paper he coauthored entitled "An extension of the taxonomy of persistent and nonviolent steps" was awarded by British ESPRC with founding "Gold Open Access" and by Rector of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun with a scholarship for publications with high impact. He served as a Member of the Program Committee for the International Conferences on Application of Concurrency to System Design (2013-15) and on Applications and Theory of Petri Nets and Concurrency (2016-19), and for the International Workshop on Petri Nets and Software Engineering (2016-17). He also served as a Chair of the Organizing Committee for the International Conference on Applications and Theory of Petri Nets and Concurrency (with colocated events) in 2016 and the International Training School in Reversible Computation. He is an expert in the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (at the Ministry of Science and Higher Education).

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2018.mikulski.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Coding by bursts and waves in the hippocampal formation

Speaker: Dr. Maria Constantinou Affiliation: Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Italy Category: Colloquium Location: Room 147, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Wednesday, September 26, 2018 Time: 17:00-18:00 EET Host: Dr. Chris Christodoulou (cchrist-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2018.constantinou

Abstract:
A vital aspect for our survival is the storage and retrieval of past experiences as memories, which relies on the hippocampal formation. Neurons in the hippocampal formation are immersed within and contribute to rhythmic electrical potential fluctuations, called local field potentials (LFPs), generated by neural networks. Increasing evidence suggests that LFPs have the capacity to convey additional information, for example about sensory stimuli, to that contained in spike firing alone. Although computational studies have proposed some mechanisms of how information contained in LFP signals might be transmitted to distant neurons, they had not been tested experimentally. To address this, we investigated whether neurons in the hippocampal formation can use bursting to transmit information encoded in LFP features according to model predictions. We fitted a two-compartmental conductance-based model of a pyramidal neuron to realistic burst firing and show that bursts with increasing spike count exhibit differential locking to the phase of the dominant oscillations in LFP signals. Using statistical analyses and information theory we show that a neural code in which n-spike bursts are three distinct symbols – where n is 1 for tonic spikes, 2 for two-spike bursts, and 3 for larger bursts – has the capacity to encode information about the instantaneous value, phase, slope and amplitude of the dominant rhythm within LFPs, both in their firing rate and intra-burst spike counts. We subsequently analysed electrophysiological recordings from the subiculum of anaesthetised rats and the medial entorhinal cortex of an awake rat, and show that neurons can employ essentially the same neural code in vivo. These outcomes suggest that bursting neurons can encode information contained in specific LFP frequency bands and thus transmit this information to downstream neurons. Related paper DOIs: 10.3389/fncom.2016.00133 10.1016/j.biosystems.2015.08.004

Short Bio:
Maria Constantinou is a postdoc researcher at Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) in Italy. She received a BSc(Hons) in Neuroscience with Industrial/Professional Experience from The University of Manchester in 2012, which included an one-year Erasmus placement in an electrophysiology laboratory in Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma in Germany; and a PhD in Neuroscience from The University of Manchester in 2016, for which she received the BBSRC Doctoral Training Partnership Studentship and President’s Doctoral Scholar Award. Dr Constantinou has investigated neural coding for six years by analysing large-scale experimental data and studying neural models. She has expertise in electrophysiological data analysis, two-photon calcium imaging data analysis, statistics, digital signal processing, information theory, transfer entropy, conductance-based neuron models, machine learning and neural network models. Her main research interest is to decipher the neural code underlying cognitive processes such as memory, perception and decision making.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2018.constantinou.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Reversing computations modelled by coloured Petri nets

Speaker: Dr. Anna Gogolinska Affiliation: Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Tuesday, September 25, 2018 Time: 11:00-12:00 EET Host: Dr. Anna Philippou (annap-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php#cs.ucy.2018.gogolinska

Abstract:
Reversible computation is an unconventional form of computing where any sequence of performed operations can be executed in reverse order at any point during computation. It has recently been attracting increasing attention as on the one hand it promises low-power computation and on the other hand it is inherent or of interest in a variety of applications. We can distinguish three main types of reversing. The first approach, called backtracking, allows reversing only the operation which was last executed in the ongoing computation. The second approach, causal reversing, allows an action to rollback only if all its effects, have been undone beforehand. The last approach is the concept of out-of-causal-order reversing, where any previously performed operation can be undone. On the other hand Petri nets are a well-known mathematical modeling language, introduced in 1962. They have a form of bipartite graphs with two types of vertices: places and transitions, and dynamical structure. The dynamics is obtained by tokens, which are distributed over places and transferred by transitions. Many extensions of traditional Petri nets have been developed, like Coloured Petri Nets (CPNs), where tokens carry data values. In this presentation we will introduce a new type of Petri nets, called reversing Petri nets (RPNs), a formalism that embeds the three main forms of reversibility. We will present also a structural way of translating RPNs to CPNs. This translation uses additional places and transitions in order to capture the machinery employed in the RPN framework and demonstrates that the abstract model of RPNs, and thus the principles of reversible computation, can be emulated in CPNs. The transformation can be automated and utilized for the analysis of reversible systems using CPN Tools.

Short Bio:
Anna Gogolinska received her M.S in computer science degree from Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun in 2009. In 2016 she received her Ph.D. also in computer science from University of Warsaw. During her PhD studies she was mostly interested in bioinformatics calculations. Since 2016 she is an assistant at the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, and her focus shifted towards Petri nets, massive parallel computations and reversing computations. Dr Gogolinska has participated in three Polish National Science Centre grants. She was also awarded the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship grant in 2013. She was a part of the Organizing Committee of many large scientific symposiums. Her research results have been presented in various conferences and published in numerous papers.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://groups.google.com/g/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2018.gogolinska.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Computational Imaging with Few Photons, Electrons, or Ions

Speaker: Dr. Vivek Goyal Affiliation: Boston University, USA Category: Colloquium Location: Building FEB 01 (ΟΕΔ01), Amphitheatre B224, Level -2, University of Cyprus, New Campus (directions) Date: Thursday, September 20, 2018 Time: 11:00-12:00 EET Host: Prof. Constantinos Pattichis (pattichi-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) and Dr. Andreas Panayides (panayides-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2018.goyal

Abstract:
LIDAR systems use single-photon detectors to enable long-range reflectivity and depth imaging. By exploiting an inhomoheneous Poisson process observation model and the typical structure of natural scenes, first-photon imaging demonstrates the possibility of accurate LIDAR with only 1 detected photon per pixel, where half of the detections are due to (uninformative) ambient light. I will explain the simple ideas behind first-photon imaging. Then I will touch upon related subsequent works that mitigate the limitations of detector arrays, withstand 25-times more ambient light, allow for unknown ambient light levels, and capture multiple depths per pixel. The philosophy of modeling at the level of individual particles is also at the root of current work in scanned ion beam microscopy. Related paper DOIs: 10.1126/science.1246775 10.1109/TSP.2015.2453093 10.1109/LSP.2015.2475274 10.1364/OE.24.001873 10.1038/ncomms12046 10.1109/TSP.2017.2706028

Short Bio:
Vivek Goyal received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, where he received the Eliahu Jury Award for outstanding achievement in systems, communications, control, or signal processing. He was a Member of Technical Staff at Bell Laboratories, a Senior Research Engineer for Digital Fountain, and the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT. He was an adviser to 3dim Tech, winner of the 2013 MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition Launch Contest Grand Prize, and consequently with Nest Labs 2014-2016. He is now an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Boston University. Dr. Goyal is a Fellow of the IEEE. He was awarded the 2002 IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS) Magazine Award, the 2017 IEEE SPS Best Paper Award, an NSF CAREER Award, and the Best Paper Award at the 2014 IEEE International Conference on Image Processing. Work he supervised won student best paper awards at the IEEE Data Compression Conference in 2006 and 2011 and the IEEE Sensor Array and Multichannel Signal Processing Workshop in 2012 as well as the Best Poster Award at the IEEE International Conference on Computational Photography and five MIT thesis awards. He currently serves on the Editorial Board of Foundations and Trends and Signal Processing, the IEEE SPS Computational Imaging SIG, and the IEEE SPS Industry DSP TC. He previously served on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery, as Technical Program Committee Co-chair of Sampling Theory and Applications 2015, and as Conference Co-chair of the SPIE Wavelets and Sparsity conference series 2006-2016. He is a co-author of Foundations of Signal Processing (Cambridge University Press, 2014).

Note:
The colloquium is carried out in the context of the IEEE Signal Processing Distinguished Lecturer Series (https://signalprocessingsociety.org/events/attend-an-event)

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2018.goyal.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

The Challenges Less Spoken-Of

Speaker: Mr. Ron Gabor Affiliation: Intel Israel Design Center, Israel Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Wednesday, June 13, 2018 Time: 10.00-11.00 EET Host: Yanos Sazeides (yanos-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php#cs.ucy.2018.gabor

Abstract:
The progress in micro-processors performance brings with it multiple challenges. Architectural innovation to enable performance and micro-architectural features to improve single thread performance and efficient interconnect of multiple cores, are just a few of the well-known challenges. The progress, however, brings with it many other challenges that must be addressed by micro-processors products, although little is being talked about them. This talk will focus on a few of these less-spoken-of challenges, such as power issues caused by the progress in performance (other than the classic dynamic power), soft-error-rate challenges, and mitigation of software complexity. The talk will give the industry perspective on these challenges.

Short Bio:
The talk will be given by Ron Gabor, a micro-processor core architect at Intel. Ron has been involved in CPU architecture for 15 years at Intel Israel Design Center, and took part in the architecture specification of multiple CPU generations including those being sold today. Ron holds an MSc in Electrical Engineering from Tel Aviv University. He holds over 25 patents in various aspects of CPU architecture, and teaches computer structure at Tel Aviv University and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Note:
The colloquium is jointly organized by the Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Cyprus.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://groups.google.com/g/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2018.gabor.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Data-driven Serendipity Navigation in Urban Places

Speaker: Prof. Panos K. Chrysanthis Affiliation: University of Pittsburgh, United States Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Tuesday, June 12, 2018 Time: 11:00-12:00 EET Host: Demetris Zeinalipour (dzeina-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2018.chrysanthis

Abstract:
With the proliferation of mobile computing and the ability to collect detailed data for the urban environment a number of systems that aim at providing Points of Interest (POIs) and tour recommendations have appeared. The overwhelming majority of these systems aims at providing an optimal recommendation, where optimality refers to an objective such as minimizing the distance to be covered, maximizing the quality of the POIs recommended etc. Nevertheless, the problem with focusing on these objectives is that little room is left to the user for serendipity. Urban and social scientists have identified serendipity, i.e., the ability to come across unexpected places, as a feature that makes a city livable. In this talk, I will present Mobile Personal Guide (MPG), our tour recommendation system, which integrates the notion of serendipity in urban navigation through the ideas of preferential diversity and random walk, without however compromising the quality the recommended POIs.

Short Bio:
Panos K. Chrysanthis (panos.cs.pitt.edu) is a Professor of Computer Science and a founder and director of the Advanced Data Management Technologies Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh. He is also an adjunct Professor at Carnegie-Mellon University and University of Cyprus. His research interests lie within the areas of data management (Big Data, Databases, Data Streams & Sensor networks), distributed & mobile computing, workflow management, operating systems and real-time systems. In 1995, he was a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award for his investigation on the management of data for mobile and wireless computing and in 2015, he received the University of Pittsburgh's Provost Award for Excellence in Mentoring (doctoral students). His currently an associate editor of IEEE TKDE and DAPD and PC Co-Chair of IEEE ICDE 2018. Chrysanthis is an ACM Distinguished Scientist and a Senior Member of IEEE. He received his BS degree (Physics with concentration in Computer Science) from the University of Athens, Greece. He earned his MS and PhD degrees (Computer and Information Sciences) from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2018.chrysanthis.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Analyzing the multiple facets of cyber-aggression on social media

Speaker: Dr. Nicolas Kourtellis Affiliation: Telefonica R&D Barcelona, Spain Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Monday, June 4, 2018 Time: 12:00-13:00 EET Host: George Pallis (gpallis-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2018.kourtellis

Abstract:
In recent years, offensive, abusive and hateful language, sexism, racism and other types of aggressive and cyberbullying behavior have been manifesting with increased frequency, and in many online social media platforms. In fact, past scientific work focused on studying these forms in popular media, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Ask.fm, etc. However, these platforms have not adequately addressed the problem of online abusive behavior, and their responsiveness, as well as effective detection and blocking of such inappropriate behavior remain limited. In this talk, I will cover our recent works, in which we propose a set of algorithms to detect and mitigate such complex user behavior. In these studies, we collect, analyze and annotate user content from Twitter, and employ advanced machine and deep learning approaches to detect online aggressive behavior, in its various facets. We use a diverse set of features, extracted from textual, user and network-related activities of Twitter users, and demonstrate that such characteristics can boost the algorithmic performance for detection cyber-aggression. Furthermore, we make our collected and annotated datasets and algorithms publicly available for further research and development by the scientific community. This research has been supported by the Marie Sklodowska Curie RISE EU project ENCASE, No 691025.

Short Bio:
Dr. Nicolas Kourtellis is a Researcher in the Telefonica R&D team, in Barcelona. Previously he was a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Web Mining Research Group at Yahoo Labs, in Barcelona. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of South Florida (2012), a MSc in Computer Science from the University of South Florida (2008), and a BSc in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece (2006). His primary interests lie (1) in the analysis and characterization of online user behavior, with respect to different dimensions such as: abusive, hateful, aggressive and bullying behavior, fake news propagation, fringe online communities, etc., (2) user online privacy, leakage of personal data to the online advertising ecosystem, (3) system design for load balancing of distributed streaming processing engines and streaming graph analysis. He has published more than 40 papers, and presented his work in top academic conferences and journals such as IEEE TKDE, IEEE TPDS, IEEE ICDE, ACM KDD, ACM WWW, ACM/IFIP/USENIX Middleware, ACM IMC, etc., as well as industry-oriented conferences such as Apache BigData in Europe and N. America. He has served in many program committees of top conferences and journals (e.g., WWW, KDD, CIKM, ACM TKDD, IEEE TKDE, IEEE TPDS, etc.).

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2018.kourtellis.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Behavioural Type-Based Static Verification Framework for Go

Speaker: Prof. Nobuko Yoshida Affiliation: Imperial College, London, UK Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Monday, May 14, 2018 Time: 11:00-12:00 EET Host: Assoc. Prof. Anna Philippou (annap-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2018.yoshida

Abstract:
Go is a production-level statically typed programming language whose design features explicit message-passing primitives and lightweight threads, enabling (and encouraging) programmers to develop concurrent systems where components interact through communication more so than by lock-based shared memory concurrency. Go can detect global deadlocks at runtime, but does not provide any compile-time protection against all too common communication mismatches and partial deadlocks. In this work we present a static verification framework for liveness and safety in Go programs, able to detect communication errors and deadlocks by model checking. Our toolchain infers from a Go program a faithful representation of its communication patterns as behavioural types, where the types are model checked for liveness and safety.

Short Bio:
Nobuko Yoshida is Professor of Computing at Imperial College, London. She has applied session types to Web services and programming languages, and introduced multiparty session types. Based on Multiparty session types, she established JBoss Red Hat Scribble project. She was awarded a CNRS visiting fellowship and visiting professorship at Paris VII. She is an editor of the Journal of Logical Algebraic Methods in Programming, the chief editor of The Computer-aided Verification and Concurrency Column for the EATCS Bulletin and an editor of Acta Informatica. She has served as a PC member for over 50 conferences in the past five years. She is a member of IFIP 2.4, and the JBoss Red Hat Savara and Scribble Projects. Her industry partners include Cognizant, Red Hat, VMware, Pivotal and Ocean Observatories Initiative.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2018.yoshida.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Human Cognition, Visual Behavior and Security in Graphical User Authentication: Case Studies and Interaction Effects

Speaker: Dr. Christos A. Fidas Affiliation: University of Cyprus, Cyprus Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Thursday, April 19, 2018 Time: 11:00-12:00 EET Host: Prof. George Samaras (cssamara-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2018.fidas

Abstract:
Graphical password schemes, which require users to sketch a secret pattern on a background image or select images on a grid, are constantly gaining market share as they scaffold natural human-computer interaction and adapt easier to nowadays mobile and immersive user interaction realms. However, studies revealed that people make predictable choices when using graphical passwords, introducing vulnerabilities to systems and services. Bearing in mind that a graphical password activity is processed on a cognitive level that entails visual attention, search, processing and comprehension, our recent research efforts are focused on building human cognition-centered graphical password schemes that can adapt to the unique cognitive and visual processing characteristics of users, aiming to improve security. In this talk, we will present and discuss results of three recent case studies within this research endeavor: a) we have initially investigated the influences of human cognition and visual behavior on password strength during graphical password composition which revealed that users with different cognitive styles followed different patterns of visual behavior which affected the strength of the created passwords; b) motivated by these findings, we have built and tested intelligent cognition-based predictive user models that are able to infer the users' cognitive processing characteristics within a few seconds by analyzing in real-time the users' eye-gaze metrics during graphical password composition; and c) we suggested and evaluated a two-step method for estimating the strength of user-created graphical passwords based on the users' eye-gaze behavior during password creation which allows unobtrusive prediction of password strength and hence enables intervention to the password composition for helping users to create stronger passwords.

Short Bio:
Dr. Christos A. Fidas is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cultural Heritage Management and New Technologies, University of Patras, and a Research Associate at the HCI Group of the Interactive Systems Laboratory, University of Patras. He received a PhD from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of Patras. His research is related with investigating the influence of human aspects in cultural heritage informatics and usable and secure information systems aiming to drive the design and development of bootstrapped solutions to the unique cultural and cognitive characteristics of the end-users. In this context, he has published papers in accredited academic journals and conferences, and patents, including a best paper award, and a best paper award nomination and honorable mention. He has also extensive professional experience in projects and human resource management in several EU-funded and National research projects. See more: http://www.cfidas.info

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2018.fidas.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Designing Processors to Accelerate Robot Motion Planning

Speaker: Prof. Daniel J. Sorin Affiliation: Duke University, USA Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Monday, April 23, 2018 Time: 12:00-13:00 EET Host: Yanos Sazeides (yanos-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2018.sorin

Abstract:
We have developed a hardware accelerator for motion planning, a critical operation in robotics. I will present the microarchitecture of our accelerator and describe a prototype implementation on an FPGA. Experimental results show that, compared to the state of the art, the accelerator improves performance by three orders of magnitude and improves power consumption by more than one order of magnitude. These gains are achieved through careful hardware/software co-design. We have modified conventional motion planning algorithms to aggressively precompute collision data, and we have implemented a microarchitecture that leverages the parallelism present in the problem.

Short Bio:
Daniel J. Sorin is the Addy Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke University. His research interests are in computer architecture, with a focus on fault tolerance, verification, and memory system design. He is the author of "Fault Tolerant Computer Architecture" and a co-author of "A Primer on Memory Consistency and Cache Coherence." He is the recipient of a SICSA Distinguished Visiting Fellowship, a National Science Foundation Career Award, and Duke's Imhoff Distinguished Teaching Award. He received a PhD and MS in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Wisconsin, and he received a BSE in electrical engineering from Duke University.

Note:
The colloquium is jointly organized by the Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Cyprus.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2018.sorin.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Predicting Positive and Negative Links with Noisy Queries: Theory & Practice

Speaker: Dr. Charalampos Tsourakakis Affiliation: Boston University, USA Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Wednesday, March 21, 2018 Time: 15:00-16:00 EET Host: Prof. Marios Dikaiakos (mdd-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2018.tsourakakis

Abstract:
In this talk, Charalampos Tsourakakis will present recent results on an important graph mining problem known as the “Edge Sign Prediction Problem”: Can we predict whether an interaction between a pair of nodes will be positive or negative? The edge sign prediction problem is modelled as follows: we are allowed to query any pair of nodes whether they belong to the same cluster or not, but the answer to the query is corrupted with some probability $0<q<\frac{1}{2}$. Let $\delta=1-2q$ be the bias. We provide an algorithm that recovers all signs correctly with high probability in the presence of noise for any constant gap $\delta$ with $O(\frac{n\log n}{\delta^4})$ queries. The algorithm uses breadth first search as its main algorithmic primitive. A byproduct of the proposed learning algorithm is the use of $s-t$ paths as an informative feature to predict the sign of the edge $(s,t)$. As a heuristic, edge disjoint $s-t$ paths of short length is used as a feature for predicting edge signs in real-world signed networks. The findings suggest that the use of paths improves the classification accuracy of state-of-the-art classifiers, especially for pairs of nodes with no or few common neighbors. Joint work with Michael Mitzenmacher (Harvard), Jarosaw Basiok (Harvard), Ben Lawson (BU), Preetum Nakkiran (Harvard), Vasileios Nakos (Harvard).

Short Bio:
Dr. Charalampos Tsourakakis received his Ph.D. from the Algorithms, Combinatorics and Optimization (ACO) program at Carnegie Mellon University, and served as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Harvard University. He holds a Diploma in Electrical and Diploma Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens and a Master of Science from the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University. Before joining Boston University, he worked as a researcher in the Google Brain team. He won a best paper award in IEEE Data Mining, has delivered three tutorials in the ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, and has designed two graph mining libraries for large-scale graph mining, one of which has been officially included in Windows Azure. His research focuses on large-scale graph mining, and machine learning.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2018.tsourakakis.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Non-monotonic Reasoning, Skeptical Abduction and Artificial Neural Network Realization

Speaker: Dr. Emmanuelle-Anna Dietz Saldanha Affiliation: Technical University of Dresden, Germany Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Thursday, February 15, 2018 Time: 15:00-16:00 EET Host: Prof. Antonis Kakas (antonis-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2018.saldanha

Abstract:
In this talk, I will present a novel cognitive theory, the Weak Completion Semantics, which is a logic programming approach, based on the three-valued Łukasiewicz Semantics. This theory seems to adequately model various human reasoning tasks in spatial reasoning, syllogistic reasoning and reasoning with conditionals. We will discuss one psychological experiment, the suppression task, which shows that humans suppress previously drawn conclusions, that is, they seem to reason non-monotonically. In order to adequately model this task, skeptical abduction is required. However, skeptical abduction is computationally expensive and does not seem to be cognitively plausible. Therefore, we investigate a neural network realization, and discuss possible ways towards bounded skeptical abduction.

Short Bio:
Emmanuelle-Anna Dietz Saldanha is a researcher at the Knowledge Representation and Reasoning group at TU Dresden in Germany. After completing her master's degree in Computer Science at Utrecht University, she registered in the European PhD Program in Computational Logic at TU Dresden and received her PhD in June 2017. During her PhD studies she stayed at the Centre for Artificial Intelligence at UNL in Portugal and at the Computational Logic Laboratory at SFU in Canada. Her research interest covers areas from Cognitive Science and Computational Logic, such as human reasoning, three-valued logics, logic programming and abduction.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2018.saldanha.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Data driven character simulation

Speaker: Yiorgos Chrysanthou Affiliation: University of Cyprus, Cyprus Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Monday, January 29, 2018 Time: 10:00-11:00 EET Host: Constantinos Pattichis (pattichi-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2018.chrysanthou

Abstract:
Virtual environments are increasingly present in our lives, with a large number of potential applications. An indispensable component of many of these applications are virtual humans. From training for evacuation through to background scenes for a historical drama, virtual characters provide important context and constraints to the user; they can significantly improve the plausibility of the environment leading to a more realistic response, and ultimately, better understanding of the situation or better entertainment. Increasing processing power due to multicore architectures, improved clock speeds and highly programmable Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), enable designers and programmers to add multitudes of virtual characters in real-time applications. As the real-time rendering of the characters is becoming more and more realistic, there is a considerable gap between the rendering appearance and their simulated behavior. In particular, procedural approaches tend to have a repetitive and robot like result. In this presentation we will look at some of our recent work on data-driven character simulation and animation that aim at overcoming some of these limitations. In particular we will look at techniques developed for the simulating of virtual crowds and ambient life as well as the stylistic animation of individual characters.

Short Bio:
Yiorgos L. Chrysanthou is an Associate Professor at the Computer Science Department of the University of Cyprus where he is heading the Graphics and Hypermedia lab. He is also the Research Director of the newly established Centre on Interactive Media, Smart Systems and emerging Technologies (RISE). Yiorgos was educated in the UK (BSc and PhD from Queen Mary and Westfield College) and worked for several years as a research fellow and a lecturer at University College London. He has published over 75 papers in journals and international conferences on computer graphics and virtual reality and is a co-author of the book "Computer Graphics and Virtual Environments: From Realism to Real-Time", (Addison-Wesley 2001+ China Machine Press 2004). Yiorgos serves as an associate editor for the Journals Computer Graphics Forum and Computers and Graphics, and review editor for Frontiers in Robotics and AI (Specialty Section Virtual Environments). He served as the local or overall coordinator of over 25 research projects, related to 3D graphics, virtual reality and applications and as Organising or Program Chair for several conferences. His research interests lie in the general area of 3D Computer Graphics, recently focusing more on the development of algorithms for real-time AR rendering, reconstruction of urban environments and computer animation.

Note:
This colloquium is part of the speaker's procedure for evaluation and promotion from Associate Professor to Professor.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2018.chrysanthou.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Machine Diagnostics and Rehabilitation - the Humaine Touch

Speaker: Prof. Vered Aharonson Affiliation: University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Wednesday, January 24, 2018 Time: 12:00-13:00 EET Host: Andreas Pitsillides (cspitsil-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2018.aharonson

Abstract:
The ideal of individualized, patient-centered health care, eHealth which can alleviate the burden from health care institutions necessitate technologies that could provide qualitative, as well as simple and low-cost diagnosis, monitoring and rehabilitation. These technologies today often neglect the user/patient’s experience where patients feel intimidated by the device and therefore are less cooperative. This lecture presents several studies that explored the feasibility of these concepts in the context of Parkinson’s disease. Speech, hand movement and gait were extracted, from non-invasive low cost sensors implemented in “everyday things”. The usability, portability and accuracy performance were studied on large cohort of patients.

Short Bio:
Vered Aharonson received the BSc and MSc degrees in physics the Technion, Israel and the PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from The Tel Aviv University, Israel. She was research fellow at the Eaton Peabody Lab, Harvard University, Boston and a professor at Afeka, Tel Aviv Academic College of Engineering, as well as the founder and CEO of NexSig LtD, which developed biometric signal based Neurological Examination Technologies. She is currently a professor at the school of Electrical and Information Engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand. Her primary research interest lies in speech and biomedical signals processing.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2018.aharonson.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Query Operators and Systems for the Mobile Big Data Era

Speaker: Demetris Zeinalipour Affiliation: University of Cyprus, Cyprus Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Monday, January 15, 2018 Time: 10.30-11.30 EET Host: George Papadopoulos (george-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2018.zeinalipour

Abstract:
Big data architectures have transformed the way enterprises collect, store and analyze massive amounts of spatio-temporal data from the mobile workforce. In this talk, I will present operators and systems for querying and managing such Mobile Big Data (MBD), that address challenges of performance, privacy, utility and network efficiency. I will start out by overviewing Anyplace, our Internet-based Indoor Navigation service that won several international research awards for its accuracy and utility. Particularly, I will discuss the challenges in prefetching and privacy-aware data processing of Indoor MBD (e.g., Wi-Fi and magnetic signals). My talk will be succeeded by a summary of Rayzit, which is an award-winning location-based crowd messaging service that allows a mobile crowd to instantly connect to its k Nearest Neighbors (kNN) as they move in space. I will particularly focus on Spitfire, which is a distributed algorithm that provides a scalable and high-performance All k Nearest Neighbor processing operator to Rayzit. I will then overview Spate, which is a novel spatio-temporal data processing and analytic system for telecommunication data (e.g., CDR and MR), which makes compression and decaying a first-class citizen. Finally, I will be concluding with an outlook to our current and future research agenda.

Short Bio:
Demetris Zeinalipour is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus, where he founded and directs the Data Management Systems Laboratory (DMSL). He holds a Ph.D. (2005) and M.Sc. (2003) in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of California - Riverside, CA, USA and a B.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Cyprus (2000). Before his current appointment, he served the University of Cyprus and the Open University of Cyprus as a Lecturer of Computer Science. He has held short-term research visits at Akamai Technologies, Cambridge, MA, USA (2004), the University of Athens, Greece (2007), as a Marie-Curie Fellow, and the University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA (2015). During 2016-2017, he was a Humboldt Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics, Saarbrücken, Germany. He is an ACM Distinguished Speaker (2017-2020), a Senior Member of ACM, a Senior Member of IEEE, a Member of USENIX, serves on the editorial board of Distributed and Parallel Databases (Elsevier) and Big Data Research (Springer) and is an independent evaluator for the European Commission (Marie Curie and COST). His primary research interests include Data Management in Computer Systems and Networks, particularly Mobile and Sensor Data Management; Big Data Management in Parallel and Distributed Architectures; Spatio-Temporal Data Management; Network and Telco Data Management; Crowd, Web 2.0 and Indoor Data Management; Data Privacy Management. For more information please visit: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/~dzeina/

Note:
This colloquium is part of the speaker's procedure for evaluation and promotion from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2018.zeinalipour.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Dealing with Emerging Data Challenges in Query Processing

Speaker: Dr. Ekaterini Ioannou Affiliation: Open University of Cyprus, Cyprus Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Tuesday, December 5, 2017 Time: 11:00-12:00 EET Host: Demetris Zeinalipour (dzeina-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2017.ioannou

Abstract:
Modern applications (e.g., Web 2.0) have introduced new challenges to information integration, including higher levels of data heterogeneity, uncertainties, and more frequent data modifications. In this presentation, I will present approaches for dealing with such challenges, focusing on two domains: Entity Resolution and Volatile Graphs. Entity Resolution is the task of detecting and creating entities, one for each set of instances that describe a distinct real world object (e.g., location, event). The vast majority of existing entity resolution approaches from the database community execute this task in isolation from queries, i.e., entity resolution is executed at a pre-processing step, and the resulted final entities are directly used while processing queries. I will present an alternate direction, where entities are resolved on-the-fly during query processing and query semantics support the retrieval of complex analytical information over a (potentially, huge) collection of possible resolution worlds. I will then discuss how to move towards achieving a deeper integration with the resolution methodology followed by the Information Extraction community through a holistic in-database query processing over information extraction pipelines. In the second part of the presentation, I will briefly present a time-travel approach for efficiently retrieving analytical information over graphs composed by volatile data, e.g., for systemic risk analysis in the financial domain. I will first discuss queries and semantics that are useful for analyzing dynamic graphs and then present mechanisms for efficiently processing such queries.

Short Bio:
I am a lecturer at the Open University of Cyprus, faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences. Previously, I was an external lecturer at EPFL in Switzerland, an independent expert for the European Commission, a research collaborator at the Technical University of Crete working with Prof. Minos Garofalakis, and a researcher at the L3S Research Center in Germany working with Prof. Wolfgang Nejdl. My research interests are in the areas of information integration, entity linkage for heterogeneous data with uncertainties, blocking-based entity resolution for large size collections, and management of uncertain data using statistical models.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2017.ioannou.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Algorithm of Contextual Information Formation for Active learning object

Speaker: Dr. Asta Slotkiene Affiliation: Siauliai University, Lithuania Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Wednesday, November 15, 2017 Time: 15:00-16:00 EET Host: Georgia Kapitsaki (gkapi-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2017.slotkiene

Abstract:
I present a contextual information formation algorithm for active learning object, which enables to comprise learning content, process of active learning activities and the essential aspects of the problematic learning situations. How to get the specification of active learning object by using context of learning content and learning activities. During my presentation I also will analyze the characteristic of proposed algorithm by comparing two active learning objects.

Short Bio:
The main research activities of Dr. Asta Slotkiene are in the areas Active/Smart Learning object design methods, software requirement engineering. She holds a Ph.D. degree from Kaunas technology University. She works associate professor at Siauliai University in Lithuania. The main subject for teaching are Software engineering and data structures. She has participated in several projects: „Open University for virtual mobility“ (Project no. 2014-1-LT01-KA203-000550); „High objectives of national organizational reform“. (project no. 530284- TEMPUS+1-2012-1-ES-TEMPUS-JPHES).

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2017.slotkiene.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

JPEG XT: A New JPEG Compression Standard for HDR and WCG Images

Speaker: Dr. Alessandro Artusi Affiliation: University of Cyprus, Cyprus Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Friday, November 24, 2017 Time: 15:00-16:00 EET Host: Yiorgos Chrysanthou (yiorgos-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2017.artusi

Abstract:
High bit depth data acquisition and manipulation have been largely studied at the academic level in the last 15 years and are rapidly attracting interest at the industrial level. An example of the high interest for High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging is the use of 32-bit floating point data for video and image acquisition and manipulation that allows a variety of visual effects that closely mimic the real world visual experience of the end-user. At industrial level, we are witnessing increasing traction towards supporting HDR and Wide Color Gamut (WCG). WCG leverages HDR for each color channel to display a wider range of colors. Consumer cameras are currently available with 14 or 16 bit A/D converter. Rendering devices are also appearing with the capability to display HDR images and video with a peak brightness of up to 4,000 nits and to support wide color gamut (ITU-R Rec. BT.2020) rather than the historical ITU-R Rec. BT.709. This trend calls for a widely accepted standard for higher bit depth support that can be seamlessly integrated into existing products and applications. While standard formats such as JPEG 2000 and JPEG XR offer support for high bit depth image representations, their adoption requires a non-negligible investment that may not always be affordable in existing imaging ecosystems, and induces a difficult transition, as they are not backward compatible with the popular JPEG image format. Instead, most digital camera and mobile phone manufacturers either store images in proprietary RAW formats or, more commonly, offer an HDR mode, which produces a traditional low dynamic range (LDR) image with improved details. In other words, visual information contained in the original high bit depth digital negative is irremediably lost, which is not optimal for editing, creative enhancements, or even viewing on HDR capable display devices. The JPEG XT standard aims to overcome all these drawbacks and to lower the entry barriers to the market. While offering new features, JPEG XT remains backwards compatible with the legacy JPEG standard. As a result, legacy applications can reconstruct an 8-bit/sample LDR image from any JPEG XT codestream. This LDR version of the image and the original HDR image are related by a tone-mapping process that is not constrained by the standard and can be freely defined by the encoder. In this talk the design philosophy behind JPEG XT will be presented. It is a common framework for lossy and lossless representation of WCG and HDR images, which can be seen as a set of various processing tools that can be combined freely. This will be followed by an extensive subjective and objective evaluation of its compression capabilities.

Short Bio:
Dr. Artusi main research activities are in the areas of Image processing, Computer Graphics and Color Science. He has a long standing activities in High Dynamic Range technology, image/video encoding and its standardization, Image content retargeting, energy saving algorithmic solution and image/video subjective and objective evaluation. He has recently initiated deep-learning investigation activities to be applied to typical image processing and computer vision problems. He holds a Ph.D. degree from the Vienna University of Technology, in Computer Graphics, and a MSc. degree in Computer Science from the University of Milano (Italy). He is a member of the IST/037 coding of picture, audio, multimedia and hypermedia information, of the British Standard Institute (BSI), and is acting as UK representative in the ISO/IEC/SC29/WG1/JPEG and ISO/IEC/SC29/WG11/MPEG standardization committee’s. He is one of the editors of the ISO/IEC/18477-JPEG-XT standard, and he has acted as co-chair of the JPEG-XT AhG, and chair of the AhG on verification of the JPEG-XT Part7. For these activities he has been recognized with the prestigious BSI Emerging Standards Maker Award. He recently has received an Associate Professor habilitation from the Agéncia per a la Qualitat del Sistema Universitari de Catalunya (Spain) (AQU) and the Certified Programme I3 (Spanish System). He regularly acts as IPC member and reviewer for major international conferences and journals, and he is the Associate editor of three peer-review international journals. His research activities have attracted more then 1 million of euros, in national and international competitive research funding calls, and he has participated in research projects for a total budget of more then 6.5 millions of euros. He is the co-author of the CRC Press reference book on High Dynamic Range Technology ‘Advanced High Dynamic Range Technology: Theory and Practice’ 1st and 2nd edition and the author of CRC Press book ‘Image Content Retargeting: Maintaining Tone, Color and Spatial Consistency’ For more info visit: http://www.artusi.org/

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2017.artusi.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Boosting for Probability Estimation & Cost-Sensitive Learning

Speaker: Dr. Nikolaos Nikolaou Affiliation: University of Manchester, UK Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Thursday, November 16, 2017 Time: 15:00-16:00 EET Host: Chris Christodoulou (cchrist-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2017.nikolaou

Abstract:
We provide a unifying perspective for two decades of work on cost-sensitive Boosting algorithms. We critique the relevant literature -consisting of more than 15 variants of the original algorithm- using four theoretical frameworks: Bayesian decision theory, functional gradient descent, margin theory, and probabilistic modelling. We find that only 3 of the published Adaboost variants are consistent with the rules of all the frameworks —and even they require their outputs to be calibrated to achieve this. Experiments on 18 datasets across 21 degrees of imbalance support the hypothesis -showing that once calibrated, they perform equivalently, and outperform all others. Our final recommendation -based on simplicity, flexibility and performance- is to use the original Adaboost algorithm with a shifted decision threshold and calibrated probability estimates. We then move on to the online setting which imposes the additional complication of having to decide whether to use new datapoints to update the parameters of the ensemble or those of the calibrator function. We propose resolving this decision with the aid of bandit optimization algorithms and present initial results suggesting superior performance to uncalibrated and naively-calibrated online boosting ensembles.

Short Bio:
Dr. Nikolaos Nikolaou is an EPSRC Doctoral Prize Fellow at the School of Computer Science of the University of Manchester. He received his Electronic & Computer Engineering Diploma from the Technical University of Crete in 2011 and his M.Sc. in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Edinburgh in 2012, supported by a PSAS Award Scholarship. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Manchester in 2016, funded by the EPSRC. His doctoral thesis was in the area of cost-sensitive boosting algorithms but his research interests included multi-label classification & feature selection. His current research focuses on ensemble learning, online learning & information-theory, with applications to renewable energy and memory controller design.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2017.nikolaou.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Using Sensors and the Internet of Things (IoT) to Better Understand Energy Behavior in a Commercial Office Building

Speaker: Dr. Sekhar Kondepudi Affiliation: National University of Singapore, Singapore Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Friday, October 13, 2017 Time: 15:00-16:00 EET Host: Vasos Vassiliou (vasosv-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2017.kondepudi

Abstract:
Understanding the energy behavior of a building is critical for efficient building operations and for confirming projected energy savings from implemented retrofits. However, measuring and analyzing all possible energy related points in order to understand the energy behavior of the building can be very cost prohibitive. In addition, the use of ICT for Green Computing is also discussed within this context. This presentation will demonstrate how the use of sensors and IoT is used to identify and quantify the most relevant data points for a meaningful energy analysis. An approach is discussed in placing these sensors subject to the constraints in a live, functioning office building, the challenges and early results from the collection.

Short Bio:
Dr. Sekhar Kondepudi is currently an Associate Professor of Smart Buildings, Smart Cities and the Internet of Things (IoT) at the National University of Singapore. At NUS, he is currently the Director of the MSc in Environmental Management (MEM) Program. He has a PhD in Energy and Buildings with 25 years of global business and product experience in a variety of technology verticals related to the Built Environment including IoT, Smart Cities, Energy, Smart Homes and Buildings, Utilities, Networking, Voice, Semiconductors, Healthcare & Public Safety. He also is active in Smart City and IoT Standards work with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU – the specialized IT arm of the United Nations) and UNCTAD. In the past, Dr. Kondepudi has led Global Product Management and Business Development for Smart+Connected Communities (S+CC) at Cisco Systems developing software, related products and solutions for Smart Buildings and Smart Cities. Previously, Prof. Kondepudi has been General Manager of Mobile Devices for Wind River Systems, Director of Business Development at Motorola, has worked at a variety of high tech start-ups in Silicon Valley, with the electric utilities industry at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) in Palo Alto, California and the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA). Sekhar is a proud Alumni of IIT Bombay (BTech, Mechanical Engineering 1983)

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2017.kondepudi.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Changing the world: Arguments, Plans and Preferences

Speaker: Yannis Dimopoulos Affiliation: University of Cyprus, Cyprus Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Monday, October 2, 2017 Time: 10:00-11:00 EET Host: Elpida Keravnou Papailiou (elpida-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2017.dimopoulos

Abstract:
At a high level, intelligent agents operate in a dynamic environment which they constantly seek to bring to a desirable state. To achieve this, they employ a variety of techniques that allows them to choose  among different alternatives, as well as decide the course of action that  brings about the desired state.  In this talk, we review recent work in various topics pertaining  to the above problems. We start with a discussion of argumentation and  its use in automated negotiation. Then we present results  on encoding planning as a boolean constraint satisfaction problem, followed by a brief discussion of preference learning.  We conclude with a glimpse at our current work.

Short Bio:
Yannis Dimopoulos obtained his PhD in 1992 from the Department of Informatics, Athens University of Economics. From 1992 to 1998 he held research positions at the Max-Planck-Institut for Computer Science and the University of Freiburg, both in Germany. Since 1999 he is with the University of Cyprus. His research interests are in the area of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning.

Note:
This colloquium is part of the speaker's procedure for evaluation and promotion from Associate Professor to Professor

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2017.dimopoulos.ics

Sponsor: The CS Colloquium Series is supported by a generous donation from

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Deep Learning and Convolutional Neural Networks

Speaker: Prof. Nicolai Petkov Affiliation: University of Groningen, Netherlands Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Monday, April 10, 2017 Time: 15:00-16:30 EET Host: Constantinos Pattichis (pattichi-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2017.petkov

Abstract:
The talk will cover the main challenges and applications in image and video processing and analysis of deep learning and convolutional neural networks.

Short Bio:
Prof. Nicolai Petkov, is full professor with the University of Groningen in Netherlands since 1991. He was scientific director of the Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science from 1998 till 2009. He was supervisor and thesis director of 30 PhD theses till now, is author of 2 books, 4 patents and more than 100 research articles. Currently, he is leader of the Intelligent Systems group (25 people, www.cs.rug.nl/is). He was coordinator of two EU projects and currently participates in the EU H2020 project TrimBot. He is associate editor of several journals.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2017.petkov.ics

Sponsor: The CS Colloquium Series is supported by a generous donation from

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

The persistence of memory: revisiting the forgotten paradigm

Speaker: Dr. Haris Volos Affiliation: Hewlett Packard Labs, USA Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Wednesday, April 26, 2017 Time: 10:00-11:00 EET Host: Yanos Sazeides (yanos-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2017.volos

Abstract:
Since the early days of computing, memory has been volatile, byte-addressable, and directly accessed with user-mode reads and writes, while storage has been durable, block-addressable, and accessed via system calls. In this talk, I will cover how Persistent Memory (PM) can change this dichotomy by allowing user-mode reads and writes direct byte-addressable access to emerging non-volatile memory technologies. I will first introduce basic system interfaces and mechanisms that enable developers safely program with persistent memory. I will then report on our experiences and findings from analyzing several modern applications based on persistent memory, and discuss implications of such findings to future research.

Short Bio:
Haris Volos is a senior researcher at Hewlett Packard Labs in Palo Alto. He is interested in systems in a broad sense, including operating and distributed systems, data storage systems, and the interaction of hardware architecture with systems. His current research focuses on programming models and system software for emerging byte-addressable non-volatile memory. He received his engineering degree from the National Technical University of Athens (Metsovion), and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2017.volos.ics

Sponsor: The CS Colloquium Series is supported by a generous donation from

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Business Process Modelling using Riva and ARIS: Comparative Study

Speaker: Dr. Dina Tbaishat Affiliation: University of Jordan, Jordan Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Wednesday, April 5, 2017 Time: 12:00-13:00 EET Host: Georgia Kapitsaki (gkapi-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2017.tbaishat

Abstract:
Business process modelling has been given great attention due to its crucial role in developing computer-based systems that support (and automate) organizational processes. Few studies in the literature focus on comparing various process modelling techniques, taking into account purposes, goals and other attributes. Instead; large amount of the research conducted concentrate on applying different modelling techniques to demonstrate organizational processes without clear understanding of the relative merits or the application in the right context. This session will introduce Riva and ARIS as business process modelling methods. It will look at modelling the organizational process architecture as a whole, then investigating the use of the modelling tools in visualizing individual processes. Comparison of the two methods will be provided to help decide the application of either methods in particular contexts.

Short Bio:
Dina Tbaishat is an assistant professor at University of Jordan, teaching IT courses at the library and Information Science Department. I come from a computer science background as I have masters of SW engineering – UWE Bristol / UK. I also finished my PhD in Information Studies, Aberysthwyth University / UK. Business process modelling is my main research interest, in which organizational processes are visualized for improvements purposes.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2017.tbaishat.ics

Sponsor: The CS Colloquium Series is supported by a generous donation from

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Parameterised Verification for Multi-Agent Systems

Speaker: Dr. Panagiotis Kouvaros Affiliation: University of Naples, Italy Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Wednesday, March 29, 2017 Time: 12:00-13:00 EET Host: Antonis Kakas (antonis-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2017.kouvaros

Abstract:
Recent advances in artificial intelligence have enabled the development and deployment of multi-agent systems and autonomous systems (MAS) in areas of societal importance. However the lack of formal guarantees on their behaviour hinders their adoption by society. To alleviate this problem in the past ten years several methods have been put forward for the efficient model checking of MAS against specifications pertaining to high level attitudes of agency. In this talk I will give a summary account of model checking MAS. I will argue that the model checking problem is intractable for systems of many agents, and therefore not applicable to systems where the number of agents is not known at design time. This is a particularly important class of unbounded MAS, developed in diverse applications ranging from multi-party negotiation and auctions to robotic swarms and scenarios in the internet of things. Accounting for common communication patterns I will introduce a semantics and a specification language to model unbounded MAS and their properties. On this formal setting I will present parameterised model checking techniques for their validation irrespective of the number of agents present. Finally I will discuss an application to the emergence identification problem of robotic swarms and experimental results obtained on MCMAS-P, a tool realising these techniques.

Short Bio:
Panagiotis Kouvaros is a Research Associate in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Naples "Federico ||". Panagiotis works within the formal methods group led my Aniello Muranno on logics and games for imperfect information in multi-agent systems. Previously, he held an EPSRC doctoral prize fellowship in the Department of Computing at Imperial College London. Under the fellowship Panagiotis devised and implemented automated verification methodologies for robotic swarm systems. He was awarded the prize in recognition of his PhD work on the parameterised verification of multi-agent systems carried out in the same department under the supervision of Alessio Lomuscio.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2017.kouvaros.ics

Sponsor: The CS Colloquium Series is supported by a generous donation from

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Coping with a Chronic Condition: The Case of Soft Errors

Speaker: Mr. Arkady Bramnik Affiliation: Intel, Israel Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Tuesday, March 21, 2017 Time: 12:00-13:00 EET Host: Yanos Sazeides (yanos-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php#cs.ucy.2017.bramnik

Abstract:
Soft Error is a big challenge for modern computer industry. Soft errors induce the highest failure rate comparing to other reliability mechanisms. In this talk different aspects of Soft Error will be discussed including general definition, metrics, modeling, protection methods, trends and upcoming challenges.

Short Bio:
Arkady Bramnik is Senior Computer Architect at Israel Design Center of Intel Corporation in Haifa. He has been with Intel for the past 25 years and contributed to the design and development of a number of Intel products. He currently works on different aspects of computer system fault tolerance including fault rate modeling and features for fault damage reduction. Arkady as a senior design engineer has also contributed in the design of on-chip memory systems and was responsible on several design methodologies. He has a Master degree in Electrical Engineering and is the author of 5 papers and 2 patents.

Note:
The colloquium is jointly organized by the Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Cyprus.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://groups.google.com/g/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2017.bramnik.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Self-similarity Analysis to Auto-correct Motion Capture Data

Speaker: Dr. Andreas Aristeidou Affiliation: University of Cyprus, Cyprus Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Wednesday, November 23, 2016 Time: 11:30-12:30 EET Host: Yiorgos Chrysanthou (yiorgos-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2016.aristeidou

Abstract:
In this talk, we propose a novel method for self-similarity analysis of raw motion capture sequences. The recent advances in motion capture (MoCap) technology allow the acquisition of highly dynamic movements, such as dances and gymnastics that comprise of a large repertoire of arbitrary and complex poses. However, despite technological advances, there are still many instances where occlusions and noise can lead to missing and erroneous data. This problem is more pronounced in complex or constrained movements (e.g., for modern dances) or when more than one subject is captured (e.g., dancing in pairs in flamenco or salsa). Wrong and missing marker positioning can create abnormal motion and outliers in a number of joints in the reconstructed motion. Our analysis allows auto-detecting outliers and abnormal joint rotations as well as correcting them automatically. The key idea relies on the premise that the expected motion data has high-degree of self-similarity. The presented method is analogous to patch-based self-similarity techniques used in images and video. Here, instead of patches we use motion words, which consist of short-periodic-sequences of all joints transformations. What makes our approach particularly interesting is that motion words, in contrast to text and image, are continuous and can vary in length. Moreover, the large number of possible movement combinations, the irregularity of human actions, and the variability in style of different people makes the analysis of the motion and its correction a challenging problem.

Short Bio:
Dr. Andreas Aristidou is a Post-Doc researcher at the Efi Arazi School of Computer Science, The Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya (Israel), and the Graphics & Virtual Reality Lab, Department of Computer Science, University of Cyprus. He had been a Cambridge European Trust fellow, at the Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, where he obtained his PhD. Andreas has a BSc in Informatics and Telecommunications from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, and he is an honor MSc graduate of Kings College London. He has been awarded a number of prestigious awards, including the ΔΙΔΑΚΤΩΡ fellowship for young researchers from the Cyprus Research Promotion Foundation, the Office of Naval Research Visiting Award, and the DARIAH-EU Theme 2015 in Open Humanities. Andreas collaborates with PhaseSpace Inc., a leading company that offers motion capture solutions for motion tracking and positioning, while he establishes a motion capture laboratory at the Graphics & Virtual Reality Lab, University of Cyprus. His research interests lie on motion analysis and classification, motion synthesis, and involve motion capture and Inverse Kinematics.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2016.aristeidou.ics

Sponsor: The CS Colloquium Series is supported by a generous donation from

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Multi-Engine Data Analytics

Speaker: Dr. Dimitrios Tsoumakos Affiliation: Department of Informatics of the Ionian University, Greece Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Monday, October 3, 2016 Time: 15:00-16:00 EET Host: George Pallis (gpallis-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2016.tsoumakos

Abstract:
The complexity of Big Data analytics has long outreached the capabilities of current platforms, which fail to efficiently cope with the data and task heterogeneity of modern workflows due to their adhesion to a single data and/or compute model. In this talk I present IReS, the Intelligent Resource Scheduler for complex analytics workflows executed over multi-engine environments. IReS is able to optimize a workflow with respect to a user-defined policy relying on cost and performance models of the required tasks over the available platforms. This optimization consists of allocating distinct workflow parts to the most advantageous execution and/or storage engine among the available ones and deciding on the exact amount of resources provisioned. Moreover, IReS can efficiently adapt to the current cluster/engine conditions and recover from failures by effectively monitoring the workflow execution in real-time. The current prototype supports 5 compute and 3 data engines, yet new ones can effortlessly be added to IReS by virtue of its engine-agnostic mechanisms.

Short Bio:
Dimitrios Tsoumakos is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Informatics of the Ionian University. He is also a collaborating researcher with the Computing Systems Laboratory of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). He received his Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering from NTUA in 1999, then joined the graduate program in Computer Sciences at the University of Maryland in 2000, where he received his M.Sc. (2002) and Ph.D. (2006). His research interests relate to both systemic and data management aspects of Distributed, Large-Scale Systems: Algorithms for big-data management over distributed platforms as well as optimization aspects of Cloud Computing.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2016.tsoumakos.ics

Sponsor: The CS Colloquium Series is supported by a generous donation from

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Prototype-based classifiers and their application in the life sciences

Speaker: Dr. Michael Biehl Affiliation: University of Groningen, Netherlands Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Tuesday, September 27, 2016 Time: 14:00-15:00 EET Host: Christos Schizas (schizas-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2016.biehl

Abstract:
This talk reviews important aspects of prototype based systems in the context of supervised learning. Learning Vector Quantization (LVQ) serves as a particularly intuitive framework, in which to discuss the basic ideas of distance based classification. A key issue is that of choosing an appropriate distance or similarity measure for the task at hand. The powerful framework of relevance learning will be discussed, in which parameterized distance measures are adapted together with the prototypes in the same training process. Recent developments and theoretical insights are discussed and example applications in the life-sciences and bio-medical domain are presented in order to illustrate the concepts. 

Short Bio:
Michael Biehl received a PhD degree in Theoretical Physics from the University of Giessen, Germany, in 1992 and the habilitation (venia legendi) in Theoretical Physics from the University of Würzburg, Germany, in 1996. He joined the University of Groningen as Assistant Professor in Computer Science in 2003 and got tenure in 2009. His earlier research concerned, among other topics, the statistical physics of neural networks and the theory and simulation of non-equilibrium growth processes and crystal surfaces. More recently, his interests are focussed on the development and study of advanced machine learning methods and their application mainly in the bio-medical domain. Homepage: http://www.cs.rug.nl/~biehl

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2016.biehl.ics

Sponsor: The CS Colloquium Series is supported by a generous donation from

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Machine learning: The efficiency of Hybrid algorithm

Speaker: Dr. Suhail Odeh Affiliation: Bethlehem University, Palestine Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Thursday, July 7, 2016 Time: 15:00-16:00 EET Host: Constantinos Pattichis (pattichi-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2016.odeh

Abstract:
In the world of machine learning there are many algorithms that can be applied in such specific problem. But which one is the best? if we combined two algorithms which is known as a hybrid algorithm /system to solve specific problem; do we get better result? In this talk, we will discuss this through applying the hybrid algorithm on the intelligent traffic system, and other applications. We will start on the definition of machine learning, its component, types of learning and the using of machine learning in the classification problems; Then discuss its application on the traffic light intelligent system, and on the skin cancer diagnosis problem.

Short Bio:
Dr. Suhail Odeh Born in Bethlehem - Palestine, after completing his Bachelor degree in Physics and Electronic Technology (1996) and Master degree in Physics (2001) from Al-Quds University, he completed PhD degree (2006) in the Computer Engineering from the Department of Computer Architecture and Technology, University of Granada -Spain. He joins Bethlehem University community as an assistant professor in the Computer and Information System department in the faculty of science at (2006). He is an active researcher in the field of Artificial intelligence, Pattern recognition, Intelligent Systems, Brain Computer Interface, Multiagent System.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2016.odeh.ics

Sponsor: The CS Colloquium Series is supported by a generous donation from

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Recommending Interesting Visualizations for Data Exploration

Speaker: Prof. Panos K. Chrysanthis Affiliation: University of Pittsburgh, USA Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Wednesday, June 1, 2016 Time: 11:30-12:30 EET Host: Demetris Zeinalipour (dzeina-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2016.chrysanthis

Abstract:
As the amount of data being generated every day increases exponentially, the term “Big Data” has been adopted to represent the challenge of large-scale data processing. Given the volume of data, the challenge is how to avoid overwhelming the users with irrelevant results. In this talk, we will discuss recent research challenges and opportunities in the emerging area of Data Exploration that aim to guide users to reveal valuable insights from large volumes of data (e.g., financial and scientific databases).  We will particularly focus on solutions that can automatically recommend interesting visualizations, which reveal useful insights into the analyzed data.

Short Bio:
Panos K. Chrysanthis is a Professor of Computer Science and a founder and director of the Advanced Data Management Technologies Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh. He is also an adjunct Professor at Carnegie-Mellon University. His research interests lie within the areas of data management (Big Data, Databases, Data Streams & Sensor networks), distributed & mobile computing, workflow management, operating systems and real-time systems. He has fostered interdisciplinary collaborations between computer science, medicine, astronomy and mechanical engineering, both within and outside the University of Pittsburgh. His research contributions in principles, algorithms and prototypes to data management have been documented in more than 150 papers in top journals and prestigious, peer-reviewed conferences and workshops. In 1995, he was a recipient of the U.S. National Science Foundation CAREER Award for his investigation on the management of data for mobile and wireless computing. His editorial service includes VLDB J (2001-2007), IEEE TKDE (2012-present) and DAPD (2011-present). Chrysanthis is an ACM Distinguished Scientist and a Senior Member of IEEE. He was honored with seven teaching awards and in 2015, he received the University of Pittsburgh's Provost Award for Excellence in Mentoring (doctoral students). For more information please visit: http://panos.cs.pitt.edu/ or http://db.cs.pitt.edu/

Note:
Additional tutorial by Prof. Panos K. Chrysanthis: "Graph Partitioning in Distributed Graph Computation", Thursday, June 2, 2016 between 10:00-12:00, Room #148, New Campus, University of Cyprus. Tutorial abstract: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/abstracts/2016-Chrysanthis-Series.pdf

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2016.chrysanthis.ics

Sponsor: The CS Colloquium Series is supported by a generous donation from

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Object Recognition Techniques in Real Applications

Speaker: Dr. Laura Fernández Robles Affiliation: University of Leon, Spain Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Wednesday, April 27, 2016 Time: 15:00-16:00 EET Host: Constantinos Pattichis (pattichi-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2016.robles

Abstract:
This talk presents and evaluates object description and retrieval techniques in different real applications. First, we address the classification of boar spermatozoa according to acrosome integrity, which is an important challenge in the veterinary field. We present several methods based on invariant local features. Secondly, we focus on the implementation of computer vision solutions for tool wear monitoring, which is a key issue for extending lifetime of cutting tools. We provide two new methods for insert localisation and an automatic solution for the recognition of broken inserts in edge profile milling heads. The proposed approaches are efficient and can be set up in-process without delaying any machining operations. Finally, we work within the European project Advisory System Against Sexual Exploitation of Children. One of the most challenging tasks in this project was to find specific objects using content-based image retrieval. We evaluate different clusterings of keypoints for object retrieval and propose a new descriptor, named colour COSFIRE. Colour COSFIRE filters add colour description and improve the discrimination power to COSFIRE filters as well as provide invariance to background intensity. This work contributes to the understanding and provides effective solutions of real applications using object recognition and image classification techniques.

Short Bio:
Laura Fernández-Robles received the B.Sc. (2009) degree in Industrial Engineering from University of León, Spain, where she graduated with honours. She carried out her bachelor thesis at the Engineering College of Aarhus, Denmark. In 2011 she obtained the M.Sc. degree in Intelligent Systems in Engineering at University of León, Spain. In 2016 she received the Ph.D. degree in a joint program from University of León, Spain, and from University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Her current research interests are in the field of computer vision and pattern recognition, in particular, object recognition and local features description.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2016.robles.ics

Sponsor: The CS Colloquium Series is supported by a generous donation from

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

The Internet of Things: Challenges and Experiences

Speaker: Dr. Natividad Martinez Madrid Affiliation: Reutlingen University, Germany Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Tuesday, March 29, 2016 Time: 10:00-11:00 EET Host: Constantinos Pattichis (pattichi-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2016.madrid

Abstract:
The Internet of Things (IoT) seems to be omnipresent in our current world. Whether in smart homes, in connected cars, in smart factories or health technologies, many developments are related to IoT. But what is actually the Internet of Things and what is new about it? This lecture will present an introduction to the Internet of Things and its interpretation in different application domains. It will show the evolution of embedded systems towards the Internet of Things as well as the future expectations. A review of the most relevant hardware, software and network technologies in the field will be offered, including also data analytics and cloud solutions for IoT. Some practical experiences and initiatives in the different application domains will be highlighted. The lecture will close with a discussion on the current challenges of the Internet of Things.

Short Bio:
Natividad Martínez Madrid researches in the areas of Internet of Things, mobile computing and biomedical computer science. Her current interests are centered in cost-effective, non-intrusive bio-signal monitoring, affective and behavioral computing and ambient assisted living. She is the Director of the Internet of Things Laboratory and coordinates the interdisciplinary Ambient Assisted Living Lab at Reutlingen University. She obtained her PhD in Telecommunication Engineering in 1998. She has previously been project coordinator at the Research Center for Computer Sciences (FZI) in Karlsruhe and Professor at the University Carlos III in Madrid. She is Professor at Reutlingen University since 2010.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2016.madrid.ics

Sponsor: The CS Colloquium Series is supported by a generous donation from

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Challenging Temporal Segmentation? Try Hidden Markov Models for your Pattern Recognition: A Practical Example in our Daily Life.

Speaker: Dr. Aristotelis Dosis Affiliation: University of Cyprus, Cyprus Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Wednesday, March 16, 2016 Time: 16:00-17:00 EET Host: George Papadopoulos (george-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php#cs.ucy.2016.dosis

Abstract:
Hidden Markov Models (HMM) are especially known for their application in temporal recognition. Although the mathematics behind the HMM were developed by L.E. Baum and his coworkers in the late 1960s and early 1970s, they had no practical use. It was only after Lawrence Rabiner who pioneered the implementation of HMMs in the Speech Recognition with his famous paper "A Tutorial on Hidden Markov Models and Selected Applications in Speech Recognition" that created a massive momentum to the global research community to adopt HMMs in solving challenging temporal pattern recognition problems. In this presentation we will attempt to highlight the basic elements of HMM and we will look at a practical example to recognise a temporal system.

Short Bio:
Dr Aristotelis Dosis is a member of IEEE and holds a PhD from the Dept. of Surgical Technology and the Dept. of Computer Science at Imperial College London in the field of Surgical Computing & Imaging, funded by Intuitive Surgical, CA, USA and BUPA Foundation, UK. In 2005 he has received a grant from Imperial Innovations to develop a Smart Conventional Laparoscopic Instrument with Active Force Feedback, which has produced a prototype and in 2007 was sold to TYCO Inc, USA. Since 2005 he has held senior software engineer and consulting positions in medium and large enterprises in the UK, France, South Africa and Cyprus. He has also collaborated with the Cyprus University of Technology in the field of Smart Mobility and Internet of Things for the project ePark, while developing the project DisAssist which aimed to help people with disabilities. His research interest area topics include surgical robotics and technologies in minimally invasive surgery, ubiquitous computing, wireless sensor networks, smart living and internet of things. He has published 21 papers.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://groups.google.com/g/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2016.dosis.ics

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Scalable Blocking for Privacy Preserving Record Linkage

Speaker: Dr. Alexandros Karakasidis Affiliation: University of Cyprus, Cyprus Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Thursday, March 3, 2016 Time: 19:15-20:15 EET Host: Yannis Dimopoulos (yannis-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2016.karakasidis

Abstract:
With the data explosion we have been experiencing recently, the problem of linking records that represent the same real world entity across various and often heterogeneous sources has become increasingly important for a number of application areas such as data integration, business intelligence, web mining and recommendation systems. When dealing with sensitive and personal user data, the process of record linkage raises privacy issues. Thus, privacy preserving record linkage has emerged with the goal of identifying matching records across multiple data sources while preserving the privacy of the individuals they describe. The task is very resource demanding, considering the abundance of available data, which, in addition, are often dirty. Blocking techniques are deployed prior to matching to prune out unlikely to match candidate records so as to reduce processing time. However, when scaling to large datasets, such methods often result in quality loss. In this talk, we will present a privacy preserving blocking technique providing high fault-tolerance and maintaining result quality while scaling linearly with respect to the dataset size.

Short Bio:
Alexandros Karakasidis received his BSc degree in Computer Science from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Ioannina, Greece in 2002 and his MSc also in Computer Science with specialization in Information Systems from the same department in 2005. He received his PhD degree in Computer Science from the School of Science and Technology at the Hellenic Open University, Greece in 2015. His research interests lie in the area of data management and especially in approximate data matching, privacy and data quality. Currently, he is a Marie Curie research fellow of the iSocial FP7 program at the Laboratory of Internet Computing, Department of Computer Science, University of Cyprus.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2016.karakasidis.ics

Sponsor: The CS Colloquium Series is supported by a generous donation from

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Innovative Technologies in Sensors and Signal Processing

Speaker: Prof. Andreas Spanias Affiliation: Arizona State University, United States Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Friday, February 12, 2016 Time: 15:00-16:00 EET Host: Constantinos Pattichis (pattichi-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2016.spanias

Abstract:
The ASU Sensor Signal and Information Processing (SenSIP) center, which is also a site of the Net Centric Cloud and Computing Systems (NCSS) Industry University Collaborative Research Center (I/UCRC), works closely with industry partners in the areas of signal processing, sensor networks and communications systems  In Phase 1 of this program, ASU SenSIP signed I/UCRC funded research agreements with more than 10 companies including Freescale (NXP), Intel, LG Electronics, Lockheed Martin, National Instruments, Raytheon, and Sprint.  The center also engaged in collaborative funded research agreements with two SBIR companies.   During the Phase 1 period of this I/UCRC, the SenSIP trained more than thirty Ph.D. and Masters students several of whom are working for high-tech company members.  Three former students of the PI have started their own companies and three others have been hired as tenure-track faculty. The center has also established internships with industry partners and some of the ASU Site students have obtained summer internships in industry labs.  In addition, the I/UCRC site has trained undergraduate students through REV and REU supplements. These undergraduate students worked with our faculty and graduate students to co-develop a ranging Android App.  A patent pre-disclosure on the research enabling this app is co-authored by one of the REU students.   The I/UCRC award had a leveraging effect across several research fronts.  During Phase 1, our I/UCRC program established intellectual property in several related areas involving signal processing.  Faculty affiliated with this ASU site, have developed intellectual property in digital signal processing and sensor systems.     Center projects have been established in several challenging research areas that involve signal processing and sensor systems.  These activities included work in sustainability, health and wellness, and defense and security.   Collaborative research in radar resulted in IP patents, publications and monographs in MIMO radar, exploitation of video, and sparse representations.  Work in architectures resulted in design tools for low power implementation of speech and audio processing functions.  Studies in embedded systems resulted in design of efficient machine learning algorithms for managing sensor data in Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Experimental investigation on mobile devices resulted in research products in motion and gesture estimation.  Research in imaging for flow sensors addressed medical applications including aneurysm  prediction.  Sustainability endeavors of the center include a project on embedding multiple sensors in solar panels and monitoring utility-scale photovoltaic arrays. SenSIP n also established international research partnerships with signed agreements with Imperial College (IC) funded by British Council,  University of Cyprus (UCY) funded by the Cyprus Promotion foundation (prime EU), and Tecnológico de Monterrey (ITESM) funded by NSF. Papers were co-authored with IC on sensor array localization, publications were co-authored with UCy on speech detection and biomedical applications, and research was initiated with ITESM on communication aspects of sensors. The ASU I/UCRC established several important research facilities including an LTE system installed  by Sprint,  a dedicated 18kW solar monitoring facility at the ASU research park, and networking sensing and computing facilities in the sensor lab.  The center also established award winning signal processing simulation apps that are disseminated freely on iTunes and Google Play.   The center engaged in outreach to middle schools, high schools and high-school Hispanic conferences for technology exposition and recruitment to engineering and STEM areas. Outreach included also high school teacher training through an RET supplement. 

Short Bio:
Andreas Spanias is Professor in the School of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering at Arizona State University (ASU). He is also the director of the Sensor Signal and Information Processing (SenSIP) center and the founder of the SenSIP industry consortium (now an NSF I/UCRC site). His research interests are in the areas of adaptive signal processing, speech processing, and sensor systems. He and his student team developed the computer simulation software Java-DSP and its award winning iPhone/iPad and Android versions. He is author of two text books: Audio Processing and Coding by Wiley and DSP; An Interactive Approach (2nd Ed.). He served as Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing and as General Co-chair of IEEE ICASSP-99. He also served as the IEEE Signal Processing Vice-President for Conferences. Andreas Spanias is co-recipient of the 2002 IEEE Donald G. Fink paper prize award and was elected Fellow of the IEEE in 2003. He served as Distinguished lecturer for the IEEE Signal processing society in 2004.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2016.spanias.ics

Sponsor: The CS Colloquium Series is supported by a generous donation from

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Incremental Robust Principal Component Analysis for Video Background Modeling: theory, applications and jitter invariant extension.

Speaker: Dr. Paul Rodriguez Affiliation: Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru, Peru Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Monday, February 29, 2016 Time: 12:00-13:00 EET Host: Constantinos Pattichis (pattichi-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2016.rodriguez

Abstract:
While Robust Principal Component Analysis (RPCA), a.k.a. Principal Component Pursuit (PCP), is currently considered to be the state of the art method for video background modeling, it suffers from a number of limitations, including a high computational cost, a batch operating mode, and sensitivity to camera jitter. The original PCP problem considers the nuclear and l1 norms as penalties for the background (low-rank) and foreground or moving objects (sparse) with an equality constraint for the observed videos and low-rank and sparse components. In this talk we propose to change constraints to penalties, obtaining a variant where the restoration error (observed video minus low-rank and sparse component) and l1 norm are penalties while imposing the rank of the low-rank component as a constraint. Interestingly, this particular variant can be effectively solved in an incremental fashion, allowing real-time implementation for live-feed HD videos; moreover, considering T(.), an unknown rigid transformation, applied to the low-rank component, we can also cope with translational and rotational jitter, allowing almost real-time processing. Furthermore, in this talk we will also include a detailed analysis of the proposed RPCA variant as well as incremental SVD, which is the key to solve the equivalent problem incrementally.

Short Bio:
Paul Rodriguez received the BSc degree in electrical engineering from the "Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú" (PUCP), Lima, Peru, in 1997, and the MSc and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from the University of New Mexico, USA, in 2003 and 2005 respectively. He spent two years (2005-2007) as a postdoctoral researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and is currently a Full Professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering at PUCP. His research interests include AM-FM models, parallel algorithms, adaptive signal decompositions, and inverse problems in signal and image processing.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2016.rodriguez.ics

Sponsor: The CS Colloquium Series is supported by a generous donation from

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Designing Cultural Learning Activities

Speaker: Prof. Nikolaos Avouris Affiliation: University of Patras, Greece Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Tuesday, December 15, 2015 Time: 11:00-12:00 EET Host: George Samaras (cssamara-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2015.avouris

Abstract:
This talk discusses theoretical and empirical work relating with designing activities for informal learning in museums and sites of culture through mobile games. As new locative media become part of our everyday life, it is argued that new kinds of mobile games facilitated by technology may change the experience of visiting a site of culture and produce new kinds of learning. We present examples of mobile games played in museums and discuss various ways through which learning may take place during game play. A distinction is made between the information consumption metaphor and a more participative way of experiencing culture. We also discuss game design as an example of participatory activity and we identify its learning dimensions. In particular, we elaborate on the role of technology in providing a scaffold that can help museum audience to construct games which can function as “public artefacts” and can be added to the museum’s assets, enhancing audience engagement and community building. This presentation is related to ongoing research of the Human-Computer Interaction group of the University of Patras, Greece

Short Bio:
Nikolaos Avouris is professor of Software Technology and Human-Computer Interaction at the University of Patras, Greece. His research interests include Interactive Systems Design and Human-machine interaction with emphasis in cultural and educational fields. He has special interest and experience in Distributed intelligent systems, collaborative systems, usability and accessibility of interactive systems, mobile systems, web applications and services. In recent years he coordinated research and design of mobile games like MuseumScrabble, Rebels vs. Spies and others.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2015.avouris.ics

Sponsor: The CS Colloquium Series is supported by a generous donation from

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

New Innovations in Cloud Computing for Big Data Applications

Speaker: Prof. Rajkumar Buyya Affiliation: University of Melbourne, Australia Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Friday, December 4, 2015 Time: 15:00-16:00 EET Host: George Pallis (gpallis-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2015.buyya

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 has emerged as one of the buzzwords in the IT industry and turned the vision of "computing utilities" into a reality. Several IT vendors have started offering computation, storage, and application hosting services, and provide coverage in several continents, supporting Service-Level Agreements (SLA) backed performance and uptime promises for their services. Clouds deliver 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. Therefore, Enterprise and Big Data applications need tools and platforms for their rapid construction and deployment on Clouds on-demand meeting user QoS requirements at lower price. This talk will cover (a) 21st century vision of computing and identifies various IT paradigms promising to deliver the vision of computing utilities; (b) opportunities and challenges for utility and market-oriented Cloud computing, (c) innovative architecture for creating market-oriented and elastic Clouds by harnessing virtualisation technologies; (d) Aneka, a Cloud Application Platform, and Cloudbus Workflow Engine for rapid development of Cloud/Big Data applications and their deployment on private/public Clouds with resource provisioning driven by SLAs; (e) experimental results on deploying Cloud and Big Data applications in engineering, and health care, and astronomy/ satellite image processing, business intelligence on elastic Clouds, and (f) directions for delivering our 21st century vision along with pathways for future research.

Short Bio:
Dr. Rajkumar Buyya is a Fellow of IEEE, Professor of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Future Fellow of the Australian Research Council, 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 over 500 publications and four text books including "Mastering Cloud Computing" published by McGraw Hill, China Machine Press, and Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann for Indian, Chinese and international markets respectively. He is one of the highly cited authors in computer science and software engineering worldwide (h-index=94, g-index=198, 42500+ citations). Microsoft Academic Search Index ranked Dr. Buyya as the world's top author in distributed and parallel computing between 2007 and 2012. "A Scientometric Analysis of Cloud Computing Literature" by German scientists ranked Dr. Buyya as the World's Top-Cited (#1) Author and the World's Most-Productive (#1) Author in Cloud Computing. 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 TCSC Medal for Excellence in Scalable Computing" from the IEEE Computer Society TCSC. Manjrasoft's Aneka Cloud technology developed under his leadership has received "2010 Frost & Sullivan New Product Innovation Award" and recently Manjrasoft has been recognised as one of the Top 20 Cloud Computing companies by the Silicon Review Magazine. He served as the foundation Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing. He is currently serving as Co-Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Software: Practice and Experience, which was established 40+ years ago. For further information on Dr.Buyya, please visit his cyberhome: http://www.buyya.com/

Multimedia File Available:
 Multimedia File

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2015.buyya.ics

Sponsor: The CS Colloquium Series is supported by a generous donation from

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Brain-inspired Pattern Recognition

Speaker: Prof. Nicolai Petkov Affiliation: University of Groningen, Netherlands Category: Colloquium Location: Room 016, Common Teaching Facilities (CTF-02/XOD-02), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Friday, November 13, 2015 Time: 13:30-14:30 EET Host: Constantinos Pattichis (pattichi-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2015.petkov

Abstract:
Insights into the function of the brain can provide clues for designing effective computer algorithms for pattern recognition. This thesis is illustrated by the design of feature detectors that are inspired by the properties of shape-selective neurons in area V4 of visual cortex. Such a filter is trainable as it is configured by the automatic analysis of a feature specified by a user. Subsequently, it can detect features that are similar to the training feature. By means of training multiple such filters for different features of an object, we design effective feature vector representation of that object that is analogous to population coding in the brain. This approach shares two important aspects with pattern recognition by the brain: the ability to learn and deal with variability. It is illustrated by the detection of vascular bifurcations in medical images, traffic sign recognition in complex scenes, optical character recognition, word spotting, object recognition in a domestic environment and the automatic motif and repetition detection in music.

Short Bio:
Nicolai Petkov is professor of computer science at the University of Groningen since 1991. In the period 1998-2009 he was scientific director of the Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science. He works in the field of brain-inspired visual pattern recognition. See www.cs.rug.nl/~petkov www.cs.rug.nl/is

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2015.petkov.ics

Sponsor: The CS Colloquium Series is supported by a generous donation from

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Protecting Services from Security Mis-configuration

Speaker: Dr. Ron Addie Affiliation: University of Southern Queensland, Australia Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Friday, November 13, 2015 Time: 12:00-13:00 EET Host: Andreas Pitsillides (cspitsil-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2015.addie

Abstract:
Examples of how service is hindered by otherwise sensible security rules are presented. Service protection policies are then described which can help to prevent these compromises to service and assist us to measure this impact where it occurs. These examples include demonstration in some cases of how the combined collection of rules (security and service protection) can be enforced and maintained. The concept of service protection policies is introduced. We use ns3 and Click in simulations to check the consistency of aggregate security policy by checking that service protection rules are valid.We show that these can improve the performance of the network experienced by users and increase network security.

Short Bio:
Ron Addie received his BSc degree from Monash University in 1972 and completed his PhD at Monash University in the area of semi-Markov queues in 1986. From 1972 to 1992, he worked in Telecom Australia Research Laboratories where he was involved in the development of ATM, teletraffic, and network analysis and design. In 1992 he moved to the University of Southern Queensland, where he holds the position of Associate Professor. His current research interests include queueing theory for long-range dependent traffic, rare event simulation, layered network design, network analysis, design and simulation software and security of web information systems. He is the author or co-author of many journal and conference papers, primarily in the area of communications, with more 1000 citations (according to Google Scholar).

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2015.addie.ics

Sponsor: The CS Colloquium Series is supported by a generous donation from

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Show Me You Care: Trait Empathy, Linguistic Style and Mimicry on Facebook

Speaker: Dr. Jahna Otterbacher Affiliation: Open University of Cyprus, Cyprus Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Thursday, November 12, 2015 Time: 12:00-13:00 EET Host: George Samaras (cssamara-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) and Styliani Kleanthous (stellak-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2015.otterbacher

Abstract:
Many advocate for artificial agents to be more empathic in their interactions with humans. Similarly, digital marketers want to understand how to effectively elicit empathic responses from audiences, to achieve desired outcomes. Endeavors such as these entail that we achieve a better understanding of how people demonstrate empathy in their communications with others in technology-mediated environments. The current research focuses on a particular aspect of human language, linguistic mimicry, that has been described as a means to, perhaps subconsciously, communicate empathy to another. Mimicry, the adoption of another’s language patterns, has been studied extensively face-to-face, but much less often in technology-mediated settings. Therefore, we draw on the social psychology and professional communication literatures to frame our study. We built a Facebook App, which we use to administer Davis’ Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), a standardized measure of trait empathy, and to capture a snapshot of participants’ language behaviors. We ask whether individuals with more empathic personalities have unique communication styles and/or elicit more linguistic mimicry from friends, as compared to less empathic personalities. We cluster participants based on IRI scores, identifying four salient profiles. We then confirm that empathy profile is indeed correlated to participants’ linguistic behaviors, in ways that we would expect (e.g., more “other-oriented” individuals directly engage their friends via the pronoun “you”). Next, through an analysis of participants’ posts and their friends’ comments on those posts, we indeed find that when particular language features are used in a post, that this often triggers its use by a friend. However, we do not find that more empathic personalities are more likely to elicit a mimicry response from friends. Rather, mimicry seems to happen more often in posts that convey a casual, personal tone. In this talk, I will discuss the implications of our results for creating more empathic messages in contexts such as personalized advertising and agent-human interaction. I will also briefly discuss some lessons learned in building and deploying a Facebook app for research purposes.

Short Bio:
Jahna Otterbacher received her doctorate in Information from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor – USA), where she was a member of the Computational Linguistics and Information Retrieval (CLAIR) research group. Her research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of social computing, communication science and data science. She analyzes behavioral and language traces left by users of information systems in order to better facilitate their interactions with others, as well as their access to information. She is currently an academic coordinator of the M.Sc. in Social Information Systems at the Open University of Cyprus, where she holds the rank of Lecturer (tenure-track). She previously served as an Assistant Professor in the Lewis College of Human Sciences at the Illinois Institute of Technology (Chicago, USA) (2010-2012) and Visiting Lecturer of Management Information Systems at the University of Cyprus (2006-2009).

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2015.otterbacher.ics

Sponsor: The CS Colloquium Series is supported by a generous donation from

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Big Data meets Internet of Things

Speaker: Prof. Arkady Zaslavsky Affiliation: CSIRO, Australia Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Thursday, November 5, 2015 Time: 18:00-19:00 EET Host: Demetris Zeinalipour (dzeina-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2015.zaslavsky

Abstract:
The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the major disruptive technologies and is on top of Gartner’s hype curve for 2014/2015. IoT will connect billions of "things", where things include computers, smartphones, sensors, objects from everyday life. IoT will be the main source of big data according to predictions of many experts. This talk focuses on challenges of the IoT and disruptively big data it generates. The talk will also showcase a CSIRO IoT technology which brings together sensing and cloud computing and is an efficient open platform for handling IoT data streams of high volume, velocity, value and variety. A case study built on the basis of the OpenIoT platform will also be presented.

Short Bio:
Dr Arkady Zaslavsky is a Senior Principal Research Scientist in Data61 @ CSIRO. He is leading the scientific area of IoT at Data61 and leads a number of projects and initiatives. He was one of the leaders of EU FP7 project OpenIoT and is now leading a WP4 in EU H-2020 project bIoTope. Before coming to CSIRO in July 2011, he held a position of a Chaired Professor in Pervasive and Mobile Computing at Luleå University of Technology, Sweden where he was involved in a number of European research projects, collaborative projects with Ericsson Research, PhD supervision and postgraduate education. He currently holds the titles of a Research Professor at LTU (Sweden), Adjunct-Professor at UNSW (Sydney), Adjunct Professor at La Trobe University (Melbourne), Visiting Professor at St. Petersburg University of ITMO. He chaired and organised many international workshops and conferences, including Mobile Data Management, Pervasive Services, Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia and others. Arkady made internationally recognised contribution in the area of disconnected transaction management and replication in mobile computing environments, context-awareness as well as in mobile agents and Internet of Things. He made significant internationally recognised contributions in the areas of data stream mining on mobile devices, adaptive mobile computing systems, ad-hoc mobile networks, efficiency and reliability of mobile computing systems, mobile agents and mobile file systems. Arkady Zaslavsky has published more than 400 research publications throughout his professional career and supervised to completion more than 35 PhD students. Dr Zaslavsky is a Senior Member of ACM and a Senior Member of IEEE Computer and Communications Societies.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2015.zaslavsky.ics

Sponsor: The CS Colloquium Series is supported by a generous donation from

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Programming Robotic Agents: A Multi-tasking Teleo-Reactive Approach

Speaker: Prof. Keith L. Clark Affiliation: University of London, UK and University of Queensland, Australia Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Monday, November 2, 2015 Time: 12:00-13:00 EET Host: Antonis Kakas (antonis-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2015.clark

Abstract:
We present a multi-threaded/multi-tasking message communicating robotic agent architecture in which the concurrently executing tasks are programmed in TeleoR, a major extension of Nilsson’s Teleo-Reactive Procedures (TR) guard ~> action rule language for robotic agents (see http://teleoreactiveprograms.net) The rule guards query rapidly changing percept facts, and more slowly changing told and remembered facts in the agent’s deductive BeliefStore, using fixed facts, relation and function rules which are the agent’s declarative knowledge. The TR procedures are its behavioural knowledge. TR operational semantics makes the language well suited to robot/robot or human/robot co-operative tasks. TeleoR extends TR in: being typed and higher order, having a typed higher order LP/FP language, QuLog, for encoding declarative knowledge, having extra forms of rules and actions for concisely expressing improved behavioural knowledge, having task atomic procedures to encoding in a high level way the sharing of multiple robotic resources by an agent engaged in several concurrently executed tasks. Its multi-tasking use is illustrated in the simulation video at http://youtu.be/f81U0iHNzB0 in which one agent alternates the use of two robotic arms to concurrently build four towers of blocks with help or hindrance. The declarative and behavioural knowledge of that agent will be introduced. TeleoR is being used at UNSW to control a Baxter robot working with a person concurrently engaged in several assembly tasks. The video https://goo.gl/gdJjxX shows essentially the same TeleoR program of the simulation being used to control the Baxter via ROS.

Short Bio:
Keith Leonard Clark is a Honorary Visiting Professor at Royal Holloway, University of London, England and a Visiting Professor at University of Queensland, Australia. Clark's key contributions have been in the field of logic programming. His 1978 paper on negation as failure was arguably the first formalisation of a non-monotonic logic. His 1981 paper on a relational language for parallel programming introduced concurrent logic programming. In 1980, he co-founded an Imperial College spin-off company, Logic Programming Associates, to develop and market Prolog systems for micro-computers (micro-Prolog) and to provide consultancy on expert systems and rule based applications. More recently, Clark has been working on the April and Go! programming languages and their application to agent programming. More Info: http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~klc/

Note:
Additional talk by Prof. Keith L. Clark: "Engineering Agent Applications in QuLog", Wednesday, November 4th between 14:00-15:00, Room #148, New Campus, University of Cyprus. Talk abstract: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/abstracts/2015-Clark-QulogTutorial.pdf

Multimedia File Available:
 Multimedia File

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2015.clark.ics

Sponsor: The CS Colloquium Series is supported by a generous donation from

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Reversible Computer Architectures

Speaker: Dr. Michael Kirkedal Thomsen Affiliation: University of Bremen, Germany Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Friday, October 30, 2015 Time: 12:00-13:00 EET Host: Pedro Trancoso (pedro-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2015.thomsen

Abstract:
Reversible computations covers computation models in which computations must be deterministic in both directions; in other words, we can always uncompute a computation. The interest in these models is often motivated by its relation to energy and information preservation and the relation to "future" implementation models, for example quantum computing. But the possibility to perform reverse execution are also useful in applications such as reverse debugging and optimistic execution. Much research focuses on design of reversible logic circuit and reversible programming languages. There is, however, also work on the level in-between, reversible computer architectures, which is the focus of this talk. I will start with a general introduction to reversible computations and logic. Afterwards I will detail work on reversible architectures and explain the details that make is possible to make the von Neumann architecture reversible. This have implications to the instruction set architecture so I will also explain this and show how to implement programs therein. I hope that the talk can motivate discussions for future directions, as this work is at a very early stage.

Short Bio:
Michael Kirkedal Thomsen got his degree at DIKU, Department of Computer Science, University of Copenhagen in 2012 on the topic of Reversible Computations with in in relations to hardware description languages, program transformation, computer architectures. He is currently working at the University of Bremen as a Marie Curie fellow where he has continued this work and have applied this to designing languages to describe reversible logic and reversible logic circuits, and formalising the reversible logic model. He is, furthermore, participating in the work of other "general-purpose" reversible programming languages and works much with functional languages, e.g. Haskell and Erlang.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2015.thomsen.ics

Sponsor: The CS Colloquium Series is supported by a generous donation from

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Rank based Estimation of Spectral Sensitivity Functions

Speaker: Dr. Maryam Darrodi Affiliation: University of East Anglia and University College London, United Kingdom Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Wednesday, October 7, 2015 Time: 13:00-14:00 EET Host: Constantinos Pattichis (pattichi-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2015.darrodi

Abstract:
The spectral sensitivity functions of a colour device e.g. a digital camera need to be known in order to accurately predict its response to spectral stimuli. These functions can be determined by cumbersome measurements in the lab or through statistical inference. The latter is the main focus of this paper. Typically, spectral sensitivities are estimated through linear regression assuming camera responds linearly to spectral stimuli. However, for rendered images (e.g. non-raw images taken by a mobile phone), this assumption is violated which can significantly impact an accuracy of sensor estimation. Here we describe a novel camera spectral sensitivity estimation technique that is robust for both linear and non-linear images. We note that the rank order of the sensor raw outputs should be the same as the rank order of the final rendered non-linear image assuming that the applied non-linear functions (gamma, camera curve etc.) are monotonically increasing. Each rank order can be written as a linear inequality that defines a linear constraint. These can be combined with other constraints such as zero sensitivity at ends of spectrum, unity of integration and linear combination of basis functions into the regression formulation. Solving for device sensitivities by this constrained regression is a quadratic programming problem. Our results show that the proposed rank-based method provides estimated spectral sensitivity functions that are consistently plausible for both raw and rendered data.

Short Bio:
Maryam Darrodi is a PostDoc of Colour Science at the University of East Anglia and University College London. She joined UEA in 2012 when she was awarded Senior Research Associate role at the age of 26. Maryam received her bachelors degree in Statistics first at the University of Beheshty (Tehran, Iran) and then directly proceeded to her doctoral degrees at University of Leeds in the UK where she was awarded PhD from school of Design. Maryam's current research is funded by Apple, Unilever, ESPRC, Buhler-Sortex and DataColor. Her overall interests is in different aspects of applied computer science, colour physics, psychophysics and psychology.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2015.darrodi.ics

Sponsor: The CS Colloquium Series is supported by a generous donation from

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Crowds for Real-time Applications

Speaker: Dr. Nuria Pelechano Affiliation: Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), Spain Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Tuesday, September 15, 2015 Time: 11:00-12:00 EET Host: Yiorgos Chrysanthou (yiorgos-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2015.pelechano

Abstract:
The simulation of large numbers of autonomous avatars can be a big challenge for real-time applications. In this talk I will cover some of the most relevant areas regarding this topic including local movement, planning, navigation meshes, synthesis of animations and rendering. Local movement can be achieved through a combination of physical forces and rules given by psychological and geometrical factors. At the higher level, local movement needs to be driven by a navigation technique, such as multi-domain planning based on different representations for space, time and actions. By using plans in one domain to focus the search in finer domains, we can speed up the overall process of having agents navigating complex virtual environments. This talk will briefly cover how navigation meshes can be automatically generated for path finding with the NEOGEN system. I will describe techniques to synthesize animations based on foot step trajectories for those scenarios that may require careful foot positioning. And finally I will cover rendering techniques focused on many animated characters in real time.

Short Bio:
Nuria Pelechano is an Associate Professor at the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya. She obtained her Engineering degree from the Universitat de Valencia, her Master’s degree from the University College London, and her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania as a Fulbright Scholar in 2006. During her post-doc she worked with the Architecture Department at UPenn in several technology transfer projects on crowd evacuation. Prof. Pelechano is co-author of the books “Virtual Crowds: Methods, Simulation, and Control. Morgan & Claypool Publishers, 2008.” and “Virtual Crowds: Steps toward Behavioral Realism, Morgan & Claypool Publishers, 2015”. Nuria has over 30 publications in journals and international conferences on Computer Graphics and Animation. She has participated in projects funded by the EU, the Spanish Government, and USA institutions. Her research interests include simulation, animation and rendering of crowds, generation of navigation meshes, real-time 3D graphics, and human-avatar interaction in virtual environments.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2015.pelechano.ics

Sponsor: The CS Colloquium Series is supported by a generous donation from

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Intelligent technologies: learning objects personalisation using Semantic Web methods and technologies, real-life application examples

Speaker: Dr. Eugenijus Kurilovas Affiliation: Vilnius Gediminas Technical University and Vilnius University, Lithuania Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Wednesday, September 16, 2015 Time: 11:00-12:00 EET Host: Georgia Kapitsaki (gkapi-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) and Pedro Trancoso (pedro-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2015.kurilovas

Abstract:
Colloquium aims at presenting research results on Web 3.0 – based personalisation of learning objects in repositories and virtual learning environments. Learning personalisation is analysed in terms of suitability of learning objects to particular learning styles. Literature review has shown that from standardisation perspective the current versions of learning objects’ specifications do not support personalised learning, and Web 3.0 approach based on RDF, XML and ontologies is suitable to personalise learning objects. Problem solving activity example is provided to illustrate the model. The novel sets portrait analysing interconnections between students’ learning styles, their preferred learning activities, relevant teaching / learning methods, and learning object types is presented in more detail. The well-known standardised vocabularies of teaching / learning methods and learning object types are used to establish these interconnections. The sets portrait of these interconnections is followed by the appropriate ontology. The ontology is considered as an appropriate tool to create learners’ personalised learning environments, consisting of learning objects, suitable teaching / learning methods and activities according to their preferred learning styles. The ontology should help the learner to find suitable learning objects according to preferred learning methods / activities, and vice versa, and thus to personalise learning. In general, students’ learning styles and other personal needs are considered as the main success factors in their learning and professional career.

Short Bio:
Eugenijus KURILOVAS is Associate Professor at Vilnius Gediminas Technical University and Senior Research Scientist at Vilnius University Institute of Mathematics and Informatics. Dr. E. Kurilovas is a member of 36 committees of international scientific journals and conferences, has published over 80 scientific papers and 6 books, and participated in over 30 EU-funded R&D projects and studies. His research area is technology-enhanced learning (e-learning): (1) Intelligent technologies for education and learning personalisation: multiple criteria decision making; Semantic Web applications; intelligent agents etc. (2) Mobile technologies in education; (3) Interoperability of e-learning system components: learning objects, repositories, activities, virtual learning environments etc. He is guest editor in “Journal of Universal Computer Science”, “Computers in Human Behavior”, and “International Journal of Engineering Education”, and reviewer in 12 journals abstracted / indexed in Thomson ISI Web of Science. He is also the author of 13 best paper awards at international conferences. Dr. E. Kurilovas is honoured as TOP 100 Scientist – 2014 by International Biographical Centre, Cambridge, and his biographical records are included in: Who is Who in the World – 2014 and 2015 (31st and 32nd Edition); 2000 Outstanding Intellectuals of the XXIst Century – 2014 (8th Edition); Who is Who in Science and Engineering – 2016-2017 (12th Edition); Dictionary of International Biography – 2014 and 2015 (37th and 38th Edition). For more information, please see http://eugenijuskurilovas.wix.com/my_site

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2015.kurilovas.ics

Sponsor: The CS Colloquium Series is supported by a generous donation from

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Geospatial Search and Mobility

Speaker: Dr. Dirk Ahlers Affiliation: Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Wednesday, September 9, 2015 Time: 18:00-19:00 EET Host: Demetris Zeinalipour (dzeina-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2015.ahlers

Abstract:
Location helps us to understand, map, and navigate the world we live in. The growing availability of geospatial data has already enabled a vast range of services. With advancing sensing technology and mapping on the one side and increased volume of user-generated geospatial data on the other side, the granularity of geospatial data has been pushed down beyond the building level towards high-quality indoor locations. This talk will first give an overview of geospatial search engines and geographic information retrieval and discuss experiences in developing geospatial search in various environments. It will continue to discuss quality issues for different types of geospatial data. A final focus will be put on recent work on human mobility and campus movement analysis in the context of Smart Cities and in collaboration with NTNU's MazeMap system. A discussion of open question and future work will open the floor for discussion.

Short Bio:
Dirk is a researcher in the field of geospatial Web retrieval and analysis. He is currently a research scientist at NTNU, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, where he works on geospatial Web mining and mobility data. He first came to Norway as a Marie Curie postdoc. Previously, after having received his Ph.D. from the University of Oldenburg, Germany, with a thesis on Geographically Focused Web Information Retrieval, he did an extended research stay at Unitec, Honduras. Dirk was the project lead on multiple geospatial search and mobility projects and recently co-organized the LocWeb2014 and LocWeb2015 workshops. More details are available at http://www.ntnu.edu/employees/dirk.ahlers

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2015.ahlers.ics

Sponsor: The CS Colloquium Series is supported by a generous donation from

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Preference-based Big Data Exploration

Speaker: Prof. Panos K. Chrysanthis Affiliation: University of Pittsburgh, United States Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Wednesday, July 15, 2015 Time: 11:00-12:00 EET Host: Demetris Zeinalipour (dzeina-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2015.chrysanthis

Abstract:
As the amount of data being generated every day increases exponentially, the term “Big Data” used to represent the challenge of large-scale data processing, is being mentioned more and more frequently in everyday life. This reflects the fact that people are increasingly relying on using data to drive their daily activities and decisions. Given the volumes of data, the challenge is how to avoid overwhelming the users with irrelevant results. Query personalization is a well-known technique in dealing with this challenge by utilizing user preferences with the goal of providing relevant results to the users. Along with preferences, diversity is another important aspect of query personalization which reduces the amount of redundant information included in the results. In this talk, we will present two new personalization techniques that significantly improve big data exploration by utilizing all types of user preferences in ranking and diversification. We will first present the HYPRE graph model and prototype system that integrate qualitative and quantitative preferences by means of preference strength or intensity. In the HYPRE model, users submit both qualitative and quantitative preferences along with an intensity value, both of which are used to filter and rank the query results. Then we will introduce a new framework called Preferential Diversity (PrefDiv), which is capable of generating results that are not only relevant to users' preference but are also diverse. Our framework provides users with a fine control over the trade-off between relevancy and diversity through intuitive tunable parameters. We design and implement a prototype of a real system for PrefDiv and design algorithms to work with the HYPER hybrid preferences model. Our experimental evaluations show that PrefDiv can successfully increase coverage of the result set compared to other alternatives, and achieves a significantly better Relevancy-Diversity trade-off ratio than other models. This work was in collaboration with Roxana Gheorghiu, Xiaoyu Ge and Alexandros Labrinidis.

Short Bio:
Panos K. Chrysanthis is a Professor of Computer Science and the founder and director of the Advanced Data Management Technologies Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh. Among his research interests are big database systems, data stream processing, mobile and pervasive data management, and distributed computing. He has fostered interdisciplinary collaborations between computer science, medicine, astronomy and mechanical engineering, both within and outside the University of Pittsburgh. His research contributions in principles, algorithms and prototypes to data management have been documented in more than 150 papers in top journals and prestigious, peer-reviewed conferences and workshops. In 1995, he received one of the first NSF CAREER Awards for his pioneer work on mobile data management and in 2010, he was recognized as a Distinguished Scientist by ACM. In 2007, he was also elevated to the level of a Senior Member of IEEE. The impact of his work is also evident in his appointment to the editorial board of several journals, his selection as a General and Program Chair of conferences and workshops and his invitations as a keynote speaker in various meetings. He was invited to offer tutorials, contribute book chapters, and organize and participate in NSF and Dagstuhl planning meetings. He has repeatedly served as a Program Committee member in all major data management conferences and his work has appeared in textbooks. For more information, please see http://db.cs.pitt.edu.

Note:
Slides available at the following URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/slides/2015-chrysanthis-talk-slides.pdf

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2015.chrysanthis.ics

Sponsor: The CS Colloquium Series is supported by a generous donation from

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

ECM-sketches and Multi-cloud MapReduce

Speaker: Dr. Odysseas Papapetrou Affiliation: Technical University of Crete, Greece Category: Colloquium Location: Room 148, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences (FST-01), 1 University Avenue, 2109 Nicosia, Cyprus (directions) Date: Wednesday, July 8, 2015 Time: 15:00-16:00 EET Host: Demetris Zeinalipour (dzeina-AT-cs.ucy.ac.cy) URL: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/index.php?speaker=cs.ucy.2015.papapetrou

Abstract:
In this talk I will present my recent work on big data management. I will start with ECM-sketch, a compact and efficient sketch that enables a wide range of sliding window queries over distributed high-dimensional data streams. The sketch allows effective summarization of streaming data over both time-based and count-based sliding windows, and enables point and inner-product queries with probabilistic accuracy guarantees. It can be employed to address a broad range of problems over centralized and distributed data streams, such as maintaining frequency statistics, finding heavy hitters and computing quantiles in the sliding-window model. The ECM-sketch is recently published in VLDB and VLDB journal. Furthermore, we are currently working towards an FPGA-based implementation of the sketch, which can further increase performance and reduce energy cost drastically. In the second part of the talk, I will introduce a new programming model that enables better utilization of the computational and network resources of multiple distributed clouds. Existing cloud programming models (e.g., MapReduce), assume that all cloud resources (consequently, also all data) are located within a single data center that supports high-speed network, e.g., infiniband. This is a restrictive assumption for many real-world scenarios, where the data to be processed is physically distributed, e.g., over cloud resources hosted by different providers, or even over multi-site data centers. I will explain why existing programming models fail in such scenarios, and describe a novel model suitable for this distribution. The model enables scalability of MapReduce computations across large distributed cloud federations, and requires a very small learning curve for existing MapReduce developers. The core innovation of the model is that it enables developers to clearly distinguish between local and holistic reductions, i.e., reductions that can be performed in isolation, inside each individual cloud, vs reductions that need to incorporate data from all clouds. This information can then be exploited by the execution engine, in order to alleviate network and processing bottlenecks and to increase parallelism. This work is currently under preparation.

Short Bio:
Odysseas Papapetrou received his PhD in Computer Science from University of Hannover, after obtaining an M.Sc. from Saarland University, and a B.Sc. and M.Sc. from the University of Cyprus. Since 2011, he is a researcher at the Software Technology and Network Applications Laboratory of the Technical University of Crete. His research focuses on big data management, with a special interest on distributed data.

	Web: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/
	Mailing List: https://listserv.cs.ucy.ac.cy/mailman/listinfo/cs-colloquium
	RSS: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/rss.xml
	Calendar: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/colloquium/schedule/cs.ucy.2015.papapetrou.ics

Sponsor: The CS Colloquium Series is supported by a generous donation from

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus cordially invites you to the Colloquium entitled:

Web-Scale Workflow and Analytics