PhD Forum 1

What an exciting start to GHC!

I attended the PhD Forum #1 this morning because it seemed to apply to my interest in networking! I've got to admit, though...as an undergraduate (in applied networking & systems administration), some of that math and algorithm used really goes over my head. :( But it's great to know there's women who enjoy it! Here's an overview of what I heard:

Improving the User Experience of Information Technologies In Residential Settings
Erika researched how technology problems affect people in residential settings. She is working on fixing user misconceptions by developing a piece of software called "Tech Clips". This allows people to ask their family and friends for help by using screenshots, text, or videos. It seems like an interesting idea.

Secure Distributed Computation and Communication
Arpita is trying to fix a core problem in distributed computing and cryptography by improving secret sharing in a distributed environment. Unfortunately I didn't really understand what she was doing. :(

Automatic Generation of Parallel Programs with Dynamic Scheduling on a Network-on-Chip
Jungsook is looking at improving hardware- specifically Network-on-chip. She is proposing using run-time load balancing to speed up on chip communication.

Discovery, Generation and Analysis of Network Policy Configurations
Taghrid has been researching ways to probe a firewall to get information about the network behind it, and also analyzing ways to improve network policy (including QoS). Pretty interesting stuff!

Liz