NYU and IBM Activities

IBM Watson: Humans vs. Machine - Who Will Win?

2011-01-28T14:51:00.078-05:00

Details

Date: February 16, 2011, 6:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Location: CUNY Grad Center, Rooms C198 and C197 ; 365 5th Avenue, NY, NY 10016

Students and staff from CUNY and NYU attended the final Jeopardy! show that featured Watson (artificial intelligence software).

The NYU STEP (Science & Technology Entry Program) group:

Some NYU students who attended the event:

Thank you for joining us to witness history being made as a machine once more takes on human intelligence. We found out who wins!

Jeopardy! The IBM Challenge promises was an epic battle.

Agenda
6:00-6:15pm : Registration and Networking
6:15-7:00pm : Welcome and Opening Remarks
7:00-7:30pm : Jeopardy! The IBM Challenge - on TV
7:30-8:30pm : Q&A and Networking

Speakers included Wlodek Zadrozny.

We look forward to seeing you at this exciting event.

Photos from Columbia Watch Event on Feb 15, 2011

Photos from CCNY Watch Event on Feb 15, 2011

More Information

IBM cordially invites you to join us for a special event: Jeopardy! The IBM Challenge. Come hear from IBM, and get an insider’s view of Watson and what it means to our future. Watson, named after IBM founder Thomas J. Watson, has been developed over the past four years by a team of IBM Research scientists who set out to accomplish a grand challenge: build a computing system that rivals a human’s ability to answer questions posed in natural language with speed, accuracy and confidence.

Watson makes its debut as the first non-human contestant to appear on the award-winning quiz show Jeopardy. Watson takes on all-time champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in a bid to become a new breed of champion. The format of Jeopardy! provides the ultimate challenge for a computing system. It must have an unlimited range of subject matter at its fingertips. Watson has been trained to understand clues with subtle meaning, irony, riddles, and other complexities in which humans excel and computers traditionally do not. But this is more than just a game. Watson's ability to process this kind of data represents a major leap forward in natural language processing, systems design and deep analytics – innovations with the potential to transform industries.

Videos

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Internships and Jobs at IBM

Please follow these links:

The Answer to one of the Jeopardy! Questions

Movies are in 3-D, why not our Data?

2010-09-30T06:18:00.011-05:00

On September 29 Julia Grace gave a talk entitled "Movies are in 3-D, why not our Data? - Taking Web 2.0 into the 3-D World"

Here is some more information:

Movies, televisions, video games: flat is out and 3-D is in. We often talk about how Web 2.0 impacts different industries (such as healthcare, journalism or government); now it's time to turn the tables and ask: how is the 3-D movement changing Web 2.0? How can we visualize and interact with our data in three dimensions? From social networking sites to tweeting buses and trains: why it's important that geotagged information generated in our 3-D world be shown in 3-D

You can find the charts for the talk here. You can find out more about Web 2.0 at the O'Reilly Web 2.0 event in NY where Julia also presented.

The attendees were varied (students, IBMers - and there were representatives from a hospital and a bank). The discussion was animated, e.g., whether a sphere is the most appropriate surface to display data, whether other surfaces are possible, applying HD TV ideas on a spherical or other kinds of surfaces. (I dreamt of cerulean spheres last night)

You can contact Julia on twitter

Think

There was an example of an IBM Think sign in the room.

NYU Open Source Club Visit

2010-01-28T18:48:00.014-05:00

The NYU Open Source Club visited IBM 11 Madison. Andy Smith of IBM talked about Apache Shindig and OpenSocial - and how to start contributing:

- Contributing Code Examples: http://wiki.opensocial.org/index.php?title=Contributing_Code_Examples

Here are some links related to some earlier work we did on OpenSocial:

- Build a pureXML and JSON application, Part 1: Store and query JSON with DB2 pureXMLAdopt a simple JSON-to-XML mapping

- Build a pureXML and JSON application, Part 2: Create Universal Services for pureXML that expose JSON Configure, deploy, and test JSON Universal Services on a JSONx store

- Build a pureXML and JSON application, Part 3: Create OpenSocial gadgets for pureXML Define, deploy, and test OpenSocial gadgets to interact with JSON Universal Services

Here are some links for finding internships at IBM:
* Jobs at IBM (you can search by country)
* Extreme Blue at IBM

One of the visiting students had already had a 6 month internship at IBM in Beijing working on the systems for the Olympics. He said that the offices in IBM 11 Madison looked like IBM in Beijing.

We also discussed the database classes at NYU and ate Liquorice Allsorts. One of the students ate Bertie Bassett

NYU WinC Group Visit to IBM at 11 Madison - Nov 20,2009

2009-11-09T20:12:00.021-05:00

Details

Meeting time: 3:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Meeting location: 11 Madison Ave (at 24th Street), 18th Floor, Room 18006

About 40 students, mostly Masters, about 6 PhDs and a couple of undergrads, attended the talks and an informal panel.

The feeback was very positive and included:

- I am a research person with a PhD and enjoyed both talks. But I loved the work that Claudia's group is doing. Thanks for inviting us.
- Very interesting presentation on data mining.
- I loved both talks. Nearing towards the end of my PhD in machine learning. I imagine how difficult it is to mine data. Thank you for the talks.
- The idea of Watson is crazy but I find it is exciting and amazing.
- Watson is crazy cool. I wish I could have heard more on the algorithms.
- Great discussion and presentation, eclectic and informative.
- Although I signed up late for this activity, but I'm lucky to be here and having a great afternoon.
- The presentations were fantastic and opened our eyes on the most cutting-edge research in IBM. And the panel session really gave us a comprehensive big picture in so many aspects of IBM. Our students were quite excited and become more interested in IBM after the trip.

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Join IBM colleagues to hear about exciting new technology and initiatives, e.g., the Jeopardy challenge, hear from those working in various divisions of IBM about their work, and network with local IBMers over refreshments.

Please notify Angjoo Kim and Jillian Elizabeth Kozyra at NYU by Tuesday Nov 17 if you plan to attend - as names have to be supplied to security in advance. Places are limited.

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Agenda

3:00-3:30 Arrive and network and have refreshments
3:30-4:00 Building Watson: A Brief Overview of the DeepQA Project by Jennifer Chu-Carroll
4:00-4:30 Data Mining at IBM Research: Combining Customers, Competitions and Science by Claudia Perlich
4:30-5:00 Informal Careers panel
- Very Special Guest Janet Butler: Vice President Software Sales at IBM for New York and New Jersey
- Very Special Guest Warren Lucas: Sales Executive at IBM running the Information Management software sales business in New York and New Jersey

- Panelist Caroline Benveniste: Working with Hardware
- Panelist Marina Greenstein: Working in Sales
- Panelist Anshu Kak: Being a Distinguished Engineer
- Panelist Keith McAuliffe: Being a Distinguished Engineer
- Panelist Claudia Perlich: Working in Research - Internships in IBM Research
5:00-5:30 Networking and Refreshments

Talk Descriptions

Building Watson: A Brief Overview of the DeepQA Project

Jennifer Chu-Carroll will present an overview the DeepQA project, an effort that integrates NLP (Natural Language Processing), IR (Information Retrieval), KR&R (Knowledge Representation and Reasoning), and ML (Machine Learning) technologies to advance the state of the art in open-domain Question Answering. A key application of this technology is the development of "Watson", a computer system that can answer complex natural language questions and will compete with human contestants on the game of Jeopardy! This talk will be a high-level overview of IBM’s development efforts so far, the key research and engineering challenges, and IBM's evaluation methodology -- what it takes to win the game

Jennifer Chu-Carroll is a Research Staff Member and manager at IBM T. J. Watson Research Center. She is currently working on the DeepQA project, where IBM develops and leverages technologies in Natural Language Processing, Information Retrieval, Machine Learning, and Knowledge Representation and Reasoning for advanced open-domain Question Answering. Prior to joining IBM in 2001, Jennifer spent 5 years as a Member of Technical Staff at Lucent Technologies Bell Laboratories where she worked on spoken dialogue management.

Jennifer is currently serving on the editorial board of the Journal of Dialogue Systems. In the recent past, she was on the executive board of the North American Chapter of the ACL (2007-2008), and was program co-chair of the HLT/NAACL 2006 Conference and program committee area chair for EMNLP/HLT 2005. She also served on the editorial board of the Computational Linguistics Journal, and as secretary and scientific advisory board member of the ACL/ISCA special interest group on discourse and dialogue (SIGDIAL).

Data Mining at IBM Research: Combining Customers, Competitions and Science

IBM Research is housing one of the largest community of data mining experts. IBM's work spans a variety of activities:
1) customer-initiates applied projects to provide analytical solutions for day-to-day business problems,
2) participating, winning and organizing data mining competitions and
3) theoretical data mining and machine learning research to be published in conferences and journals.
Claudia Perlich will give an overview of a number of these activities and discuss some of the necessary skills and experiences.

Claudia Perlich has received her Master in Computer Science from Colorado University at Boulder, Diplom in Computer Science from Technische Universitaet in Darmstadt, and her Ph.D. in Information Systems from Stern School of Business, New York University. Her Ph.D. thesis concentrated on probability estimation in multi-relational domains that capture information of multiple entity types and relationships between them. Claudia joined the Data Analytics Research group as a Research Staff Member in October 2004. Her research interests are in machine learning for complex real-world domains including marketing, finance and medicine. She and her team have been very successful in data mining competitions. Her recent wins include KDD CUP 2007, 2008 and 2009.

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Panelist Bios

Caroline Benveniste is a Senior Technical Staff Member in the Systems Group Technology RAS and Architecture Department. She is currently leading a project in the area of High Availability and Resiliency. Caroline has an undergraduate degree in Physics and a PhD in Electrical Engineering. After working for two failed start-ups, she joined IBM in 1996 where she worked on many aspects of computer architecture, including interconnection networks and memory. She is an expert in main memory compression and previous to her current position worked on edge of network computing. She has also led projects in virtualization, simulation and performance analysis.

Marina Greenstein is an Executive IT Specialist with the IBM Data Servers and Application Development Team. She is an IBM Certified Solutions Expert and has experience in database application architecture and development. Joined IBM in 1995, in the past 14 years Marina has assisted customers in their migrations from Microsoft SQL Server®, Sybase, and Oracle databases to DB2. She has presented migration methodology at numerous DB2 technical conferences and at SHARE. She is also the author of multiple articles and tutorial about DB2 application development.

Anshu Kak is a Distinguished Engineer in IBM Software Group leading the Worldwide Software IT Architect Community. Anshu is recognized as a leader in the deployment of architecture and the design of complex end-to-end client solutions, leveraging her deep technical expertise in Enterprise Architecture, WebSphere, SOA and Master Data Management. Anshu is TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework) Certified Enterprise Architect. Anshu is focused on strengthening the skills of the Software IT Architect community and has a particular passion for developing the architecture skills of key growth markets including Russia, India, South Africa and China. In addition Anshu is currently leading very important initiatives for the Software Technical Professionals: the Software Deployment initiative where she has authored a book also called "Guidance to Successful Software Deployment". Anshu is a tenacious advocate of technical vitality both inside and outside of IBM. She has twice received the Women In Color Technology "All Star Award" from a national level publication magazine. She is a member of Open Group, ACM and Women in Technology consortium. She is an IBM Ambassador to New York University New York.

Keith McAuliffe is a Distinguished Engineer in IBM Global Financial Services Sector. Mr. McAuliffe supports the Morgan Stanley Integrated Account. As a Distinguished Engineer, Mr. McAuliffe has developed a breadth of experience and a proven track record of delivering successful engagements. Mr. McAuliffe has provided leadership in all aspects of application development including project management, design, and implementation. His expertise includes enterprise resource planning implementations, enterprise architecture assessments, middleware solutions, e-business application development, and client/server programming

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Logistics for Nov 20

11 Madison is on 24th Street between Madison and Park Avenues. You can enter on either of the avenues. Please check in at the IBM security desk in the middle of the lobby (not the Credit Suisse desk on the side). You will need to show a photo ID, such as a driver’s license. The meeting is on the 18th floor. Enter on the side of the floor where the receptionist sits, and you will be directed to room 18006

View Larger Map

NYU WinC Group Visit to IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Hawthorne - 14 November 2008

2008-10-29T07:41:00.042-05:00

About 33 students from NYU visited IBM Hawthorne on 14 November 2008. NYU alumni at IBM and some of the IBM Manhattan Technical Vitality Community (associated with the IBM Academy of Technology) attended the event - as well as the speakers. Here is the agenda for the day:

09:30-11:00am : Bus from NYU
11:00-11:50am : IBM Research Overview - Joanna Batstone
12:00-12:30pm : Services Research - Robert Morris
12:30-1:00pm : Stream Processing - Lisa Amini
01:00-2:30pm : Lunch with Alumni Visits to offices etc
02:30-3:00pm : The Promise, the Limits, and the Beauty of Software - Grady Booch in Second Life with help from David Levine
03:00-3:30pm : The Genographic Project - Laxmi Parida
03:30-5:00pm : Bus to NYU

Some Feedback from the Students

Great to talk to IBM employees
Lunch with NYU alumni was so great
Nice to see how open the office is
It would have been even better if we had some more time to do everything in detail and not rush.
Great opportunity to meet up with NYU Alumni
Interesting to see so many Macs
Thank you so much to everyone at IBM and WinC - it has been excellent.
Lunch was great, the interaction superb. (Coffee)
More information on job hiring process would have been good.
Thanks a lot. Excellent work. Interacting with the employees over lunch was so special and informative. A little more time would have been great.
A great experience. It is really a privilege to have listened to people like Grady Booch and other accomplished employees of IBM.
Thank you very much for organizing the IBM trip. It's really a fantastic experience of meeting those outstanding people and listening to their talks! WinC IS doing something unusual!

Lunch with the NYU Alumni

A small accident with the spaghetti :)

Speaker Bios

Joanna Batstone

Joanna L. Batstone, Ph.D. is the Director for Distributed Computing in IBM Research, with worldwide strategy responsibility for Distributed Computing. Previously she was the Program Director, Development, for IBM’s Sensors & Actuators business unit and a Senior Technical Staff Member, IBM Software Group. She spent 5 years as a Senior Manager for Solutions Development in IBM's Healthcare & Life Sciences Business Unit with development responsibilities for IBM's Life Sciences solutions for Pharma and Biotech. Under her leadership, IBM launched industry solutions for data integration, regulatory compliance, clinical trials management and information lifecycle management. Before joining the IBM Healthcare & Life Sciences team, Batstone spent 11 years in IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY, in the Physical Sciences and Computer Sciences departments.

She has published over 80 papers and organized many industry conference symposia. Her professional activities include: BIO IT Coalition Advisory Board, Indiana University Science Informatics Advisory Board, invited speaker on "Turning Genomics into Medicine" at the 2003 MIT Emerging Technologies conference, sponsored by the Technology Review, featured speaker at the Bio IT World webcast - IT Solutions for Proteomics, (Nov ’02), scientific advisory board for the Cambridge Healthtech Institute’s Data Visualization and Interpretation Conference, (’03) and invited speaker in ’02, an invited speaker on "The Future of the Biotechnology Industry: Opportunities for Small Businesses", at the NY Solutions 2002 Conference.

Batstone received a B.Sc., in Chemical Physics and a Ph.D., in Physics from The University of Bristol, UK, followed by postdoctoral work at AT&T Bell Laboratories, NJ, and a Lectureship in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Liverpool, UK, before joining IBM Research. She received the ’95 Burton Medal from the Microscopy Society of America, the '91 Robert Lansing Hardy Gold Medal from The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society and the '89 Cosslett Award from the Microbeam Analysis Society.

Batstone takes a leadership role in promoting opportunities for Women in Technology with regular presentations on careers and survival skills. Batstone chaired the American Physical Society’s Committee on Careers and Professional Development and was an elected Member at Large on the Executive Committee for the Forum for Industrial and Applied Physics. She represents IBM at the New York Academy of Sciences Womens' Investigators Network Diversity Leadership Initiative, she was an invited Panelist at the 1st Annual Conference on Non-Traditional Careers, sponsored by Trendsetters Network, 21st Century Careers for Girls in NYC, a keynote speaker at the 14th Annual Conference on Women in Engineering, Kingston, Ontario and a keynote speaker for the Committee on the Status of Women in Physics, American Physical Society March meeting, in Montreal, Canada.

Robert Morris

Dr. Robert Morris is Vice President, Services Research, IBM Research, where he is responsible for IBM's worldwide research efforts in services. IBM's revenue is now more than 50% from services, and recently IBM Research has introduced this major new area of services research at labs in New York, California, Austin, Haifa, Zurich, Tokyo, Beijing, New Delhi and Bangalore. Representative projects include policy and risk management, human resource optimization, data systems management, business mining and insights, model-driven business designs, services software engineering, etc. IBM is also an early proponent of Services Science, Management and Engineering (SSME). SSME draws heavily on information and computer sciences, mathematics, management and social sciences, etc., and combines them in new ways to create global wealth and solve social problems.

From 2004-2006 he was VP, Assets Innovation, IBM Global Services. In this position his mission was to drive innovation in IBM's services through four main activities: the creation and commercialization of intellectual assets (typically technology) that can be used to improve service effectiveness; the creation and management of services methods and tools; knowledge management tools; and talent (professions, communities, etc).

From 1999-2004, he was the director of the IBM Almaden Research Center where he oversaw scientists and engineers doing exploratory and applied research in hardware and software areas such as nanotechnology, materials science, storage systems, data management, web technologies and user interfaces. Robert was also vice president for personal systems and storage research, managing this worldwide research work within IBM. During this period he managed the creation of variety of new initiatives, including a joint research institute with Stanford on spintronics, a startup business on webscale knowledge mining and discovery, new technologies for distributed storage and client management, and a focused “services science” research effort. Previously, Robert was a director at the IBM T.J. Watson Research lab in New York, where he led teams in personal systems research and was the executive responsible for the Deep Blue chess machine. He began his employment with IBM at Almaden working on storage and data management technologies. Originally from Australia, he began his career at Bell Laboratories where he was involved in developing a number of networking and computing technologies.

Robert was chairman of the Bay Area Science and Innovation Consortium (BASIC) from 2002-2005, an organization consisting of the heads of major research institutions in Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. He represented IBM on the Government University Industry Research Roundtable (run by the National Academies) from 2001-2006. He has published more than fifty articles in computer science, electrical engineering, and mathematics literature and has received eleven patents. He holds a PhD in computer science from the University of California, Los Angeles, and is a member of the IBM Academy of Technology, and a Fellow of the IEEE. He was an Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Computers from 1986-1991 and is on a variety of advisory boards for leading universities.

Lisa Amini

Lisa Amini is a Distinguished Engineer and Senior Manager of the Exploratory Stream Processing Research Group at the IBM TJ Watson Research Center. She is the Engineering Lead for the System S project, led the design and development of its stream processing core, and is now architect for the recently announced InfoSphere Streams product, which is based on System S technology . Lisa has worked at IBM the areas of stream processing systems and algorithms, distributed systems, networking, and multimedia for over 15 years. Lisa received her PhD degree in Computer Science from Columbia University.

Grady Booch

Grady Booch's Bio

Laxmi Parida

Laxmi Parida's Bio

Laxmi Parida is a Research Staff Member of the Computational Biology Center at the IBM T, J. Watson and a visiting professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York. She received her Ph.D. in the area of Computational Genomics from New York University; she received the Janet Fabri Award for an outstanding thesis in computer science. She is also a recipient of the Sandra Blestein award for notable achievement in mathematical and computer science by a woman. She has authored over seventy-five research papers, and holds several patents related to her algorithmic work.

Some Group Photos

Final Farewells

Handy Links

IBM Hawthorne: http://www.watson.ibm.com/general_info_haw.shtml
NYU and IBM Activities: http://nyuibm.blogspot.com/
The XML Challenge - Be an XML Superstar http://xmlchallenge.com/
XQuery: Introduction, Tips, and Future Directions - Nov 17, 2008 2:00 p.m. Eastern / 11:00 a.m. Pacific (60 minutes) - The session will be Recorded : http://www.eseminarslive.com/c/a/Database/IBM111708/
Two Internships available in IBM Toronto - Jan 2009 until April 2010 - Posting # is SWG-0186245 and available at: http://www-03.ibm.com/employment/ca/en/job_3.html
Two graduate positions available in IBM Toronto - Posting # is SWG-0201281 and available at: http://www-03.ibm.com/employment/ca/en/job_2.html

NYU Contacts : Yi Ke, Christine Lee, Sana' Odeh,
IBM Contacts : Arcadia Kocybala, Susan Malaika

IBM Workshop at NYU - 12 October 2007

2007-09-28T06:10:00.001-05:00

When: Friday, October 12th - 10am – 4pm
Where: Courant Room 109
The Schedule:

Morning 10:00-12:30: SOA, DB2, XML, associated tools and industry usage – targeted towards undergraduates
Lunchtime 12:30-13:25: Talk with Brenda Dietrich, IBM Fellow and Director of Mathematical Sciences Dept in IBM Research - and She's Got Their Number!
Afternoon 13:30-15:45: Research topics – targeted towards graduate students

Summary of the Day
Everything went according to plan - Hurrah! About 40 students attended the sessions through the day - with a maximum of about 18-20 students at any one time. The attendees were mostly from NYU Courant, with one or two from the Stern Business School, from Columbia, from Rutgers, and from CUNY. About 8 students remained all day - and some came in for individual sessions, e.g., the approximation algorithms session. All the sessions were very well received. The students were divided between whether future events should be presented in one day - or on a weekly basis. The students who attended from other universities prefer the single day format. The Stern students said many more Stern students would be interested in the morning sessions - as well as Msis - Master of Science in Information Systems students.

Many thanks to the NYU hosts Shaila Musharoff, and others from the NYU WinC group. Special thanks also to Sana' Odeh of NYU - and of course all the IBM speakers.

The students are very interested in SOA and ask Steve Schaffer a lot of questions.

A student shows off a DB2 CD.

Brenda Dietrich tells us about research topics in mathematics.

Claudia Perlich listens to Brenda Dietrich before she presents - Claudia tells us about her entry to a NetFlix competion which won a prize.

Yuan-Chi Chang prepares to present.

Konstantin Makarychev tells us about approximation algorithms.

Rama Akkiraju tells us about Services Science.

THE AGENDA

Undergraduate Students Become part of a community, write articles, books, become DB2 certified, and become a student ambassador

10:00-10:45 SOA in 45 minutes
10:45-11:45 DB2, pureXML, Web Services and Web 2.0
11:45-12:15 Using DB2 in Business
12:15-12:30 Getting Lunch
12:30-13:25 Lunch and Talk with Brenda Dietrich and She's Got Their Number!

Graduate Students Get ideas of research topics suitable for Masters projects (or possibly part of your PhD) that may be of interest to IBM or to IBM customers

13:30-14:00 Research topics for Data Management
14:00-14:30 Research topics for KDD (Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining)
14:30-15:00 Approximation Algorithms for Unique Games
15:00-15:30 Research topics for Service Science
15:30-15:45 Final Remarks

The Topics and their speakers

• Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA): Steve Schaffer – Wall St SOA Architect, Certified SOA Solution Architect and Software IT Architect
• DB2, pureXML, Web Services and Web 2.0: Susan Malaika – Senior Technical Staff Member in IBM's Software Group
• Using DB2 in Business: Vernaliz Co
• Data Management: Yuan-Chi Chang - Chair of the IBM Data Management Professional Interest Community
• Knowledge Discovery: Claudia Perlich – Research Staff Member in the Data Analytics Research group
• Approximation Algorithms for Unique Games: Konstantin Makarychev – IBM Researcher whose area is in approximation algorithms
• Service Science: Rama Akkiraju - Senior Technical Staff Member; Chair of the Service Science Professional Interest Community

Also on the agenda…
- Lunch with Brenda Dietrich

- Meeting with Faculty at 4:15pm

Location: Warren Weaver Hall

Room 109
Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
New York University
251 Mercer Street
New York, N.Y. 10012-1185

This is a large lecture hall on the ground floor which can has 190 seats, a podium at the front, and projector system with in-house support. Room is available from 9am for set up. Directions and map can be found here: http://cims.nyu.edu/direct.html

More Details of the Sessions

Services Oriented Architecture: This session provides an overview of the SOA concept, constructs and value as a Systems Integration strategy.
Speaker: Steve Schaffer is an Open Group Master IT Architect, Certified SOA Design Architect, and Designated Consulting SOA Architect to IBMs Wall Street Business Unit

DB2, pureXML, Web Services and Web 2.0 : This talk will introduce DB2 and its support for XML and will describe its uses in the industry. It will also outline how students can become DB2 certified.
Speaker: Susan Malaika is a senior technical staff member in IBM's Software Group. She specializes in XML and databases. She is a member of the IBM Academy of Technology.

Lunch with Brenda Dietrich

Data Management: This session will describe current research activities in the areas of XML, warehousing, integration, unstructured information management.
Speaker: Yuan-Chi Chang is the chair of the data management professional interest community in IBM Research and manages database research group at Watson Lab.

Knowledge Discovery: This session will provide a brief overview of a number of ongoing projects in the Data Analytics group and present in more detail the recent successful effort on modeling NETFLIX users in the KDD-CUP 2007.
Speaker: Claudia Perlich has received her Ph.D. in Information Systems from Stern School of Business, New York University. Claudia joined the Data Analytics Research group as a Research Staff Member in October 2004 and has been working on a number of research projects and customer engagements in the broad area of predictive modeling for business applications.

Approximation Algorithms for Unique Games: This talk will introduce the Unique Games Problem and Unique Games Conjecture. The Unique Games problem was introduced by Uriel Feige and Laszlo Lovasz. We are given a graph G, a set of labels [k] = {1,...,k}, and permutations pi_{uv} on the set [k] (for all edges (u,v)). Our goal is to find an assignment of labels to variables x(u) (for all vertices u) that maximizes the number of satisfied constraints x(v) = pi_{uv}(x(u)) (for edges (u,v)).
Given an instance where all constraints are satisfiable, it is easy to find such a satisfying assignment. However, if almost all constraints are satisfiable, the Unique Games Conjecture of Khot says, that it is hard to satisfy even a very small fraction of all constraints. This conjecture is interesting from the theoretical point of view, because it implies strong inapproximability results for many combinatorial optimization problems. Particularly, if the conjecture is true, many known approximation algorithms are optimal and cannot be improved.
The talk will describe SDP-based approximation algorithms for the Unique Games Problem and discuss their implications.
The talk is based on joint works with Moses Charikar, Eden Chlamtac and Yury Makarychev.
Speaker: Konstantin Makarychev is a researcher at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. His area of research is approximation algorithms. Konstantin graduated from Princeton University in 2007.

Service Science is becoming a strategic area of scientific study at IBM Research. Historically, IBM has been a leader in applying mathematics, statistics, and operations research to traditional manufacturing problems such as supply chain management, transportation optimization and logistics management. While these concerns continue to be of importance to manufacturing companies, the shift towards service-based economies in certain parts of the world are bringing new business concerns to focus. Industry leaders need guidance on how to innovate, manage, evaluate and optimize their service businesses.
IBM Research is actively working with the world-wide research and academic communities to help define research directions for Service Science. These activities include new academic initiatives such as Service Science Management and Engineering (SSME) and sponsoring several conferences in this area to stimulate research and cross-disciplinary collaboration. In this session, we will introduce our perspectives on service science and outline interesting research topics in this area.
Speaker: Rama Akkiraju is a Senior Technical Staff Member at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in Hawthorne, NY. She holds a masters degree in computer science and an MBA degree from Stern School of Business, New York University. Rama graduated at the top of the MBA class of 2004. Since joining IBM Research in 1995, she has worked on agent-based decision support systems, electronic market places and business process integration technologies. She is currently working on interesting problems such as valuation of business transformation projects, and business value networks. Rama is the chair of the Service Science Professional Interest Community for Watson Labs in New York.

Previous NYU IBM Day

See http://nyuibm.blogspot.com/2007/03/nyu-wic-group-visit-to-ibm-tj-watson.html

Testing : FpML (derivatives) Feed on a pureXML database

2007-05-18T19:49:00.000-05:00

FpML Atom Feed from a pureXML database

The link above returns an atom feed exposed directly from FpML messages stored a pureXML database.

NYU WinC Group Visit to IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Hawthorne - 30 March 2007

2007-03-30T14:54:00.000-05:00

NYU Women in Computing Group Visit to IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Hawthorne on 30 March 2007:
30 NYU students visited IBM including 9 PhD, 16 MS, and 12 BS students from Courant and Stern.

At the end of the sessions, we proposed the following:
- making the NYU visit to IBM an annual activity
- running a workshop on technical topics in the fall at NYU

Here is the agenda for the visit
- 11:00-11:50 Cathy Lasser (VP, Industry Solutions and Emerging Business) Research Overview
- 11:50-12:10 Susan Puglia (VP, Quality and Process Transformation Executive for Technical Career Paths Development and Technical Support)
- 12:10-12:35 Brenda Dietrich (Director, Mathematical Sciences) Mathematics at IBM
- 12:35-13:00 Anshu Kak (Executive IT Architect) Services-Oriented Architecture
- 13:00-14:00 Lunch with NYU Alumni, speakers, Charles Lickel (VP, Software),
- 14:00-14:45 Fran Allen (IBM Fellow Emerita, ACM Turing Award Recipient)Compiling a Career
- 14:45-15:15 Mahesh Viswanathan (Lead Architect, Information on Demand)Web 2.0: Challenging the Status Quo in Information Technology

Here are some comments from the students about the visit:

Lectures were interesting and engaging! It would be great to have similar speakers on campus.
Interesting and fun. Learned a lot.
It was great!
Inspiring and fun!
Very informative and fun!
It was very nice to hear from people who are experienced in the field I am interested in.
Great to learn about IBM and how they fit into technological innovation. Exceptionally inspiring.
Very interesting, would have liked to have seen the facility more.
Very useful and practical advice. Also, fun. Great.
Useful for my future -> Very diverse topics and great speakers!!
Amazing set of speakers. Exciting topics. Very well-organized. I learnt a lot! Thanks a lot!
One idea: have a 5-10 min break in between talks such that students can interact with the speaker informally - and rest-room break.
I appreciate the support and encouragement from IBM's employees.
Great, informative, educational day. Wonderful opportunity to listen to exemplary figure like Fran Allen and other amazing speakers from different departments of IBM.
Suggestion: A little more detail regarding internship opportunities in different departments would have been useful and made a difference.
Reply: Here is some information on the IBM Research internship program.
Thanks a lot for the great trip!
Suggestions: More technical content and more detailed description of ongoing research would be of interest, e.g., examples of specific research problems and approaches etc).
Please provide the speakers contact information if possible.
Reply: Can contact me initially if information not available above.
Would like to have a trip inside the IBM Building
It is great.
Very informational, Gave me lots of insight to the company.

Community Maintained Artifacts and The Social Web

2007-03-29T14:51:00.000-05:00

John Riedl, Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Minnesota
Friday, March 30, 10:30AM-noon
IBM Yorktown, Room 26-024
Host: David Cohn

Many online communities are emerging that, like Wikipedia, bring people together to build community-maintained artifacts of lasting
value (CALVs). Motivating people to contribute is a key problem because the quantity and quality of contributions ultimately determine
a CALV's value. We pose three related research questions: 1) How does intelligent task routing---matching people with work---affect the
quantity of contributions? 2) How does reviewing contributions before accepting them affect the quality of contributions? 3) How do
recommender systems affect the evolution of a shared tagging vocabulary among the contributors?

About the Speaker: Professor Riedl specializes in collaborative filtering, systems, and information filtering. He also often speaks as an expert on the topic of online social networks. In 2006, he was named a Senior Member of the IEEE and also won the Best Paper Award at the Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) Conference. Riedl has also received the Commerce Technology Award, The MIT Sloan School Award for Innovation in E-Commerce, and at least half a dozen teaching awards. Riedl has served on many program committees and has authored more than 50 publications, including one book, journal and conference papers, short articles and book chapters. He is a member of the ACM and IEEE organizations, and an Editorial Board member for the Journal of Electronic Commerce Technologies.

Enabling Data Retrieval - by Ranking and Beyond

2007-03-15T23:01:00.000-05:00

Title: Enabling Data Retrieval - by Ranking and Beyond
When: 29 March, 2007 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM
Where: IBM Hawthorne GN-K35
Speaker: Chengkai Li, Ph.D. Candidate, UIUC
Availability: Open

Database management systems (DBMSs) are facing challenges in supporting non-traditional data retrieval for emerging applications. We need retrieval systems over data, much like a "Google" for databases, parallel the well-established information retrieval over text. Such systems should allow users to use flexible and intuitive queries capturing their information needs, and to explore the databases
effectively. In the talk, I will discuss this exciting research area and introduce my work in this direction. In particular I will present RankSQL, a DBMS that provides a systematic and principled framework for ranking by extending relational algebra. I will further introduce our work on ranking aggregate queries. Effective data retrieval mechanisms go beyond just ranking. I will discuss our proposal of generalizing Group-By to clustering, parallel to the generalization from Order-By to
ranking, and combining the two constructs. Moreover, I will briefly mention our study of inverse ranking queries.

Recruiting and Internships in Technology Session Summary - Feb 1st

2007-02-05T09:49:00.000-05:00

Women in Computing's (WinC) "Recruiting and Internships in Technology" event that was held on Thursday, February 1st was a great success! We had over 70 people show up, when we were expecting around 40.

Students looking for a full-time, part-time, or internship position came to meet our panel of extraordinary women technologists. A VP from Morgan Stanley and two IBM representatives came, one of which included Sandy Carter,the Vice President of SOA and WebSphere strategy, Channels and Marketing of IBM Corporation. They talked about their work, what exactly they do, what companies they work with, and what is in store for the future of technology. They shared their expert advice on how to manage and successfully execute the job hunt, and how they themselves reached the high level status in their own careers.

After the panel discussion,students got a chance to ask questions and enjoy refreshments (compliments to Patsy's Pizzeria). They also got the chance to talk to all three of our panelists, and to personally give them their resumes. This event was a fantastic networking opportunity to mingle with some very important, high power women.

This event's success is due to the hard work of the WinC team. However, we would like more people to get involved and help continue the burgeoning growth of Women in Computing. In order to serve our WInC members better, we strive to constantly hosts events and activities that will benefit you to the fullest extent. If you are interested in lending a helping hand, or have some idea/interest in a specific area and would like to pursue such, let us know! We would greatly appreciate it. Thanks to all that attended-Hope you took full advantage of a great opportunity!

The next WinC meeting
Monday, February 12th
8pm, Room 1314 Warren Weaver Hall

Hope to see you all there!
Below is a link to the blog of Sandy Carter, one of our speakers at the event :
Sandy Carter Blog

Christine Lee

Recruiting and Internships in Technology Event: - Thu Feb 1st

2007-01-31T07:55:00.000-05:00

Recruiting and Internships in Technology Event: IBM and Morgan Stanley

Women in Computing (WinC) will be holding a "Recruiting and Internships in Technology" event for all those looking for a full-time, part-time, or internship position.

Date: Thursday, February 1st
Location: Courant Institute (251 Mercer), 13th Floor
Time: 7pm - 9pm

Representatives from IBM and Morgan Stanley will come speak about job opportunities and internships available at their respective companies. They will also share advice on how to land that perfect tech job and to make the most of your career hunt. You will have the opportunity to ask questions and have one-on-one time with the speakers. Come prepared with your resumes, and business casual attire. This event is open to all CS graduate or undergraduate students. Refreshments will be served.

Co-sponsored with Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Wasserman Center
for Career Development.

IBM DM PIC Seminar: SOCIAL CAPITAL THEORY MEETS WEB 2.0

2007-01-30T17:21:00.000-05:00

Tuesday Feb 6 11 AM -12 PM EST

IBM T J Watson Research Center
Hawthorne Bldg I, Room 1S-F40
19 Skyline Dr, Hawthorne, NY 10532

Title : SOCIAL CAPITAL THEORY MEETS WEB 2.0
Speaker : Donna Bogatin, Author of the Digital Markets Blog at ZDNet
Abstract :

Tim Berners-Lee envisaged the World Wide Web as a participatory medium. The original browser was also an editor and Berners-Lee wanted it to function as a collaborative authoring tool enabling interaction and editing.

Web 2.0 technologies, applications and business models are now sparking user participation and fostering group communication in both the personal and professional spheres. From blogs to wikis to social networking, consumers and businesses are tagging, bookmarking, commenting and sharing for personal expression and community building.

Is the Web 2.0 phenomenon a democratizing force? Are businesses capturing and delivering value through Web 2.0 experiences? Will Web 2.0 flourish in 2007 and beyond?

The impact of participatory media on individuals and within the enterprise will be explored.

BIO:

Donna Bogatin authors the Digital Markets Blog at ZDNet and the buzz@NYSIA weekly technology column.

Donna is the founder of online directional media properties UrbanSavings.com and VIPOffers.com. In addition to her own ventures, Donna has been advising companies on Web-based business development since 1997, when she created and led an "Internet For Entrepreneurs" workshop for the Small Business Administration. As Adjunct Associate Professor of Information Systems, Donna has instructed at the New York University Stern Graduate School of Business Administration on how companies of all sizes can best use the Internet to gain strategic advantage.

Prior to becoming an Internet entrepreneur, Donna was an international investment banker and served as Director of M & A for Societe Generale Securities Corp. Donna holds an M.B.A., M.A. and B.A. from New York University.

Upcoming NYU Seminar - 31 Jan 2007

2007-01-30T08:58:00.000-05:00

Jimmy Wales
Owner, Wikia Inc.;
Founder, Wikipedia;
President, Wikimedia Foundation

Free culture, Transparency, and Search
Wednesday, January 31st @ 3:30pm - 4:45pm
Courant Institute,
251 Mercer Street, Room 109

Free and open to the public.

Susan Malaika