Abstract: In this talk I will present our experiences from designing and deploying three very different applications in the general domain of Wireless Health Care. The first one is the MEDiSN system designed to monitor the vital signs of ambulatory patients in hospitals' Emergency Rooms. Three generations of the MEDiSN system have been deployed for multiple months at the Johns Hopkins Hospital supporting three clinical studies. The second system, is an "exer-game" based on the Nintendo Wii, designed to motivate low-income, older adults to improve their balance through low intensity exercises. The game application is supplemented by a cellphone application that delivers customized alerts and questionnaires to the system's participants. This application was deployed in 20 homes in Baltimore and demonstrated quantitative improvement in lower-body strength and general well-being for the study's participants. Finally, I will present a system that we developed recently to estimate the caloric expenditure of bicyclists using cellphones. The system demonstrates that "virtual" sensors (i.e., estimated of calories burned through models of the biker's effort as a function of speed and terrain incline) can achieve equal accuracy as physical sensors while significantly reducing the system's complexity. I will use these three examples to present lessons learned and outstanding challenges in this application domain. -

Biography: Andreas Terzis is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University, where he heads the Hopkins InterNetworking Research (HiNRG) Group. His research interests are in the broad area of wireless sensor networks, including protocol design, system support, and data management. Dr. Terzis is a recipient of the NSF CAREER award.

Abstract: It is vital for first responders arriving at a scene of a crime, fire, natural disaster or terrorist attack to quickly set up a public safety communication network for accessing critical information and to better coordinate their efforts. Such first responders would benefit from accessing video images of a crime in progress, streaming video from and to emergency vehicles, downloading building plans of a burning building, and accessing national crime data bases for accurate information about a subject.
Emergencies like 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina have painfully illustrated the lack of such solutions, especially in terms of interoperability, when different law enforcement agencies could not talk to each other. This keynote will discuss the challenges for efficiently and securely establishing group communications across multiple agencies at a scene when power and communication infrastructures are destroyed or unavailable. Any solution needs to take into account the unique security requirements of public safety communications that need to be met even in the harshest and most time-critical environments.

Abstract: Thanks to the ongoing convergence of telecommunications, Internet and entertainment, and the increasing adoption of Internet technologies in our daily lives, we are moving rapidly into a world of total interconnection of humans and machines. This means that after fixed mobile convergence (FMC) and voice data integration, which has coined the evolution of telecommunication infrastructures in the last decade, we are now witnessing the start of a much broader convergence of quite different application domains with different value chains and technologies. This convergence is driven by the adoption and extension of Internet technologies in various application domains under the banner of the Future Internet (FI), which today is getting a lot of attention by the increasing notion of Smart Cities, the Internet of services (IoS), Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine to Machine (M2M) communications. Thus different transport and control platforms need to be integrated into a future Internet service platform enabling an open set of application domains by so-called common or generic enablers on top of different fixed and mobile network infrastructures.

This talk will provide a review of relevant control platforms and the related standards in the context of fixed and mobile Next Generation Network (NGN) evolution towards the Future Internet (FI). Starting from Intelligent Networks (IN) we will look at the 3GPP IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), the 3GPP Evolved Packet Core (EPC) and emerging 3GPP Machine Type Communications (MTC) platforms. In addition, we will review relevant Service Delivery Platform (SDP) concepts and related service enablers and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) as defined by ETSI, 3GPP, GSMA and OMA for enabling seamlessly various applications on top of fixed and mobile networks. Also we briefly touch the current state of the art in international Future Internet research, particularly looking at the European FI PPP Initiative.

Finally, the talk terminates with a short introduction to relevant toolkits and laboratories from Fraunhofer FOKUS and Technical University Berlin, enabling rapid prototyping for academic and industry research in the context of Smart Cities. Thus we will briefly look at the Open IMS Core (www.openimscore.org), OpenEPC (www.openepc.net), and the new OpenMTC (www.open-MTC.org) toolkits, as well as the FUSECO-Playground (www.fuseco-playground.org) enabling comprehensive prototyping in the context of smart city infrastructures and applications.

A diverse panel of experts will explore government, standardization, public safety, research, and industry aspects of “Secure Group Communications”. The panelists include Dr. Lily Chen (National Institute of Standards and Technology), Dr. Tim Strayer (BBN), Ms. Deborah Monks (Motorola Solutions), and Mr. William Supernor (KoolSpan). After the panelists present their own views and experience on the topic, the panel will be opened for a Q&A session.

Abstract: Delay-Tolerant Networking and Information-Centric Networking represent two new approaches to networking that have been proposed by the research community over the last few years. DTN has explored methods to interconnect networks with various naming, routing and delivery semantics with store-carry-forward delay-tolerant operations, while several ICN-related projects are exploring the naming of data objects instead of nodes, in-network caching and routing, and support for a form of delay-tolerance as a byproduct.

In this talk I will cover the basic goals and results of each style of networking, and highlight common lessons learned that contrast the benefits of these approaches with the current IP-based Internet architecture.

Abstract: One of the defining properties of small worlds is the prevalence of short paths connecting node pairs. Unfortunately, as a result the usual notion of distance is not particularly helpful in distinguishing neighborhoods in such graphs. This is the case, for example, when analyzing the interdomain routing system of the Internet.

We describe a motivating problem that requires a finer-grained notion of distance. The problem is quite simple to state: how can any given network operator in the Internet determine which paths pass through its network? Surprisingly, the nature of Internet routing makes this question rather hard to answer.

To address this problem, we define a new distance metric on graph nodes. This metric has useful and interesting properties: it is easy to compute and understand, it can be used to sharply distinguish neighborhoods in networks, and it remains useful even in small-world networks. We show how we use this metric to address our motivating problem, and more generally how it can be used for visualization and dimensionality reduction of complex networks.

Abstract: Mobility is a significant problem in wireless networks that impacts the capacity and quality of service. The impact is not only in the physical layer, but also in other layers of the communication protocol stack. Historically, the networks and systems are designed to accommodate the worst-case mobility conditions, limiting the efficient usage of the communication resources and hence the performance of the overall system. Adaptive and cognitive networking strategies bring about effective approaches to handle the mobility issues in wireless communication networks. In this talk, cognitive radio and cognitive networks will be discussed as a solution to mobility issues in wireless networks.

Abstract: The physical limits of the functionality of sensor networks affect more the wireless transmission than the sensing ability. To put it simply: a sensor network can collect much more data then it can transmit to its customer. In this talk, we argue that there are significant disparities in the value of different chunks of information, and techniques which choose data to transmit based on its potential value to the customer can significantly increase the utility of the network. We outline two application scenarios and approaches for value of information-based data routing. We conclude with a research agenda for future work.

Abstract: In many of the challenges faced by the modern world, from overcrowded road networks to overstretched healthcare systems, large benefits for society come about from small changes by very many individuals. We survey the problems and the cost they impose on society. We then describe a series of pilot projects which aim to develop principles for inducing small changes in behavior in networks such as transportation, wellness and recycling. Pilots have been conducted with Infosys Technologies, Bangalore (commuting) and Accenture-USA (wellness), and two are ongoing: in Singapore (public transit congestion) and at Stanford (congestion and parking).

In this talk, we will describe this work and present results from the pilots. Some salient themes are the use of low-cost sensing and networking technology for sensing individual behavior, and the use incentives and social norming to influence the behavior.

Speaker Bio: Prof Balaji Prabhakar is a faculty member in the Departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Stanford University. His research interests are in computer networks; notably, in designing algorithms for the Internet and for Data Centers. Recently, he has been interested in Societal Networks: networks vital for society's functioning, such as transportation, electricity and recycling systems. He has been involved in developing and deploying incentive mechanisms to move commuters to off-peak times so that congestion, fuel and pollution costs are reduced. -

Biography: He has been a Terman Fellow at Stanford University and a Fellow of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. He has received the CAREER award from the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Erlang Prize, the Rollo Davidson Prize, and delivered the Lunteren Lectures. He is a co-recipient of several best paper awards. He is on the Advisory Board of the Future Urban Mobility Initiative of the World Economic Forum.

Abstract: The concept of Internet of Things (IoT) is opening new horizons in systems intelligence, where physical objects (embedded with sensory, identification and networking capabilities) can interact with other objects through the global infrastructure of wireless/wired Internet. These systems can be monitored and controlled by filtering and processing collected data. Such intelligent design will naturally result is efficient and cost effective systems. Several architectures are being built to implement IoT from two different perspectives. The first, also known as sensor-oriented, is based on large-scale sensors deployment targeting the collection of accurate sensory data. Such huge sensory data are analyzed through cloud computing to deliver intelligent responses. The second architecture, also known as service-oriented, targets the association of unique identifiers with specific services. In such architecture, the service (or the appropriate response) is invoked upon receiving the unique identifier from a specific ID collecting node considering the context in which it was collected.

IoT offers many opportunities, among which are smarter solutions and spaces. The talk will also cover some of the activities at the Telecommunication Research lab at Queen's University towards the realization of true smart spaces. We introduce the design and implementation of a Smart Spaces framework that utilizes the social context. In order to manage services and sessions, we integrate our system with the IP Multimedia Subsystem. The result: SocioSpace, a system capable of delivering targeted personalized services and content to customers and end users occupying a SocioSpace-enabled environment.

The advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Cloud Computing (CC) is changing the domain in which objects can communicate, share data, and grant access to one another. One such prominent domain is the local communication domain. Having objects networked with one another and with surrounding networking devices viz. access points, gateways, routers, satellites, etc. will have a great impact on the local communication domain and the major role it plays in today’s world; from providing rich connectivity to realizing sensory and actuary applications.