2024 Computer Science Colloquium Series

Applied Complexity: Digital Acequias for Collective Perception and Action and Bringing Intelligence to the Light

Stephen Guerin, Simtable

Wednesday, March 27, 2024, 2:00 PM

Location: Larrañaga Engineering Auditorium (Centennial 1041)

Abstract:

As we collectively build omnipresent sensor/actuator networks coupled with omniscient AI, what are the design approaches informed by the science of complexity to realize self-sovereign 'sousveillant" data architectures for self-governance and collective intelligence? I will demonstrate some of my work on Simtable.com, Realtime.Earth, AgentScript.org, and the research of RedfishGroup and the Harvard Visualization Lab that attempts to address this question and my 35-year journey in HCI, agent-based modeling, spatial augmented reality, and decentralized computing networks. I will make the case that New Mexico and research at UNM, LANL, Sandia, and Santa Fe Institute is uniquely suited to bring about a fundamental change in the architecture of the next era of collective computing.

Bio:

Stephen Guerin is the inventor and CEO of Simtable, which produces interactive simulations for firefighters and communities that are projected onto physical 3D sandtables. Simtable was developed in 2009 and named one of Time Magazine's top 5 inventions in 2011, along with Apple's Siri and the Lytro camera. Simtable is the first "app" on RedfishGroup's AnySurface platform for making all surfaces in the room interactive via coupled projector/camera systems. Stephen is a Research Associate in the Visualization Research and Teaching Lab in the Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. His focus includes geospatial agent-based models, interactive projection for local and remote collaboration, complex systems, and artificial life.

Stephen is also the founder and CEO of RedfishGroup. Redfish developed graphics applications in commercial prepress and interactive media 1991-1993. Redfish operated in Beijing and Shanghai 1994-1997 with the first foreign commercial servers on the Chinese Internet and provided early web services to multinational and Chinese firms. Redfish hosted the US Embassy in China, one of the first embassies to go online. In 1996, Stephen originated the popular phrase "Great Firewall of China". He remains deeply interested in China's development and US-China relations.

Stephen maintains a 25-year research relationship with his mentor, Stuart Kauffman, and has lectured as a faculty member of Santa Fe Institute's Complex System Summer School. Stephen researches universal laws in self-organization, structure formation in non-equilibrium systems, and living systems. He's currently exploring how primal and dual systems interact via "Least Action". He suspects bidirectional path tracing in dual particle/field systems may be a general algorithm more universal than natural selection for system evolution and symmetry breaking.

Stephen lives in Santa Fe with his wife, Alison, and their two sons.


A little light reading: changes in lighting technology and the human and environmental health

Tom Igoe, Arts Professor, NYU

Wednesday, February 28, 2024, 2:00 PM

Location: Larrañaga Engineering Auditorium (Centennial 1041)

Abstract:

The lighting industry has seen some significant changes in the past decade. There are four driving forces behind this:

  • LEDs are the primary lighting technology now;
  • Digital control of light is becoming increasingly common;
  • Recent discoveries in biology have detailed light's impact on human health;
  • The lighting industry has a material impact on the environment.

These factors change profoundly how we design, how we teach lighting design, how we make lighting fixtures. The first two affect what we can do with light; the second two affect what we should do with light. In this talk, I'll discuss these factors in context of the lighting industry and its intersection with digital systems and human and environmental health.

Bio:

Tom Igoe is the area head for physical computing courses at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) in the Tisch School of the Arts. In these courses, he teaches programming and electronics as tools for art and design, starting with how to sense and respond to human physical expression. His research interests also include networks, lighting design, the environmental and social impacts of technology development, clocks, and monkeys. He is a co-founder of Arduino, and hopes to visit Svalbard and Antarctica someday.


2 talks: "Interactive Murals" and "Travel Reduction Algorithm"

Alyshia Bustos, Jaime Gould

Wednesday, March 20, 2024, 2:00 PM

Location: Larrañaga Engineering Auditorium (Centennial 1041)

Abstracts:

Title: Interactive Murals
This work explores Interactive Murals; a mural that blends traditional mural practices and ubiquitous computing, which contains embedded electronics including sensors, actuators, and microcontrollers. I designed three interactive murals in collaboration with a professional muralist, Nanibah Chacon. We developed a suitable workflow for creating interactive murals. This workflow guided us in teaching middle and high school students a series of introductory workshops and interactive mural workshops. Nanibah and I designed and constructed two large outdoor interactive murals with students. After each project, I conducted semi-structured interviews with students, and I determined that students gain agency, learn technical skills, and positively shift their perspectives of computer science by designing and building interactive murals. This talk also each aspect of the workflow for the most recent interactive mural at the National Hispanic Cultural Center.

Title: Travel Reduction Algorithm
Travel Reduction Algorithm (TRAvel) Slicer is a slicing software that minimizes X, Y, and Z travel movements in 3D printing. Conventional slicing software often generates travel movements to print everything within each given layer. These travel movements can negatively impact the quality of prints, especially in models with branching structures. Moreover, for some printers and some materials, travel movements can make printing impossible. TRAvel Slicer combines Zhao et. al.’s method of space-filling Fermat spirals and introduces a method of vertical ordering in order to minimize travel movements in X, Y, and Z. I demonstrate how TRAvel Slicer increases efficiency of print time and makes it feasible to print complex models on Direct Write 3D printers in novel materials.


What is wrong with Artificial intelligence?

Manel Martínez-Ramón, UNM

Wednesday, March 6, 2024, 2:00 PM

Location: Larrañaga Engineering Auditorium (Centennial 1041)

Abstract:

The public opinion about AI bounces between the utopia, with the promise that AI will promote unseen productivity, and the dystopia, where society will collapse and fail. This last one raises fear, controversy, and lack of social acceptance. This makes it necessary to rebrand AI in an unapologetic way, to demonstrate its benefits to society through its incorporation as an engineering tool. There is a quest to construct a corpus of AI fundamentals, AI engineering and industrial and societal applications. In this talk we will review the present context of AI, its outstanding drawbacks from the societal point of view and avenues for a more optimistic future.

Bio:

Dr. Manel Martínez-Ramón is a Professor in the ECE Department. He holds the King Felipe VI Endowed Chair, sponsored by the household of the King of Spain. He received a M.S. in Telecommunications Engineering with a major in Electronics from Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Barcelona, Spain) in 1994, and a Ph.D. in Telecommunications Technologies from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (Madrid, Spain) in 1999. He joined the UNM ECE Department in 2013 as a full professor. His research activities include applications of machine learning to smart antennas, smart grid, photovoltaics, particle accelerators, and others. He is co-author of several books. Among them Digital Signal Processing with Kernels (IEEE Press/Wiley, 2018), Machine Learning Applications in Electromagnetics and Antenna Array Processing (Artech House, 2021) and Deep Learning: a practical approach (Wiley, 2024) are the most recent ones.


A little light reading: changes in lighting technology and the human and environmental health

Tom Igoe, Arts Professor, NYU

Wednesday, February 28, 2024, 2:00 PM

Location: Larrañaga Engineering Auditorium (Centennial 1041)

Abstract:

The lighting industry has seen some significant changes in the past decade. There are four driving forces behind this:

  • LEDs are the primary lighting technology now;
  • Digital control of light is becoming increasingly common;
  • Recent discoveries in biology have detailed light's impact on human health;
  • The lighting industry has a material impact on the environment.

These factors change profoundly how we design, how we teach lighting design, how we make lighting fixtures. The first two affect what we can do with light; the second two affect what we should do with light. In this talk, I'll discuss these factors in context of the lighting industry and its intersection with digital systems and human and environmental health.

Bio:

Tom Igoe is the area head for physical computing courses at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) in the Tisch School of the Arts. In these courses, he teaches programming and electronics as tools for art and design, starting with how to sense and respond to human physical expression. His research interests also include networks, lighting design, the environmental and social impacts of technology development, clocks, and monkeys. He is a co-founder of Arduino, and hopes to visit Svalbard and Antarctica someday.