Speaker: Wei Chen, Chuanxiong Guo and Xin Liu MSRA
Time: 2012-12-13 14:00-2012-12-13 16:00
Venue: FIT-1-315

Abstract:

Talk 1:

Title: Network Centric and User Friendly Control of Cellular networks:
Architectures, Algorithms, and Implementation

Speaker: Xin Liu

Abstract: A grand challenge facing today抯 cellular networks is how to satisfy the unprecedented growth of demand for mobile broadband services. The tremendous increase in terms of (i) the number of cellular subscribers, (ii) Internet-hungry smartphones and tablets, and (iii) mostly importantly, the traffic volume, has put significant stress on cellular systems. Relying solely on acquiring new spectrum and expanding existing infrastructure is both costly and insufficient to satisfy the fast-increasing demand. Hence, innovative approaches to the control and management of cellular networks are needed to alleviate network congestion and improve overall user experience.

Towards this end, we investigate how to exploit application-level opportunistic-control to significantly improve overall network performance. By exploiting the elasticity of many mobile applications
and the highly personal nature of mobile devices, we can opportunistically manage cellular network resource to alleviate network congestion, improve network efficiency, and enhance overall
user experience. I will present our current results and discuss future research questions.




Talk 2:

Title: Data center networking research at MSRA

Speaker: Chuanxiong Guo



Abstract: The IT industry is moving toward cloud computing where data centers are indispensable infrastructures. Data center networking (DCN) provides us new research opportunity due to the fact that: (1) data centers contain hundreds of thousands of servers, which makes network interconnection a challenge; (2) different from the Internet, a data center network is built and operated by a single organization, which makes single point of control possible; (3) data center networks need to support multiple tenants, which makes network virtualization a vital problem. In this talk, we will present the past and on-going DCN projects at MSRA, which include DCN architecture and topology design, DCN protocols, new network device platform, and networking support for DCN applications.






Talk 3:

Title: Computational Social Influence

Speaker: Wei Chen



Abstract: Social influence is deeply weaved into the fabric of human society and affects every aspect of human life. Computational social influence is aimed at empowering social influence with computational tools such as modeling, algorithm design, and data mining. In this talk, I will focus on the study of influence diffusion dynamics and the influence maximization problem, which is the problem of selecting a small number of seed nodes in a social network such that their influence coverage after the influence diffusion process is maximized. I will first present our recent results on designing scalable influence maximization algorithms for the classical diffusion models such as the independent cascade model and the linear threshold model, and then show how to extend these models to cover more complex influence diffusion dynamics, such as emergence and propagation of negative opinions, competing influence diffusion, and diffusion on networks with distrust relationships, and how to achieve efficient influence maximization in these models. I will conclude the talk with some discussions on future directions in computational social influence.

Short Bio:

Biography 1: Xin Liu received her B.S. and M.S. in electrical engineering from Xi�an Jiaotong University in 1994 and 1997, respectively, and her Ph.D. degree from Purdue University in 2002. She
is currently with Microsoft Research Asia, on leave from the Computer Science Department at the University of California, Davis where she is an associate professor. Before joining UC Davis, she was a postdoctoral research associate in the Coordinated Science Laboratory at UIUC.

She received the Best Paper of year award of the Computer Networks Journal in 2003 for her work on opportunistic scheduling. She received NSF CAREER award in 2005 for her research on
Smart-Radio-Technology-Enabled Opportunistic Spectrum Utilization. She received the Outstanding Engineering Junior Faculty Award from the College of Engineering, University of California, Davis in 2005. She becomes a UC Davis Chancellor�s Fellow in 2011.

Biography 2: Chuanxiong Guo is a Senior Researcher in the Wireless and Networking Group of Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA). His research interests include networked systems design and analysis, network security, data centric networking, networking support for operating systems. He is currently working on data center networking (DCN) and Cloud Computing.

Biography 3: Wei Chen is a Lead Researcher at Microsoft Research Asia, Beijing, China. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Tsinghua University. His research interests include computational and game theoretic aspects of social networks, algorithmic game theory, distributed computing, and fault tolerance. He won the prestigious William C. Carter Award in 2000 in the area of dependable computing, for his seminal dissertation work on the quality of service of failure detectors. His co-authored paper on a novel game-theoretic approach for community detection in social networks won the best student paper award in ECML PKDD 2009. He has done a series of impactful work on social influence dynamics and social influence maximization, which appeared in recent KDD, ICDM, SDM, WSDM, ICWSM, and AAAI conferences, with collective citation count over 350 in three years. For more information, you are welcome to visit his home page at
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/weic/ .