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IN DE KIJKER
Inaugural lectures of the new professors Danny Hughes and Giovanni Samaey
2nd of December 2011
Giovanni Samaey, new professor at our department
 Ten years ago, when I joined the department as a PhD student, I could at most dream of being in a position to write this introduction.
And yet, as of October 1, 2011, I will be appointed as a tenure-track research professor (BOF-ZAP) in the Scientific Computing group.
When I arrived at K.U. Leuven in 1996 as a bachelor student, the Master in Mathematical Engineering did not yet exist, and I had never displayed the slightest interest in computer programming. It was only by accident that I discovered the option 'Numerical Analysis and Applied Mathematics' within the Master program of Engineering in Computer Science. I was immediately fascinated by the idea that mathematics could be put to use in real life, and that one could spend one's time creating the computational tools rather than just using them.
In 2001, I started a PhD on the bifurcation analysis of delay differential equations, under the supervision of Prof. Dirk Roose. Dirk, however, felt we should 'try something new', and spent a whole year tempting me into studying methods for multiscale problems. He even invited Prof. Yannis Kevrekidis (Princeton) to come to Leuven to give the final push.
It worked, and I don't know where I would have been today if it wouldn't have. In 2005, the 'micro/macro' group already consisted of five people, and I defended my PhD in 2006 on an embarrassingly parallel method for spatially distributed systems with fine-scale structure, which restricts simulation to a set of disconnected small space-time subdomains that only synchronize every now and then.
From 2008 up to now, I spent some time at INRIA in Lille (France), at our sister university at Louvain-la-Neuve, and at CERMICS (ParisTech, France), enlarging the scope of my research to included kinetic equations and stochastic systems. I am immensely grateful to have had the privilege of being supported by the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO) during my entire career up to now.
Concerning my private life: I am married to Valerie Van Damme. She is a pulmonologist in Tielt (West-Flanders), where we live. We have two children: Lukas (6) and Emma (3). Especially Lukas is very proud of his father's appointment, because, according to him, I am now actually entitled to the absent-minded behaviour I have displayed throughout the years.
Link to Giovanni Samaey's webpage.
Danny Hughes, new professor at our department
 I am very happy to be joining the Computer Science Department of K.U. Leuven as a tenure-track professor. I am a member of the Distributed and Secure Software (DistriNet) research group and the Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) team.
I grew up in Rainford, a small town in North West England. From 1998 to 2001, I attended Lancaster University, UK and earned a degree in Computer Science. I received my MSc degree in Distributed Interactive Systems from Lancaster in 2002. From 2002 to 2007, I then completed a PhD in Computer Science at Lancaster University under the supervision of Prof. Geoff Coulson.
Since completing my PhD, I have performed postdoctoral research at Lancaster University, the University of California at Berkeley, and Universidade de São Paulo as well as a rewarding six months spent at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. In 2008, I joined the Computer Science Department of Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) in Suzhou, China as an Assistant Professor.
My current research interests focus on middleware support for complex distributed systems such as WSNs and Peer-to-Peer (P2P) systems. In the P2P domain, I have performed a number of experiments to analyze user behavior on large-scale P2P file-sharing systems. In the WSN domain, I have deployed sensor networks to support advanced flood monitoring on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales and the River Dee in North Wales. I also developed a small-scale pollution monitoring sensor network for the city of São Carlos, Brazil.
Outside of my research work, I enjoy travel, snowboarding, live music, cooking and dining at restaurants.
Retirement celebration of Denise Brams
On October 26, 2011 we celebrated the retirement of Denise Brams, former head of the secretary.
The CODeS Research Group recently won CHeSC'2011 Winner
The CODeS Research Group recently won an international research competition, i.e. "Cross-domain Heuristic Search Challenge (CHeSC'2011)".
Our algorithm outperformed 19 other competing methods from all over the world.
Link to the competition website
Link to competition results
Our team is composed of: Mustafa Misir, prof. Patrick De Causmaecker, Greet Vanden Berghe and Katja Verbeeck
25 jaar informatica
Reunie 1e lichting lic. informatica (1985-86)
In juli 1986 studeerden de eerste licentiaten informatica af aan onze
universiteit. Na 25 jaar namen een aantal van hen het initiatief om een
reunie te organiseren. Een bezoek aan het intussen grondig gewijzigde
gebouw 200A mocht daarbij uiteraard niet ontbreken.
(Als de lichting 1986-87 ook plannen in die richting heeft, dan
horen we het graag.)
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Green light for EMuRgency project (project supported bij Ariadne, research group HCI)
In November 2011 the INTERREG project EMuRgency has started. This project, led by the Centre of Learning Sciences and Technologies of the Open Universiteit, focuses on the problems of cardiac arrest in the region Euregio Maas-Rijn (EMR). The primary goal of the project is to achieve that in case of a cardiac arrest bystanders start CPR before the emergency services arrive at the scene.
Life or dead
In the EMR region every year there are about 2.500 cases of cardiac arrest. In case of a cardiac arrest serious brain damage can occur after three minutes. The emergency services seldom manage to arrive within three minutes. Therefore CPR by layman, bystanders, can mean the difference between life and death. But in the Euregio in about 75% of the cases of cardiac arrest CPR has not been started when the ambulance arrives. Mostly because those present do not know what to do. The EMuRgency project want to change that through a combination of activities. A cross-border alarm system, a learning programme to teach people how to give CPR and a roadshow to train college students and to make them and their surroundings aware of their reponsibility.
Infrastructure
The project will develop and implement an alerting system in the whole region. In case of a cardiac arrest citizens who know how to give CPR are alerted and sent to the patient. Experiences from projects as SMS-Retter in Aachen (Germany), AED-Alert and Hart voor Limburg will be used in this activity. The 112 centre will find (spotting) and alert the nearest available persons skilled in CPR using their mobile phones. This system will function cross-borders.
Learning
Important is that more people learn how to give CPR. The project will develop a range of schooling possibilities. Apart from ‘classic’ e-learning content, innovative learning scenarios will be developed using mobiele devices and game patterns. The schooling will be organised for different target groups (children/teenagers/adults, non-professional and professional relief workers).
Roadshow Reanimation
In order to reach a large part of the college students in the Euregio a ‘Roadshow Reanimation’ is developed that can teach an entire college in CPR in one day. Two emergency doctors and ten other assistance workers (medicine students, volunteers of relief organisations) visit the school. In this way a critical mass of young people will be reached, but at the same time through conversations and information materials their surroundings (parents, teachers etc.) become aware of the problem and of the responsibilities of citizens for their fellow citizens.
Ultimate goal
In 2014, when the project finishes, the region will have the disposal of an innovative technical infrastructure that ensures the best and quickest alert of first-aid services. And it will offer a training of first aiders following the newest scientific ideas and methods. But the project also wants to strengthen the feeling of mutual responsibility in the population of the Euregio. The result should be that in more and more cases CPR will have started when the ambulance arrives.
Project partners
Apart from the Open Universiteit (Centre for Learning Sciences and Technologies), the projectpartners are: Universitätsklinikum Aachen, RWTH Aachen, Maastricht University, Ziekenhuis Oost-Limburg (ZOL), K.U.Leuven, CHR Citadelle (CHR) en CECOTEPE ASBL.
The project is financed by European Regional Development Funds, different regions from EMR & different institutions.
Interview with coordinator of the EMuRgency project. (youtube)
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VARIA / VARIOUS SUBJECTS
In de pers: prof. Erik Duval - Proffen twitteren naar studenten
- Interview Studio Brussel
- Interview Het Laatste Nieuws 28.09.2011: Lees het artikel
Personnel of CS dept. supported Music for Life and donated 500€
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Game against Diarrhea and Hotdogs for Life ! We supported the ‘music for life’ initiative of ‘Studio Brussel‘ (radio station) and the ‘Red Cross’ and collected 500 €. The department transferred this amount and requested to play the song 'Viva la Vida' from Coldplay for this amount.
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Pieter Agten (DistriNet) receives Alcatel Lucent Bell MSc Thesis award
 Antwerp, October 18, 2011. Alcatel-Lucent Belgium organized its annual innovation awards contest to reward students who show exceptional achievements in their field and are an inspiration to others.
Pieter Agten was awarded the Alcatel-Lucent Bell MSc Thesis Award 2011 for his Master Thesis titled "Traffic monitoring and rate limiting in wireless sensor networks". The promotor of his thesis is Prof. Wouter Joosen, Head of the DistriNet Research Group.
Abstract
Applications of wireless sensor networks can be found in many different domains, ranging from logistics to home automation and from agriculture to health care. Because of mobility requirements and constraints in physical size and cost, sensor nodes have only limited resources available for achieving their goals. Therefore, it is important to utilize the available resources as efficiently as possible. In order to realize this, measuring and actively limiting the resource usage is crucial. Monitoring and limiting the network traffic generated by the sensor nodes is a key part of this.
Best Paper award for three Distrinet members at Formal Methods 2011
The paper "The 1st Verified Software Competition: Experience Report." co-authored by three Distrinet members (Bart Jacobs, Jan Smans and Frank Piessens) has won the best paper award at FM 2011, a top research conference on applications of formal methods in software engineering.
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Bram Bonné was awarded the Luciad Master Thesis prize 2011
 Bram Bonné was awarded the Luciad Master Thesis prize 2011 for his master thesis titled "Improving session security in web applications".
Bram received this award from the business representatives during the official proclamation of the Faculty of Engineering on July 8, 2011.
For Luciad, the prize was handed out by Frank Suykens, head of product development at Luciad.
The thesis studied the security of session management in nowadays web applications and improved upon the state-of-the-art by proposing and developing a novel client-side countermeasure against session fixation and hijacking.
The thesis contributes in two important areas. The first contribution is an analysis of the security issues in web session management, and surveying the existing client-side and server-side mitigation techniques. Web session vulnerabilities have been an important attack vector in web applications in the past decade, and are today still in the top 3 web security issues (OWASP Top 10 2010). Although good server-side mitigation techniques exist, in practice most web applications still remain vulnerable. For this reason, Bram also focused on client-side mitigation techniques to allow an end-user to protect himself especially in case server-side protection mechanisms are not in place.
In a second contribution, Bram designed and developed NoFix, a novel client-side mitigation technique against session fixation. This contribution started from a clear identification of the session fixation/hijacking problem as part of the survey, and inspired Bram to devise a simple and clever security policy to differentiate malicious and legitimate access to session management data. He implemented his technique as an extension to Mozilla Firefox. As part of the evaluation, he studied the performance impact on the Alexa top 1000 websites, and evaluated the usability of his countermeasure in a 20-week field experiment.
The Jos Schepens prize
The Jos Schepens prize (more) for the "best" thesis in our departement is awarded to Thomas Janssens for his thesis "Segmenting Skeletal Muscle Cells in Histological Images using Machine Learning and Image Processing Techniques (Segmenteren van skeletale spiercellen in histologische beelden met behulp van machinaal leren en beeldverwerking)". Promotor was prof. Luc De Raedt.
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ECML 2011 best-paper runner up award
Bernd Gutmann, Ingo Thon, prof. Luc De Raedt have won the best-paper runner up award at the 2011 European Conference on Machine Learning (ECML) with their paper "Learning the Parameters of Probabilistic Logic Programs from Interpretations".
Students Computer Science and Mathematical Engineering end at fifth place in the Benelux Algorithm Programming Contest 2011
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Team King High consisting of Philip De Keulenaer (Computer Science), Wouter Massa (Computer Science) and Merijn Mestdagh (Mathematical Engineering and Psychology) ended at the fifth place of the yearly Benelux Algorithm Programming Contest 2011 in Eindhoven, on October 15.
They ended as the first Belgian team.
More info: http://www.bapc.eu/
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