Programming Language Ideas Escape the Lab: A Declarative Data Description Language for Managing Ad hoc Data

Location: Torreys Peak I - II

Invited Technical Speaker: Kathlen Fisher, Principal Member of the Technical Staff at AT&T Labs Research

XML. HTML. CSV. JPEG. MPEG. These data formats represent vast quantities of scientific, governmental, industrial, and private data. Because the formats have been standardized and are widely used, many reliable, efficient, and convenient tools exist for processing such data. In an ideal world, all data would be in such formats. In reality, however, we are not nearly so fortunate. Instead, vast amounts of data exist in ad hoc formats, which do not typically have readily available tools. Every day, network administrators, financial analysts, computer scientists, biologists, chemists, astronomers, and physicists deal with ad hoc data in a myriad of complex formats, wasting valuable time on low-level chores like parsing and format translation instead of actually using the information stored in their data.

In this talk, I will describe the PADS data description language that colleagues and I have designed and built to address this problem. PADS allows users to describe both the physical layout of ad hoc data sources and semantic properties of that data. From such descriptions, the PADS compiler generates libraries and tools for manipulating the data, including parsing routines, statistical profiling tools, translation programs to produce well-behaved formats such as XML, and tools for running queries over raw PADS data sources. The descriptions are concise enough to serve as “living” documentation while flexible enough to describe most of the ASCII, binary, and Cobol formats that we have seen in practice. The generated parsing library provides for robust, application-specific error handling. As I describe PADS and its associated tools, I will highlight how various ideas from the programming language research community have informed the design and implementation of the PADS system.

Information about PADS and a list of the many people who have contributed to the system is available from the project web site: www.padsproj.org

Preparing for an Advanced Degree: Life after the BS/BA

Location: Crestone Peak II – IV

Presenters: Jacqueline Thomas (The National GEM Consortium), Patty Lopez (Intel)

Undergraduates, especially minorities, may not pursue an advanced degree because of a lack of knowledge of opportunities (both financial and professional), a lack of role models/mentoring/preparation, and the mystique surrounding the graduate school experience. This workshop will discuss the benefits of graduate school and how to prepare for it. We will share real life experiences from professionals in academia, industry, and government, where they address their fears, reflect on their experiences, and discuss their careers and opportunities.

Engaging Students in the Free Open Source Movement Through Civic Engagement

Location: Quandary Peak III

Presenters:: Trishan R de Lanerolle (Trinity College), Ralph Morelli (Trinity College) Ingrid Russell (University of Hartford), Sarah Thayer (Trinity College), Rachel Foecking (Trinity College), Myles Garvey (University of Hartford)

This panel discussion will provide an overview of the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) movement, introduce the Humanitarian-FOSS project, an NSF CPATH Project to engage students in building socially beneficial software, and provide perspectives from both faculty and students involved in development of humanitarian Open Source software.

An International Perspective on Successful Programs to Attract Women to ICT Presented by ACM-W Ambassadors

Location: Torreys Peak III

Presenters: Catherine Lang (Swinburne University of Technology), Mary Anne Egan (Siena College), Jan Peters (KatalytiK), Reyyan Ayfer (Bilkent University), Jehan Ara (Enabling Technologies)

An international snapshot of women in IT in ACM-W Ambassador countries will be provided. There will be a particular focus on political initiatives to address the lack of diversity in the ICT workforce. A discussion of where the under-representation of women in IT sits in current political climates will be addressed leading to at least one example from each country of a successful program to attract women in to IT careers.

Leveraging an Ecosystem of Supporters—Measuring the Effectiveness of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology

Location: Crestone Peak I

Facilitator: Caroline Simard (Anita Borg Institue), Panel: Tracy Prentiss, (SAP Labs LLC North America), Lucy Sanders (National Center for Women in Technology), Jody Mahoney (Anita Borg Institute), 2 panelists yet to be named.

As a change agent, ABI measures itself on effectively leveraging a broad ecosystem of industry and academic partners to foster cultural change and create opportunities for technical women. However, companies and universities often measure the success of their engagement with ABI differently—new recruits of employees and students; increased visibility and networking opportunities to retain and advance technical women in faculty and industry positions; or provoking a dialogue on gender issues and cultural change at the executive or dean level.

Can individual organizations leverage the full impact of ABI’s ecosystem of partners and supporters? Do industry and academia learn from each other through their involvement with ABI? Different organizations measure their social return on investment with ABI—is there one set of metrics ABI should adopt in 2009 to measure its overall impact and effectiveness?

Scaling Applications to Enable Unprecedented Science on Petaflop Platforms

Location: Torreys Peak IV

Presenters: Maria Eleftheriou (IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center), Valentina Salapura (IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center)

Massively parallel architectures promise to revolutionize the way researchers do science, by enabling simulations that are orders of magnitude larger in scale than has previously been possible. IBM BlueGene is a large-scale computing platform which currently holds top positions in the Top500-list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers. We will present the design goals of the BlueGene family and the challenges in scaling applications on BlueGene for enabling biological simulations.