Department of Computer Science
Texas A&M University
Jennifer L. Welch
Location of Texas A&M University
College Station, Texas
About College Station, Texas




Population of area is approximately 133,550
90 miles northwest of Houston and 170
miles south of Dallas.
Growing industrial base, excellent housing,
strong public school systems, many
recreational and entertainment activities.
College Station is the home of the George
Bush Presidential Library and Museum.
Texas A&M University



Established in 1876 as
first public institution of
higher education in
Texas
More than 2,200
faculty members
About 45,000 students
Department of Computer Science
Degrees offered:
 Bachelor’s
 Master’s
– thesis
– courses-only
PhD
in Computer Science and, jointly with the Department
of Electrical Engineering, in Computer Engineering.

CS Research Areas







architecture
artificial intelligence
bioinformatics
computational
mathematics
computer systems
and networks
computer vision
distributed systems








hypertext / hypermedia
neural networks
real-time systems
robotics
software systems
theoretical computer
science
VLSI design
automation
etc.
CS Research Facilities
Research labs with state-of-the-art Sun, HewlettPackard (including an HP 16-processor V class),
and Intel workstations, connected to Gigabit
Ethernet/ATM
 Instructional network of more than 800
workstations/PCs and compute and file servers.
 Specialized teaching labs for networking, computer
architecture, microcomputer design, real-time
systems, robotics, and senior engineering design.
 Campus has IBM Regatta p690, SGI Origin 3000
and SGI Origin 2000; connected to Internet with
OC-3.

CS Faculty and Students
Above: Prof.
Amato’s research
group, with Prof.
Bjarne Stroustrup
Above: Profs. Chen,
Klappenecker and
Sarin at new grad
student orientation
Left: Fall picnic
Nancy Amato’s Research
•Research Group
• 12+ graduate students
• 2-4 undergraduates during the academic year
• usually 2-4 undergraduates for summer internships (not all from TAMU)
•Research Topics
• Motion Planning, Computational Biology, Robotics, Animation, VR
• Parallel & Distributed Computing, C++ Libraries, Performance modeling
• Computational Science (Chemistry, Geophysics, Neuroscience,
Physics)
• Undergraduate Research Projects
• recent projects from all the above areas
• usually work in small group with me, an advanced graduate student, and
possibly another undergraduate
• many projects lead to publications in international conferences and
journals
Motion Planning
(Basic) Motion Planning:
Example: The Alpha Puzzle
Given a movable object and a
description of the environment,
find a sequence of valid
configurations that moves it from
the start to the goal.
Objective: Separate the two
tubes, one is the ‘robot’ the
other is an ‘obstacle’
start
goal
obstacles
Hard Motion Planning Problems:
Highly Articulated (Constrained) Systems
Paper
Folding
Polyhedron: 25 dof
Soccer Ball: 31 dof
Digital Actors
• Closed chain constraint
Hard Motion Planning Problems:
Group Behaviors for Multiple Robots
Traversing a Narrow Passage
Hard Motion Planning Problems
Computational Biology & Chemistry
• Drug Design - molecule docking
• Protein Folding – find folding pathways
Jianer Chen’s Research




Algorithms and optimization
Computational complexity theory
Parallel processing and Networking
Computer Graphics
Research group:
 2-3 undergraduate students
 5 graduate students
Algorithms and Optimization
(sample problems)


Algorithms for practical problems
(task scheduling, network routing …)
Optimization and approximation of hard
problems (vertex cover, SAT …)
Undergraduate student participation:
algorithm development, implementation, and
testing
Computational complexity
(sample problems)


Study of computational intractability
(NP-hardness, W[1]-completeness … )
Parameterized tractability and
approximability
Undergraduate student participation:
learning the frontier research, and prepare for
graduate study and research
Parallel Processing and
Networking (sample problems)



Network fault tolerance
Network routing
Network security
Undergraduate student participation:
development, implementation, and
testing network algorithms
Computer Graphics
• Graphics shape modeling
and solid modeling
• Interactive graphics
modeling systems
• Graphics data structures
and algorithms
Undergraduate student participation:
development, implementation, and testing
of interactive graphics modeling systems
Jennifer Welch’s Research
Research Group
• 5 graduate students
• 2 undergraduates
• 1 post-doctoral fellow
Research Topics – Theory of Distributed Computing
• Mobile Ad Hoc Networks
• Metamorphic Robots
• Randomized Distributed Data Structures
Undergraduate Research Projects
• involve theory and/or implementation, as student wishes
• closely integrated into research group
• projects can lead to publications
Mobile Ad Hoc Networks


MANET: links form and disappear as nodes
come into and go out of each other’s wireless
communication range
Investigating design of fault-tolerant
algorithms and services
Undergrad projects: algorithm development
and simulation for clock synchronization,
leader election, group communication.
Metamorphic Robots

How to get a collection of homogeneous
interlocking robots to change their
global shape
Undergrad project: algorithm development, correctness proof, and simulation
for handling obstacles.
Distributed Data Structures



Develop useful and rigorous specifications of
DDS’s with probabilistic behavior
Find efficient algorithms to implement the
specifications
Identify classes of distributed applications
that can tolerate probabilistic behavior
Undergrad projects: simulation of distributed
linear algebra applications; simulations of
algorithms to implement a shared stack.
Contact Info

Prof. Nancy Amato:
http://parasol.tamu.edu/~amato
[email protected]

Prof. Jianer Chen:
http://faculty.cs.tamu.edu/chen
[email protected]

Prof. Jennifer Welch:
http://faculty.cs.tamu.edu/welch
[email protected]