IDENTITY THEFT, CANCER DETECTION AMONG
INTERACTIVE DEMOS AT UH EVENT
Future of Computing Showcased, Prizes to Win at April 8 Public Open
House
HOUSTON, March 31, 2006 – Cancer detection, homeland security
and Mars topography are among the subjects of 12 interactive displays
that will be showcased during an open house at the University of
Houston.
Open to the public, the event will be held 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday,
April 8 on the fifth floor of the Philip G. Hoffman Building at
Entrance 14, off Cullen Boulevard at UH, and is hosted by the computer
science department. To see all available demonstrations will take
about two hours.
It is being held to educate the public on the future of computing
and provide information to high school and community college students
interested in pursuing a computer science education.
“The exhibits we have lined up introduce a totally new way
of approaching computer science and demonstrate a renewed impact
of our work on society,” said Marc Garbey, UH computer science
professor and chair of the department. “This is an exciting
time in our field, because interdisciplinary collaborations and
sophisticated computing are allowing computer scientists to create
tools and solve problems in areas like the environment and medicine.”
About a million dollars worth of equipment will be on display, such
as a high-performance computing booth used by UH researchers to
solve problems ranging from modeling Houston’s air quality
to creating designer drugs targeted at cancer, Alzheimer’s
and other diseases. Other demonstrations will include a display
of computational biomedicine techniques that look at cells for early
signs of cancer, as well as have applications in heart attack risk
detection.
Additional exhibits involve high-tech animation, smart robots,
thermal facial imaging for health screening at a distance, 3-D infrared
face recognition for identity theft, brain activity analysis for
understanding brain function and behavior, teaching geometry to
a computer through machine learning, remotely controlling robot
cars and characterizing the Martian landscape through data analysis.
More than a dozen faculty and numerous graduate students will be
in attendance and available for interviews, such as Garbey, who
will demonstrate his work on analyzing blood flow that has the potential
to assist surgeons in tissue remodeling, such as vein grafting after
artery failure.
Through a Science in Action contest, the general public will have
an opportunity to answer a quiz on the research demonstrations to
win software and hardware prizes totaling $5,000. Area high school
students will be eligible for a group programming contest that carries
a first-place prize of $2,400, with six $1,000 tuition scholarships
for first and second place team members who plan to enroll in the
UH computer science program. For UH students, there will be a research
poster contest, judged by UH faculty and the public, with prizes
totaling $2,000. Advance registration is only required for the teams
participating in the programming contest, with 10 teams already
entered.
Faculty members and graduate students will answer questions about
and demonstrate the following research:
- “Watch Your Blood Flow” – Professor and Chair
Marc Garbey
- “Your Face is Your Password” – Associate Professor
Ioannis Kakadiaris
- “See the Invisible” – Assistant Professor
Shishir Shah
- “Teach the Computer” – Associate Professor
Kam-Hoi Cheng
- “Find the Needle in the Haystack” – Associate
Professor Christoph Eick / Assistant Professor Ricardo Vilalta
- “Crazy Racing” – Assistant Professor Rong
Zheng
- “Robots to Go” – Associate Professor Albert
Cheng
- “Graphics and Animation” – Professor Olin
Johnson
- “Your Brain on Display” – Associate Professor
George Zouridakis
- “Future Face” – Associate Professor Ioannis
Pavlidis
- “High Performance Computing” – Associate Professor
Barbara Chapman / Assistant Professor Edgar Gabriel
- “What’s Inside Your Arteries” – Associate
Professor Ioannis Kakadiaris
For more information, visit http://www.cs.uh.edu/events/2006_0408_openhouse.shtml.
About the University of Houston
The University of Houston, Texas’ premier metropolitan research
and teaching institution, is home to more than 40 research centers
and institutes and sponsors more than 300 partnerships with corporate,
civic and governmental entities. UH, the most diverse research university
in the country, stands at the forefront of education, research and
service with more than 35,000 students.
About the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics
The UH College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, with nearly
400 faculty members and approximately 4,000 students, offers bachelors,
masters and doctoral degrees in the natural sciences, computational
sciences and mathematics. Faculty members in the departments of
biology and biochemistry, chemistry, computer science, geosciences,
mathematics and physics have internationally recognized collaborative
research programs in association with UH interdisciplinary research
centers, Texas Medical Center institutions and national laboratories.
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For more information about UH visit the universitys Newsroom
at www.uh.edu/admin/media/newsroom.
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