Research in Action 2008 - University of Toronto

contents
3 Message from the Chair
4 Online Music Recommendation and the Problem of Missing Ratings
5 Understanding Language Through Interactive Visualization
6 Computational Analysis of Ice Hockey Gameplay
7 Novel Interfaces for Molecular Visualization
8 Searching the Sky
9 ShapeShop
10 The Vocal Village Number Pad Client
11 All Optical Networks – Networking With Tiny Buffers
12 Technology to Support Cognition and Combat Memory Impairments
13 Personalized Search With Provably Good Properties
14 Snowflock: Virtual Machine Framework for Parallel
and Data-Intensive Computing
15 Speech Summarization
16 Automated Protein Crystallography
17 Rethinking Access Control With Social Networks
18 Interactive Performance Control – A New Puppetry
of Real and Virtual Robots
19 Building Software With Traceability
20 A Content Delivery System for Bluetooth
21 Interactive Preference Elicitation
22 Model Management With TReMer+
23 Pursuing the Netflix Prize: Large-Scale Collaborative Filtering
* Point of contact identified within each Project Team listing
MESSAGE from the chair
The Department of Computer Science (DCS) has been a leading international
research department for over forty years. Our roughly fifty research faculty
and 300 graduate students are engaged in cutting-edge investigations at the
forefront of the dramatic changes in the development and uses of information
and communications technology. We also place great emphasis on exposure
to, and direct engagement in, research projects among our undergraduates,
integrating inquiry-based learning deeply into our curriculum.
We are pleased to highlight a small cross-section of the many fascinating
research projects currently underway in DCS. The research described in this
booklet gives a sense of the fundamental advances in computing taking
place in the department, from new networking technologies and virtualization
techniques to new tools for software development or interacting with devices.
It also demonstrates the wide-ranging impact of computer science on areas
as diverse as animation, product recommendation, web search, speech
understanding, astronomical and biological discovery, and much more.
While the projects described here are, to a degree, applications-oriented,
faculty and graduate students in DCS also engage in groundbreaking
theoretical research that influences the entire discipline.
Much of our innovative research is shaped by collaborations with research
partners in industry and in other academic disciplines – in the sciences, health
sciences, social sciences and humanities. Connections and collaborations
with industry are especially important to ensure that
our research has genuine impact.
We’re proud of our deep interdisciplinary
connections and our strong ties with the industrial
and business communities, but are always striving
to do more. I encourage potential partners to
explore the breadth and depth of the internationally
renowned research in DCS, and propose novel ways
to benefit from our expertise, creativity and drive.
Craig Boutilier
Professor & Chair