News

David commented on the recent introduction of the “digital wallet” in the Toronto Star and the Hamilton Spectator.

This past weekend, Roel Vertegaal and the team at the Human Media Lab unveiled what is being hailed as the first ever “Boutique Laboratory”. See the featured story, covered by CKWS-TV, here.

A research team from the Human Media Lab, headed by Roel Vertegaal, has developed a hologram system that produces life-size, three-dimensional holograms. The team was rounded out by John Bolton, Kibum Kim, Peng Wang and McGill University professor Jeremy Cooperstock. The story was featured in The Kingston Whig Standard, Queen’s News Centre, The Globe and Mail, National Post, Toronto Sun, Toronto Star, Montreal Gazette, CTV, QR77 (Calgary Talk Radio), CBC Radio and more than 50 other newspapers and websites across Canada. It was also featured in News Track India, the Los Angeles Times, United Press International, Canberra Times, Brisbane Times, Sydney Morning Herald, Daily Mail, Wired, Discovery Channel News, HSXD.com, Txchnologist, Logiciel, YouTube and several other technology and media outlets from around the world. The YouTube video demonstrating the technology received more than 21,000 hits in the first 24 hours.

• Kingston Whig Standard – Queen’s Research Team Launches Hologram System
• Queen’s News Centre – Life-size, 3D hologram-like telepods my revolutionize videoconferencing
• The Globe and Mail – Star Trek-like device beams life-sized holograms
• National Post – Star Trek just got real: Hologram-like 3D telepod invented by Queen’s U professor
• Toronto Sun – Researchers develop holograms for online chatting
• Toronto Star – Star Trek comes to life: Life-size 3D hologram created by Queen’s University researcher
• News Track India – Star Trek-like pd that beams 3D holograms may revolutionize videoconferencing
• Los Angeles Times – 3-D holographic video conferencing is real? Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi!
• United Press International – 3-D pod like something from Star Trek
• CTV – Researcher invents Star Trek-like 3-D videoconferencing
• Wired – Augmented Reality: Telehuman and Bodipod
• Discovery Channel News – Videoconferencing Is Like 3-D Skype
• HSXD
• Txchnologist – “You’re My Only Hope”: 3D Videoconferencing with Telehuman
• Logiciel – Telehuman un concept qui innove

The Discovery Channel’s “Daily Planet”  recently featured the Human Media Lab, the first ever boutique laboratory. Click HERE to see the whole episode!

A new futuristic Human Media Lab, designed to inspire students through a creative and flexible workplace environment, opens next week. The lab serves as one big interactive playground, allowing students to hack and experiment with the architecture and space as a user interface.

Computing professor and Queen’s Human Media Lab director Roel Vertegaal collaborated on the laboratory’s design with New York-based Karim Rashid, who Time magazine calls “the most famous industrial designer in all the Americas.”

“We believe it is important to surround graduate students with great, inspirational room design. A stimulating room produces stimulating ideas. So we created the world’s first boutique laboratory,” says Dr. Vertegaal. The new Human Media Lab is designed to inspire creativity.

Laboratory and other work environments are notorious for being designed as functional, linear spaces that are not suitable for innovative thinking. Instead the new laboratory features space to think, a cantilevered table to collaborate around, and pods and offices for focus work. Walls and windows are flexible and curved, rather than straight and flat.

One of the laboratory’s main features is a 16-by-9 feet interactive flexible display with gesture technology as seen in the futuristic Tom Cruise film Minority Report. Users in front of the wall-sized display use in-air gestures to control the user interface by moving objects around the screen.

This may be the way people interact with future computers seamlessly integrated into their surrounding space. Eye trackers recognize when people in adjoining cubicles are looking at each other, automatically turning the translucent glass between them transparent for communication.

The laboratory was funded through a grant by Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Ministry of Research and Innovation of Ontario.

Click here for more details about new Human Media Lab.

(This story appeared in the Queen’s News Centre on May 1, 2012)

David Skillicorn was interviewed recently by the Toronto Star and was asked to comment on the DNSChanger virus, which is expected to affect computers as of July 9, 2012.

Read the entire article here.

You are invited to the third Queen’s Graduate Computing Society Conference (QGCSC 2012), which will take place on Wednesday and Thursday, May 9-10, 2012. The main highlights of QGCSC 2012 are:

1) Distinguished keynote speakers:
Dr. Steve Easterbrook, Dr. Esin Kiris and Dr. Selim Akl
We are proud to have three great speakers this year, which are Dr. Steve Easterbrook, Dr. Esin Kiris and Dr. Selim Akl. The first speaker, Dr. Steve Easterbrook is from the University of Toronto. He will give us an overview of history and his research in the exciting area of climate modeling, which involves tools known from software engineering. Dr. Esin Kiris from CA Technologies will show us her work that combines research and industry in the area of Human Computer Interactions. Our final speaker, Dr. Selim Akl, is the director of Queen’s School of Computing, and he will present us the highlights of his research in the area of unconventional computing.

2) Panel discussion:
Has social media changed computer science as we know it?
We will be holding a panel discussion on the effects of social media within computer science. More specifically we want to hear from panelists their opinions on how permanent are those effects and what do they mean for scientists and for practitioners. The discussion will involve our guests, Dr. Esin Kiris and Dr. Steve Easterbrook, and representatives of the School of Computing: Dr. James Cordy, Wendy Powley and Scott Grant.

3) Scientific presentations and posters from our students
This is one of the most important events during our conference. Students from many different research areas, such as networking, biomedical computing, software engineering, computation theory and human computer interactions will present their achievements. This is a showcase of the breadth and depth of the research that is conducted in the School of Computing, of which we are all very proud.

4) Programming competition
We will have a competition between labs and we will find out which lab has the best programmers!

More information and the detailed program are available on our website. Please note that the registration for the event closes April, 24.

We look forward to seeing you at the conference!

We are very pleased to report that Queen’s School of Computing Professor Nick Graham has been awarded an NSERC Collaborative Health Research Project grant for his Cerebral Palsy Fit ‘n Fun research.

Nick will be collaborating with Holland Bloorview Hospital on improving fitness for children with Cerebral Palsy.

Well done, Nick, on your first application to the NSERC CHRP funding program!

Nick was interviewed by CKWS Television during the Creative Computing event, which was held April 5 at the Queen’s BioSciences Building. In the interview, he comments on computing in the modern era.

See Nick’s interview here.

Although many universities offer computer science as an option to satisfy science or math requirements, some schools are now making it a required course in order to graduate. For example, each of the nearly 2,000 freshmen entering the Georgia Institute of Technology each year must take a computer science course regardless of their major, says College of Computing Associate Dean Charles Isbell. In addition, every student at Montclair State University must complete a computer science course in order to graduate. Most Montclair students take “Introduction to Computer Applications: Being Fluent with Information Technology,” which is designed to teach students majoring in non-technical fields about network security, artificial intelligence, databases and e-commerce, says Computer Science Department Chairman Michael Oudshoorn. “It’s not aimed at making them experts; it’s aimed at making them aware,” Oudshoorn says. “They do live in a digital age … they have an obligation to know something about the technology.” University of California, Irvine professor Geoffrey Bowker says more schools should make computer science a requirement. “All aspects of our personal lives and our work lives are affected by computers,” he says. “We need to know about the tools that we’re working with.”

View the full article from US News here.