What I Learned And What I Wished I Had Learned
Timothy Doughty, DriveSavers, Novato, California
01/29/2015
Given the wide variety of subjects related to programming and software engineering, it's hard to keep up with everything. This talk will involve a discussion of the things that have served me well since graduation, the things that I wished I had spent more time with before graduation, and the things I didn't even consider I'd use.
From Bit To Qubit: Quantum Information For Everyone
Michael Nathanson, St. Mary’s College, Moraga, California
02/05/2015
Classical information theory abstracts all data into strings of zeroes and ones. The particular medium used to encode them is theoretically irrelevant, and any strange behavior introduced by the medium becomes a challenge to overcome. In quantum information theory, information is encoded in the states of quantum systems, and the extent to which its behavior deviates from the classical is no longer seen as a challenge but as a fundamental resource. In this talk, I will describe how properties of quantum mechanics such as superposition and entanglement offer the possibility of more efficient algorithms and secure cryptographic protocols, giving specific examples of each.
Government Cybersecurity 2015: What To Expect From Congress And The Executive Branch In The Coming Year
Chris Finan, former White House Cybersecurity Advisor
02/12/2015
Will Congress ever pass cybersecurity legislation? Will the Obama administration build on the Executive Order and NIST framework with additional initiatives in the coming year? How will policymakers balance privacy and security concerns? What are the strategic priorities and what can we expect? Chris will offer insight into key legislative and policymaking issues, and provide analysis of what Washington is likely to do to address the nation’s cybersecurity challenges in 2015.
Optimizing Performance At 20 Megawatts: Open Problems In Power-Constrained Supercomputing
Barry Rountree, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
02/19/2015
Through the history of supercomputing, we've been able to assume that, in effect, we can plug each new machine into the wall and expect that there will be enough electricity to run the system. As the fastest machines on the planet make the transition from petaflop to exaflop architectures, this assumption no longer holds: future machines will have hard limits onb the power they are allowed to consume. Performance optimization will have to be done within these power constraints, which leads to several unexpected complications.
Towards The Next Generation Of Search Engines
Yi Fang, Santa Clara University
02/26/2015
Owing to the massive amount of data on the Web, search engines have become an indispensable means for people to find relevant information in their daily lives. The traditional paradigm of search being just a way of locating the top ten relevant web pages is undergoing changes. In this talk, I will introduce some recent developments of search technologies. One of them is entity-oriented search, which enables users to search for things and objects (such as people, places, and products) instead of documents and instantly get information that is relevant to the query. I will also discuss the convergence of search engines with other technologies such as recommender systems.