Three DIMACS Special Focus Programs Draw to a
Close
[October, 2017] Three long-running DIMACS special
focus (SF) programs drew to a close with the end of the summer. Each
DIMACS SF is a multi-year program of coordinated activities
addressing a broad topic and comprising activities such as
workshops, research working groups, tutorials, and research
visitors. Each SF concentrates on an area with high potential for
impact that is likely to spawn continuing collaborations and lasting
research activities. The three that ended are the: 1) SF on
Cybersecurity; 2) SF on
Energy and Algorithms; and 3) SF on
Information Sharing and Dynamic Data Analysis.
The SF on Cybersecurity explored issues related to providing
security and privacy in a world where everything is connected.
Themes of the SF included: security of critical infrastructure
systems; security for new paradigms like cloud computing;
fundamental cryptographic services like hash functions; and basic
mathematical topics (such as coding theory) that underlie modern
communication protocols. The SF on Energy and Algorithms highlighted
modeling and algorithmic challenges in energy systems. Important
themes included: optimization methods; new energy sources; and
uncertainty, risk and reliability. The SF on Information Sharing and
Dynamic Data Analysis looked at complex challenges in the use of
data, particularly “big data.” These included: privacy and security;
continual and distributed processing; and bringing together diverse
sources of information to draw conclusions and make decisions.
These three SFs combined to sponsor 53 events that engaged nearly
2800 people and to host a total of 30 visitors at DIMACS and its
partner institutions. Among these events were the 2014
Implementation Challenge on Steiner Trees and the two most recent
Reconnect workshops – on Mathematical and Computational Tools for
Energy Efficiency and Reliability of Data Centers and the Electrical
Grid in 2017 and on Cybersecurity in 2016. The Reconnect workshops
and the Implementations
Challenges are long-standing “signature” events of DIMACS. The
three SFs also laid the foundation for new DIMACS programs, such as
the ongoing Big
Data Initiative on Privacy and Security and the SF on
Cryptography, as well as the upcoming SF
on Bridging Continuous and Discrete Optimization that begins
in 2018.
SF events, with letters in parentheses indicating the associated SF
(C = Cybersecurity; E = Energy and Algorithms; I = Information Sharing and Dynamic Data Analysis),
were as follows:
1) China-US Software Workshop (C)
2) Workshop on Stochastic Networks: Reliability,
Resiliency, and Optimization (C)
3) Workshop on Green High Performance Computing
(E)
4) Workshop on Systems and Networking Advances in
Cloud Computing (C)
5) China-US Software Workshop 2 (C)
6) Workshop on Connectivity and Resilience for
Large-Scale Networks (C)
7) Privacy-Oriented Cryptography - Dagstuhl
Seminar 12381 (C)
8) NSF/DIMACS Workshop for Aspiring PIs in Secure
and Trustworthy Cyberspace (C)
9) Workshop on Recent Work on Differential Privacy
across Computer Science (C, I)
10) Workshop on Information-Theoretic Network
Security (C)
11) Workshop on Geological Data Fusion (I)
12) Workshop on Economic Aspects of Information
Sharing (I)
13) Workshop on Energy Infrastructure: Designing
for Stability and Resilience (E)
14) Workshop on Cascading Failures of Power
Transmission Systems: Models & Algorithms (E)
15) Workshop on Current Trends in Cryptology (C)
16) Workshop on Analysis of Information from
Diverse Sources (I)
17) Working Group on Measuring Anonymity (C)
18) DIMACS/BIC/A4Cloud/CSA International Workshop
on Trustworthiness, Accountability and Forensics in the Cloud (C)
19) Workshop on Big Data Integration (I)
20) Workshop on Algorithmic Information Fusion and
Data Mining (I)
21) Brainstorming Workshop on Cybersecurity
Education (C)
22) Workshop on Statistical Analysis of Network
Dynamics and Interactions (I)
23) Working Group on Algorithms for Green Data
Storage (E)
24) Workshop on Algorithms for Green Data Storage
(E)
25) DIMACS/RUCIA Workshop on Information Assurance
in the Era of Big Data (C)
26) Workshop on Systems and Analytics of Big Data
(I)
27) Workshop on Secure Cloud Computing (C)
28) Workshop on Building Communities for
Transforming Social Media Research Through New Approaches for
Collecting, Analyzing, and Exploring Social Media Data (I)
29) Workshop on Multicore and Cryptography (C)
30) NSF/DIMACS Workshop for Aspiring PIs in Secure
and Trustworthy Cyberspace (C)
31) MPE 2013+ Workshop on Data-aware Energy Use
(E)
32) CERI/DIMACS Workshop on Streaming Graph
Algorithms (I)
33) DIMACS Implementation Challenge: Steiner Tree
Problems (I)
34) Workshop on Mathematics of Post-Quantum
Cryptography (C)
35) Workshop on Coding-Theoretic Methods for
Network Security (C)
36) Workshop on Social and Collaborative
Information Seeking (I)
37) DIMACS/IEEE Working Group on Efficient and
Scalable Cybersecurity using Algorithms Protected by Electricity
(C,E)
38) Workshop on Big Data through the Lens of
Sublinear Algorithms (I)
39) DIMACS/Columbia Data Science Institute
Workshop on Cryptography for Big Data (I)
40) Workshop on Network Coding: the Next 15 Years
(C,I,E)
41) DIMACS/Statistics Workshop on Fusion Learning,
BFF Inferences, and Statistical Foundations (I)
42) NSF Algorithms in the Field (AitF) Workshop on
Algorithms for Software-Defined Networking (I)
43) Reconnect 2016: Mathematical and Computational
Tools for Cybersecurity (C)
44) Workshop on Cryptography and its Interactions:
Learning Theory, Coding Theory, and Data Structures (C)
45) Workshop on Distance Geometry: Theory and
Applications (I)
46) DIMACS/Northeast Big Data Hub Workshop on
Privacy and Security for Big Data (C)
47) IMS/ASA Spring Research Conference 2017 (I)
48) Workshop on Algorithms for Data Center
Networks (I)
49) Workshop on Complexity of Cryptographic
Primitives and Assumptions (C)
50) Reconnect 2017: Mathematical and Computational
tools for Energy Efficiency and Reliability of Data Centers and the
Electrical Grid (E)
51) Workshop on Outsourcing Computation Securely
(C)
52) ICERM Women in Data Science and Mathematics
Research Collaboration Workshop (I)
53) Workshop on Distributed Optimization,
Information Processing, and Learning (I)
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