The NSF ALADDIN Center Organization and Management

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The NSF ALADDIN Center Organization and
Management
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Personnel
Faculty 8 Faculty summer
Co-directors Guy Blelloch Lenore Blum
Postdocs (one at CMU) Adam Meyerson (02-03) Jason
Hartline (Fall 03) Harald Racke (Spring 03) Eran
Halperin? (03-04)
Administrator Susan Hrishenko (paid by department)
Web Designer Beatrice Angelache (half time)
Students 15 Graduate students 9 Undergraduates
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Responsibilities

• Hiring, Funding and Policy decisions
• Co-directors "executive committee"
• Selection of Probes
• Co-directors "advisory committee"
• Individual PROBEs
• PROBE organizers (oversight from co-directors)

• Workshop Logistics
• Administrator
• Publications Web design
• L. Blum B. Angelache

• College Workshops
• Lenore Blum
• Algorithms Depot
• Guy Blelloch

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Executive Committee

• Guy Blelloch
• Lenore Blum
• R. Ravi
• Daniel Sleator
• Robert Tarjan

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Friday Faculty Lunches
Every Friday we have a faculty lunch in which we
discuss Possible PROBE topics (external
speakers), upcoming events, status of PROBEs
Typically in Attendance
Sometimes in Attendance

• Guy Blelloch
• Avrim Blum
• Lenore Blum
• Manuel Blum
• Lisa Fleischer
• Alan Frieze
• Anupam Gupta

Mor Harchol-Balter Bruce Maggs Gary Miller Adam
Meyerson R. Ravi Danny Sleator
Bernard Chazelle Bob Nichol Bob Tarjan Latanya
Sweeney
de-facto AdvisoryCommittee
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Selecting PROBE Topics

• Current process
• Executive committee solicits topics.
• Someone presents the topic at a Friday lunch
• If there is enough interest from faculty at the
  lunch we encourage the formation of an
  organization committee
• Key selection criteria
• High potential impact
• Cross disciplinary
• Scope is not too narrow or too broad
• Potential interest to students and faculty

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Leveraging other projects

• We have co-organized some PROBEs with other
  projects (e.g. Meshing with Sangria).
• This has allowed us to support more PROBEs than
  initially proposed.

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Timeline (approx.)
Sept 02
Sept 03
Sept 04
Sept 01
CAPTCHA
Privacy
Meshing
Logistics
Graph Cuts
Dyn. Algs.
Algs. Econ.
Sched. Net.

• joint with other projects

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Are PROBEs working?

• Measurements
• Are topics being introduced across fields,
  leading to research and published papers?e.g.
  k-anonymity paper submitted to SODA
• Are we changing the way algorithms are used in
  practice?
• Are research proposals being submitted on the
  topic?
• We think they are, but in general it is too early
  to tell.

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Dissemination activities

• Research Papers 38
• PROBE Workshops 6
• College Workshop material for classes at
  Undergraduate Colleges
• Partnership activities CAPTCHA used by Yahoo,
  ideas followed up by Xerox PARC and Berkeley
• News articles on CAPTCHA in NYT
• Algorithms Depot initial release over the next
  year

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Princetons Involvement

• Logistics PROBE held at Princeton
• Moses Charikar co-organized the logistic PROBE
• Bob Tarjan co-organizing Dynamic Algorithms PROBE
• Bernard Chazelle involved in trying to start a
  PROBE on high-dimensional geometry
• Princeton students participated in Logistic
  PROBE, and graph cuts PROBE.

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Compared to the Original Plan

• PROBEs have been for 2 years instead of 1 1.5
• Suggested by the reviewers
• Supporting more parallel PROBEs than proposed
• We have not yet used an external advisory
  board.
• Richard Karp (Berkeley), Udi Manber (Amazon), and
  Fred Roberts (DIMACS) agreed in principal but we
  have yet to ask them to take a formal role.
• PROBE workshops are not as synchronized as
  proposed.
• We do plan to have a joint workshop next summer.
• Note Library component was dropped when grant
  was scaled down by 50.

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Plans for next year

• Talk to industrial partners about monetary
  support.
• Review successes and shortcomings of previous
  PROBEs
• Form committee for Algorithms Depot
• Possibly start a quarterly or semiannual
  newsletter

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Budget Summary

• Administration
• Faculty
• Students
• PostDoc
• Workshops
• Other