New faculty member

The School of Computer Science welcomes new faculty member, David Meger.

Professor Meger's research interests are computer vision, machine learning, and robotics. Visit his website to learn more: http://www.cim.mcgill.ca/~dmeger

Computer Games Lab

efficient and playable game implementations / Modelling and analyzing different facts of game structure

HALO STATECHARTS
Statechart-based game AI

Designing and modelling an agent comparable in size and complexity to a commercial AI using to formalism of layered statecharts. As a reference point, looked at the behaviour tree of Halo and reconstructed it using the new approach.

NARRATIVES
Computer game narratives

Aims to model computer narratives and develop analysis techniques for detecting narrative flaws and other narrative properties, currently built around an investigation of Interactive Fiction as a relatively pure source of game narratives.

GAMEPLAY PACING
Measuring gameplay pacing in WoW

Using a World of Warcraft client-side plugin created to record data about players' progress through a cooperative scenario and analyzing the data, the level of difficulty can be quantified in order to design scalable and adaptable scenarios to challenge players.

Professors Bettina Kemme , Jörg Kienzle , Clark Verbrugge

Network Dynamics Lab

Measuring and predicting complex systems

WHO'S IN A POPULATION?
Demographic Inference

Organizations, governments, and companies are interested in understanding the people in groups they’re interacting with. We're developing new techniques for inferring the demographics of physical populations using data from online networks like Twitter and Facebook.

HOW DO SOCIAL NETWORKS GROW?
Community Identification

Grow, decay, and dissipate. We're interested in observing and measuring these processes using computational and mathematical models. We hope that such knowledge aids in building more vibrant, constructive societies.

WHY ARE ORGANICS HARD TO KILL?
Origin of Biological Robustness

Despite the complex biochemical processes at work in cells, you can mess with a cell's DNA, douse it in toxins, and expose it to extreme temperatures and it will survive. We're working to uncover aspects of cellular design that evolution has used to make living systems so resilient.

Professor Derek Ruths

Distributed Simulation Lab

Synchronization techniques / Load-balancing algorithms / VLSI simulation / Astrophysics simulation

GATE LEVEL PARALLEL SIMULATION
parallel Verilog simulation

Developing a parallel environment for gate level simulation which incorporates our research on synchronization and load-balancing algorithms, with the intention to focus on the use of multi-core architectures, GPUs, and embedded circuit simulation.

GRAVITATIONAL N-BODY SIMULATION
n-body problem

Studying the motion of particles under the influence of their mutual gravitational attraction, making use of direct methods for the solution of the equations of motion and parallel discrete-event simulation instead of continuous simulation.

ASTROPHYSICS SIMULATIONS
astrophysical and weather

Integrating continuous and discrete event paradigms to provide a new and powerful approach to the simulation problems of continuous simulations such as those for astrophysics and weather, using reverse computation as a key component.

Professor Carl Tropper

Computational Structural Biology

Theoretical models & algorithms/ Genomic sequences/ Molecular systems/ Cellular functions

HUMAN-COMPUTING
Phylo

Solve difficult scientific problems while playing a casual video game. We develop human-computing games such as Phylo to solve central problems arising in biology. Join the open-science movement!

MECHANISM OF LIFE
Protein Folding

Understanding how proteins fold is an important step to decipher the mechanisms of life and design pharmaceutical drug. We develop new models to make this task faster and more accurate.

ORIGIN OF LIFE ON EARTH
RNA & Evolution

Ribonucleic Acids (RNAs) could be at the origin of life on earth. We develop algorithms to design synthetic biological systems and simulate molecular evolution based on RNAs.

Professor Jerome Waldispuhl

Distributed Information System Lab

Large-scale distributed data management / Cloud computing / Data consistency

LARGE-SCALE DATA STORES
Reliability, Consistency, Load-distribution

Managing consistency for transactional applications when data is distributed across many components is challenging. ConsAD detects and quantifies anomalies as they occur, and we build algorithms that maintain the desired level of consistency across all components.

DISTRIBUTED MULIPLAYER GAMES
Update dissemination, Game engines in the cloud

The goal of our research is to understand the challenges of distributing a game engine across a distributed cluster or a peer-to-peer network and to find solutions for update dissemination, load-balancing, cheating, movement prediction, and much more.

ADAPTIVE CACHING
Workload-aware caching and load-balancing

CumuloNimbo is a novel platform as a service (PaaS) that will provide high scalability (100+ nodes), high availability, and adaptability for traditional transactional workloads without sacrificing data consistency and ease of programming as is the norm in today's PaaS.

Professor Bettina Kemme

Comparative and Regulatory Genomics

Algorithmic and machine learning approaches to biological sequence analysis / Comparative genomics / Genome evolution

COMPARATIVE & ANCESTRAL GENOMICS
Functional regions of the human genome

Can we tell what the genome of the first mammal looked like? Yes, with a clever analysis of genomes of extant species. We use inferred ancestral genomes and evolutionary scenarios to map the functional regions of the human genome and predict the impact of mutations.

PROTEIN-PROTEIN INTERACTION NETWORKS
Mapping the human cell network

These interactions occur when two or more proteins bind together to carry out their biological function. In collaboration with the Coulombe Lab, we are developing the experimental and computational techniques to map this network and the graph algorithms required to analyze it.

3D GENOMICS
Inferring and analyzing the genome's 3D structure

Two metres of DNA fit into the nucleus of each cell. The precise way DNA is packaged is highly organized, dynamic, and has major implications on how genes are expressed. In collaboration with the Dostie Lab, we investigate experimental and computational approaches.

Professor Mathieu Blanchette

Pervasive Security and Privacy

Mobile and pervasive computing / Networked embedded systems / Privacy-preserving computing / Cloud systems

PRIVACY-PRESERVING SENSING AND COMPUTING
Important considerations

Design challenge for pervasive computing researchers: continuous sensing is useful, but how can we design such systems so that they use sensing when and where it is needed while respecting the privacy and comfort of users and others who may be monitored?

SIDE-CHANNEL INFORMATION LEAKS
Protecting WLAN users

By encrypting your wireless communications and requiring users to authenticate before connecting, you can ensure unauthorized users do not intrude on your WLAN and that your wireless data can not be intercepted.

LOCATION VERIFICATION SYSTEM
Location-based social network services

Location-based services (LBS) is a computer program-level services used to include controls for location and time data as control features. LBS has many uses in social networking today, through the mobile devices' network accessing its geographical position.

Professor Wenbo He

Reasoning and Learning Lab

Probabilistic systems / Markov processes / Decision making under uncertainty / Reinforcement learning

SMARTWHEELER
J. Pineau - multi-modal intelligent wheelchair control

Senses obstacles, uses programmed maps to localize and self-navigate through its environment, and helps individuals with mobility impairments achieve greater autonomy, who can communicate with the robot through a speech interface or touchscreen.

APPROXIMATION OF CONTINUOUS STATE SYSTEMS
P. Panangaden

Developing theoretical tools for analyzing continuous-state systems, using duality theory, metrics and logic. Algorithms for automatically computing approximations whose behaviour can be guaranteed to be “close” to that of the original system.

REINFORCEMENT LEARNING AND TIME SERIES ANALYSIS
D. Precup

Algorithms for learning good representations of time series data and how to control a stochastic, complex environment to maximize a long-term objective. Applications in medical decision making, energy management, e-commerce, music, etc.

Professors Jackie Chi Kit Cheung , Prakash Panangaden , Joelle Pineau , Doina Precup

Modelling, Simulation & Design Lab

Computer-aided multi-paradigm modelling and simulation / Model compilers & languages / Rapid application development / Reactive systems

NECSIS
Automotive engineering network

A $16.6-million national research network created to tackle the technological challenges related to the growing complexity of automotive software systems. GM of Canada Ltd and IBM Canada are mobilizing leading software engineers at 7 universities and in Montreal.

ATOM^3
Tool for multi-formalism and meta-modeling

Meta-modelling refers to the description, or modelling, of different kinds of formalisms used to model systems. Model-transforming refers to the process of converting, translating or modifying a model in a given formalism, into another model that may be in the same formalism.

adapID
Advanced applications for electronic Identity cards

Designing secure e-ID card apps to protect citizens’ privacy with research in digital credentials, secure integration of biometry and cryptology, reliable dispute handling, trusted modules for securing applications, and services and legal aspects of trust in an open network.

Professor Hans Vangheluwe

Advanced Networking Research Lab

Design of secure and trusted networked computing systems / Authentication / Access control / Cloud computing

HYBRID CLOUDS
Leveraging public and private cloud combinations

A framework for combining resources from public clouds and/or resources donated by participating resources with trusted resources from private clouds to deliver higher levels of services at lower cost for resource intensive applications such as image and video processing.

GINI
Open-source software-based toolkit for experimental virtual networks

An entirely software-based system providing lightweight but IP compliant virtual elements for machines, routers, switches, wireless access points, and mobile devices, which can be interconnected to create virtual networks for experimentation purposes.

SOCIAL ACCESS CONTROL
Human-centric information access control

Include social factors in confidentiality control and integrity management decisions to create flexible schemes where policies can be expressed in terms of social linkages and risks of sharing or upfdating can be related to the interactions observed in the social network.

Professor Muthucumaru Maheswaran

Software Technology Research Group

Source Code and Documentation Analysis Techniques / Specialized Search Engines and Recommendation Systems / Information Extraction and Software Analytics

Recommending Adaptive Changes
for Documentation Evolution

Programming technologies evolves rapidly and information about them can become outdated. We design techniques to automatically detect and repair inconsistencies.

Automatic Code Example Summarization

We are developing the idea of source code summarization to repackage existing open-source code fragments so that they cleanly illustrate programming concepts or patterns of interest.

TaskNav
Extracting Development Tasks to Navigate Software Documentation

With the TaskNav project, we are exploring the use of natural language processing to re-index programming tutorials so that they map to questions programmers have.

Professor Martin Robillard

Computation and Logic Group

Developing a theoretical and practical foundation for building and reasoning about reliable, safe software systems

BELUGA
Programming with proofs

Beluga is a novel programming environment for trustworthy computing where programmers can specify sophisticated safety policies and weave proofs into programs. The goal is to establish safety of software systems via programming with proofs.

CORE
COntextual REasoning

Contextual reasoning plays a fundamental role in linguistics, AI, logic, functional programming and theorem proving. CORE investigates its logical foundation and explores its ramifications in meta-programming and meta-reasoning.

PROMIS
Safety of computational systems

The goal of this international collaboration with INRIA, CMU and UMn is to develop a unified framework for specifying and certifying safety properties of computational systems, in particular distributed computation.

Professor Brigitte Pientka

Computer Graphics Lab

Physically based animation / Deformation / Contact / Modeling motion and control of humans and animals / Interaction capture

COMPOSITE FINITE ELEMENTS
Embedding of linear elastic deformable models

A new technique results in significant improvements in the efficient physically based simulation of highly detailed objects, taking into account topological details, varying material properties, and empty space.

HANDNAVIGATOR
Hands-on interaction for desktop virtual reality

Aimed at hands-on manipulation of digital models through natural hand gestures, this novel system is composed of a new physical interaction device coupled with a simulated compliant virtual hand model.

MODAL LOCOMOTION
Animating virtual character locomotion

Efficient locomotion should exploit the natural passive response of the character's dynamical system, specifically focusing on the natural vibration modes, which are affected by parameters such as shape, size, mass, and joint stiffness.

Professor Paul Kry

Computational Complexity Lab

Algebra / Communication complexity / Boolean functions

ALGEBRA
Understanding computations realised by finite-state machines

Algebra is useful in understanding computations realized by finite-state machines. Extending ideas and techniques coming from these investigations to other research domains: boolean circuits, computational learning, automated verification, constraint satisfaction, etc.

COMMUNICATION COMPLEXITY
Fourier analysis and its applicaions

How many bits two computers need to communicate with each other in order to compute a function - efficient solutions can be viewed as efficiently solving certain communication tasks, which allows studying the computational hardness of problems in this context.

BOOLEAN FUNCTIONS
Animating virtual character locomotion

Boolean functions are central to complexity theory and combinatorics as objects of interest in these areas can often be represented as such. Fourier analysis provides some of the strongest tools, with applications to graph theory, circuit complexity, communication complexity, etc.

Professor Denis Therien

Computational Vision Lab

Image motion in cluttered scenes / Flow visualization / Specular reflections / Blur, depth, and occlusions / Light source modelling

SPECULAR REFLECTIONS
Shading & shape

How do we judge hills and valleys from smooth patterns reflected in a surface?

3D CLUTTERED SCENES
Occlusions, size & density

How do we use spatial arrangement, scale, and blur to perceive surface orientation and distance?

TEXTURE AND FOCUS
Spatial arrangement, scale & blur

Boolean functions are central to complexity theory and combinatorics as objects of interest in these areas can often be represented as such. Fourier analysis provides some of the strongest tools, with applications to graph theory, circuit complexity, communication complexity, etc.

Professor Michael Langer

Cyber-Physical Systems Lab

Design of secure and trusted networked computing systems / Authentication / Access control / Rights management

GREEN COMPUTING
Environmentally sustainable computing and IT

Some goals of Green IT are maximizing energy efficiency during the product's lifetime and promoting the recyclability / biodegradability of defunct products and factory waste - using computers as energy-efficient as possible and designing for efficiency-related technologies.

SYSTEMS AND NETWORKING SUPPORT FOR CPS
Cyber-physical systems

Research will improve the link between computational and physical elements in CPS, and broadening its potential in dimensions including intervention (eg collision avoidance), precision (eg robotic surgery and nano-level manufacturing), and coordination (eg air traffic control).

SOCIAL COMPUTING
Intersection of social behaviour and computational systems

Designing digital systems to make socially produced information available to their users, either directly, after having been filtered and aggregated, or indirectly - in all cases, info that is produced by a group of people is used to provide or enhance the functioning of a system.

Professor Xue Liu

Software Engineering Lab

Dependable software development / Aspect-orientation / Research applications to massively multiplayer games

MAMMOTH
MMO game research framework

The goal is to provide an environment for experimentation in areas such as distributed systems, fault tolerance, databases, modeling and simulation, artificial intelligence and aspect-orientation, partnered with Quazal, EA Montreal, and EJ-Technologies.

RAM
Reusable aspect models

A novel approach to aspect-oriented modeling that makes scalable multi-view modeling possible, allowing the modeler to define stand-alone reusable aspect models, which support the modeling of structure and behavior (UML diagrams).

TOUCHRAM
A multi-touch enabled tool for aspect-oriented software design

TouchRAM is aimed at developing scalable and reusable software design models, giving the designer access to a vast library of reusable design models encoding essential recurring design concerns and featuring a multi-touch enabled user interface.

Professor Jörg Kienzle

Sable Lab

Tool development for computation-intensive problems in Java / Better understanding and faster execution of Java programs

MCLAB
Extensible compiler and VM Toolkit for MATLAB

The McLab project aims to provide languages, compilers and virtual machines for dynamic scientific languages, starting with the MATLAB language, and extensions of the MATLAB language such as AspectMatlab.

ABC
The AspectBench Compiler for AspectJ

A complete implementation of AspectJ that aims to make it easy to implement both extensions and optimisations of the core language, providing two front ends: one built on the Polyglot framework, the other an extension of the JastAddJ extensible Java compiler.

SOOT
Java optimization framework

Provides four intermediate representations for analyzing and transforming Java bytecode, and can be used as a standalone tool to optimize or inspect class files, as well as a framework to develop optimizations or transformations on Java bytecode.

Professors Laurie Hendren , Clark Verbrugge

Scientific Computing Lab

Scientific computing / Matrix computations / Numerical estimation methods / Communications / GPS positioning / Localization in wireless networks

LARGE SPARSE MATRIX CALCULATIONS
Algorithms and data structures

In the subfield of numerical analysis, a sparse matrix is populated primarily with zeros. When storing and manipulating these matrices on a computer, it is beneficial and often necessary to use specialized algorithms and data structures.

NUMERICAL METHODS AND THEIR APPLICATIONS
Computational analysis

Developing algorithms that use numerical approximation for the problems of mathematical analysis using various methods for lattice reduction and integer least squares problems, and researching their applications in GPS and wireless communications, etc.

POWER MINIMIZATION OF MOBILE POSITIONING
Location-based services

A modern mobile device must position itself and support remote position tracking. Research involves building low-power location-based services that can run for hours on mobile phones depending on how different phone features and different types of LBSs consume power.

Professor Xiao-Wen Chang

Cryptography Lab

Theoretical and practical crypography / Quantum information theory / Quantum computing

TWO PROVERS IN ISOLATION
Classical and quantum strategies

We investigate the security of cryptographic protocols in a scenario where two special participants are placed "in isolation". Based on the concept of "non-locality" issued from quantum mechanics, isolation is in essence "no non-locality".

POST-QUANTUM OBLIVIOUS TRANSFER
Encryption scheme

The new concept of "weakly random self-reducible" crypto-systems is exploited to construct secure cryptographic primitives from complexity assumptions that appear secure even in the presence of a quantum adversary.

POST-QUANTUM ZERO-KNOWLEDGE
Zero-knowledge proof systems

Describing and relating several zero-knowledge languages from the fields of coding theory, lattices, and multivariate polynomials. As far as we know these problems are intractable, even equipped with a quantum computer.

Professor Claude Crepeau

Mobile Robotics Lab

Sensor-based robotics

Aqua
Marine and amphibious robot sensing and locomotion

This project deals with underwater and amphibious robotics, and is the umbrella for a host of different specific research probjects at McGill, as well as in collaboration with our associates at York University. Most of the sub-projects enatil work with out Aqua family of underwater hexapod robots.

Human-robot interaction
Smart interactions for humans and robotics

We examine the construction of a vision-based interface for human-robot interaction and control for autonomous robots in arbitrary environments. The goal is to enable a human operator to control and program the robot without the need for any complicated input interface, and also enable the robot to learn about its environment and the operator.

GSSP
Graphical state-space programming for robot control

We are developing an interface for controlling mobile robots that combines aspects of graphical trajectory specification and state space programming. Our objective is to facilitate the programming and debugging of robot execution plans, containing both scheduled trajectories and activities, as well as contingency plans and failsafe behaviors.

Professor Gregory Dudek

Reasoning and Learning Lab: Computational Linguistics

Natural language processing / Computational semantics / Natural language generation / Automatic summarization

Computational Semantics
Understanding the meaning of words, phrases and passages

We are investigating how to understand the meaning of a word, phrase, or entire passage using vector space models of semantics. The goal of our models is to make inferences about the state of the world based on the contents of the text.

Natural Language Generation
Generating languages of particular styles

With the proliferation of smart devices, we will need more fluent and natural ways to receive information from automatic systems. We are working on methods to generate language of a particular style, whether it is formal text or a casual conversation.

Event Extraction and Understanding
Extract events from text using computational models

What happens at a play? The audience enters the theatre, the lights go off, then the performance begins! We are developing computational models to extract typical sequences of events and their participants from text.

Professor Jackie Chi Kit Cheung

research@cs

New faculty member

Computer Games Lab

efficient and playable game implementations / Modelling and analyzing different facts of game structure

Network Dynamics Lab

Measuring and predicting complex systems

Distributed Simulation Lab

Synchronization techniques / Load-balancing algorithms / VLSI simulation / Astrophysics simulation

Computational Structural Biology

Theoretical models & algorithms/ Genomic sequences/ Molecular systems/ Cellular functions

Distributed Information System Lab

Large-scale distributed data management / Cloud computing / Data consistency

Comparative and Regulatory Genomics

Algorithmic and machine learning approaches to biological sequence analysis / Comparative genomics / Genome evolution

Pervasive Security and Privacy

Mobile and pervasive computing / Networked embedded systems / Privacy-preserving computing / Cloud systems

Reasoning and Learning Lab

Probabilistic systems / Markov processes / Decision making under uncertainty / Reinforcement learning

Modelling, Simulation & Design Lab

Computer-aided multi-paradigm modelling and simulation / Model compilers & languages / Rapid application development / Reactive systems

Advanced Networking Research Lab

Design of secure and trusted networked computing systems / Authentication / Access control / Cloud computing

Software Technology Research Group

Source Code and Documentation Analysis Techniques / Specialized Search Engines and Recommendation Systems / Information Extraction and Software Analytics

Computation and Logic Group

Developing a theoretical and practical foundation for building and reasoning about reliable, safe software systems

Computer Graphics Lab

Physically based animation / Deformation / Contact / Modeling motion and control of humans and animals / Interaction capture

Computational Complexity Lab

Algebra / Communication complexity / Boolean functions

Computational Vision Lab

Image motion in cluttered scenes / Flow visualization / Specular reflections / Blur, depth, and occlusions / Light source modelling

Cyber-Physical Systems Lab

Design of secure and trusted networked computing systems / Authentication / Access control / Rights management

Software Engineering Lab

Dependable software development / Aspect-orientation / Research applications to massively multiplayer games

Sable Lab

Tool development for computation-intensive problems in Java / Better understanding and faster execution of Java programs

Scientific Computing Lab

Scientific computing / Matrix computations / Numerical estimation methods / Communications / GPS positioning / Localization in wireless networks

Cryptography Lab

Theoretical and practical crypography / Quantum information theory / Quantum computing

Mobile Robotics Lab

Sensor-based robotics

Reasoning and Learning Lab: Computational Linguistics

Natural language processing / Computational semantics / Natural language generation / Automatic summarization

positions@cs

Accepting applications for a tenure-track appointment in Software Engineering academic position

events@cs

How to Go Really Big in AI: Strategies & Principles for Distributed Machine Learning colloquium

Expert information processing as strategic information encryption colloquium

Central-limit approach to risk-aware Markov decision processes colloquium

Building Games in Unreal Engine with Free Assets seminar

Entity-Centric Data Management colloquium

Computational Riboswitch Detection Using Inverse RNA Folding seminar

achievements@cs

Oct 11, 2015 award Prof. M. Blanchette elected Member of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada.

Apr 12, 2015 announcement Research group at CS uncovers flaws with Facebook's Like mechanism

Apr 06, 2015 award Emeritus Professor Chris Paige is named a SIAM Fellow

Apr 06, 2015 award Prof. Joelle Pineau named a William Dawson Scholar at McGill

Apr 06, 2015 award CS student Pascale Gourdeau wins Anita Borg Fellowship

Dec 03, 2014 award Annie T.T. Ying and Professor Martin Robillard, Distinguished Paper Award

Apr 01, 2014 award Mingyuan Xia awarded IBM Ph.D. fellowship

Nov 07, 2013 award Prof. P. Panangaden named Royal Society of Canada Fellow

notices@cs

Casual Research Asst. - Backend Developer

Nov 26, 2015 job posting

Academic Associate

Nov 19, 2015 job posting

Accepting applications for a tenure-track appointment in Software Engineering

Nov 06, 2015 academic position

Position: Graduate Student, Data/GIS Support

Nov 03, 2015 job posting

Looking for an Experienced Web Scraper

Oct 28, 2015 job posting

© McGill University 2015. Credits

Accepting applications for a tenure-track appointment in Software Engineering
academic position

How to Go Really Big in AI: Strategies & Principles for Distributed Machine Learning
colloquium

Expert information processing as strategic information encryption
colloquium

Central-limit approach to risk-aware Markov decision processes
colloquium

Building Games in Unreal Engine with Free Assets
seminar

Entity-Centric Data Management
colloquium

Computational Riboswitch Detection Using Inverse RNA Folding
seminar