[e2e] Call for White Papers - NSF Workshop on Pervasive Computing at Scale (PeCS)

Andrew Campbell campbell at cs.dartmouth.edu
Tue Nov 23 10:01:06 PST 2010


Call for White Papers

NSF Sponsored Workshop on Pervasive Computing at Scale (PeCS)

http://sensorlab.cs.dartmouth.edu/NSFPervasiveComputingAtScale/

University of Washington,
Seattle, WA
January 27-28, 2011

Next year is the 20th anniversary of Mark Weiser's landmark Scientific
American paper on ubiquitous computing: “The Computer for the 21st
Century”. While there has been significant progress towards his vision
most research has focused on the development of small-scale pervasive
systems, tested by a handful of users, interacting with a limited
number of devices. In order to advance the field and make technology
truly pervasive, the research community needs to address the issue of
scale. Future large-scale pervasive systems need to operate over
different spatial and temporal scales, encompass a large number of
diverse devices (e.g., mobile phones, tablets, wearables, embedded
wireless sensors) that enable a spectrum of applications, deal with
very large amounts of data distributed over a diverse set of
networking platforms and devices, and support 100s of millions of
users.

The trajectory from small to massive scale pervasive computing systems
is underway. Recently, smart environments, body area sensor networks,
and smartphones with embedded sensors are enabling the delivery of a
wide variety of applications from predicting traffic jams and modeling
human activities, to social interactions, behavioral and mobility
patterns, to community health tracking, public safety and large-scale
environmental sensing. These recent developments are being driven by
the availability of embedded sensors; the ease at which researchers
and developers can distribute new applications to millions of users;
and the emergence of the mobile computing cloud.

The goal of this workshop is to discuss the challenges for scaling our
future pervasive applications, algorithms, models, data and systems.
The problem of scaling pervasive systems is multi-disciplinary in
nature, including challenges in HCI, machine learning, data mining,
mobile systems, wireless and sensor networks, smart environments,
security and privacy, signal processing, control theory, information
theory, game theory, optimization techniques, psychology and social
networking.

To facilitate discussion, the National Science Foundation is
sponsoring a workshop on Pervasive Computing at Scale (PeCS) with the
following objectives:

•       identify open problems and fundamental challenges that must be
addressed to enable deployment of pervasive computing systems at
massive scale;

•       understand the needs of new applications capable of complex
inferences about personal, social, and urban spaces across a set of
domains, including but not limited to: smart health and well-being,
social networks, smart environments, human behavioral modeling and
persuasion, cyber-physical systems, and environmental and critical
infrastructure monitoring and protection (e.g., smart grids);

•       explore infrastructures, algorithms and tools necessary for the
collection and analysis of data from large ensembles of pervasive
heterogeneous and distributed  devices (e.g., mobile phone sensing,
wearable sensors, embedded sensors) and intelligent multi-scale
decision making;

•       understand the implications for privacy, security, trust and social
aspects of large-scale  pervasive computing systems;

•       identify software challenges, including middleware and operating
systems, for pervasive computing and associated applications;

•       explore new interfaces and modes of interactions between people and
pervasive computing devices, applications or environments;

•       study the computing continuum and trade-offs where pervasive
applications are self adaptive across a wide spectrum of devices and
networking technologies, from the smallest embedded sensors to the
computing cloud;

•       provide theoretical foundations toward defining the “Science of
Pervasive Computing”; for example, How to guarantee reliable pervasive
computing at scale in the presence of uncertain and incomplete
information? How to quantify and assess information quality for making
accurate decisions?;

•       explore the nexus between scalability and application
characteristics and context with the goal of identifying fundamental
insights, models and methods;
•       identify new networking challenges as very large pervasive systems
become commonly integrated with the Internet;

•       understand assurance and verification for critical applications
(e.g., health-care or safety); and,

•       Identify challenges in simulation, emulation and experimentation
with pervasive systems at scale.

Results from the workshop will serve as an input to NSF for
identifying specific new research directions and/or programs as part
of its strategic planning process and updating solicitations for
existing programs.

We solicit two page white papers on various topics related to scaling
in pervasive systems. The whitepapers must include three paragraphs
describing the following: (i) the background and experience of the
participant in this field; (ii) the vision of the participant; and
(iii) evidence that pursuing this vision will lead to major advances
in the field – the remainder of the white paper can expand on the
vision. Please note, whitepapers that present mature or
already-published work will not be accepted. Acceptance will be based
on several factors including the quality of the whitepaper and the
ability to form a diverse program in terms of topics and participants.

Participation in the workshop is by invitation only. Invitations will
be extended based upon review of the whitepapers. A limited number of
international participants may be invited. Washington State University
will pay travel expenses for all participants through an NSF grant.

All participants are required to contribute to a workshop report that
will be provided to the NSF.  The report will be edited by the
workshop co-chairs.

Submission Guidelines

Format: No longer than 2 pages, 12 point font, 1 inch margins

Submit via the web site using EDAS: http://edas.info/N9881

Important Dates:

December 15, 2010: Whitepaper Submission Deadline
December 20, 2010: Invitations Extended
January 27-28, 2011: Workshop Days
February 20, 2011: Final Report Due to NSF

Organizing Committee:

Andrew T. Campbell (Dartmouth College)
Diane Cooke (Washington State University)
Roy Want (Intel Labs)

Local Arrangements

Shwetak Patel (University of Washington)

National Science Foundation

Alhussein Abouzeid
Sajal Das
Krishna Kant



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