1999-2000 ACADEMIC ACTIVITIES REPORT
(dates covered: 4/1/99 - 3/31/00)
I. NAME AND DEPARTMENT
Timothy J. Hickey,
Computer Science
II. INSTRUCTIONAL ACTIVITIES
-
List courses taught throughout the year, (title, number,
enrollments, hours per week). For team-taught courses, please provide
details of your specific responsibilities. Please discuss, if applicable,
new courses created, new pedagogical materials and techniques, and
supervision of teaching assistants. You may wish to attach course syllabi
and relevant course materials.
Courses taught
This year I taught a total of 363 students in 2 large lecture courses,
2 TYP courses, 5 independent studies, and 3 Summer Odyssey internships.
- Summer 1999
- Summer Odyssey -- 3 students
- Reggie Chinthrajah -- Memory-based applet communication
- Beth Hollander -- Combining interval arithmetic and finite domain solvers
- Ted Stein -- distributed interval arithmetic constraint solving
- Autumn 1999
- Lecture Courses
- CS2a -- Introduction to Computers -- 224 undergrads registered, 2 drops
- TYP Math -- 16 students
- Independent Study Courses -- 1 senior
- CS98 -- J. Abercrombie, Smooth Surface Rendering:Theory
- Spring 2000
- Lecture Courses
- CS155 -- Computer Graphics -- 101 students
- TYP Math -- 12 students
- Independent Study Master's Courses: CS210 -- 1 student
- Dan Garrie -- Developing Web-based applications in Silk Scheme
- Independent Study Courses: CS98 -- 5 students
- J. Abercrombie -- Rendering Smooth Surfaces: Implementation
- Anat Weinstein and Sopha Tamar Djmal -- Independent Study on Web Design and Programming
- Judy Kramer and Macabee Levine -- Independent Study on Computer-Aided Instruction
SCHEDULE: AUTUMN 1999
MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY
9:00 CS2a CS2a CS2a
9:30 CS2a CS2a CS2a
10:00 TYP Math TYP Math TYP Math
10:30 TYP Math TYP Math TYP Math
11:00 OH
11:30 OH
12:00
12:30
1:00 OH
1:30 OH OH
2:00 OH
2:30 OH
3:00 OH
3:30
4:00
4:30
SCHEDULE: SPRING 2000
MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY
9:00 CS155 CS155 CS155
9:30 CS155 CS155 CS155
10:00 TYP Math TYP Math TYP Math
10:30 TYP Math TYP Math TYP Math
11:00 OH
11:30 OH
12:00
12:30
1:00 OH
1:30 OH OH
2:00 OH
2:30
3:00
3:30
4:00
4:30
New Pedagogical Materials
- Software
- Silk4 -- a Java-based implementation of Scheme
- Web-materials
- CS2a at
www.cs.brandeis.edu/~tim/Classes/Aut99/CS2a
lectures notes, readings, exams, solution sets,
students homeworks, pseudonymous grade lists
and extensive links to related web material.
This course was designed with no textbook. All
readings are either from primary sources on the
net, or are from lecture notes for the class.
I am developing the software for this course in collaboration
with two colleagues at other institutions.
- CS155 at
www.cs.brandeis.edu/~tim/Classes/Spr00/CS155
lectures notes, study guides, students homeworks,
and extensive links to related web material
Please describe your involvement in the direction of
reading courses, theses, dissertations, and other student research projects
(undergraduate and graduate).
- Ph.D. Students
- M.S. Students
- Dan Garrie -- working on developing web-based applications in Silk Scheme
- Undergraduate Independent Study/Research Projects
- J. Abercrombie -- Rendering Smooth Surfaces (Aut99, Spr00)
- Anat Weinstein and Sopha Tamar Djmal -- Independent Study on Web Design and Programming
- Judy Kramer and Macabee Levine -- Independent Study on Computer-Aided Instruction
-
Please list numbers and categories (first year, graduate,
etc.) of advisees, and comment on other relevant advising and/or
interactions with students outside the classroom. List the times and days
of your scheduled office hours.
- Advisees
- graduate students - 1
- undergrad majors - 82
- undergrad minors - 13
- undecided sophmores/transfers - 0
- first year students - 0
- Scheduled Office Hours (signup sheet posted on door, with 10 minute time slots)
- Autumn 99: 3 hours/week
- Spring 00: 3-6 hours/week (depending on the estimated need for the week)
III. PUBLICATIONS, RESEARCH, AND ARTISTIC CREATIONS
-
List publications that have appeared from March, 1999 to
the March, 2000. In the creative arts, please list and describe artistic
creations, performances or exhibitions.
-
"Interval Constraint Plotting for Interactive Visual Exploration
of Implicitly Defined Relations"
by Timothy J. Hickey, Zhe Qiu, and Maarten H. van Emden,
in the special issue on Reliable Geometric Computations, in
Reliable Computing, Vol 6., No. 1, 2000.
-
"Reflecting Java into Scheme"
(.ps.gz 182K)
by Ken Anderson and Timothy J. Hickey
in
Cointe, P., Nantes, France (Ed.)
Meta-Level Architectures and Reflection
Second International Conference,
Reflection 99,
Saint-Malo, France, July
19-21, 1999 Proceedings,
Springer-Verlag,
Lecture Notes in Computer Science,
v. 1616, 1999/2000.
-
Analytic Constraint Solving and Interval Arithmetic
(.ps.gz, 106K)
by Timothy J. Hickey
in Proceedings of the
27th Annual ACM SIGACT-SIGPLAN Symposium
on Principles of Programming Languages
(POPL'00), Jan. 2000.
An early version is available as
Brandeis CS Tech. Report CS-99-203, July, 1999.
(.ps.gz, 59K)
-
"Metalevel Constraint Solving in CLIP",
(.ps.gz, 77K),
by Timothy J. Hickey
in the Proceedings of PADL'00, Jan. 2000.
Springer-Verlag, "Lecture Notes in Computer Science", vol. 1753, 2000.
An earlier version of this paper is available as Brandeis CS Tech. Report CS-99-204, August, 1999.
(.ps.gz, 72K),
-
Validated Constraint Contraction,
(.ps.gz, 16K),
T. Hickey, D. Wittenberg,
Joxan Jaffar (Ed.): Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming - CP'99, 5th International Conference, Alexandria, Virginia, USA, October 11-14, 1999, Proceedings.
Lecture Notes in
Computer Science, Vol. 1713, Springer, 1999, ISBN 3-540-66626-5 , pp. 482-483 .
List manuscript(s) submitted or accepted for publication,
specifying journal or publisher and anticipated publication date. For
artistic work, please provide information about forthcoming exhibitions or
performances.
-
Constraint-Based Termination Analysis
for Cyclic Rule Activation in Active Databases
(.ps.gz 96K)
by Saumya Debray and Timothy Hickey, January 2000.
submitted to Deductive and Object-Oriented Database Conference,
Sagiv, CL2000
-
Interval Arithmetic: from Principles to Implementation
(.ps.gz 96K)
by Timothy J. Hickey, Qu. Ju, and Maarten H. van Emden
Brandeis CS Tech. Report CS-99-202, July, 1999.
submitted to JACM on 12 June 1999.
-
Validated Constraint Compilation
(.ps.gz 72K)
by Timothy J. Hickey and David Wittenberg
Brandeis CS Tech. Report CS-99-201, 17 pp., April, 1999.
For ongoing work, please describe progress made since the
last activities report (e.g. chapters completed). Be as specific as
possible.
- The Silk Scheme System -- We have made considerable progress
in developing the Silk Scheme system (Silk 4.0), which is the successor to JLIB2 and Silk3.
The underlying Scheme engine was completely redesigned by Peter Norvig, and debugged
by Ken Anderson, who also added Generics. I developed the concept of "Java Literals" by
extending some of Ken's ideas on syntax, and I built a Scheme->Java compiler for Silk.
I am currently developing a high level library (JLIB) for writing GUIs and will use this
library in the CS2a course (nicely combining research with teaching), and I am developing
a suite of applications showing the benefits of Silk as an alternative to Java.
This language could potentially have a major impact on the way client-side programs are
written. We will be making our first major release in April.
- Interval Arithmetic Constraints -- I am currently building a
new Silk-based version of IAsolver (the constraint solving applet which was initially released in 1997
and has become recognized at several major numerical web sites). Also, I have begun developing
new high level libraries for the declarative construction of non-linear constraint solvers.
I expect to have a new release of this software (and a paper) in the next month or two.
- Faculty Website -- The faculty website has now been accessed by about 40 faculty
members (which is no mean feat since they must find the site and give the proper username and
password) and now hosts the faculty handbook and the proposed handbook as well as several reports.
My goal is to encourage faculty to post committee reports at the site and more importantly to
use the site as a way of communicating about sensitive and important issues.
IV. SERVICE
Please detail your participation in Departmental and University activities:
-
Departmental:
Service on committees, administrative tasks, etc.
- Undergraduate Advising Head
University:
Involvement in student activities, panel presentations, fund-raising, etc.
- Faculty Communication Committee (lead development of the Faculty Website)
- Provost and Dean's Advisory Committee
- Faculty Wien Oversight Committee
- Faculty Committee on Student Affairs (chair)
- CS Department Liason to the Admissions Department (went to Open House)
- CS Department Liason to the Pscyhological Counseling Center (no duties!)
V. GRANTS
Please list grant applications, renewals, and awards from March, 1999 to
the present. Include granting agency, title of project, period of grant,
and total amount.
-
Groupware-Mediated Cooperative Programming: Teaching Technology to the
Non-Scientist
PIs: Tim Hickey, Rick Alterman
Proposal to NSF-ITR for $499,007 over 3 years.
Submitted on 2/16/00
-
A Constructive Approach to Computer Literacy using Scheme Applets.
PI: Tim Hickey
Proposal ID No: CCR-9980683
for $65383 over 2 years.
(postscript)
Submitted on 6/2/99 to NSF EHR/DUE/CCLI
Rejected 9/99 -- referees encouraged resubmission in 6/00
Grant Awards
NONE
VI. AWARDS AND HONORS
- Please list awards and honors received since March, 1999.
NONE.
VII. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
-
List any inventions, patent applications, patents, copyright, software,
maskworks, and any other intellectual property that is or may be patentable
which you have conceived or reduced to practice, individually or jointly
with others, during the course of your appointment, employment, or
participation in Brandeis activities.
-
CLIP 1.0 -- a CLP(Intervals) extension of GNU prolog.
Distributed under GNU LGPL licence.
-
Silk 4.0 -- a Java-based Dialect of Scheme
Distributed under ZLIB/PNG opensource licence.
Codeveloped with Ken Anderson at BBN and Peter Norvig at NASA Ames
Latest release: Silk 4.0.16 (3/11/2000)
VIII. PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES OUTSIDE THE UNIVERSITY
-
List and/or describe lectures given, involvement in professional societies,
legislative testimony, etc. If none, indicate non-applicable.
- I gave two Conference talks at
- PADL'00 -- "CLIP: a CLP(Intervals) Dialect for Metalevel Constraint Solving",
- POPL'00 -- "Analytic Constraint Solving and Interval Arithmetic",
IX. WORK OUTSIDE THE UNIVERSITY
-
List courses taught at other institutions for which you
received payment (March, 1999 to present). Please provide name of
institution, term, course(s) taught, days and hours per week. If none,
indicate non-applicable.
NONE
List any and all other employment, and/or consultant
arrangements, that you have outside of Brandeis (March, 1999 to present).
Please provide name of company, corporation or institution. Please append
summaries of relevant parts of contracts, letters of appointment or
consulting agreements. Do any of these arrangements provide present or
future equity interest possibilities to you and do you receive any research
support from any of these organizations? If none, indicate non-applicable.
NONE
List management or fiduciary activities in which you have a
role as an officer, director, trustee, supervisor, or founder with respect
to any organization or group. If none, indicate non-applicable.
NONE
List any inventions, patent applications, patents,
copyright, software, maskworks, and any other intellectual property which
you have conceived or reduced to practice, individually or jointly with
others, which has been developed outside of Brandeis University and which
has been developed during the course of your appointment, employment, or
participation in Brandeis activities.
NONE
X. GOALS -- OPTIONAL
-
Please reflect upon what you hope to achieve in the coming year in terms
of your ongoing work, new project you hope to begin, your teaching,
professional development, and/or your role in the Brandeis community.
- Curriculum Development -- I am actively developing software,
tutorials, sample programs, and other course materials for the
CS2a course, Introduction to Computers. This course is designed to teach
novice programmers to develop sophisticated web-based
programs with complex graphical user interfaces that run on almost all
platforms (Mac, PC, Linux).
- The Silk Scheme Project -- I am developing a high level
alternative to Java (along with two codevelopers -- Ken Anderson at BBN, and
Peter Norvig at NASA Ames). Over the coming year I intend to study the problem
of applying high-level semantics-based optimizations to Silk, which is
a high-level language together with an extensive collection of libraries for
graphics, networking, cryptography, etc. We have moved the Silk project to
the Opensource domain sourceforge.net
where it can be accessed and "debugged" by other developers.
- Interval Arithmetic Constraints -- Over the past year I have
published three papers on the theoretical foundations of Interval Arithmetic Constraints
and I've submitted three others. Over the next year, I will be exploring the application
of these methods to solving large systems of non-linear constraints as well as looking
at applications in other numerical domains such as ODEs and PDEs. The goal will be to
determine whether these methods are potentially competitive with more classical
approaches which are either less rigorous or less declarative or both.
Please feel free to provide any other information relevant to your 1999-00
activities and contributions to the University.
NONE
This file is available on line at
http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~tim/Activity/99-00.html