Institut für Telekooperation
Johannes Kepler University Linz
Altenberger Strasse 69, 4040 Linz, Austria
gabriele.kotsisjku.ac.at

Abstract
Mobile computing is associated with the concept of any-time / any place access to information and computation resources. If we consider the Web as todays biggest, distributed information system it appears to be natural to add mobility to the web and a lot of research efforts and developments have been undertaken towards a "mobile web". However, usage statistics show that there is still a huge gap between the potential of such services and their acceptance in practice.

In this talk, an overview of existing technological developments towards a mobile web will be given along with a critical review of existing services and applications identifying potential barriers hindering their acceptance. One of the major questions to be answered is to enable the human users to cope with this omnipresence of information. We already observe in the "traditional" web people suffering from information overflow, receiving too much, the wrong, or even unwanted information on the web. Personalisation and adaptivity appear to be potential solutions to this problem but bear the risk of putting the user out of control. Approaches trying to overcome this area of conflict will be the focus of the presentation.

Biography

Univ. Prof. Mag. Dr. Gabriele Kotsis – Prof. Kotsis received her master degree in 1991 (honoured with the Award of the Austrian Computer Society), her PhD in 1995 (honoured with the Heinz-Zemanek Preis) and the venia docendi in 2000 (computer science, from the University of Vienna). She was working as a researcher and teacher at the University of Vienna (1991-2001), at the Vienna University for Economics and Business Administration (2001) and at the Copenhagen Business School (2002). Since December 2002 she is holding a full professor position at the Telecooperation Department at the Johannes Kepler University Linz. Her research interests include performance management of computer systems and networks, workgroup computing, mobile and Internet computing, telemedia and telecooperation. She has experience in national and international research project in those areas, including for example the EU-funded international BISANTE project on network traffic modelling and simulation, where she was technical leader, or the EMMUS project on Multimedia Usability where she was project coordinator. Gabriele is author of numerous publications in international conferences and journals and is co-editor of several books. She is member of IEEE and ACM and acting president of the AustrianComputer Society. She is actively participating in the organization of international conferences.

Abstract
Networking unattended wireless sensors is expected to have significant impact on the efficiency of a large array of military and non-military applications. The main goal of wireless sensor networks is to obtain globally meaningful information from strictly local gleaned by individual sensor nodes. The network is deployed such that the sensors are embedded, possibly at random, in a target environment. Utilizing the basic capabilities of sensor nodes in the network different types of monitoring and control applications that address the target environment can be developed. Depending on the application at hand, the interface between a sensor network and the outside world is provided by aircraft, helicopters, ground-based vehicles, satellites, co-located sink-nodes, etc.

However, a wireless sensor network is only as good as the information it produces. In this respect, the most important concern is information assurance, including among others, information security security.
Indeed, in most application domains sensor networks will constitute a mission critical component requiring commensurate security protection. Sensor network communications must prevent disclosure and undetected modification of exchanged messages. Due to the fact that individual sensor nodes are anonymous and that communication among sensors is via wireless links, sensor networks are highly vulnerable to security attacks. If an adversary can thwart the work of the network by perturbing the information produced, stopping production, or pilfering information, then the perceived usefulness of sensor networks will be drastically curtailed. Thus, security is a major issue that must be resolved in order for the potential of wireless sensor networks to be fully exploited.

This talk is concerned with a number of novel solutions to the important problem of information assurance in wireless sensor networks.

Biography

Professor Stephan Olariu is a tenured full professor in Computer Science at Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia. He is a world-renowned technologist in the areas of parallel and distributed systems, parallel and distributed architectures and networks. He was invited and visited more than 120 universities and research institutes around the world lecturing on topics ranging from wireless networks and mobile computing, to biology-inspired algorithms and applications, to telemedicine, to wireless location systems, and demining. Professor Olariu is the Director of the Sensor Networks Research Group at Old Dominion University.

Professor Olariu earned his Ph.D. (Computer Science) in three years at the McGill University, Montreal. He has coauthored two books: Solutions to Parallel and Distributed Computing Problems: Lessons from Biological Sciences (with A. Zomaya and F. Ercal), Wiley and Sons, New York, 2000, ISBN 0471353523, Parallel Computation in Image Processing (with S. Tanimoto), Cambridge University Press, to appear 2005, Wireless Sensor Networks and Applications, Wiley and Sons, New York, 2006, with four more books in preparation. He has also published 200+ journal articles and 100+ conference articles. 

Stephan is an Associate Editor of Networks, International Journal of Foundations of Computer Science, and serves on the editorial board of Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing and served (until January 2003) as Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems and VLSI Design..

Professor Olariu has a conducted several successful tutorials on Wireless Networks and Mobile Computing as well as Wireless Sensor Networks and Applications, at ICPADS (Taipei, Taiwan, December 2002), HICSS-37 (Hawaii, January 2004), Networking 2004 (Athens, Greece, May 2004), HICSS-38 (Hawaii, January 2005), and PerSeNS’2005 (Hawaii, March 2005) among many others. In the past twelve months, Professor Olariu has delivered invited talks on the topic of wireless sensor networks at University of Alabama, Virginia Tech, Naval Research Laboratories, Sandia National Laboratories, Humboldt University (Berlin, Germany), University of Bourgogne (Dijon, France), Technical University  (Berlin, Germany), Free University (Berlin, Germany),  Kent University (Kent, Ohio), and Clemson University (Clemson, South Carolina).

Johannes Kepler Universität Linz
Institut für Pervasive Computing
Altenberger Straße 69
4040 Linz
ferschasoft.uni-linz.ac.at

Abstract
Most recent advances in microprocessor-, wireless communication- and sensor-/actuator technologies envision a whole new era of computing, popularly referred to as “pervasive” or “ubiquitous” computing. Autonomous, ad-hoc networked, wirelessly communicating and spontaneously interacting computing devices appearing in great number, and embedded into environments, appliances and objects of everyday use will deliver services adapted to the person, the time, the place – or most generally: the context – of their use. The nature and appearance of computing devices will change to be hidden in the fabric of everyday life, invisible networked, and will be augmenting everyday environments to form a perva-sive computing landscape, in which the physical world becomes merged with a “digital world”. Computers are becoming invisible.
In this presentation I will explore the interface engineering issues, challenges and enabling technologies associated with the provision of context aware interaction styles within ad-hoc, highly dynamic and frequently changing computing environments, where computers are “invisible”, but physical interfaces are “omnipresent”. Implicit and explicit interaction approaches will be analysed at the frontiers of pervasive, integrated and thus “hidden” technology. Perceived invisibility and the invisibility of technology will spawn the interac-tion design space challenge, and help identifying strategies for embedding interaction into everyday objects and environments, into literally every “thing”.
I will review contemporary interaction design research challenges, reflect on the tangible interface and embodied interaction research, and delve into the issue of everyday objects or artefacts interacting with humans, but also with each other in spontaneous spatial / temporal communication contexts, based on proximity, priority, privileges, capabilities, context and interests, offerings. I will discuss “opportunistic interaction” as being based on local goals and objectives defined as rules or constraints, and “coincidential coordination” as interaction among the “unbeknown”. Finally, I will present some of our own interaction design frameworks, and demonstrate applications like the “Context Knob” or the “Digital Aura” that have been built on top of it.

Biography

Alois Ferscha received the Mag. degree in 1984, and a PhD in business informatics in 1990, both from the University of Vienna, Austria. From 1986 through 2000 he was with the Department of Applied Computer Science at the University of Vienna at the levels of assistant and associate professor. In 2000 he joined the University of Linz as full professor where he is now head of the department for Pervasive Computing and the speaker of the JKU Pervasive Computing Initiative.
Prof. Ferscha has published on topics related to parallel and distributed computing, like e.g. Computer Aided Parallel Software Engineering, Performance Oriented Distrib-uted/Parallel Program Development, Parallel and Distributed Discrete Event Simulation, Performance Modeling/Analysis of Parallel Systems and Parallel Visual Programming. Cur-rently he is focussed on Pervasive Computing, Embedded Software Systems, Wireless Communication, Multiuser Cooperation, Distributed Interaction and Distributed Interactive Simulation. He has been the project leader of several national and international research projects like e.g.: Network Computing, Performance Analysis of Parallel Systems and their Workload, Parallel Simulation of Very Large Office Workflow Models, Distributed Simula-tion on High Performance Parallel Computer Architectures, Modelling and Analysis of Time Constrained and Hierarchical Systems, Broadband Integrated Satellite Network Traffic Evaluation and Distributed Cooperative Environments, etc. Currently he is pursuing project work related to networked embedded systems, software frameworks for context comput-ing, coordination architectures and models, wireless and mobile ad-hoc networks and sen-sor/actuator networks. In his application related work he has built context based applica-tion frameworks for the JKU "Wireless Campus" network, public community displays with wireless remote controls ("WebWall"), geo-enhanced, augmented reality mobile navigation systems, RFID based realtime notification systems, wearable computing and embedded internet application frameworks ("DitgitalAura", "SmartCase", "DigiScope").
He has been a visiting researcher at the Dipartimento di Informatica, Universita di Torino, Italy, at the Dipartimento di Informatica, Universita di Genoa, Italy, at the Computer Sci-ence Department, University of Maryland at College Park, College Park, Maryland, and at the Department of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon, U.S.A. He has served on the committees of several conferences like PERVASIVE, UMBICOMP, WWW, PADS, DIS-RT, SIGMETRICS, MASCOTS, TOOLS, PNPM, ICS, etc. Prof. Ferscha is member of the OCG, GI, ACM, IEEE and holds the Heinz-Zemanek Award for distinguished contributions in computer science.