Each of the research groups under evaluation has been awarded a score between 1 and 5, where 5 is defined as excellent in the meaning of having “international leadership, visibility, and vision”. Simula achieved the score 5 for research in Scientific Computing, 5 in Software Engineering, and 4 in Communication Systems. Two top scores were also given to Department of Informatics at the University of Bergen for research conducted in the Algorithms group and in the Selmer Centre. In addition, the Control Systems group at Department of Engineering Cybernetics at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology received the top mark. Observing that only five of the 62 groups evaluated nationally have been awarded the top score, these results place Simula in a leading position together with the University of Bergen.

In its assessment, the evaluation committee states that  “Simula has, by most measures, been a substantial success and lead to the creation of a center of international visibility. Many of the research activities provide international leadership and Simula is a substantial resource for research and education in ICT.” The committee also observes “The connections to industry are strong and provide examples for other universities and research institutes on how to establish such connections without impacting the depth of the research.”

In its recommendations, the committee points to Simula’s potential for taking national responsibility in ICT research and education. In this context, the committee expresses concern about whether Simula’s strong focus on international collaboration can be combined with such a national role.

“The management of Simula highly appreciates the outstanding results of this evaluation and conveys its congratulations and deep admiration to all employees for their success”, says the leader of the Simula centre, professor Aslak Tveito. “The recommendations and advice provided by the evaluation committee will be valuable input to upcoming discussions on Simula’s future strategy for research and education”, concludes Tveito.

For more information, please contact Professor Are Magnus Bruaset (+47 926 10 063 / arem@simula.no).

For decades, shared-memory supercomputers and distributed cluster solutions, in latter years featuring multicore CPUs, have dominated this field. More recently, there has been a growing interest in utilizing special-purpose processors originally designed for computer graphics, so-called GPUs, for solving mathematical equations. These processors have certain design restrictions permitting very high computational performance. Unfortunately, the same restrictions also lead to heavy challenges for those writing the simulation software. The goal of the new project is to provide methodology and tools that reduce the threshold and development time for writing GPU-based simulation software, while still maintaining extremely high computational performance.

The research project is strongly linked to the development of Mint, a software tool developed at UCSD by Didem Unat and Scott Baden. This tool allows annotated program coded in the C language to be automatically translated to the GPU-specific language CUDA, optimised for computational speed. The project will utilise real-world case studies from geoscience, such as modelling of earthquakes, of mantel flow inside the Earth, or of the formation of rock layers through deposition of gravel and mud on the seafloor.

The project is scheduled to start on July 1st, 2012 and will cater for one PhD student, one postdoctoral fellow, and contributions from senior researchers at Simula and UCSD.

Read more: User-friendly programming of GPU-enhanced clusters via automated code translation and optimization.

Hovedfokuset har vært på å aggregere båndbredde. Ved å kombinere flere nettverk, får applikasjoner tilgang på en forbindelse som er av høyere kvalitet enn den et enkelt nett kan levere. Hvis det er en ting som er sikkert, så er det at det ikke finnes noe som heter nok båndbredde. Hele tiden dukker det opp nye og krevende internettbaserte tjenester, for eksempel videostrømning, tjenester man ofte vil benytte seg av hvor som helst og på hvilken som helst type enhet. Enkelte av teknikkene er tilpasset bestemte typer applikasjoner, mens andre er generiske. Samtlige har blitt implementert  og evaluert i strengt kontrollerte omgivelser og virkelige nett, og resultatene er uten unntak positive. Overføringshastigheten økte betraktelig, noe som blant annet gjorde det mulig å motta video i høyere kvalitet og med færre avbrudd enn hvis bare ett nett var i bruk.

Ved å bruke flere nettverk samtidig, kan man også gjøre forbindelsene mer robuste. Hvis et nett faller ned, kan trafikken flyttes over på de andre nettene og forbindelsene overleve.  En teknikk for å automatisk flytte trafikk uten å endre på eksisterende infrastruktur, presenteres også i avhandlingen. I tillegg introduseres et plattformuavhengig rammeverk som letter utviklingen av tjenester som nytter seg av flere nettverk."

The thesis is written within the field of computer networks. The work has been conducted at Simula Research Laboratory and Telenor ASA.

Prior to the defense, Kristian R. Evensen presented his trial lecture DNS security issues: threats, mitigations, and introduction to DNSSec.

The adjudication committee

• Associate Professor Kang Li, Department of Computer Science, University of Georgia.
• Associate Professor David Ros, Département RSM GET, Telecom Bretagne.
• Associate Professor Roman Vitenberg, Department of Informatics, University of Oslo.

Chair of the disputation

• Morten Dæhlen, University of Oslo

Supervisors

• Professor Paal E. Engelstad, Telenor ASA
• Dr. Audun F. Hansen, Simula Research Laboratory
• Professor Carsten Griwodz, Simula Research Laboratory & University of Oslo
• Professor Pål Halvorsen, Simula Research Laboratory & University of Oslo

Read more

Announcement of the PhD defense at the University of Oslo's web pages (in Norwegian).

One important contribution of this thesis is a scalable RobUstness Modeling Methodology (RUMM), which is achieved using Aspect-Oriented Modeling (AOM). It is a complete, automated, and practical methodology that covers all features of state machines and aspect concepts necessary for MBRT. Such methodology, relying on a standard (Unified Modeling Language or UML) and using the target notation as the basis to model the aspects themselves, is expected to make the practical adoption of robustness modeling easier in industrial contexts. The applicability of the methodology is demonstrated using an industrial case study. Results showed that the approach significantly reduced modeling effort (98% on average), improved separation of concerns, and eased model evolution. The approach is further empirically evaluated using two controlled experiments involving human subjects and results showed that the proposed methodology significantly improves the readability of models as compared to modeling using standard UML notations.

Another important contribution of this thesis is an efficient approach for solving constraints (written in Objects Constraint Language (OCL)) on the operating environment of a system, which is mandatory for emulating faulty situation in the environment for the purpose of MBRT. A set of novel heuristics is devised for various OCL constructs, which are required for the application of search algorithms. The heuristics have been empirically evaluated on an industrial case study for robustness testing and the results showed to be very promising and significantly better than the existing works in the literature on OCL constraint solvers.

A final contribution of the thesis is robustness test case generation from the models developed using RUMM. Test case generation also includes scripts generation for environment emulation, which is mandatory for automated robustness testing again using an industrial case study. In preliminary experiments, the execution of test cases found one critical, robustness fault in a deployed industrial system. 

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The thesis is written within the field of Software Verification and Validation. The work has been conducted at Simula Research Laboratory and Cisco Systems Inc, Norway.

Prior to the defense, Shaukat Ali presented his trial lecture titled (Model-based) development of large-scale embedded systems.

The adjudication committee

• Professor Robert B. France, Computer Science Department, Colorado State University, US
• Research Scientist Franck Fleury, SINTEF Information and Communication, Norway
• Associate Professor Ragnhild Kobro Runde, Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, Norway

Chair of the disputation

Professor Annik M. Myhre, University of Oslo, Norway

Supervisors

• Professor Lionel C. Briand, Certus Software V&V Lab, Simula Research Laboratory, Norway
• Adjunct Research Scientist, Andrea Arcuri, Certus Software V&V Lab, Simula Research Laboratory, Norway
  

Read more:
Announcement of the PhD defense at the University of Oslo's web pages (in Norwegian).

Furthermore, the thesis investigates the negative effects of data reordering. When data packets are sent over several Internet connections that differ in speed, the packets are likely to arrive out of order. Especially for the TCP communication protocol, which transports the majority of Internet traffic, packet reordering is known to be very destructive. To reduce packet reordering, a scheduler was designed that keeps track of the connection speeds and smartly sends packets so that they always arrive in order at the destination. In addition, a large set of experiments was carried out in which TCP was exposed to various degrees of packet reordering. Thereby, several parameters were identified, which, when correctly tuned, lead to improved TCP performance over multiple networks.

While related research often introduces complexity to third-party servers or to long-established network protocols, the proposed solutions target an easy deployment. Implemented and tested in real-world networks, the thesis shows the benefit of simultaneously using multiple Internet connections to achieve a higher data throughput.

The thesis is written within the field of computer networks. The work has been conducted at Simula Research Laboratory and Telenor ASA.

Prior to the defense, at 10:15, Dominik Kaspar presented his trial lecture Software Defined Networking: will OpenFlow change the computer networks?

The adjudication committee

• Professor Anna Brunström, Computer Science Department, Karlstad University
• Professor Olivier Bonaventure, Department of Computing Science and Engineering, Université Catholique de Louvain
• Professor Michael Welzl, Department of Informatics, University of Oslo

Chair of the disputation

Supervisors

• Professor Paal E. Engelstad, Telenor ASA
• Dr. Audun F. Hansen, Simula Research Laboratory
• Professor Carsten Griwodz, Simula Research Laboratory & University of Oslo
• Professor Pål Halvorsen, Simula Research Laboratory & University of Oslo

Read more:

• Announcement of the PhD defense at the University of Oslo's web pages (in Norwegian).

Read more

Further information about the award, including a list of past recipients.

Mantle convection is the principal control on the thermal and geological evolution of earth. The flow in the mantle drives plate tectonics and continental drift and, in turn, controls much activity ranging from the occurrence of earthquakes and volcanoes to mountain building and long-term sea level change. Despite the central role mantle convection plays in our understanding of earth, there are enormous first-order gaps in the knowledge currently available.

Dr. Martin Peters, Executive Editor of Mathematics and Computational Science and Engineering at Springer, said, “Modeling global mantle convection at tectonic plate boundary-resolving scales is one of the grand challenge problems in computational geosciences. The prizewinners’ work represents a major advance in the geological understanding of the earth, and the team fully deserves to be awarded the Springer CSE Prize for the year 2011. Moreover, it is an outstanding example of the increasing use of CSE in geoscience.”

Laura Alisic is a researcher at the Seismological Laboratory in the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Carsten Burstedde until recently was a Research Scientist at the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. Two months ago he took over a professorship for Scientific Computing at the Institute for Numerical Simulation at the University of Bonn in Germany. Georg Stadler is a Research Scientist at the Center for Computational Geosciences and Optimization at the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin.

The CSE Prize recognizes the importance of the cross-disciplinary, teamwork-oriented nature of computational science and engineering.  Established in 2009, the prize is awarded biannually to teams of scientists, the members of which represent at least two different fields.  In addition, prizewinners will not yet have reached the age of 40 years. The prizewinning team is selected by the editors of the Springer book series Lecture Notes in Computational Science and Engineering.

Springer is a leading global scientific publisher of books and journals, delivering quality content through innovative information products and services. Springer is part of the publishing group Springer Science+Business Media.  In the science, technology and medicine (STM) sector, the group publishes around 2,000 journals and more than 7,000 new books a year, as well as the largest STM eBook Collection worldwide.

By enabling cognitive radio technology, wireless transmitters and receivers can adapt their radio frequency intelligently according to their radio environment. It can solve the radio frequency shortage problem while increasing the capacity of wireless networks.

In his thesis, Xiang investigates the resource management and optimization problems in three different scenarios by applying cognitive radio techniques into cellular networks, femtocell networks, and mesh networks. His solutions for cognitive radio cellular networks will help network operators to maximize the revenue with limited radio frequency resource. His solutions for cognitive radio femtocell networks will help network users to maximize the capacity with limited transmission power. His solutions for cognitive radio mesh networks will help network operators to provide the most reliable routes for real-time traffic.

The thesis is written within the field of wireless networks. The work has been conducted at Simula Research Laboratory.

Prior to the defense, at 11:15 AM, Xiang presented his trial lecture Mobility models for studying cognitive radio networks.

The adjudication committee

• Associate Professor Biplab Sikdar, Department of Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
• Professor Hanna Bogucka, Chair of radio Communications, Poznan University of Technology.
• Professor Carsten Griwodz, Department of Informatics, University of Oslo / Simula Research Laboratory.

Chair of the disputation

• Associate Professor, Arne Maus, Department of Informatics, University of Oslo

Supervisors

• Associate Professor Yan Zhang, Simula Research Laboratory / University of Oslo
  
• Professor Olav Lysne, Simula Research Laboratory / University of Oslo
• Professor Tor Skeie, Simula Research Laboratory / University of Oslo

Read more

Announcement of the PhD defense at the University of Oslo's web pages (in Norwegian).

Together with Karlstad University in Sweden, CAIDA in San Diego USA, Funcom AS, University of Kaiserslautern in Germany, Uninett, Cisco systems Norway AS, and the University of Oslo, Andreas Petlund in the Media Performance department has proposed a project on Traffic behaviour of interactive time-dependent thin streams on the modern Internet. The primary objectives of this project is to locate the sources of increased delay and loss rates for thin streams along the entire path of a data packet, and develop mechanisms that reduce the latency for time-dependent thin-stream applications without having to change current Internet infrastructure. The total budget for this project is about 10 million NOK.

We congratulate both groups on their outstanding and successful proposals.

The announcement from the Research Council of Norway

• Link to the paper

The Center will combine ultrasound imaging with computer-based modeling and simulation of the heart to provide diagnostics and treatment planning in a manner which is otherwise impossible. The ultimate goal of this research is to develop novel methods and solutions that can be integrated into next-generation ultrasound equipment, which can be made available to and improve care for patients worldwide.

The Center will be led by Professor Thor Edvardsen at Oslo University Hospital. Edvardsen is a cardiologist and leads a world-renowned research group in ultrasound-based cardiac diagnostics. – This Center will bring us a step further when it comes to revealing the underlying heart disease earlier and to finding the best possible treatment for patients with rhythm disturbances, says Professor Edvardsen. – It also gives us a unique opportunity to develop an even closer cooperation with both developing ultrasound technology for GE Vingmed Ultrasound and with heart-simulation environment at Simula Research Laboratory, he continues.

The extensive research program planned for the CCI will be executed in concert with aforementioned partners and coordinated by Eigil Samset at GE Vingmed Ultrasound. – The Center for Cardiological Innovation will be able to bring forward solutions and products that both save lives and save the community money. It's motivating to be working with something that will mean so much to so many, and especially when we know that the result will be patients’ worldwide benefit through our products, says Samset.

About the partners

• Oslo University Hospital is the largest hospital in Norway, with over 20,000 employees. The hospital's Heart and Lung Clinic is core to Norway’s national competence in these branches of medicine within a range of disorders that will be relevant to the CCI.
  

• Simula Research Laboratory is an independent research institute located at Fornebu, just outside of Oslo. Simula seeks to create knowledge about fundamental scientific challenges with clear social purpose. The Department of Computational Cardiac Modeling, led by Molly Maleckar, uses computers to simulate the heart's activity from the subcellular level to the whole heart.
  

• GE Vingmed Ultrasound, part of GE Healthcare, develops advanced cardiac ultrasound equipment which is sold worldwide. The company has its headquarters in Horten, Norway, with over 200 employees,in addition to research and development activities conducted at the Research Park near the University of Oslo in Oslo, Norway.
• Other partners in the CCI are Kalkulo, a Norwegian high-tech company specializing in visualization and advanced calculation software development. CardioSolv is a U.S. company which develops and markets heart-simulation software and solutions. The University of Oslo is Norway's largest institution of higher education, and is involved in the CCI through the Institute for Clinical Research.

The thesis employs a sociocultural perspective on software effort estimation. The data material consists of a set of video recordings that have been gathered from two separate cases. Interaction analysis has been used as a means to investigate the communicative and interactional work teams of software professionals do when estimating software projects.

The findings show the need for extensive sense making and specification work in complex collaborative problem solving involved in software effort estimation. The three estimation approaches investigated did not take this sufficiently into account, as the teams needed to do a lot more work than what the idealised estimation approaches outlined. Three process models have been derived from the analysis and findings in the three articles and they demonstrate how the specification and sense-making processes are conducted and accomplished as interactional achievements in the collaborative work of software effort estimation. They also explicate the challenges faced by software professionals in this work. Together the three process models show how software effort estimation can be perceived as collaborative planning activity that play out in social interaction by way of meaning making processes, recontextualisation processes and different types of tool mediated actions.

The thesis is written within the field of workplace learning. The work has been conducted at Simula Research Laboratory and the Department of Educational Research, Faculty of Education, University of Oslo

Trial lecture

Prior to the defense, Børte presented her trial lecture Specificities of project work compared to other forms of work.

The adjudication committee

• Fil.Dr. Per-Anders Forstorp, HCI Group, School of Computer Science and Communication, Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan, Sweden
  
• Associate Professor Yvonne Dittrich, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark
  
• Associate Professor Terje Grønning, Department of Educational Research, Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Oslo
  

Chair of the disputation

• Professor Bodil Stokke Olaussen

Supervisors

• Professor Monika Nerland, Department of Educational Research, Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Oslo
• Professor Sten Ludvigsen, InterMedia, University of Oslo
• Professor Magne Jørgensen, Simula Research Laboratory

Read more:

Announcement of the PhD defense at the University of Oslo's web pages (in Norwegian).

One of the main challenges in software reverse engineering is that those software systems that would benefit most from being reverse engineered typically suffer from irregularities that make it hard to systematically extract models from their artifacts. Examples include being written in obscure programming languages or language dialects, containing embedded code, incompleteness, or relying on idiosyncratic work-arounds to deal with hardware or operating system limitations. Moonen proposed a solution to deal with these challenges in his paper Robust Parsing using Island Grammars, published in 2001 as part of the proceedings of WCRE.

In the years following its publication, the technique has had a major impact on the field: numerous scientists cited the work of Moonen in their own publications and the technique has been implemented in various software analysis tools.

In recognition of this long term impact on the developments in software reverse engineering, Dr. Moonen is honored ten years later: 19 October 2011, he received the Most Influential Paper Award at the International Working Conference on Reverse Engineering (WCRE), sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society. During the conference, he presented an invited talk Robust Parsing Using Island Grammars Revisited in which he looks back at work described in the original paper and discusses subsequent developments in this area.

– I feel very honored for receiving the award, especially since it is recognition from peers in my field who can really value the importance of this contribution, says Leon Moonen.

The technique developed 10 years ago still plays a role in the first stages of the program analysis and program comprehension research that Moonen currently conducts at Simula Research Laboratory.

Read more:

• International Working Conference on Reverse Engineering (WCRE)
• Leon Moonen's profile page

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 For more information, please contact Dr. Amund Kvalbein. 

• More details about the program and link to the presentations are available here.
• Read more about the Resilient Networks project.