Ten Things I Like about CS
Graduate Research
(and Five I Don’t)
Bill Howe
Phd Student
Maseeh College of Science and Engineering
Portland State University
Portland, OR

My Background
1994-1999: BS in Industrial and Systems
Engineering from Georgia Tech
1999-2001: Worked as a consultant on projects for

Excel Telecommunications



Verizon Wireless
Siebel Systems
Microsoft
2001-present: working on a Phd in
Computer Science…

Outline
Graduate Research in CS: The Good
Graduate Research in CS: The Bad
Overview of my research on data management tools for Computational
Science

Graduate Degrees
CS Bachelor’s degree of Science (BS)

Programming
CS Master’s degree of Science (MS)

Advanced Programming
CS Doctor of Philosophy (Phd)

Research, Teaching

The Next 10 Years
120
100
0
-20
-40
80
60
40
20 me
BS
MS
Phd (Univ)
Phd (Lab)
1 2 3 4 5 year
6 7 8 9 10
Sources:
Starting salaries: 2004, U.S. Department of Labor, www.bls.org
Average raise: Software Developer Magazine 2004 Salary Survey, assumes 2003-2004
Also: Harder to outsource MSs, Phds harder still

A Question
Why do you study Computer Science?

Claim: All Science is Becoming
Computer Science
Biology


Ensembl, GenBank, HGP, SwissProt
Folding@Home

Bioinformatics
Astronomy

Sloan Digital Sky Survey, SETI
Oceanography

Environmental Observation and Forecasting
First comes X, then “Computational X”
Modern scientists are programmers!

Claim: Everything else is also
Computer Science (1/2)
Medicine

Medical Informatics, MRI Nobel Prize
Journalism, Broadcasting

Blogs, Podcasts, BitTorrent
Commerce, Advertising
 eBay, iTunes, Amazon, AdWords,Overture, Google
Communication
 email, IM, VoIP
Research, Publishing

Search Engines, Wikipedia, RSS, BioMed,
Citeseer

Claim: Everything else is also
Computer Science (2/2)
Economics
 eBay, Everquest, World of Warcraft
Entertainment


MP3, DVD, iTunes, GarageBand, P2P,
Pixar, LoTR, Star Wars, Gaming
Social
 friendster, MySpace, eHarmony, Match.com
Busy Work

Mechanical Turk

Travel
Write papers, submit them to conferences in exotic locales, and get the trip paid for!
Even with my stunted income, I’ve visited

Chicago (GGF 2001)




Paris (SIGMOD 2003)
Toronto (VLDB 2004)
Santa Barbara (SSDBM 2005)
Tokyo (ICDE 2005)
 ICDE 2006 is here in Atlanta April 2-7

Laziness is a Virtue
If it's boring, make the computer do it


Office: Filing, Sorting, Accounting, Reporting
Factory: Assembly, Warehousing


Science and Mathematics: Prime numbers,
Calculation
Housework? Flying? Driving?
Low-hanging fruit

We do 80% of the job with 20% of the effort


Programmers do this for their company/customers
CS Researchers try and do this for everybody

Get Paid to Think
My time involves equal parts

Reading



Writing
Coding
Staring into space
Plus

Conversing with colleagues


Preparing and giving talks
Administrative tasks

Focus > Brains
Edison

“Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”
Pasteur


“Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity.”
“Chance favors the prepared mind”
Focus is not easy

It’s easy to drift through the day as a Phd student and accomplish very little

No one forces you to be productive – which is a bad thing!

Abundant Help
Every professor

 has gone through graduate school is willing to giving advice

 is expected to give advice is generally good at giving advice
At Portland State, for example, this means


130 paid experts to advise you plus 250 other students who may also have insight

Corporate “open door” policies do not quite compare

Fewer Jerks
Perhaps surprisingly, scientists tend to be open-minded


It’s ok to argue with the boss
But you must reciprocate!
Bosses (and customers) are not frequently known for open-mindedness

“Must Have Strong
Communication Skills”
You'll do enough writing and public speaking that you'll be an expert
All employers require these skills
Ironically, few employers give you the opportunity to learn them

Autonomy
Working from home
Setting your own schedule
Setting your own research agenda
Scheduling your own meetings
…anyone see a downside?

“Free” Training
Take classes in a variety of CS areas
Remember: Everything is Computer Science


I took Environmental Engineering courses for my research
How about Art? Music? Language?



“Order in Pollock’s Chaos”, Richard P. Taylor, Scientific
American, December 2002
Lilypond
"Chinese Character Synthesis Using Metapost", Candy YIU
L.K. and Wai WONG, TeX Users Group, July 2003

Self-study with Languages and Tools
I learned Haskell, C++, Python, Javascript, and countless other tools while in Graduate School

Outline
Graduate Research in CS: The Good
Graduate Research in CS: The Bad
Research Overview

Begging for Money
Funding comes primarily from gov. agencies

NSF, NIH, NASA, DARPA, DOE
Scientists write proposals to convince non-experts that their future research will be productive

Anything sound strange about this?
Funding not necessarily commensurate with the quality of the proposal
As a student, you are largely shielded from this process

Innovation not always rewarded
Best advice for writing papers and giving talks:

People like what they understand
But:

People understand best that which they already know!
Encourages incremental improvements rather than transformative ideas


Lots of papers on searching the web slightly faster,
Fewer papers on, e.g., self-driving cars or other really useful things

Intense Competition from
Industry
Everyone can potentially do “CS Research”


We don’t need particle accelerators
Commercialization is easier (witness Google)
Databases

MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, Microsoft, IBM
Amateurs are empowered as well

Open-source, Mash-ups

Difficult to Make an Impact
Pressure to innovate means you won't always have time to follow through on ideas
Prototypes and experiments are common
Polished, deployable systems less so

Difficult to Distinguish Good
Research from Bad Research
There is no simple objective criteria

 sales figures? website hits? number of downloads?
Perhaps # of citations, but this number is zero for a lot of good work
There is a lot of mediocre work

Lesson I had to learn: If a paper doesn’t seem to make sense, it may not just be you

Summary
I like it!
Consider it!
Ambiguity is a Good Thing

Outline
Graduate Research in CS: The Good
Graduate Research in CS: The Bad
Overview of my research supporting
Computational Science

1994 Northridge aftershock, San Fernando valley http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~quake/quakeviz.html
Animations created by Greg Foss, Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center and CMU Quake project, from synthetic data generated by the CMU Quake project

Load
Inactive VTK control

“GridFields”
16.1
17.9
16.2
2.3
12.5
2.1
13.5
14.0
15.1
15.7
16.3
15.4
13.7
1.4
13.7
1.9
11.4
14.2
[0.0, 1.0)
[1.0, 2.0)
[2.0, 3.0)
[3.0, 4.0)
[4.0, 5.0)
[5.0, 6.0)

GridField Operators (1) gridfield, no data
Scan retrieve grid data by
(grid name, context)
Catalog Interface
Storage Subsystem gridfield, bound data
25
19
24
Bind
27
21
26 retrieve attribute data by
(grid, attr. name, context)
…

GridField Operators (2)
27
25
24
19
21
26
Restrict(>23)
27
25
24
26

Cross Product (1)
 =
 =

Cross Product (2)
2 x
3
A z y

0 w
1
4
= xw
30
20 x 0
3 w
2 w
21
A0
31 x 1
A1 z 1 z 0 y 0 y 1
Aw
40
4 w
41 yw zw

Describing Fancy Grids
(a) (b) (c) (d) (e)
(a) H
0: (x)
V
0: (y)
(b) H
0: ()
V
0: ()
 bind(0,x) bind(0,y)

(c) H
0: ()
V
0: ()
(d) H
0: ()
V
0: ()

 bind(0,x,y)
) bind(0,x,y bind(1,f)

Idea: Separate Data Manipulation from Data Visualization
Our work
Client Machine
Visualization
Isosurfaces, Streamlines,
Contours, Colors, Animation,
Volume Rendering
GridField
Expressions
Locating, Cutting, Slicing,
Aggregating, Combining
Cluster of Servers
GridField
Expressions
… push processing upstream

Objectives
Model generalized gridded datasets
Optimize computations over gridded datasets
Demo available after the talk

Thick arrows are data, thin arrows are messages
Client
XMLRPC
Message
Web Service
Parse and
Optimize
Client App
Server
Cache
Evaluate
Client
Cache
XMLRPC
Response
Respond
Data
Repository

What do we use to hold these data?
Lists?
Arrays?
Relations?
Relations?

Analyzing the Results:
Data Products
Data Products

Computational Science
1. Governing Equations
2. Discretize the Domain
3. Convert Differential Equations into Algebraic Equations
4. Solve the Algebraic Equations
5. Analyze the Results

Graduate Degrees
CS Bachelor’s degree of Science (BS)


 year 1-2: Tester: Regression testing, write unit tests year 3-6: Programmer: Program to spec year 6+: Architect: Design, Code, Manage, Plan, Sell
CS Master’s degree of Science (MS)



2 additional years in school year 1-2: Programmer year 2+: Architect, Manager, etc.
CS Doctor of Philosophy (Phd)

4-9 additional years in school

 year 1-2: Postdoc, year 2+: University Faculty, Research Scientist OR Architect,
Manager, etc.

Getting a Phd is like Being all
7 Dwarves
At first you feel Dopey and Bashful
In the middle, you’re Sleepy, Sneezy, and Grumpy
At the end, they call you Doc, and you’re Happy

The Next 10 Years
CS Bachelor’s
Degree (BS)
Tester Programmer
CS Master’s
Degree (MS)
Student Programmer
Software Architect
Manager
Software Architect
Manager
CS Doctoral
Degree (Phd)
Student Research Assistant
Post
Doc
Univ. Faculty
Research Sci.
Architect
Manager
0 1 2
Usually earn a Master’s degree along the way
3 4 year
5 6 7 8 9 10

The Next 10 Years
160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
-20
-40
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
BS
MS
Phd
Sources: Starting salaries: NACE, 2004, Average raise: NACE 2003-2004
Also: Harder to outsource MSs, Phds harder still