USRP PROJECT TITLES



Name of supervisor: Lua KT
The project title: Information Retrieval Based On Word Senses
IC288 or IC388 or both: both

Brief description of the project (optional):
In this project, we will explore one approach to potentially achievewide coverage, high accuracy word sense disambiguation (WSD). Clustering algorithms will be used to find groups of related words from a large corpus of English texts. This is followed by automated WSD of the related words in a group. These two procedures can be done off-line to generate a useful list of related words with disambiguated senses. Such a list can then be used to disambiguate words in new, previously unseen texts. Such a list can then be used to disambiguate words in new, previously unseen texts.
Name of supervisor: Lua KT
The project title: Information Theory and Meaning - K T Lua
IC288 or IC388 or both: both

Brief description of the project (optional):
We have found that the information content (entropy) has some effect on the word construct and its meaning. A word lose information when it is combined from a number of characters. It is a process of losing entropy for the binding of the word. We will continue the research to define a scope for the word sense using its information content.
Name of supervisor: Lua KT
The project title: A Study Semantics of Chinese Words - K T Lua
IC288 or IC388 or both: both

Brief description of the project (optional):
In this project, we attempt to classify meanings in a n-layer tree. The so-called semantic distances are the distance of the meaning on the tree. Using this model, we have obtained some important result for Chinese language. We are able to predict the meaning of Chinese compound at an accuracy of above 70%. We have also explained why there are only about 5,000 Chinese characters in use. Many more interesting results will be derived in the near future. We are also working in two directions: (i) to incorporate results from psychological research about Chinese characters into the model and (ii) to enhance the scheme of semantic representation to a net. This work will be continued in the direction of re-clsutering of meaning of Chinese/English words. A general comparison between word meaning clustering of Chinese and English words will also be carried out.
Name of supervisor: Lua KT
The project title: Application of Neural Net In the Predicition of Meaning of Compound Words
IC288 or IC388 or both: both

Brief description of the project (optional):
A three layer back propagation neural net is set up to determine the dependence between the semantic class of a bisyllabic Chinese word and its two characters. Simulations were performed using a three-layer back-propagation neural net(BPNN) with various combinations of inputs. The inputs are (1) semantic classes of the characters, (2) Entropy of the characters and (3) semantic strengths[1] of the characters. Our results show that we can obtain the bias of meaning class of a bisyllabic word with an accuracy of 81% by inputting the semantic classes and strengths of the characters. The BPNN can also be trained to predict the meaning of word to a high precision of 83%. With the results obtained from this system, more research on the formation of word and meaning can be performed. This system can be applied to compound words of any languages.
Name of supervisor: Lua KT
The project title: Parsing of short sentences
IC288 or IC388 or both: both

Brief description of the project (optional):
In this project, we try to identify short sentences and parse them into noun and verb phrases. We can then obtain direct relationship between a noun and its verb. In LINK grammar, this is called long distance dependency as noun and its verb can be seperated by many other words such as adjectives, quantifiers, advers etc. In the example: He buys a kilogram of red chilly. The noun-verb-noun becomes He-buys-chilly, taking away a kilogram of red as attachment to the last noun chilly.
Name of supervisor: Lua KT
The project title: Information Extraction and Knowledge Discovery Through Internet
IC288 or IC388 or both: both

Brief description of the project (optional):
Nowadays, we can obtain all sorts of information from Internet by reading the Web pages. However, the whole process is very tiresome. It takes long times and information are documented in a most dis-organised way. We often spend hours or even days in the search of the information we want. In this project, we aims to 1. Develop an Internet Agent program to do intelligent search based a detailed specification of search objectives. 2. Analyze and Extract the knowledge we want from the information collected. Basic AI and NLP (natural language processing) techniques will be deployed.
Name of supervisor: Tan Tiow Seng
The project title: Real Virtual Reality Modeling
IC288 or IC288 or both: IC288 or IC388

Brief description of the project (optional):
Research and development into tools to effectively capture real world into virtual world in computer.
Name of the supervisor: A/P A.L.Ananda
The Project Title: Investigation into the internet 2 protocol and performance

Name of supervisors:
Dr. Ooi Beng Chin, DISCS, 874-6465, ooibc@iscs.nus.sg
Dr. Pang Hwee Hwa, ISS, 874-7859, hhpang@iss.nus.sg
Dr. Ngair Teow Hin, ISS, 874-6668, teowhin@iss.nus.sg
The project title: Mobile Java Threads

Objectives:

To extend the Java runtime environment so that threads of execution can migrate from host to host while preserving their state information.
Motivation
In mobile computing, it is highly desirable for threads to be able to hop between hosts. This allows a user to initiate a job on a mobile device, and subsequently move the entire job to a server for resource-intensive computation. It also enables an application to roam with a user to different machines without having to shut down and restart each time. Yet another use of mobile threads is to implement work flow engines.
While mobility has been researched into since the advent of distributed computing, the impact has been limited due to the difficulty of migrating processes across platforms. However, with Java fast becoming ubiquitous, mobility in a heterogeneous environment can finally be a reality.
Description
The project team will implement 2 features -- checkpointing and resumption. Checkpointing allows an application to call an API, which will dump out a binary image of all the necessary code, program counter(s), stack and other data structures. The resumption feature enables the Java virtual machine to load the binary image and pick up the execution thread(s) from the checkpoint.
The project requires the team members to develop Java classes and probably modify the Java virtual machine. As such, the team members can expect to be(come) conversant with Java programming and the internals of Java.
Deliverables
- Java classes and modified virtual machine to support checkpointing and resumption. - A simple application to demonstrate thread migration between PC and Sun workstations.
Name of supervisor: Dr Leow Wee Kheng (leowwk)
The project title: Keeping Track of Moving Objects in an Intelligent Room
Course code: IC288/IC388

Project description:
Motion analysis plays a key role in an intelligent environment. For example, a security or surveillance system may keep track of the people moving in a bank. It may detect unusual movement patterns, such as sudden and rapid movements, which may signal the presence of robbers. In an intelligent room, an object tracking system may keep track of the people and objects as they move. A user who needs to locate an object or a person can just check with the object tracking system (as in the Star Trek senario: "Computer, where's Captain Picard?").
This project aims at developing a system that detects object movements in an intelligent room. Having detected moving objects, it will keep track of the current locations of the objects.A user can then query the system to find out where are the objects.

Name of supervisor: Dr Leow Wee Kheng (leowwk)
The project title: Robotic Head and Eyes
Course code: IC388

Project description:
What is a mobile robot without a head and eyes? It would be as blind as a bat.
The objective of the project is to develop algorithms to scan for interesting objects in a scene, and then move a robot's head and eyes to focus on the objects. This way, the robot can selectively focus attention at interesting things, just like humans.

Name of supervisor: Roland Yap
The project title: Extending Web Browsers
IC288 or IC388 or both: both

Brief description of the project (optional):
Web browsers like Netscape, Internet Explorer, Opera, etc. are usually commercial software. One would like to be able to extend their functionality in various ways but this cannot be done directly because there is no program source and because an ideal solution should be portable among various web browsers. Browser embedded languages like Java are one avenue but this is limited by the Java security model.
In this project, we will look at ways of extending web browsers by using forms of extended proxy support. For example, the user could have shortcuts to execute queries on the web. The first part of the project will look at building an extendable user level proxy server which can be customizable to do various actions on the WWW by the user and also customizable behavior. The second part of the project will look at using this approach to look at how the user can use this to extend web pages. In partcular, how to integrate a logic programming language such as Prolog/CLP(R) into a web page which provides embedded computation facilities much like Java.

Name of supervisor: Ong Ghim Hwee
The project title: Fractal Image Coding
IC288 or IC388 or both: IC288

Brief description of the project (optional):
The purpose of image coding is to represent an image using as little amount of data as possible under the condition of acceptable reconstructed image quality. A fractal is a geometric form which has self-similar irregular details. Techniques based on fractal properties to compress and encode image data are called fractal image coding/compression algorithms. These techniques make use of self-similarities existing in an image at different resolutions under a set of affine transformations to achieve compression. This project aims at developing various partitioning schemes to encode images that possibly give better compression and processing time.

Name of supervisor: Ong Ghim Hwee
The project title: Multimedia Bus/MRT Route Searching
IC288 or IC388 or both: IC288

Brief description of the project (optional):
This project is to employ multimedia tools to develop a bus/MRT route searching system including
(a) a subsystem of image-based street maps.
(b) a subsystem for best route searching in terms of least time and/or least cost.
(c) a subsystem that supports interactive communication schemes, allowing users to make on-line queries.

Name of supervisor: Dr. Sung Kah Kay
The project title: Variable-pose Human Face Detection
Subject Areas: Computer Vision, Neural Nets.
Proposed Module: IC388

Short description of the project:
In this project, we shall develop a face finding system that locates human faces in images. We shall begin by solving a simpler problem of locating a single (possibly non-frontal) face in a uniform image background. If time permits, we shall use the isolated face finder to train a robust non-frontal face finder that operates in cluttered scenes.
Initial work will be based on an existing frontal-view face detection approach by [Sung and Poggio 1994].

Name of Supervisor: Dr. Leong Hon Wai (leonghw) S15, 04-16
The project title: Some Applications of Clustering Systems
Course: IC2288 or IC3288

Brief Description:
This project aims to investigate the use of clustering methods to (i) improve network design and reliability, and (ii) obtain clusters of ships for a container port berth allocation problem. For the second application, clustering will be based on the container movement matrix.
Note: In a previous research project, we have developed a general Clustering System (in C on UNIX) that encompasses several well-known clustering methods.

Name of Supervisor: Dr. Leong Hon Wai (leonghw) S15, 04-16
The project title: Design of Low Power Multiplexor (MUX)
Course: IC2288 or IC3288

Brief Description:
This project deals with discrete optimization algorithms for a binary tree decomposition problem. This problem has application in the practical problem of low power design of digital circuits. Specifically, we want to decompose a large n-to-1 multiplexor (MUX) into a binary tree of 2-to-1 MUXes. The problem is to find a decomposition that optimizes the overall power consumption. (A paper describing our research work on this problem is available.)
In this project, student will give *efficient* implementations of the some heuristic algorithms for the problem.
Extensive experimental evaluation of these algorithms will be carried out. Possible extensions of this problem will also be explored.

Name of supervisor: A/P Chua Tat Seng
The project title: Object-based Model for Image Retrieval

Brief description:
This research is to look into higher level representation of images' contents by using colors and regions, and explore the effectiveness of using these higher level models for retrieval.

Name of supervisor: A/P Chua Tat Seng
The project title: Relevance Feedback in Image Retrieval

Brief description:
Image retrieval is an iterative process. This research will look into how content characteristics of relevant images identified may be used to improve retrieval performance automatically. In particular, the use of higher level content representation at obejct level will be explored.

Name of supervisor: A/P Chua Tat Seng
The Project title: Advanced Free-text retrieval Techniques

Brief description:
This research looks into the use of addiitonal lingustic support to improve the performance of free-text retrieval system. In particular, we will look into using advanced digital dictionary such as WordNet to provide additional support to word meanings and senses.

Name of supervisor: Tan Tiow Seng
The project title: Computer-Aided Road Modeling
IC288 or IC288 or both: IC288 or IC388

Brief description of the project (optional):
Research and development into tools to effectively model city roads for computer simulation

Name of supervisor: Tan Tiow Seng
The project title: IT in infra-structure planning--- an augmented reality application
IC288 or IC388 or both: IC288 or IC388

Brief description of the project (optional):
Research and development into augmented reality application to planning infra-structure

Name of supervisor: Dr Leow Wee Kheng (leowwk)
Project Title: Neural Network for Controlling Robotic Arms
Project Type: IC288 or IC388

Project Description:
Robotic manipulators (i.e., robotic arms) have been widely used in the industry to perform routine manufacturing and assembly tasks. However, existing robotic arms are very bulking and cumbersome, and are, therefore, difficult to control.
Many researchers are now working on using neural networks to control the robots. The advantage of neural networks is that they can be trained to perform the tasks better and better.
The objective of this project is to devise a neural network that can perform simple control tasks.

Name of supervisor: Dr Leow Wee Kheng (leowwk)
Project Title: Searching for Objects for Vision-Guided Robotic Assembly
Project Type: IC388

Project Description:
Robotic arms have been widely used to perform routine assembly tasks. Existing robots are blind---they can perform the tasks only if the parts to be assembled are placed at predefined locations. This project aims at giving the robots the sense of sight. A camera takes pictures of the workbench on which the parts are randomly placed. A computer vision system searches for the required parts in the image and tells the robot where the parts are on the workbench. The robot can then pick up the parts and assemble them. This project will focus on the searching of the objects.

Supervisor: Dr Leow Wee Kheng (leowwk)
Project Title: Extracting Shape Features From Natural Images
Project Type: IC288 or IC388

Project Description:
An object typically consists of several parts, each of which has a simple shape. For example, a mug consists of a cylindrical body and a curved handle. The shapes of these object parts can be described by properties such as curvature, symmetry, parallelism, and convergence. These shape features can be used in many applications such as object recognition and retrieval of images based on shapes.
The objective of this project is to extract these shape features from images containing natural objects and scenes.

Name of supervisor: Dr. Chan Hock Chuan
The project title: Spreadsheet Programming
IC288 or IC288 or both: either IC288 or IC388

Brief description of the project (optional):
The objective is to program, with Visual Basic for Applications language, small auditing tools for Microsoft Excel. These auditing tools are to help users analyse a spreadsheet. The student should be excellent in programming.

Name of supervisor: Feng Ming Dong
The project title: Multithreaded Programming System on AP3000

Brief description:
Multithreading is widely available in almost all operating systems. Multithreaded programming languages have been used in many commercial applications. For example, Netscape uses threads to support JAVA applets. There is an interesting runtime system for a multithreaded programming language Cilk (see more details of Cilk at http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~cilk). The Cilk runtime system features provably efficient scheduling and virtual shared memory support. This project studies porting of the Cilk runtime system onto the department's own MPP machine AP3000.

Name of Supervisor: Dr. Leong Hon Wai (leonghw) S15, 04-16
Project Title: Vessel Packing using Mathematical Programming
Course: IC2288 or IC3288

Brief Description:
In this project, we study the use of mathematical programming methods in solving the problem of "packing" vessels into a section of the harbour. This problem arises as a sub-problem of a larger R&D project on berth allocation of ships in a container port.
We are given a collection of ships (vessels) that have to be berthed in a section (of the harbour) consisting of a set of berths.
We are also given all other pertinent information such as the lengths, the arrival and departure times, and the berthing times (length of time that a vessel has to be berth) of the vessels.
We want to assign the vessels to berths (long vessels may occupy more than one berth) so as to satisfy (as much as possible) the departure times of the vessels.

Name of Supervisor: Dr. Leong Hon Wai (leonghw) S15, 04-16
Project Title: Search Techniques for the Berth Allocation Problem
Course: IC2288 or IC3288

Brief Description:
In this project, we study the berth allocation problem (BAP). This problem arises as a sub-problem of a larger R&D project investigating the BAP.
The BAP is described as follows:
Vessels arriving at a container port are berthed in a section of a wharf, and the containers they ferry are then transferred to the port or to other vessels. We are interested in finding good berth allocations so as to minimize the overall movement of the containers.
We currently have one solution to the BAP that uses genetic algorithm. In this project, we want to explore the use of other search techniques such as simulated annealing and tabu search.

Name of Supervisor: Dr. Leong Hon Wai (leonghw) S15, 04-16
Project Title: The Airport Gate Assignment Problem
Course: IC2288 or IC3288

Brief Description:
In this project, we study the Gate Assignment Problem (GAP) of allocating gates to planes arriving at the airport terminal. This problem arises as a sub-problem of a larger R&D project investigating the GAP and related problems.
The GAP is described as follows:
Planes arriving at an airport are assigned gates in the terminals of the airport and the passengers either go into the airport or are transferred (connected) to other flights. We are interested in finding good gate assignments so as to optimize resources and minimize the overall passenger movement.
We currently have a solution to a related problem, the BAP (see my other project proposal). In this project, we want to modify the BAP solution for solving the GAP and possibly explore other solution methods.

Name of supervisor : Dr Chin Wei-Ngan, Dr Khoo Siau Cheng
The project title : NESL - A Functional Language for Nested Parallelism

Brief Description:
NESL is a simple functional language which supports portable nested data parallelism. It has a simple programming model and is portable across a range of parallel and serial machines. Due to its simplicity and expressiveness, the language has been found to be an excellent tool for both teaching and writing parallel programs.
The aim of this project is to port the NESL language to the AP3000 parallel systems. The focus will be on ensuring that a core library of data-parallel operations are efficiently supported in the port.

Name of supervisor: Dr Khoo Siau Cheng (khoosc@iscs.nus.sg 7726730 S15 #05-10)
The project title: Algebra of Programming

Description of the scope of the Project :
An algebraic approach to programming is suitable both for the derivation of individual programs and for the study of programming principles in general. Such an approach is usually called "calculating programs". Recently, there have been breakthroughs in using this approach, and researchers have found various ways of describing program transformations based on the algebra of programming. Some of these program transformations can even be automated and used in compiler design.
All these program transformations, and the algebra of programming in general, are based on a mathematical framework, known as the "categorical calculus", which is known as the "category theory" in the field of mathematics. With the help of this calculus, the standard principles of algorithm design (and transformation strategy) can be formulated as theorems about classes of problems whose specifications possess a particular structure. These theorems say that, under appropriate conditions, a certain strategy (eg: transformation) works and leads to a particular form of abstract solution (eg: more efficient programs).
The scope of this project is :
0. to understand category theory;
1. to investigate and understand the categorical approach to programming;
2. to investigate the use of such approach in performing a particular program transformation (eg : fusion, tupling, etc.) ;
3. to implement such program transformation.

Name of supervisor: Andrew Lim Leong Chye (alim@iscs.nus.sg)
The project title: 3-D Container Packing Problem

Name of supervisor: Andrew Lim Leong Chye (alim@iscs.nus.sg)
The project title: Ship Berthing Problem with Delays

Name of supervisor: Andrew Lim Leong Chye (alim@iscs.nus.sg)
The project title: Vehicle Routing Problem

Name of supervisor: Liu Bing (liub@iscs.nus.sg)
The project title: Discovering interesting knowledge in databases

Name of supervisor: Yeo Gee Kin (yeogk@iscs.nus.sg)
The project title: Model Queries

Brief description:
Query in the context of modeling concerns not only of data, but also of model structure, its entities and attributes. Because of different model views, different representations and therefore structures are used in a modeling system. Providing answers to model queries very often involve moving between structures, integrating representations and scheduling and executing processes. In particular, solution query has been used broadly to refer to requests for any model manipulation performed by solvers and is not limited only to retrievals, as in the database sense, but also includes evaluation, satisfaction and optimisation. This project will review works done in model queries and identify viable approaches for implementation in a modeling system prototype, VMS/SM(http://www.iscs.nus.sg/~yeogk/MM/research/vms_sm).

Name of supervisor: Yeo Gee Kin (yeogk@iscs.nus.sg)
The project title: Multi-lingual support on an Internet simulation game

Brief Description:
MAGNUS (http://www.iscs.nus.sg/~yeogk/MAGNUS/magnus.html), a simulation game used to support a course in decision support system in DISCS are being internationlised to be available on the WWW. (http://www.iscs.nus.sg/~stfpool/magnus). This project will re- examine its multi-lingual support to allow its use on multi-cutural settings. An experimental multi-lingual application support environment will be used to generate the required multi-lingual support modules.

Name of supervisor: Dr. Sung Kah Kay
The Project Title: Parameterizing face structure and texture for face recognition
Subject Areas: Computer vision, Face recognition.
Proposed Module: IC388

Short description of the project:
Over the past few years, the eigenspace approach for face recognition [Turk and Pentland 91] has received a significant amount of attention within the face recognition research community. The approach aligns a face (manually) to a canoncal grid, and reconstructs the aligned face image as a linear combination of several pre-stored face images (a.k.a. basis functions). The linear combination coefficients are used as features for face recognition.
In this project, we shall develop the front-end of a face recognition approach that uses the structure (i.e. the original shape and precise location of facial features) of a face as additional features for face recognition. We shall develop a parameterized model for face structure, similar in spirit to the eigenspace approach for parameterizing face texture.
Given a face image, the front-end procedure you develop will attempt to align the face with a canonical face structural model, and recover a set of alignment coefficients as recognition features.

Name of supervisor: Dr. Sung Kah Kay
The Project Title: Training a Vision-based Mobile Robot Navigation Controller
Subject Areas: Computer Vision, Neural Nets.
Proposed Module: IC388

Short description of the project:
For a mobile robot to be truly autonomous, it must be able to move along a passage way without running into obstacles. In this project, you will train and implement a vision-based mobile robot control algorithm to perform some simple indoor navigation tasks.
We shall look at ways of automating the training process by using sonar sensors on the robot to train its visual guidance system.
Our goal is to produce a scaled-down indoor version of NavLab: the CMU AGV guidance system.

Name of supervisor: A/P Tan Chew Lim
The project title: GENETIC PROGRAMMING OF NEURAL LOGIC NETWORK

Brief description:
Neural Logic Network is a kind of hybrid between neural network and rule-based expert system. It has the ability to encode knowledge like an expert system and yet at the same time it can learn by allowing the weights in its rule networks to change, thru some neural network learning algorithms such as backpropagation. The present project is to study the possibility of applying genetic programming on neural logic network as another form of learning.
Genetic programming is an extension of the conventional genetic algorithm in which each individual in the population is a computer program. In the case of neural logic network, each computer program to be subject to genetic programming will be the basic rule network. Thru genetic programming, it is hoped that the system will be able to learn to construct an entire neural logic network on its own.
A neural logic network environment has already been developed. The student will first study the behavior of the nerual logic network within the environment and then move on to experiment the genetic programming.

Name of supervisor: Tan Kian Lee
The Project Title: Distributed Spatial Join Processing
IC288 or IC388 or both: IC2288

Brief:
In a distributed environment, a spatial join may involve 2 relations that are stored at two different sites. As communication may be expensive especially for spatial data which are usually large in size, new spatial join algorithms are needed. This project will design and study new spatial join processing algorithms for distributed environment.

Name of supervisor: Ang Chuan Heng
The project title: Recursive linear hashing and its improvement

Brief description:
In this project, student will read a paper, implement the recursive linear hashing algorithm, explore various ways to improve it and carry out some experiments to compare the performance of the variants.

Name of supervisor: Ang Chuan Heng
The project title: Filtered spiral hashing

Brief description:
In this project, student will read at least 2 papers, implement the spiral hashing algorithm and filtered spiral hashing, and carry out some experiments to compare the performance of the variants.

Name of supervisor: Ang Chuan Heng
The project title: Linear hashing and its improvements

Brief description:
In this project, student will read a paper, implement the linear hashing algorithm, explore various ways to improve it and carry out some experiments to compare the performance of the variants.

Name of supervisor: Dr. Wang Ke (wangk@iscs.nus.sg) S16, 06-13
The Project Title: Data warehouse keeper for Knowledge discovery and data mining

Brief Description:
Knowledge discovery and data mining is becoming a key IT technology for the success of business and industry. It helps an organization to make sensible decision through intensive data analysis. Today data mining is a multi-billion dollar industry --- very easy to find jobs. The crucial component of data mining is the data --- one has to know where to find the data before mining any "gold" from it. In this project, the student will search and investigate what data sources exist on the internet and WWW. For different discovery tasks, data can have different formats. Some are relational tables in a database (most business types), some are HTML files on the web, some are transactional data (what are bought in each transactions) in the supermarket case, some are image/sound data, some are textual data (like news), some are sequences data (like weather and stock data), etc. In many cases, data have to be interpreted using background or domain knowledge. The student will first get familar with all types of knowledge discovery and data mining tasks. Then he/she will search and classify data sources existing on internet or web according to use for different tasks. This project is particularly suitable for students who wish to do research on knowledge discovery and data mining in later stages such as Honour, Master or Ph.D

Name of supervisor: Tan Kian Lee
The project title: Spatial Join Processing by Partial Precomputations

Name of supervisor: Tan Kian Lee
The project title: Query Processing and Optimization in Heterogeneous Database Systems

Name of Supervisor : Dr Khoo Siau Cheng
The Project Title : Super-linear Speedup via Tupling Transformation

Brief Description :
Source-to-source program transformation is the bridge between easy-to-read programs and their efficient-to-execute counterprats. Tupling transformation is distinctive from other existing program transformation in that it realises super-linear speedup in the transformed program. Candidate (programs) for tupling transformations abound, like fibonacci function, tower of hanoi, etc. All these candidates share a common syntactic property that enables tupling transformation to take effect: the property of having redundant computation.
In this project, the student will learn the technique of tupling transformation, the method to detect redundant computation in a program. His/her task is then to implement the transformation and collect some statistics on its effectiveness in achieving super-linear speedup.

Name of Supervisor: Ang Chuan Heng
The project title: S-trees vs R-trees

Brief Description:
In this project, the student has to read afew papers, implement S-tree, R-tree, and R*-tree, and carry out some experiemtns to compare their performance.

Name of Supervisor: Teo Yong Meng
The project title: A Study of Distributed Interactive Simulation

Name of Supervisor: Teo Yong Meng
The project title: Strategies for Distributed Memory Management

Name of Supervisor: Teo Yong Meng
The project title: Scenario Analysis on a Parallel Computer

Name of supervisor: Dr Lucas Hui
The Project Title: Authentication Scheme based on Question-Answering

Brief description:
User authentication on a computer network such as internet is an important issue for successful deployment of information technology. Popular solutions include the use of passwords, public key cryptosystems, secure hardware like smart cards, or biometric means such as fingerprint or voice recognition. Recently, there is a new approach for network user authentication. In this kind of schemes, when a human user wants to identify himself to another party such as a host computer over the network, the other party will generate a set of questions for the user to answer. The core idea of the scheme is that the question-answering model is specially designed in a way that enough information content are reviewed in the answers to identify the user, but yet an attacker who wiretap the communication channel cannot obtain enough information to impersonate the user.
The aim of this research project is to study the properties different question-answering models, as well as to study the values of these models in practical settings such as a customer authenticating himself in front of a banking machine, or students authenticating themselves in an electronic examination system. Research work can be either analytical, experimental, or both.