Fishing for information, without drowning: Monfort Professor to discuss data streams

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Jeff Dodge

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Sensors are everywhere, from cell phones to satellites, and they’re continually collecting and transmitting information – a constant, moving stream of data. The problem, says Colorado State University Monfort Professor Shrideep Pallickara, is that we’re drowning in data.

Pallickara, associate professor in the Department of Computer Science, will discuss the technologies needed to process this continuous flow of data during his Monfort Professor Lecture, March 1, 4-5 p.m. in Clark A202. All are welcome. His talk is titled, “Data streams: How to wade into the current, fish for information, and not drown.”

“How do we collect the tsunami of data continually streaming from sensors?” says Pallickara, an expert in large-scale distributed systems, cloud computing and big data. “What information is in all this data? How do we sift through it to find the pieces that can help us? And how do we do all this fast enough – maybe in fractions of a second?”

Timely processing

In his talk, Pallickara will describe how technology can process burgeoning data streams while still ensuring timeliness. He will also discuss his VitalHome project – a real-world application in which researchers are targeting and processing non-invasive, wireless measurements of personal vital sign data. The project is a first step toward analyzing physiological data streams in real time to detect warning signs of health problems.

Pallickara has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles. His research has been deployed in domains including epidemiology, earthquake science, environmental and ecological monitoring, health-care systems, high-energy physics, defense applications, geosciences, GIS, and commercial internet conferencing systems.

His research has been funded by agencies in the United States and the United Kingdom, including the National Science Foundation, the Department of Homeland Security through its Long Range program, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Agriculture, and the United Kingdom’s Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute.

Pallickara is also a recipient of the National Science Foundation’s CAREER award and the CSU Board of Governors’ Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award.

About the Monfort Professorship

The Monfort Professorship is one of CSU’s highest honors. It was established in 2002 through a gift from the Monfort Family Foundation. It awards $150,000 over two years to outstanding CSU faculty in support of their research and teaching.