Research Interests / Publications / Patents / Education / Invited talks / Collaborators
Recent advances mean the ability to generate, store, and share unprecedented quantities of data. Much of the data is uncertain, ambiguous, or error prone, and the sheer amount of data means more complex interrelations that affect the interpretation of the data. Instead of information from a single source or a number of standardized sources, many problems require considering information of miscellaneous sorts coming from diverse sources. The primary application of computing in the 21st century will be in working with such data. As an example area in which to explore these issues, we are looking at biological data analysis and modeling.
We will also explore the increasingly important and exciting areas of biotechnology and bioinformatics. We will look for business and research opportunities both within these areas and in the support of companies and research institutions working within these areas. We will also follow advances in alternative hardware like quantum and molecular computing.
Our project explored methods for automating the design of certain hard-to-write software. As an example area we chose the design of completely decentralized control software for modular robots. This area serves as an ideal domain in which to experiment with automated software generation methods since there are many robotic tasks that are easily specified but for which it is nevertheless highly non-obvious what distributed software would create the desired behavior. Our work was in collaboration with Mark Yim's modular robotics group at PARC who are building such robots. See my publications and patents for more details.
As a side project, we also continued our exploration of quantum computing.
We looked briefly at a number of machine learning techniques and alternative forms of computation (DNA computing, molecular computing). Quantum computing particularly caught our attention. We wrote the first detailed technical tutorial on quantum computing aimed at non-physicists. The tutorial was published by ACM computing surveys and has had a wide international readership, including a translation into Russian.
We explored the use of online virtual environments and hypermedia to support collaboration and communication. I was particularly interested in scientific collaboration and communication. My work culminated in the paper "The Genre of Mathematics Documents and its Implications for Digital Documents" and a patent on temporary digital ink.
Eleanor G. Rieffel
Senior Research Scientist, FXPAL
email
Return to Eleanor Rieffel's official home page.