Informatica 2012

The diversity of research areas covered by computer science is enormous, and nowadays almost all fields of human activity are transformed by its results.

Computer Science: Working Smarter!

The way computer science is taught in high school will probably not give you a very clear picture of what it would be like to study Computer Science at a university. The diversity of research areas covered by computer science is enormous, and nowadays almost all fields of human activity are transformed by its results. Think only of how current web technology is changing the way we interact, learn and work. Another natural consequence is a growing demand for smart people to work on topics such as bio-informatics, pattern recognition and data mining, parallel processor architectures, security and cryptography, or for instance, developing new smart programming languages. And, we can only imagine how fascinating tomorrow’s world is going to be once we make further progress on challenges such as computer vision, computational linguistics, and who knows, artificial intelligence…  

In the LAPP-Top Computer Science program we would like to introduce you to this diversity, and at the same time show you that research at a university goes beyond the surface: working towards a deep understanding of algorithms, patterns and information can be a truly enjoyable and rewarding experience.  

For our lecture program we have chosen four concrete themes from computer science and to each of these we devote two afternoon-long sessions. The sessions are led by expert researchers that give an overview of the theme and introduce you to some of the main insights. Having two sessions per theme we also reserve a good amount of time for direct experience in playing with the ideas yourself.   


The four themes are:
1) Puzzles and Games: Backtracking, Surreal Numbers and Tomography (dr. Walter Kosters)
2) Computational Biology (dr. Hendrik Jan Hoogeboom)
3)  Tools for multi-media searches and datamining (dr. Nies Huijsmans)
4) Modern Software Engineering (prof. dr. Farhad Arbab)  

 
The program is also open to international students; if needed, the lectures will be in English.   
The program is also open to international students; if needed, the lectures will be in English.


Globale indeling van de colleges

Overview of the Lectures
Lectures I and II 
(Tuesday January 17th  and 24th  2012, 13:30-16:30 hrs)
Puzzles and Games: Backtracking, Surreal Numbers and Tomography
In two lectures, we explore how we can use computer science to study and solve various classic games and puzzles. We first discuss a number of traditional ways of classifying and analyzing games and then move on to less mainstream approaches, such as surreal number theory and tomography. Tomography uses the idea that based on lower dimensional projections (for example X-ray images) we can gain insight into a higher dimensional object (for example the human body). It turns out that many puzzles use ideas from tomography. The most well-known are the Japanese puzzles: the problem is to reconstruct an image of black and white pixels, when for every row and column the numbers of consecutive black pixels are given. We will discuss different ways to solve Japanese puzzles, and see how tomography and logic are closely related. Perhaps there will also be time to code a simple Sudoku solver.  

Lectures III and IV
(Tuesday January 31th  and Wednesday February 8th  2012, 13:30-16:30 hrs)
Computational Biology
Assembly of the human genome is one of the greatest achievements of bioinformatics. Indeed, it is not possible to directly 'read' the contents of your DNA as it is too large to be handled in one experiment. Instead it has to be broken into separate, relatively small, pieces short enough to be sequenced automatically. During this process the order of these pieces is lost. With the help of the computer the complete picture is reconstructed. Now that the human genome has been completely read, an even more difficult task is waiting: determining what all this information means, where the genes are, and under what circumstances they are used by the cell to produce certain proteins. We are not trained as biologists, so we cannot explain you the secrets of life. Instead, we will give examples of data structures and algorithms that were developed to assist in the analysis of biological data.  

Lecture V and VI
(Wednesday February 15th and 29th  2012, 13:30-16:30 hrs) Tools for multi-media searches and datamining You all know how successful search engines like Google have become in retrieving information on the Internet. Although the search engine helps one to search for text, images, maps,  program code etc. few realize that almost all of this is solely based on text search techniques applied to text documents, and image or map annotations. Worldwide research groups are trying to develop search engines based on image, map, video, music, songs, speech, handwriting, hieroglyph representations other than textual. This contribution will introduce you to search engines based on features obtained from these inherently noisy data sources and how to measure and optimize its performance using decision theory. Present search engines are also almost exclusively aimed at recovering information using known keywords, but are unsuited to get overviews or insight into (for the user  yet) unknown areas. Research is therefore also done on ways to visualize large data collections using spatio-temporal data elements in combination with clustering techniques to organize and allow for  visual exploration of data collections.
 
Lectures VII and VIII
(Tuesday March 6th  and 13th  2012, 13:30-16:30 hrs)
Modern Software Engineering
To write a computer program is like building a house. Before building a house (or writing a program) you have to make a plan to master the complexity of the task and to define midway levels down to the building blocks available. It is the task of the software engineer to analyze the task and design a successful growth path.  

In the first week we will introduce a variety of useful software components.
In the second week you will analyze the workings of the NS ticket selling machine and design a representation of its inner workings using the software components introduced during the first session.  

SLU's, motivatiebrief, toelating

Credits "Studielasturen (slu's)"
The credit value of active participation in the LAPP-Top program is 25 slu. If you like, you can also write a "Profielwerkstuk" based on one of the program themes. In this case, please discuss this with your own teacher at school and contact one of the LAPP-Top instructors listed above.

Letter of Intent
Use your letter to tell us about yourself and in particular why you would like to take part in this program. Please restrict your letter to about 300 words or one page of A4.

Admission
The maximum number of students selected for the program will be 20.

 
Laatst Gewijzigd: 26-09-2011