Model-based Design for Embedded Computing Systems

***JOINT SEMINAR***

		Department of Computer Science
				and
	Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Speaker:	Dr. T. John Koo
		Embedded Computing Systems Laboratory
		Institute for Software Integrated Systems
		Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
		Vanderbilt University

Title: 		"Model-based Design for Embedded Computing Systems"

Date:		Monday, 20 September 2004

Time:		4:00 pm - 5:00 pm

Venue:		Lecture Theatre F
		(Leung Yat Sing Lecture Theatre near lift nos. 25/26)
		HKUST

ABSTRACT:

Embedded systems are appearing in more and more parts of our daily lives
and have the potential to seriously affect the well-being of national
economies. From home appliances to aircraft and from medical devices to
power distribution networks, embedded systems monitor and control our
physical world in a computational manner. Information processing performed
in embedded systems is tightly integrated with physical processes and is
called embedded computing. Embedded computing is becoming the universal
integrator for physical system. Although embedded computing has become
pervasive, researchers and engineers have been developing embedded
software without the necessary theories, methods, and tools. Nowadays, the
cost of embedded computing systems development is primarily linked to
prohibitively expensive embedded software integration and testing
techniques that rely almost exclusively on exhaustively testing of more or
less complete versions of complex systems.  The rapidly growing demand for
high-performance high-confidence embedded computing system is putting
tremendous pressure on system engineers in the industry.

During the last decade, significant progress has been achieved in the
research field of hybrid systems towards establishing the theoretical
foundations and computational methods for embedded computing systems.
Hybrid system theory is linking the fields of computer science, control
engineering, and mathematics with the unifying aim of aiming developing
formal analysis and synthesis methods for embedded computing systems.
Hybrid systems are used as the mathematical models for embedded computing
systems because the dynamical interactions between discrete and continuous
components in the systems can be well captured in a unified modeling
framework. Unique characteristics of embedded computing systems such as
multi-modal behaviors of reconfigurable embedded software, distributed
concurrent computation by means of synchronous or asynchronous
communication channels and system robustness with respect to temporal and
functional constraints can now be rigorously considered within the same
framework.

In this talk, modeling, analysis and verification of various classes of
hybrid systems will be introduced. In particular, special attention will
be paid to computational and simulation tools for hybrid systems.
Applications ranging from networked sensors, power electronics and
multi-robot coordination will be covered.



***********************
Biography:

T. John Koo received the B.Eng. degree in Electronic Engineering and the
M.Phil. degree in Information Engineering from the Chinese University of
Hong Kong in 1992 and 1994, respectively, and the Ph.D degree in
Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley in
2000.

Since August 2003, he has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and the Institute for
Software Integrated Systems (ISIS) at Vanderbilt University. He was a
Visiting Faculty in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer
Sciences of the University of California at Berkeley in 2002. In 2001, he
held a Research Specialist position in the Electronics Research Laboratory
of the University of California at Berkeley. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow
in the Department of Electrical Engineering of the University of
Pennsylvania in 2000. In 1998, he held a Consultant position at the
Stanford Research Institute International, Menlo Park, CA. From 1995 to
2002, he was the founder and project leader of the Berkeley Aerial Robot
project. In 1994, he was a Graduate Research Fellow in the Signal and
Image Processing Institute of the University of Southern California. His
research interests include embedded software, hybrid systems, nonlinear
control theory, and robotics with applications to wireless sensor
networks, power electronics, communication networks, and autonomous
vehicles.

Dr. Koo received the Distinguished M.Phil. Thesis Award of the Faculty of
Engineering, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, in 1994. He serves as an
Associate Editor for the IEEE International Conference on Decision and
Control (CDC) and European Control Conference (ECC), Seville, Spain,
December 2005. He is the International Scientific Committee Member of the
International Embedded and Hybrid Systems Conference, Singapore, April
2005.  He was the Publicity Chair of the International Workshop on Hybrid
Systems: Computation and Control (HSCC'04), Philadelphia, PA, 2004. He has
involved in reviewing papers submitted to many international conferences
and journals related to his research. He served as a reviewer for the
Research Grant Council in Hong Kong.  He is a member of IEEE, ACM, SIAM,
and AIAA.