TITLE: Sensor Web: Applications and Research Challenges

SPEAKER: Dr. WenZhan Song, Associate Professor of Computer Science at Georgia State University

ABSTRACT:

If Internet is viewed as the circulatory system connecting the world for information sharing, then Sensor Web can be said as the nervous system sensing the world: extracting timely information for efficientdecision support and quick corrective actions, where sensing, computing, communication and control play a critical role and need a transformative study. Sensor web has found many important applications. In this talk, the speaker Dr. WenZhan Song will present his research experiences, challenges and future plans in creating Sensor Web systems for environment monitoring, smart grid and smart environment. Dr. Song is a pioneer to apply sensor web technology to volcano monitoring. During 2006-2009, within a NASA project, he led a team of WSU, JPL and USGS to create and demonstrate the first known space in-situ sensor web for volcano monitoring. With a recent funded NSF grant, Song is leading a new team of GSU, UNC and MSU to create a new paradigm, VolcanoSRI (Volcano Seimic Realtime Imaging), for imaging the tomography of an active volcano in real-time. A future effort aims to integrate seimic tomography, InSAR and deformation model to make the fictional holographic projector known as Virgil in the film "Supervolcano" (3:49) a reality. Dr. Song is also active in applying sensor web to smart grid and recently partners with Cornell and UC Berkerley to investigate key aspects of a computation and information foundation of the smart grids. Our goal is to gain a foundational understanding of how information should be partitioned in time and space; how it should be collected, distributed, compressed, and aggregated. Song will be in charge of developing an open and scalable experimental platform for its emprical study and validation. This platform, known as SmartGridLab, will combine a hardware testbed with a software simulator, allowing software virtual nodes to interact with physical nodes in the testbed. Dr. Song has also been passionate with applying sensor web technology to deliver cost-effective healthcare at home. Having good health increasingly means managing our long-term care rather than sporadic treatment of acute conditions. Sensor web system can potentially emulate the monitoring funtions of homecare nurses.

Bio: 

Dr. WenZhan Song is an associate professor of computer science at Georgia State University. He established Sensorweb Research Laboratory in 2005 with the vision of transforming information acquisition and ambient intelligence paradigms through sensor web technology. His research on sensor web system has received $6+ million research funding from NSF, NASA, USGS and Boeing since 2005, resulting dozens of high-impact research publications. His research has been featured in MIT Technology Review, Network World, Scientific America, New Scientist, etc. He was an assistant professor at Washington State University - Vancouver during 2005-2010. He earned his PhD (2005) in computer science from Illinois Institute of Technology, and MS (2000) and BS (1997) from Nanjing University of Science and Technology. Dr. Song was a recipient of NSF CAREER Award (2010) and Chancellor Research Excellence Award (2010) of WSU Vancouver. He is an IEEE Senior Member.