d.i.r.    Database and Information Research
Faculty of Science, UOIT

Ken Pu, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Science, UOIT

Research interests: I am currently working the following areas of research:

• New. Video databases and queries: collaborting with Dr. Bonetta (Biology) and Dr. Qureshi (Computer Vision), I am working on data management of very long lasting video streams (over 100 hours). The experience revealed many exciting research topics for database stream management, distributed storage, distributed query processing, and query language design for large scale image analytics.
• Keyword queries: we are investigating interesting applications of keyword search for legency databases as well as Web 2.0 data sources. In particular, my interest is the algorithmic and probablistic problems in interpretation of keyword queries as structured queries for relational and graphical databases.
• Data from sensors: my student and I are experimenting with a wide range of wireless sensors and RFID technology. We are working some interesting problems centered around archival of time series data, distributed processing of sensor data, and statistical inference of spatial information from RFID tag systems.

In the past, I have worked on Web service composition, type systems and type analysis in service oriented architecture, and equational logic and its applications to multidimensional query optimization.

Contact Information

Ken Q. Pu
2000 Simcoe Street North,
Oshawa, Ontario, Canada
L1H 7K4

T: 1-905-721-8668 ext 3444
F: 1-905-721-3304

Email

Interested at Graduate School?

News:

[March 31, 2010] The undergraduate Computer Science lab got a huge face-lift. To name a few exciting things that are worth mentioning:

• A 22-unit rack is installed (I did it).
• An Apple xserv is installed.
• A HP virtualization server is installed. It will host about 6 different instances (of Linux and Windows servers).
• A tabletop computer is installed. Very cool...

[Sep 23, 2009] Touchpoint is a jQuery plugin for enabling iPhone style touchscreen Web browsing for touchscreen-based desktops. It was developed in our lab this summer, and has been released under the Apache License 2.0. Visit its homepage hosted on Google Code. I made the Logo:

[Aug 22, 2009] It's amazing what you find out when you Google yourself. Today, I found out that my work back at IBM Silicon Valley has been patented. Go figure...

[Aug 20, 2009] Our touch screen interface for generic Web sites, dubbed TouchPoint will be exhibited at IBM CASCON 2009. It also helped Alex Kidd, the summer research student, to receive the Best Student Research Poster award.

[July 1, 2009] Our paper, titled ``Spatial inference using networks of RFID receivers: a Bayesian approach'' has been accepted by the IEEE Global Communication Conference (Globecom), 2009. Part of the paper is the undergraduate honours thesis work done by William Howard.

[April 3, 2009] Our keyword search technology is showcased at the International Conference on Data Engineering, 2009.

[March 20, 2009] Our paper, titled ``Visualization and Integration of Databases using Self-organizing Maps'', has been awarded the best paper award by the First International Conference on Advances in Databases, Knowledge, and Data Applications.

[March 16, 2009] IBM CASCON, 2009 submission site opens.

[February 17, 2009] Collaboration with an industry partner on a web search engine for an intranet begins. The unique challenge is the requirements of searching related pages which are generated from a well-documented graph database.

[January 4, 2009] Winter semester starts at UOIT.

[December 17, 2008]
William Howard completed an outstanding undergraduate thesis on 2D positioning of RFID tags in noisy environment using statistical inference with multiple radio receivers.

[November 1, 2008]
The research server, simcoe, is now upgraded to 10G RAM and 3.5 TB storage.

[September 8, 2008]
The sensor network setup is moved to the Computer Science research lab.

[September 4, 2008]
UOIT Fall term starts.