Augmented Creativity

at WEF Davos

COMMUNICATIONS QUARTERLY

The newsletter for communication activities of the Computer Science Department1/2017

Student Summer Research Fellowship

ETH Unterwegs CS on the road I

WORLDWEBFORUM Next Generation Sir Tim Berners-Lee

Visit by Strathmore UniversityI

Communications Quarterly - 1/2017

It has always been a tradition that ETH Zurich presidents join the World Economic Forum in Davos to meet and net-work with delegates from world-leading universities, in-dustries and politics. But it is a novelty that ETH has its own little pavilion on-site.

By courtesy of the Davos Icehockey Club, the ETH Global team rented the club restaurant at affordable conditions and planned and constructed an attractive exhibition environment with a beautiful and modern cate-ring zone.

During both event days, the pavili-on was open to the general public, delegations and VIP visitors. In the evening, the place changed into an event location for official recep-tions and night cap talks.

The exhibition area focussed on projects that enable people to interact, so it was obvious to involve our Game Technology Center (GTC) with its augmented creativi-ty demos. Together with other exciting projects like the “Brain Runner” or “Cubli”, short talks and guided presen-tations, the ETH pavilion was a small but nice showcase

and spontaneous visitors as well as invited guests evidently enjoyed the experience.

The D-INFK crew on-site consisted of Prof. Markus Gross, Prof. Bob Summer and Dr. Fabio Zünd, suppor-ted by Sandra Herkle from the communications group. These two days at Davos were quite intensive and long, starting early in the morning and ending around midnight.

But everybody was busy with mee-tings, presentations, live demos and official nightcap talks, so time flew by. And for the little moments of energy loss, the motivated team from the “TasteLab” was on the spot to provide the crew with excel-lent coffee and tasty food.

Talking about the “TasteLab”: Did you know that one of the TasteLab-

founders is a former computer science student? Indeed, Remo Gisi is not only passionate about algorithms, but also about the fusion of science and cooking. We like!

Our president Lino Guzzella was very happy with this first edition of ETH Zurich @ WEF and we are quite sure that the story will be continued.

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D-INFK @ WEF Davos, 18 + 19 January 2017

More information

ETH Zurich @ World Economic Forum → World Economic Forum → Game Technology Center → TV Interview with Lino Guzzella (German) → Video ETH Zurich @ WEF → Brain Runner from Cybathlon →Magic Cubli →Robot Rezero →

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Sir Tim Berners-Lee at WORLDWEBFORUM Next Generation, 25 January 2017

More information

WORLDWEBFORUM Next Gen. → WORLDWEBFORUM → Sir Tim Berners-Lee → Prof. Ankit Singla → Prof. Laurent Vanbever → ETH Entrepreneur Club → eZürich →

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Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, made a guest appearance at the WORLDWEBFORUM Next Generation event, hosted by the Department of Computer Science.

The auditorium maximum was filled with young people, entrepreneurs and students - maybe unusual for a man in his sixties to be popular among such a crowd. But Berners-Lee has shaped our modern communication systems like no other.

During his speech, he traced out how the internet evolved from its infancy to the present day while appealing for its (re)decentralization. In order to achieve this, Berners-Lee encouraged the young audience to think beyond the limi-tations of the computer, to study the web as an interdisci-plinary thing, and to build networks where people can be constructive.

When asked by a student what it feels like to live in a world he designed, Berners-Lee answered: “I may have invented it, but it was created by others.“

Sir Tim Berners-Lee was introduced by ETH president Lino

Guzzella who motivated the audience to “become scien-tists, researchers and entrepreneurs.“ In the second half of the event, the assistant professors Ankit Singla (D-INFK) and Laurent Vanbever (D-ITET) introduced their research. Ankit Singla from the Network Design and Architecture Lab focused on a “speed of light“ internet while suggesting that systems should be built in a way which allow society to debate on how to use them. The event closed with a net-working apero.

About WORLDWEBFORUM

The WORLDWEBFORUM Next Generation event is part of WORLDWEBFORUM, a significant European business con-ference for digital transformation and thought-leadership. The conference brings together some of the greatest minds from around the globe to exchange ideas, connect and en-gage with decision-makers.

The Next Generation event was organized by the Depart-ment of Computer Science, supported by the Canton of Zurich, eZürich and the ETH Entrepreneur Club, in coope-ration with the team of WORLDWEBFORUM.

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Student Summer Research Fellowship 2017

More informationWebsite → Contact →

Next application period: 1 December 2017 - 31 January 2018

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ETH on the road 2016/2017At the end of last year we launched, with the support of the rectorate, a new fellowship program that allows both un-dergraduate and graduate students to obtain research ex-perience in our department during July and August. Once a candidate is accepted into the program, we will provide information regarding visa applications (where required) as well as assistance with finding affordable accommoda-tion. The fellows will receive a monthly stipend that covers housing and living expenses.

Applications for the program were open to students world-wide who are enrolled in a regular study program in com-puter science or a closely related field of study, e.g. elec-

trical engineering, mathematics, or physics. We received over 1‘100 applications and accepted 15 - approximately 1% of the candidates.

During their stay at ETH, a number of on-site socializing events will encourage the fellows to interact with people outside their respective research groups, including current ETH students at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Additionally, the fellows will have the opportunity to ex-plore the vibrant culture of Zurich in the summer, as well as the beautiful mountainous landscape of Switzerland in their free time.

More informationWanted: projects for ETH on the road 2017/18

We are looking for projects that leave high school stu-dents with a memorable appetite for computer science. Please share your suggestions with us.

Contact →

ETH on the road (ETH Unterwegs) is a mobile exhibition featuring experiments, demos and lectures, giving high school students a chance to explore the complete study course program of ETH Zurich. The exhibition stops at 6 to 10 Swiss schools per year. At each stop, two computer sci-ence students are on-site to demonstrate current projects, explain the study program and answer questions. Further, they distribute information brochures and flyers.

The roadshow 2016/2017 stopped at Urdorf (ZH), Neufeld (BE), Brig (VS), St. Gallen (SG), Lugano (TI), Oerlikon (ZH) and Sion (VS). In order to give students a most vivid insight into the studies of computer science at ETH, our crew pre-sented three projects:

1) Rig AnimationThe project „Rig Animation with a Tangible and Modular Input Device„ came to life in the Interacative Geometry Lab. The software allows expert and novice users to animate characters. Project → Video →

2) 3D Face Scanning AppThe second project, a “3D Face Scanning App”, sprang from the cooperation of ETH spin-off astrivis and the Computer-vision and Geometry Group (CVG). The new technology can be applied in various ways, for example for the use of bio-metric 3D-face scans as passwords. Project → Video →

3) 3D Modeling on the Go„3D Modeling on the Go”, another 3D technology of the Computervision and Geometry Group (GVC), enables the three-dimensional reconstruction of large outdoor scenes on the go. Through the mere movement of a tablet the scenes can be reconstructed in real time. Project →

Additionally, a cryptology puzzle gives students a hands-on chance to test their code hacking skills.

A big THANK-YOU goes to the students Ali, Andrea, Daniel, Fabian, Gabriel, Jan, Reto, Sandro, Simon R., Simon W., to Prof. Friedemann Mattern and Prof. Juraj Hromkovic, and to Benedek Vartok, Petri Tanskanen and Thomas Schöps for their contributions.

„I was delighted to hear about the significant number of applica- tions. The program was funded jointly by the Huber-Kudlich Foundation, the Rectorate and the Computer Science Depart- ment. Originally we planned the program for two years, and due to the tremendous response, we recently agreed to extend it.“

Prof. Sarah Springman, Rector of ETH Zurich

„With this fellowship pro- gram we aim not only to promote research and mo- bility among international students but also to give excellent students an oppor- tunity for a real research experience in an area of their choice, and to learn more about ETH Zurich and Switzerland.“

Prof. Emo Welzl, Head of Computer Science Department

Area of Research Professor Fellow Country

Data Management & Machine Learning Andreas Krause Ali Mottaghi Iran Thomas Hofmann Katherine Bancroft Canada Gunnar Rätsch Figali Taho Albania

Human Computer Interaction Otmar Hilliges Amala Deshmukh India

Information & System Security Adrian Perrig Branislava Zivkovic Serbia David Basin Olga Obrenovic Serbia

Software Engineering Markus Püschel/Martin Vechev Afra Amini Iran

Systems Ce Zhang Tian Li China Gustavo Alonso Margarita Capretto Argentina Torsten Hoefler Yosuke Oyama Japan

Theory & Algorithms Emo Welzl/Bernd Gärtner Dahyun Kang South Korea Peter Widmayer Stefan Tiegel Germany Ueli Maurer Siqi Liu China

Visual Computing Marc Pollefeys Wei Dong China Markus Gross Yang Zhao China

Communications Quarterly - 1/2017

MiscellaneousUpcoming events

Friday, June 9, 2017 Master’s Degree CelebrationAs a mentor or supervisor of a current graduate you are welcome to join the celebration. Please just don’t forget to register.

Registration for D-INFK staff →Impressions 2016 →

Friday/Saturday, June 16 and 17, 2017 InformatiktageAfter a very successful first edition, companies, organi-zations, institutions and universities in the greater Zurich area will open their doors again to the wider public. We are part of the overall organization team and played a role in the realization of the project. Also, we are one of the more than 70 partners and supporters who will open their doors during both event days. This year, we took IT-Services (ID) on board. Together we will offer an exciting mix of lectures, workshops, tours, demos and information booths. Spread the word among your families and friends and join us!

Program D-INFK and ID →Official Website →Informatiktage on Facebook →

Outlook Communications Quarterly 2/2017Department-BBQ - Master´s Celebration - Informatiktage - Visits

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Visit by Strathmore University, 22 March 2017

More informationStrathmore University →

Group and projects of Prof. Markus Püschel →Prof. Srdjan Capkun → Prof. Gunnar Rätsch →

On March 22, more than 50 students and five staff mem-bers from Strathmore University visited ETH Zurich. “Hig-her education is of critical importance to the long-term development of Kenya. We need to train the teachers, edu-cate future professionals, including managers and leaders who will drive the country’s developmental trajectory,” says Prof. Joseph Orero, Dean of the School of Information Technology. “At Strathmore University, we endeavor to in-tegrate innovation, research and education, and promote industry interactions,“ adds Dr. Bernard Shibwabo, a lectu-rer of computer science at Strathmore University.

The visits to ETH, IBM Research, University of Saarland, the Max-Planck Institute, and the German Center for Arti-ficial Intelligence were intended both as opportunities for students to explore the field of computer science and for faculty members to call for concrete actions in taking the university’s development and collaboration forward.

Prof. Markus Püschel welcomed the group and gave an overview of the departmental structure, some of its cur-

rent “cool” projects and study programs. Dr. Aanjhan Ranganathan, a postdoctoral researcher of Prof. Srdjan Capkun, talked about how “Spoofing your GPS Location is Easy! Actually, super easy.” GPS, today’s common out-door localization system, is vulnerable to signal spoofing attacks. Aanjhan explained the basics of GPS and demons-trated how easy it is to spoof a person’s location to anywhe-re in the world without touching his/her phone.

The presentation of Stephanie Hyland, a doctoral student of Prof. Gunnar Rätsch, was about “Word Embeddings, Medi-cal Machine Learning and Long-Memory Recurrent Neural Networks.” In her view, identifying relationships between concepts is a key aspect of scientific knowledge synthesis. Stephanie described in her presentation how distributio-nal semantics can be used to unify structured knowledge graphs with unstructured text to predict new relationships between medical concepts, using a probabilistic generative model. Her approach also ameliorates data sparsity and scarcity issues in the medical domain.

Highlights «In the media »

January 16, 2017 “Forbes 30 under 30” Europe:As Pascal Berard (doctoral student of Prof. Markus Gross) is selected to be one of the 30 people under the age of 30 who are disrupting the way we live.Pascal Bérard works with Disney Research on a novel soft-ware system that reconstructs the lifelike qualities of the human eye. His software brings an unprecedented level of detail to eyes in films like «Doctor Strange and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.» →

February 6, 2017 Medienmitteilung der ETH Zürich und EPFL: Inauguration des Swiss Data Science CenterDie ETH Zürich und die ETH Lausanne eröffnen gemein-sam ein nationales Zentrum für Datenwissenschaften. Beide Hochschulen haben sich zum Ziel gesetzt, Innova-tionen auf dem Gebiet der Informatik und der Datenwis-senschaften zu fördern und gleichzeitig eine Infrastruktur zu schaffen, die eine multidisziplinäre Forschung und eine offene Wissenschaft ermöglicht. Die Anwendungen sollen von personalisierter Medizin bis hin zu Umweltfragen rei-chen. →

March 2, 2017 The Atlantic: Machine Learning is Bringing the Cosmos into Focus In a paper published by the Royal Astronomical Society, a team of researchers led by Prof. Kevin Schawinski, an ast-rophysicist at ETH, described their successful attempts to train a neural network to identify galaxies, then, based on what it had learned, sharpen a blurry image of a galaxy into a focused view. “If we are careful enough and do this right, [using] a neural network might not be too different from what we are currently doing with more classic statis-tical approaches,” said Prof. Ce Zhang. →

Published by: Communications GroupSupervisor: Prof. Markus PüschelTeam: Minh Tran Sandra Herkle Amanda Caracas Katharina LierowPhotos: D-INFK www.flickr.com - sillyLittleSnowmen www.pixabay.com

@ ETH Zurich, 11 April 2017

Contact

ETH ZurichDepartment of Computer ScienceUniversitätstrasse 6, CAB8092 Zurich

www.inf.ethz.ch