Computer Science research at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar continues to make headlines as the results of the fourth cycle of the National Priorities Research Program (NPRP), the Qatar National Research Fund's flagship funding initiative, are announced. CS at CMU-Q was awarded five grants, each over a million dollars, out of the 12 NPRP awards made to CMU-Q. One additional grant involving CMU-Q CS faculty was awarded through Qatar University.
The chosen projects cover a diverse range of areas in Computer Science. Nael Abu-Ghazaleh, Vinay Kolar and collaborator will study applications of large-scale mobile networks in Qatar. Bernardine Dias and Yonina Cooper will also look into mobile technology but for the specific purpose of improving English literacy skills among children and adults. Iliano Cervesato and collaborators will construct a spreadsheet that enables users to easily do deductive reasoning. Kemal Oflazer, Majd Sakr, Behrang Mohit and collaborators will develop a system to automatically correct standard Arabic texts. Again Bernardine Dias and her collaborators will design cooperative robotic boats to monitor coastal and flooded areas. Finally, Nael Abu-Ghazaleh and Iliano Cervesato again, together with collaborators, will develop a secure infrastructure for future cloud computing nodes.
The projects are set to start in the Fall of 2011 and last over the next three years. They will result in the hiring of half a dozen new postdocs and research staff, thereby continuing the exponential rise of the research capacity of Computer Science on our campus. These project add to the active research projects from previous NPRP cycles, to the Young Scientist Research Experience Program (YSREP) projects recently awarded to Thierry Sans, to Behrang Mohit and to Peter Hansen by QNRF, and to the numerous student research projects that have kept CMU-Q buzzing over the summer.
