PLATO [1] was an experimental computer network built in the 1970’s which had many features that did not become mainstream until many years later: plasma panel graphics displays, touch screens, multiplayer and first-person shooter games, voice synthesis, etc. We will explore PLATO, and compare how the PLATO architecture solved various problems compared to the modern Internet/desktop/server architecture solution. A PLATO simulator exists [2] and we will log in to the simulator and show some of the amazing power of 70’s technology.

In this talk, we will (very informally!) learn how to use algorithms to address the following problems.

• GPS and Navigation using Shortest paths: GPS Routes
• Web search using Page Rank: article1, article2
• Big Data Analysis using Clustering and Nearest Neighbor Search: article1, article2, video, coursera course
• Other methods (if time permits): matrix multiplication, linear programming and the probabilistic method

This session will discuss ongoing research at the JHU Engineering Research Center for Computer-Integrated Surgical Systems and Technology (CISST ERC) to develop computer-integrated interventional systems (CIIS) that combine innovative algorithms, robotic devices, imaging systems, sensors, and human-machine interfaces to work cooperatively with surgeons in the planning and execution of surgery and other interventional procedures. The impact of CIIS on medicine in the next 20 years will be as great as that of Computer-Integrated Manufacturing on industrial production over the past 20 years. A novel partnership between human surgeons and machines, made possible by advances in computing and engineering technology, will overcome many of the limitations of traditional surgery. By extending human surgeons. ability to plan and carry out surgical interventions more accurately and less invasively, CIIS systems will address a vital need to greatly reduce costs, improve clinical outcomes, and improve the efficiency of health care delivery.

CIIS systems combine images and other information about an individual patient with .atlas. information about human anatomy to help clinicians plan how to treat the patient. In the operating room, the patient-specific plan and model are updated using images and other real-time information. The system has a variety of means, including robots and .augmented reality. displays to assist the surgeon in carrying out the procedure safely and accurately. The same technology will be used to assist in subsequent patient follow-up and in enabling statistical quality control to help improve the overall efficacy and safety of surgery and interventions.

Software is everywhere: On your computer, your phone, possibly your toaster. Should you be free to run whatever software you want on your devices? Should you be free to study how the software in your life works? Should you be free to modify software, improve it, adapt to a different purpose? And should you be free to distribute software you have modified so that others can benefit from your work? Whose interest is served when you're NOT free to do these things? It's free as in freedom, not free as in beer.

Over the past several decades cryptography has become an indispensable tool for constructing secure electronic banking systems, Internet-based commerce, and secure mobile telephony. Due to the rapid adoption of this technology, many cryptographic systems have achieved widespread deployment without being subjected to proper design and evaluation. This has led to a number of widely-publicized .breaks.: reports of serious vulnerabilities, including flaws in WiFi encryption, GSM cellular networks, SSL, disk encryption, and deployed biometric systems. In this talk I will discuss the ways that real cryptographic systems fail in practice. My focus will be on the techniques used in practical security systems, the mistakes that lead to failure, and the approaches that might have avoided the problem.

While computers already beat us in tasks such as playing chess or finding directions when driving, having a conversation with a computer still breaks down very quickly. We seem to be making progress these days with speech interfaces such as Siri, or automated language translation on the web, but these are far from perfect. Why is processing natural language so hard? What is it even good for?

Suppose you know a solution to a hard sudoku puzzle. How can you prove it to a friend without revealing the solution? Zero-knowledge proofs to the rescue! Zero-knowledge proofs, invented by Goldwasser, Micali and Rackoff in the 1980s, provide a way to prove any statement without revealing anything except the validity of the statement. In this session, I will introduce this seemingly magical and paradoxical idea.

Have you ever been to a casino? Have you played with coins and dice? Do you know that coin flips also help computation in many ways? In this session we will discuss situations where coin flips help a lot in computation, together with cases where we can get rid of them, and cases where we really need them.