May 05, 2008 —
 |
Viterbi Computer Science Deparment
chair Ramesh Govindan
|
Ramesh Govindan, chair of the Department of Computer Science and fifth-year doctoral student Nupur Kothari have won the Best Paper award at the IEEE Symposium on Information Processing in Sensor Networks, a conference with only a 25 percent acceptance rate.
They won for a paper titled “Deriving State Machines from Tiny OS Programs Using Symbolic Execution,” which also was co-authored by UCLA professor Todd Millstein.
“We tried to derive from (a program for sensor networks) a high level of representation in the form of a finite state machine. We did this using various program analysis techniques,” said Kothari, who is working on designing programming languages and analysis techniques for sensor networks. “Using this… people can better understand the functionality of the program.”
Govindan gave Kothari high praise for her work in the research.
“I’m really pleased at the recognition that Nupur's work has received,” he said. “The IEEE IPSN is a top-tier networked sensing conference, so this is a prestigious award. Her work, which helps programmers extract the logic underlying programs they have written, is a big step towards a world with pervasive sensors.”
Govindan, chair of the Viterbi School's Computer Science Department, also heads USC’s Embedded Networks Laboratory and is a senior researcher on the NSF-sponsored Center for Embedded Network Systems.
The award was given on April 22 at the symposium in St. Louis, Missouri, attended by Kothari.
“It was great, we got some really great feedback,” she said.
