Projects
Masters Project: Grouping of Nominal values in Decision Tree Learning
Project Goal:
To group values of Nominal attributes during decision tree learning which helps in:
efficient learning, decreases computation and gives a clear view of the decision tree.
Key Idea: An attribute or a node in a decision tree has a branch for every value
of the attribute. If the attribute is continuous, then there are discretization
methods to discretize the range of the values. If the attribute is nominal,
then we can group values by some grouping technique. C4.5 implements one
such grouping technique. My algorithm is a variation of the existing one
and is being incorporated into C4.5.
Role: Designer/Programmer
Time Frame: Dec 2002 - Present
Members: One
Development Tools: C4.5 Software, C Programming Language
Text Retrieval Engine
Project Goal:
To build an engine that retrieves and displays a set of relevant documents from a collection, in response to a query.
Key Idea:
Designed and developed a text retrieval engine that indexes a 1/2 GB collectionand stores it in the compressed form. Vector Space model was used to retrieve documents from the collection. A GUI was built to provide an interface for the user. The user enters a query and therelevant documents were displayed in the GUI. Also, differential weighting schemes for words appearing in the HTML tags (h1-h6, title, bold, italics, emphasized and the anchor text) were employed while ranking documents.
Role: Designer/Programmer
Time Frame: 3 months
Members: Two
Development Tools: Perl, Java Swing
XTalks
Project Goal:
To incorporate the buddy agent scenario into the X-Talks system.
Key Idea:
Semantic Web deals with giving well defined meaning to the information stored across world wide web. XTalks is an application which uses the Semantic Web concepts to provide service to the users. It informs the users about a talk that is going on in some particular locations. This is an agent based system where each user will have a personal agent and which will communicate with the XTalks agent. The buddy agent scenario consisted of a few agents which were buddies of the user's personal agent and also personal agents of some other users. These agents would recommend each other about a talk being held at some location.
Role: Programmer
Time Frame: 3 months
Members: DAML Group at UMBC
Development Tools: Java Agent Development Environment (JADE), Java Expert System Shell (JESS), Darpa Agent Markup Language (DAML)
DLX Simulator
Project Goal:
To develop a simulator for the DLX Pipeline
Key Idea:
Simulated the DLX processor that accepts DLX assembly as input. Incorporated the features like data forwarding and delayed branching, and optimized the pipeline using loop unrolling.
Role: Designer/Programmer
Time Frame: During Spring 2002 as part of the Course - Advanced Computer Architecture
Members: Three
Development Tools: C Programming Language, STL
Competetive Bot Development
Project Goal:
To develop a bot that would participate in the Class Tournament
Key Idea:
A bot (robot) is a character in the game whose aim is to capture the flag at the enemy base. This project involved building a bot which has some intelligence and some special features like move, shoot, talk, dodge, strafe, jump, etc. This bot would play the game against other bots built by other students. More than one bot participated in the team, thus creating a multi-agent environment.
Role: Programmer
Time Frame: During Spring 2002 as part of the Course - Agent Architectures and Multi-Agent Systems
Members: Two
Development Tools: Gamebots Simulator, Java
Kernel Programming and Linux Intrusion Detection
Project Goal:
To modify the system kernel and provide security to the linux kernel
Key Idea:
Two new system calls that would get and set the system variables were added. Also a software called LIDS was installed to provide security.
LIDS (Linux Intrusion Detection Software) is a kernel patch and admin tool to enhance the linux kernel security. The key feature of this software is that even the root cannot modify the lids-protected files. Therefore, it does'nt allow the superuser to abuse his/her rights.
Role: Programmer
Time Frame: During Summer 2002 as part of the Course - Unix System Administration
Members: Three
Development Tools: Kernel Programming, LIDS Software
Web Caching Proxy Server
Project Goal:
To build a Web-Caching proxy server for the www.cs.umbc.edu domain
Key Idea:
A client side proxy server was developed which handles the request from the client and would redirect it to the main server if it could not be served by it. The proxy server reduced the page fetch delay by incorporating caching. This decreased the response time and also the load on the main server. Different cache replacement mechanisms such as LRU and LFU were employed.
Role: Designer/Programmer
Time Frame: 3 months
Members: Three
Development Tools: Java, Client-Server Programming
Othello Game
Project Goal:
To develop an othello game
Key Idea:
Role: Designer/Programmer
Time Frame: 3 months
Members: Three
Development Tools: Lisp