Projects

My current interests lie within game theory and game programming, although in other lives I've studied compilers, algorithms, theory, and operations research. While there is a certain "coolness factor" in games, don't be fooled -- rigor is hiding just below the surface and arises in any serious study. This combination of appeal and depth means that games represent a concrete way to experience complex mathematics and computer science concepts, both on projects and in the classroom.

You'll notice that the following list of projects strays from my stated areas of interest. I suppose you can say that I defy categorization, but I think the real reason is that I love collaborative work, and I'm motivated by other people's enthusiasm. So, tell me about what you're doing. I might want to get involved!

Streaming Seismic Data

In the spring of 2008, Joe Gerencher and I worked with the students in CSCI 334 System Design to implement a system that allows seismic data to be collected at one computer but viewed from any other. We were invited to present a poster about the project at the annual IRIS workshop.

Set

The elegance of the game Set(tm) is found in the connection between simple game play and deep mathematical ideas. Kevin Hartshorn and I have been studying the game in a variety of ways.

• We are interested in strategies for successful play, and using group theory to answer probabilistic questions about the game.
• We have developed an application called Swingset that can be used to visualize the mathematics involved. This program can be used in a variety of courses to illustrate important concepts. Please visit the Swingset homepage to utilize this software.

Robotics

During the summer of 2006, Wes Moser and I began work on a SOAR project using handyboard robots. These robots have limited sensor capabilities and a very small amount of memory so the challenge of navigation is especially difficult. Our goal is to have the robot explore its environment and then generate a map.

Chess

Jeff Feist and I wrote a chess-playing computer program as a SOAR project during the summer of 2005. Then during the 2005-2006 academic year, Jeff used this program for his honors project. Jeff explored the techniques used to create a chess engine and compared how changes to the engine affect the strength and speed of the engine.

Some problems are NP-harder than others

Each year DIMACS offers workshops to help faculty "reconnect" with current research areas. During the summer of 2004, Kay Somers and I attended the DIMACS Reconnect Workshop on Experimental Algorithmics. In response to this workshop, Kay and I worked with Sally Cockburn from Hamilton College and R. Bruce Mattingly from SUNY Cortland to write an educational module designed for upper-class mathematics and computer science students.

In the module, we consider two classic graph problems that, at first glance, appear to be similar. We discuss concepts of complexity theory to explain why one problem is significantly harder to solve than the other.

Lookahead Scheduling

My graduate work was in the area of computational operations research, specifically job scheduling. My advisor, Weizhen Mao and I considered the benefits of adding lookahead to traditional scheduling problems.

Our results consider the trade-off between quality of schedule and algorithm complexity. We showed that while a lookahead algorithm will always produce a superior schedule, the amount of effort needed to properly design and implement such an algorithm make their use appropriate only in certain circumstances.