News

MADMUC Lab

News

Our Lab is now (Dec 2012) over 12 years old. Here is a recap of the number of students trained in the lab over this time:

46 students have successfully graduated (4 PhD, 42 MSc).
18 are currently working on their degrees (8 PhD and 12 MSc).
So in total, 64 graduate students have been trained in the lab.
Ralph supervises currently 8 MSc students and 4 PhD students (1 of them co-supervised with Julita). Julita - 2 MSc students and 6 PhD students (1 of them co-supervised with Ralph and 1 with Regan Mandryk from the HCI Lab).
The lab has hosted also 14 summer students (NSERC, non-NSERC, GSTEP, exchange, visiting students), and 2 Post-doc fellows.
So overall, 80Highly Qualified Personnel has been trained in the MADMUC Lab over the last 13 years (May 2000 - Dec 2012)!
More detailed stats: Over the past 12 years, 25 (1 Phd and 24 MSc) students have graduated under Ralph's guidance; 22 (3 PhD and 19 MSc) students have graduated under Julita's guidance (5 of them have been co-supervised with other colleagues from the CS department: 1 with John Cooke, 2 with Winnfried Grassman and 2 with Gord McCalla). 2 M.Sc students have graduated under the joint supervision of Ralph and Julita.

News:

2013

March 15. 2013: Three short papers from the lab were accepted at UMAP'2013 (Rome, Italy) and AIED'2013 (Memphis, TN)
- Johnson's paper on Privacy aware user model sharing (at UMAP)
- Shaikhah's paper on Recommending papers to researchers (at AIED)
- Bunmi's paper on Online Group Mentorship (at AIED)
- Congratulations!!
March 8, 2013: At the Graduate Student Association (GSA) Galla Awards Dinner, people from our lab got two major awards:
- Rita Orji won the GSA award for Research Excellence in Science
- Julita won the Graduate Student Association (GSA) award for Excellence in Advising.

These awards are given for the first time. It is a great honour to have two recipients from our lab! Photos

January 16, 2013: Johnson Iyilade, has a third baby, this time a boy. Congratulations!

2012

December, 2012: Rita's two papers were accepted as full papers - one at Persuasive 2012 in Sydney, Australia and one at CHI'2013 in Paris. Congratulations!
December 4, 2012: Udeep Tandukar, supervised by Julita, defended successfully his M.Sc. thesis. Congratulations!
November 27, 2012: Sara Mansouri joined the lab. She will be pursuing M.Sc under Julita's supervision. Welcome, Sara!
November 9, 2012: Xiaobo Zhang, and Yiding Chai, supervised by Ralph, defended successfully their M.Sc. theses. Congratulations!
November 8, 2012: Afshana Hussain, supervised by Julita, defended successfully her M.Sc. thesis. Congratulations!
October, 2012: Abdullah Altagafi, supervised by Ralph, defended successfully his M.Sc. thesis. Congratulations!
September 2012: Milan Bogunovic, Yaowen Chen, Wen Fu and Sinh Pham joined the lab. They will be pursuing M.Sc. under Ralph's supervision. Welcome!
September, 2012: Shomoyita Jamal, and Min Luo, both supervised by Ralph, defended successfully her M.Sc. thesis. Congratulations!
June 12, 2012: Bunmi Adewoyin gave birth to a baby girl! Congratulations to the new mother!
May, 2012: Sarooyan Nagulendra joined the lab to pursue M.Sc under Julita's supervision. Welcome!
April 11, 2012: Sabrina Nusrat, supervised by Julita, defended successfully her M.Sc. thesis, 4 months earlier! Congratulations!
March, 2012: Muhammad Mughees joined the lab to pursue MSc. under Ralph's supervision. Welcome!
March 23, 2012: Nicoleta Brad, Dan Merino and Richard Lomotey, all supervised by Ralph, defended successfully their M.Sc. theses over the last week. Congratulations!

2011

October 11, 2011: A University of Toronto undergraduate student makes a splash re-inventing our I-Help system from 1999, "an online “peer-to-peer” tutoring service that allows undergrads to obtain real-time, interactive help with their assignments and problem sets whenever they need it. The site, ..., will function like an open marketplace, with students and tutors negotiating a per-minute rate before starting each session ..." More about our I-Help economy is available here.
October 8, 2011: A paper about Julita appeared in On Campus News. Find more here.
September 26, 2011: Oluwabunmi Adewoyin, a new PhD student is joining the lab. She will work with Julita.
September 15, 2011: Kewen Wu, a visiting scholar from Nanjing University is joining the lab for one year. Welcome, Kewen!
September 1, 2011: Thomas Largillier, a Post-Doc Fellow is joining the lab. Welcome, Thomas!
September 1, 2011: Rahnuma Kazi is joining the lab as a new M.Sc student. Welcome!
September 1, 2011: Papers by Min Luo and Afshana Hussain were presented at the S3T'2011 Conference in Burgas, Bulgaria.
August 25, 2011: Shey defended successfully his M.Sc Thesis today. Congratulations!
August 17, 2011: Two new M.Sc students are joining the MADMUC Lab: Ashik Ahmed and Jorge Pinto. Welcome to both!
August 9: Dmytro defended successfully his Ph.D. Thesis today. Congratulations Doctor Dmytro!
August 4: Rita is featured in the Star Phoenix as one of the top 5 recepients of the prestigious Vanier Scholarship. Congratulations, Rita!
August 1: Yiding Chai, a new M.Sc. student is joining the lab. Welcome!
July 18: Julita's research was featured in an article in Saskatoon Express.
July 11: Papers by Udeep and Sabrina were presented at two workshops at the UMAP'2011 conference in Girona, Spain.
May 1: Our alumni, Tariq, MSc 2009, is joining our lab again, this time as a PhD student! What can be nicer than seeing our students come back - since they liked it so much here!
May 1: Shaikhah Al-Otaibi, a PhD student from Saudi Arabia is joining the Lab. She will work with Julita. Welcome!
April 12: Congratulations to all 13 students who presented their 880/890 paper at the Graduate Research Symposium of our department today. You were all awesome!
And another great news today: Abdullah has a baby daughter! This day would be unforgettable for him :-)
February 1. 2011: Johnson Iyilade, a new PhD student joined the lab. His advisor will be Julita. Welcome!
January 26, 2011: Andy Wang and Zach Harrington defended successfully their M.Sc. Theses. Congratulations to both!
January 1, 2011: Two new students joined the lab: Sunny Sharma (MSc) and Edgar Lelei (PhD). Welcome!

2010

December, 2010: November and December were fruitful months for our current students and alumni. Dong Liu (PhD student) has a second child - a son this time! Indratmo (PhD, 2010) has a baby boy, Yamini (MSc, 2005) has a second child - a baby boy again, and Jie Zhang (Post-doc, 2009) has a little daughter! Congratulations to all!
November 22, 2010: Yuan defended successfully his M.Sc. Thesis. Congratulations!
October 10, 2010: Ximeng Li decided leave the PhD program and to go back to Hong Kong... good luck, Ximeng!
September 10, 2010: Radhika successfuly defended her M.Sc. Thesis. Congratulations !
August 28, 2010: Three new students are joining the lab: Ximeng Li (PhD), Sabrina Nusrat (MSc) and Udeep Tandukar (MSc). All of them will be supervised by Julita. Welcome!
August 26, 2010: Two new M.Sc. students are joining the lab: Shomoyita Jamal and Richard Lomotey. Both will be supervised by Ralph. Welcome!
August 25, 2010: Kadhambari successfuly defended her M.Sc. Thesis. Congratulations !
August 24, 2010: Yao successfuly defended her PhD Thesis. Congratulations Doctor Yao!
June 1, 2010: We are happy to weclome Dan Merino and Hashim Al Adhami, new MSc. students to work with Ralph. But Andrew Jelovic is leaving us to take a job in industry... good luck, Andrew!
May 3, 2010: We are happy to welcome Andrew Jelovic, a new M.Sc. student of Ralph and Martina Nagy, NSERC USRA summer student of Julita! Also Rita Orji (PhD student, co-supervised between Julita and Regan Mandryk, from HCI Lab) has joined the lab! Welcome!
May 3, 2010: Julita was nominated for the YWCA Women of Distinction Award in Science and Technology (one of 3 UofS nominees).
April 21, 2010: Manju successfully defended her M.Sc. thesis. Congratulations!
April 9, 2010: Julita received the Department of Computer Science Graduate Students' Award of Excellence in Graduate Supervision.
January 8, 2010: Indratmo successfully defended his PhD thesis. Congratulations, Doctor Indratmo!
January 4, 2010: Two new M.Sc. students joined the lab: Afshana Hussain (supervised by Julita) and Abdullah Althagafi (supervised by Ralph). Welcome!

2009

October 30, 2009: We have a new baby on board: Nicoleta's little daughter, Arina Bianca. Here are some pictures! So now we have five babies in the lab (Dong's, Kadhambari's, Manju's, Shey's and Nicoleta's) and one "big girl" (Yao's daughter Cynthia).
Sept 1, 2009: Four new M.Sc. students joined the lab: Ming Luo, Nicoleta Brad, and Xiaobo Wang (supervised by Ralph) and Shi Shey (supervised by Julita). Welcome!
Sept 1, 2009: Jie Zhang, Ph.D. (Waterloo) joined the lab as post-doc of Julita. Welcome!
Aug 12, 2009: Four people defended successfully their M.Sc. theses in a 3 day marathon of defenses! Congratulations are due to:
Zina Sahib (supervised by Julita),
Sazedul Alam, Kamal Elbashir, and Yuting Luo (all supervised by Ralph)
May 16, 2009: Tariq Muhammad (supervised by Julita), successfully defended his M.Sc. Thesis. Congratulations!
May 1, 2009: Katherine Schramm (supervised by Julita) joined the lab as a summer student. Welcome!
March, 2009: Ralph received (For the 3rd time!) the Excellence in Teaching Award by the Undergraduate students at the Computer Science Department!
Jan 1, 2009: Flavio Ishii (supervised by Ralph) joined the lab. Welcome!
Manjula Shenoi (supervised by Julita) and Rajitha Bakhtula (supervised by Ralph) joined the Lab as GSTEP exchange students on a 6 month visit. Both are M.Sc. students at Karuya University, Coimbatore, India. They will write their graduate thesis for the project they complete at the UofS.
2008
Oct 2008: Zina, Julita and Carrie (from ARIES) attended the Grace Hopper Celebration in Keystone, CO. Here are the pictures... (Zina's and Julita's)
Sept 9, 2008: Yuxuan Meng (supervised by Ralph) defended successfully her M.Sc. Thesis. Congratulations!
Sept 1, 2008: Kadhambari Raghavun and Yuan Wang (supervised by Julita) joined the lab. Welcome!
Sept 1, 2008: Radika Ramasahayan and Andy Wang (supervised by Ralph) joined the lab. Welcome! August 1st, 2008
Adnan Fida (supervised by Ralph) defended successfully his M.Sc. thesis. Congratulations!
July 29, 2008 Karolina Zurowska (supervised by Ralph) defended successfully her M.Sc. thesis. Congratulations!

March 27, 2008: Yan Mao (supervised by Julita) successfully defendedher M.Sc. thesis. Congratulations!

January 1, 2008: Manju Shree Chava - a new M.Sc. student supervised by Julita joined the lab. Welcome!

2007
Sept 5, 2007: Andrew Webster (supervised by Julita) successfully defended his M.Sc. thesis. Congratulations!
Sept 2, 2007: Programming jobs in Saskatoon - quite a few available! Check this list!
August 30, 2007: Sazedul Alam - a new M.Sc. student supervised by Ralph joined the lab. Welcome!
August 27, 2007: Yuting (Tracy) Luo - a new M.Sc. student supervised by Ralph joined the lab. Welcome Tracy!
August 8, 2007: Svetlana Slavova (supervised by Ralph and Julita) defended successfully her M.Sc. thesis. Congratulations!
August 7, 2007: Zina Sahib - a new M.Sc. student supervised by Julita joined the lab. Welcome Zina!
July 16, 2007: Xin Liu (supervised by Ralph) defended successfully her M.Sc. thesis. Congratulations! She is going to be a PhD student at the University of Waterloo.
March, 9 2007: Yamini Upadrashta (MADMUC alumna from 2005) has a baby boy - Anish! Yamini lives with her family in Seattle and works at Intel.

2006
November 20, 2006: Pinata Winoto defended successfully his Ph.D.! He is the first doctoral student graduating from the lab. Congratulations!

September 1, 2006: Two new people are joining the lab. Welcome!:

Karolina Zurowska, M.Sc. student (supervised by Ralph)
Yuxuan Meng, M.Sc. student (supervised by Ralph)

August 16, 2006: Weidong Han and Nyik San Ting (both supervised by Ralph) successfully defended their M.Sc. theses! Congratulations!

April 16, 2006: A paper about the Adaptive Rewards Mechanism in Comtella, written by Ran and Julita was accepted in UMUAI - the 4th journal by impact factor in Computer Science.

April 5, 2006: Two papers written by Indratmo and Andrew Webster, have been accepted, correspondingly at CHI'2006 (Computer Human Interaction) in Montreal and AH'2006 (Adaptive Hypertext and Hypermedia) in Dublin.

April 2, 2006: We have a new baby in in the lab! Matt Monsman's daughter was born last Wednesday, March 29. With Yao and Weidong's baby who was born in October 2005, we have now two little baby-girls!
March 30, 2006: Yan Mao and Svetlana Slavova were awarded travel grants by the CRA-W Graduate Cohort Conference to attend the conference in San Francisco, March 30 and April 1. Both said that the conference was a terrific experience. Here is a picture of a happy Yan, with Anne Condon, CWSE for BC and Yukon.
January 9, 2006: Matt Monsman is joining the lab as a M.Sc. student. He will be supervised by Julita. Welcome Matt!
January 6, 2006: Comtella-D - a new discussion forum empasizing relationship developed by Andrew has been launched. It will be used in CMPT 408 (Ethics and IT) from January until April 2006.

2005
September 19 , 2005: Julita Vassileva was named the NSERC Cameco Prairie Chair for Women in Science and Engineering. Congratulations!
September 15 , 2005: Ran Cheng (supervised by Julita) successfully defended his M.Sc. thesis. Congratulations!
September 1, 2005: Two new M.Sc. students joined us: Tariq Muhammad (supervised by Julita) Yan Mao (supervised by Julita and Winfried Grassmann).
August 15 , 2005: Julian Day (supervised by Ralph) successfully defended his M.Sc. thesis. Congratulations!
August 10, 2005: Four new M.Sc. students have joined us this summer: Xin Liu (supervised by Ralph), Zachary Harrington (supervised by Ralph), Svetlana Slavova (supervised by Ralph and Julita), Andrew Webster (supervised by Julita)
July 20, 2005: Comtella was demonstrated at the AIED conference in an interactive event. Fourteen participants played with the system for about one hour, shared links to papers, pictures, other social software systems and rated the links shared by the other participants.. In the end those who obtained gold memberships received small gifts.
The top prize (a framed certificate of achievement) was awarded to Kaspar de Geus, a first year Computer Science student from the University of Amsterdam. In about 45 minutes, he shared 5 papers, which obtained 7 ratings from others, he also rated 23 links shared by others. Congratulations! Try the Comtella demo version here.
June 15, 2005: A version of Comtella is being used in the MADMUC lab to share research papers in among the graduate students.Try it out.
June 8, 2005: Yao Wang (supervised by Julita) passed her comprehensive exam. Congratulations!
May 31, 2005: Lingling Sun (supervised by Julita) successfully defended his M.Sc. thesis. Congratulations!
May 15, 2005: Try the newest web-based version from Winter 2005 (Ethics and IT).
You can log-in with "comtellaguest" (as both username and password).
April 4, 2005: We are welcoming Indratmo. He will be working on his Ph.D. supervised by Julita.
.February 21, 2005: Chris Brooks (co-supervised by Julita Vassileva and John Cooke) successfully defended his M.Sc. thesis. Congratulations!
January 28, 2005: Yamini Upadrashta (co-supervised by Julita Vassileva and Winfried Grassmann) successfully defended her M.Sc. thesis. Congratulations!

2004
December 10, 2004: Xiaolin Niu (co-supervised by Julita Vassileva and Gord McCalla) successfully defended her M.Sc. thesis. Congratulations!
October 20, 2004: Check out how our new lab space in Thorvaldson looks like and take a virtual tour. Visit the "Feature of the week".
September 09, 2004: Lichun Ji (supervised by Ralph Deters) successfully defended her M.Sc. thesis. Congratulations!
September 07, 2004: Two new M.Sc. students and one new Ph.D. student have joined the lab: Dmytro Dyachuk (M.Sc.) Weidong Han (M.Sc.) Dong Liu (Ph.D)
August 16, 2004: Three M.Sc. students supervised by Ralph Deters successfully defended their theses: Jeremy Pfeiffer (Aug 16), Peng Xu (Aug. 12), Emir Halepovic (Aug.5). Congratulations to all of them!!
July 23, 2004: Pinata Winoto's paper won the BEST STUDENT PAPER Award at AAMAS'03. Congratulations, Pinata!!! Full story from the Department Webpage.
May 5, 2004: Two new summer students have joined the lab from May 2, 2004: Ian Hopkins (NSERC Summer student from 2nd year CS-Commerce program at the UofS) and Kate Davison from Queens University.
March 31, 2004: Two M.Sc. students successfully defended their theses: Golha Sharifi, Shubhash Vasti, Congratulations to both of them!!
Feb, 2004: Two papers, one about Golha Sharifi's research and one about a team-project of Golha Sharifi, Yamini Upadrashta and Yang Cao (from Aries) were accepted as long papers at the ICEIS'2004 Conference (International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems) in Porto, Portugal. The acceptance rate for long papers was 12%! A third paper about Nyik San Ting's research was accepted as a short paper. Congratulations!
Jan 5, 2004: A new version of the Comtella system is used currently in the CMPT 490 class on Ethics and IT. See the description, instructions and download the version from here.

2003

Oct.2, 2003: Yao Wang's paper was one of the three papers nominated for *Best Paper Award* at the Web Intelligence WI'03 Conference in Halifax, 12-16 Oct, 2003. Only 16% of the 350 WI’03 submissions were accepted as regular papers. Congratulations, Yao!
Sept 10, 2003: The new version of COMTELLA is ready to go. It features extended range of search categories. Download it from here!
Sept 4, 2003: Three new graduate students have joined us from Sept. 2003: Ran Cheng, Julian Day, Lingling Sun. Check who sits where! Also Yao Wang was transfered into the Ph.D. program - congratulations, Yao!!
Sept 4, 2003: Our summer student, Chris Cox, is going on a 1 year exchange program with the Technische Universitaet Darmstadt, Germany. Good luck, Chris!
April, 2003: Again, we will have two summer students from May 5 to August 31: Chris Cox (again on NSERC scholarship!) and Lingling Sun, 4th year student from the University of Saskatchewan.
April 28, 2003: Chris Brooks presented his M.Sc. proposal
April 17, 2003: Golha Sharifi presented her M.Sc. proposal
Feb 4, 2003: Xiaolin Niu presented her M.Sc. proposal.
Dec. 2, 2002: Alan Fedoruk completed his M.Sc. Thesis!
2002
Sept 3, 2002: We are growing!
- We are pleased to welcome six new graduate students in MADMUC from September 1, 2002: Adnan Fida, Emir Halepovic, Lihun Ji, Nyik Ting, John Kaufmann, and Peng Xu. They will all be supervised by Ralph.
- A new graduate student from China, Yao Wang arrived on April 24, 2002 to work with Julita
- Check who sits where
April, 2002: Two NSERC summer students will be joining us this summer: Chris Cox, 2nd year University of Saskatchewan student (NSERC scholarship) and Helen Bretzke, 4th year student from the University of Toronto (CRA-W and NSERC scholarship)
4 April, 2002: The CTV donates $180,000 to developing the infrastructure of the lab. More information available here.