This page contains a short description of the projects I have worked on. It also presents the technologies and tools I used and an overview of each project. For more information please contact me at:
vlad.ureche[at]gmail[dot]com
Diploma Thesis
[business intelligence mining from search logs]
Project description: I prepared my diploma thesis as an intern at Adobe Systems, with the task of extracting business intelligence from their search logs. My work involved processing large amounts of data efficiently, fast user session reconstruction and trend ranking. The work at Adobe Systems sparked my interest for machine learning and distributed computing. Unfortunately, due to contract clauses I am not able to publish my diploma thesis.
Team: me and my supervisor, PhD Paul Chirita
Pythia
[natural language question answering based on Google queries]
Project description:
A Java application for answering natural language questions by
transforming the question into a Google query, reranking the results
and extracting the most relevant text snippets.
Team: four
My role: question classification and transformation into google query
Technologies: Java (main application), JSP (REST api) and Adobe Flex (UI)
Resources:
- Pythia running in Google App Engine: pythia-qa.appspot.com [offline]
GridInitiative 2008 Challenge
[Politehnica University Bucharest]
Project description: Optimize
and paralelize a nanophysics simulator. We obtained a combined
(serial+parallel) speedup of 700x on 16 processors. We have redesigned
the data paths inside the simulator and used data caching where
possible.
Team: 3
My role:
Team manager, paralel algorithm design, quality
Resources
- Final report: NanowireSimulation-FinalReport.pdf
Links
- http://gridinitiative.ncit.pub.ro/ [offline]
PiCoPS system [7th place, Windows Embedded Student Challenge Final, Redmond, WA]
Project description: A modular system for detecting and preventing water pollution in a metropolitan water network.
Team: 4
My role:
Embedded modules programming: SMARTi and netlid (Atmel 8 bit AVR
microcontrollers 8535/128), testing software and demonstration table
preparation
Technologies: Atmel 8-bit micro controllers
Tools: AVR Studio on Windows, avr-gcc and avr-dude on Linux, Visual Studio 2005 (for system testing)
Resources
- Final report: PiCoPS-FinalReport.pdf
- Demonstration table photos: PiCoPS-demo-table-1 PiCoPS-demo-table-2
- The next year W.E.S.C. became the Embedded Development section of Imagine Cup Contest.
Links
Image Compression usingNeural Networks [faculty project]
Project description: Create a image compression tool using neural networks
Team: only me
My role: research, implement, DEBUG and test, optimize for grid
Technologies: neural networks
Tools: C, C++ (core), C# (graphical interface)
Research
- Final report: NeuralCompression-Final-Report.pdf [Romanian]
- Google code project: http://code.google.com/p/neural-image-compression/
- Paralel optimization documentation: NeuralCompression-ParallelSpecificat.pdf
- Paralel optimization results: NeuralCompression-ParallelResults.pdf
VM system [9th place, Imagine Cup Software Design, National Level, Timisoara]
Project description: A scalable digital circuit emulator. Interaction with the user via VNC protocol, configuration and control via Web Application.
Team: 3
My role: Adapting open source libvncserver to Visual Studio 2005 (it was compiled with Visual Studio 2003), creating electronic devices, web service, engine and web service syncronization
Technologies: VNC, web services, sockets
Tools: Visual Studio 2005, C++ (engine), C# (web service)
Resources
- Presentation: VM-Presentation.pdf
- Final report: VM-Interim-Report-Ro.pdf [Romanian]
Links
- Imagine Cup: www.imaginecup.com
openCDS [intended for One Laptop Per Child Program]
Project description:
A classroom-oriented presentation system, intended to be used with the
One Laptop Per Child programme. It allows the teacher to control the
presentation and automatically updates the pupil's current slide.
Especially tailored for olpc's limited resources.
Team: 4
My role:
Network communication management. Project research and start-up. When
we developed openCDS we had no olpc computers available so we used
virtual machines running the olpc interface, sugar [olpc&s operating
system is a highly-customised fedora core]
Tools: Python, GTK, Google Code (svn/wiki)
Technologies: OLPC, sugar, sockets
Links
- openCDS page: code.google.com/p/opencds [includes screen shots]
- One Laptop Per Child: www.laptop.org
- One Laptop Per Child wiki: wiki.laptop.org
bluether
[printed circuit board, faculty project]
Project description:
A printed circuit board with a bluetooth receiver and an ethernet port.
It acts as a bridge for bluetooth to send messages to the local network.
Team: only me
My role: research, design, etch, solder components, debug, develop alpha software, test
Technologies: Printed Circuit Board design, basic electronics
Tools: Eagle, soldering iron, avr-gcc, bash
Resources:
- Development photos: bluether-development bluether-debugging
Other smaller projects, including, but not limited to:
- a compiler for a simple pascal-like language with added object support [faculty homework, see elf.cs.pub.ro/cpl/wiki/ for info] - Java, Antlr (source code parsing, grammar and semantic analyisis) svn, ant, bash
- a very simple bash-like command interpretor [Linux/Windows, faculty homework, see cs.pub.ro/~so for info] - C, Linux/Windows API
- a Jabber messenger [Microsoft Summer Activities, 4 people team] - C#, sockets, threads, Visual Studio 2005
- a
news reader with Windows Presentation Foundation (Avalon) Interface
[Microsoft Summer Activities, 4 people team] - C#, sockets, threading,
Avalon, Visual Studio
- a command-line messenger [faculty homework] - C++, sockets
- a command-line torrent-like P2P client and tracker [faculty homework] - Python, sockets, threading
- a module for intercepting system calls in Linux [faculty homework, see cs.pub.ro/~pso for info] - C, Linux kernel programming
- a text file archiver [Axway-Eestec 24-hour programming competition, 4 people team] - C, Windows batch scripting