Zachary G. Ives

Assistant Professor
Computer & Information Science Department
University of Pennsylvania

Associated Faculty, Penn Center for Bioinformatics

Teaching CIS 650 in Fall 2008
Office hours for Fall 2008 semester: Wednesdays, 2PM

Contact Information

Biographical Sketch

Zachary Ives is an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and an Associated Faculty Member of the Penn Center for Bioinformatics. He received his B.S. from Sonoma State University and his PhD from the University of Washington. His research interests include data integration, peer-to-peer models of data sharing, processing and security of heterogeneous sensor streams, and data exchange between autonomous systems. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER award and a member of the 2006 (first) DARPA Computer Science Study Panel.  He has been a co-program chair for the XML Symposium (2006) and New Trends in Information Integration (2008) workshops.

Statements and CV

Here are my research and teaching statements and CV.

Research

My research interests lie in the areas of databases and distributed systems, especially as they relate to the Web, Web-scale information sharing, and distributed networks of devices (e.g., sensors, actuators). I am a member of the database, wireless/mobile systems, and systems research groups at Penn. My research projects relate to making it easier to exchange, locate, and analyze networked information.

• ORCHESTRA focuses on the problem of collaborative data sharing:  exchanging data and updates among loose confederations of databases, when the different database owners have different schemas and different ideas of what is the "right" content. We have developed techniques to map data and updates among different sites, maintain data provenance, and use the data provenance as the basis of assessing trust and ultimately to resolve conflicts.  We specifically target biological data sharing applications.  Funded by NSF CAREER #IIS-0477972.
• The Q query system addresses the challenges of querying in a system like Orchestra, when one does not know apriori where to find the most relevant data.  Q takes as input a keyword query, which it matches against schema elements to produce potential data integration queries.  The system returns answers from the most promising queries and takes user feedback on the results.  This feedback is used to learn which sources are most relevant to the information need that motivated the query.  Funded by NSF CAREER #IIS-0477972 and SEIII #IIS-0513778.
  
• Aspen addresses the problem of programming and integrating large-scale and complex sensor networks. The system focuses on a setting in which large numbers of distributed sensors, with varying capabilities, must be coordinated in order to manage and reason about collections of physical entities and phenomena. My focus is on sensor data integration, i.e., integration of data streams from multiple sensor (and other) sources. Different aspects of the research are funded by NSF III #IIS-0713267 and NOSS #CNS-0721541.

I also participate in several projects that are led by my colleagues at Penn:

• SHARQ (led by Susan Davidson) is a joint effort with the Penn Center for Bioinformatics. It leverages the core Orchestra engine and the Q system, plus a portal (SHARQ Guide) that offers both keyword search and browse access to data sources, schemas, and queries.  Funded by NSF SEIII #IIS-0513778.
• pPOD (led by Val Tannen) focuses on the modeling and management of information related to phylogenetic trees.  pPOD leverages the Orchestra engine.
• PIRIS (led by Doug Wiebe) focuses on integrating data records relating to gunshot wound cases in Philadelphia, in order to help support intervention.  Funded by the State of Pennsylvania.

Acknowledgments: I have also received grants from DARPA CSSG (#HR0011-06-1-0016), Penn ISTAR, the State of Pennsylvania, and Lockheed Martin, and software donations from MarkLogic, Electric Software, and IBM Corp.

Teaching

Selected recent courses and seminars:

• Fall 2008: CIS 650, Implementing Data Management Systems.
• Spring 2008: CIS 455/555, Internet and Web Systems.
• Fall 2007: CIS 550, Database Management Systems.
• Spring 2006: Systems lunch reading group. Fridays @ noon.
• Spring 2006: DB-IR-ML reading group. Wednesdays @ 2:30.

Detailed information is here.

Publications

To appear:

• Recursive Computation of Regions and Connectivity in Networks, with Mengmeng Liu, Nicholas E. Taylor, Wenchao Zhou, and Boon Thau Loo. Accepted for publication, ICDE 2009.
• The Orchestra Collaborative Data Sharing System, with Todd J. Green, Grigoris Karvounarakis, Nicholas E. Taylor, Val Tannen, Partha Pratim Talukdar, Marie Jacob, Fernando Pereira. To appear, ACM SIGMOD Record, September 2008.
• Invited entries on Adaptive stream processing, Updates in P2P systems, and XML publishing for the upcoming Encyclopedia of Database Systems, edited by Ling Liu and M. Tamer Ozsu, soon to be available from Springer.

Selected recent publications:

• A Substrate for In-Network Sensor Data Integration, with Svilen Mihaylov, Marie Jacob, and Sudipto Guha. DMSN 2008.
• Learning to Create Data-Integrating Queries, with Partha Pratim Talukdar, Marie Jacob, M. Salman Mehmood, Koby Crammer, Fernando Pereira, and Sudipto Guha, VLDB 2008.
• Bidirectional Mappings for Data and Update Exchange, with Grigoris Karvounarakis, WebDB 2008.
• Sideways Information Passing for Push-Style Query Processing, with Nicholas Taylor. ICDE 2008, Cancun, Mexico.
• DBpedia: a Nucleus for a Web of Open Data, with Soeren Auer, Christian Bizer, Georgi Kobilarov, Jens Lehmann, Richard Cyganiak. ISWC/ASWC In-Use Track, 2007.
• Adaptive Query Processing, with Amol Deshpande, Vijayshankar Raman. Tutorial, VLDB 2007. Slides
• Update Exchange with Mappings and Provenance, with Todd J. Green, Grigoris Karvounarakis, and Val Tannen. VLDB 2007.
• The Case for a Unified Extensible Data-centric Mobility Infrastructure, with Yun Mao, Boon Thau Loo, Jonathan M. Smith. MobiArch 2007.
• Adaptive Query Processing, with Amol Deshpande and Vijayshankar Raman. Foundations and Trends in Databases, Vol. 1 No. 1, 2007. Hardcopy available at a discount from Now Publishers; see here.
• ORCHESTRA: Facilitating Collaborative Data Sharing, with TJ Green, Nick Taylor, Grigoris Karvounarakis, Olivier Biton, Val Tannen. Demonstration description, SIGMOD 2007.
• Reconciling while Tolerating Disagreement in Collaborative Data Sharing, with Nick Taylor. SIGMOD 2006.
• ORCHESTRA: Rapid, Collaborative Sharing of Dynamic Data, with Nitin Khandelwal, Aneesh Kapur, Murat Cakir. CIDR, January, 2005, Asilomar, CA.
• Adapting to Data Integration Source Properties, with Alon Halevy and Dan Weld. ACM SIGMOD Conference on Management of Data, June 2004, Paris, France.

A complete list is here.

PhD Student Collaborators

• TJ Green (with Val Tannen), expected graduation 2009.
• Grigoris Karvounarakis (with Val Tannen), expected graduation 2009.
• Nick Taylor
• Svilen Mihaylov (with Sudipto Guha)
• Mengmeng Liu (with Boon Thau Loo)
• Marie Jacob
• Partha Pratim Talukdar (with Fernando Pereira)

Frequent Faculty Collaborators

• Steve Minton, Fetch Technologies
• Craig Knoblock, USC ISI
• Val Tannen, Penn CIS
• Insup Lee, Penn CIS
• Sudipto Guha, Penn CIS
• Matt Blaze, Penn CIS
• Fernando Pereira, Penn CIS
• Lyle Ungar, Penn CIS
• Boon Thau Loo, Penn CIS
• Chris Stoeckert, Penn Center for Bioinformatics
• Pete White, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

A complete list of advisees is here.