AT&T Labs Research — Leading Invention, Driving Innovation

AT&T Research at VLDB 2012

This year's Very Large Data Bases (VLDB) conference is being held in Istanbul from August 27 to 31. AT&T researchers and collaborators are making five presentations, including a paper by Divesh Srivastava, that won the best-paper award. Go here for times and dates.

In addition, Luna Dong is co-organizer of the Workshop on Quality in Databases.

Paper on dense subgraphs voted best of VLDB 2012

A paper co-authored by Divesh Srivastava, Dense Subgraph Maintenance under Streaming Edge Weight Updates for Real-time Story Identification, has won the Best Paper Award for VLDB 2012.

The paper describes a real-time technique for identifying trending news stories within social media, an enormously rich information stream. The award cites the technique’s insightful algorithmic contributions and its potential for broader applicability.

Turn When the Steering Wheel Tells You

Digital services in the car have the potential to make driving easier and safer—if they don’t distract the driver. A haptic steering wheel, by using tactile-based signals, may more safely convey navigation information than audio or visual cues.

Other cloud-based services recently showcased by AT&T Research include a bio-acoustic door lock, a car system that alerts when you forget an item, and Air Graffiti for air-tagging locations.  Read more.

Encouraging women to consider STEM majors

Women and minorities have traditionally avoided majoring in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). But as the need grows for more scientists and engineers, STEM fields must become more inclusive. 

In this US News and Report interview, Alicia Abella, executive director of technical research at AT&T Labs, describes what colleges, professionals, and parents can do to encourage women to consider STEM majors.

Innovation: Changing the Face of Telecom

Innovation is usually associated with small startups quick to see the changes in the technology landscape and nimble enough to get out in front of those changes.

But large telecoms, including AT&T, are surprisingly innovative; they have to be or risk becoming irrelevant. A recent Pipeline article compares and contrasts the different approaches taken by large telecoms to advance and incorporate cutting-edge technology.

2002 Paper on tomography stands test of time

This year’s ACM SIGMETRICS conference conferred its Test of Time Award on Network Tomography on General Topologies, a paper co-authored by Nick Duffield. The award, given each year to a previous conference paper whose impact is still felt 10-12 years after publication, cited the paper’s pioneering work in network tomography, particularly its novel methods to estimate delay, packet loss, and other measures of performance.