Resident Scholars in Emerging Techonolgies
The Resident Scholars in Emerging Technologies work at CoSSMO on a Full time basis conducting their research and teaching duties (if any), from 6 months to 1 year. Their teaching should support the development of pedagogical material and courses using and illustrating their area of expertise (emerging methodology). They should liaise with the current student members and actively seek research opportunities, participating in joint grant applications with the members of CoSSMO. It is also expected that the Resident Scholars will bring visibility by engaging in contracts with the private and public sectors of society, and be involved in creating internships and/or professional outreach educational programs that will help to bring funds to CoSSMO. It is desirable that the resident Scholars contribute to the creation and support of undergraduate and graduate material in the area of Statistics, Computer Simulation and Operations Research.
What makes CoSSMO a special and ambitious initiative is the ORE principle, which integrates the knowledge of mathematical and computing methodologies for problem solving and the expertise in specific areas of applications. It is this principle that will provide members of the academic community at CoSSMO the potential to contribute to society. The field known as Operations Research can be described in very similar terms, and there exist established computer algorithms to solve certain problems. Examples of areas of application are finance, public transportation, telecommunication networks and health management. Because different applications have their specific problem settings, it is necessary to understand how to apply cutting-edge methodologies beyond traditional OR to approach these problems. Industry and the public sector may be unaware or unwilling to test the efficacy of such new methods. CoSSMO seeks to attract experts in various important emerging technologies that are expected to impact scientific research in the 21st Century, with the view to enhance the projected activities.
CoSSMO is currently looking for experts in the following emerging technologies.
• Change detection techniques: these are sophisticated statistical algorithms for computers to process various data from automatic sensors and trigger “intelligent” decisions as to whether there is a change in regime that should be cause for alarms or serious adjustments. Applications of these techniques can have unprecedented success from computer vision, to anticipation of financial crises, to climate change.
• Data Analytics: massive processing of statistical data that allows computers to discover patterns and act “intelligently”. Most notably, the recent success of the IBM Watson algorithms exemplifies the power that such methodologies will acquire in our immediate future.
• Evolutionary optimization algorithms: techniques for optimization of large complex systems have recently been proposed that mimic the manner in which genetic mutations succeed in natural selection, and others mimic the manner in which animal colonies (notably ants and bees) communicate simple individual directives in order to produce a coherent behavior that results in intelligent actions with purpose that goes beyond what each individual can grasp.
Resident Scholars in Emerging Technologies will be hired either:
• As regular Research Fellowships funded by research grants or private sources,
• Visitors on Sabbatical from their institutions (national and international) whose stay will be funded by
seeking special collaborative grants or who bring their own funding,
• Invited CUNY professors on teaching release from their college, upon approval of the appointment by the
Provost of the CUNY college where the affiliation of the professor is.
