Professor Panagiotis Takis Metaxas, Computer Science, Wellesley College

Course Websites
CS114: Socio-Techno Web
CS215: Multimedia
CS230: Data Structures
CS331: Parallel Computing
CS315: Web Search

Resources
Media Arts&Sciences Major
FPCC'95 FPCC'97
Parallel Computing CDROM

Family Pics that are so... last century, 2003, 2008

Dennis Downey:
Electric Thoreau
Textradio 2x2 3x3 4x4

Address: Computer Science Department, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA 02481
Email: pmet...@wellesley.edu Tel: 781-283-3054 Fax: 781-283-3642
Office Hours:
Mon 8:30-9:40 AM;
Wed 11:10-12:20 PM;
Thu 9:50-11:00 AM

Modified: September 7, 2009

Panagiotis Takis Metaxas is an Associate Professor of Computer Science and co-Director of the Media Arts and Sciences Program at Wellesley College (located about 10 miles west of Boston). He studied Mathematics at the University of Athens and Computer Science at Brown. He has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Dartmouth (advisor: Donald B. Johnson) and has been a visiting scientist at MIT and at the Sydney Uni. He spent a couple of years working as the Chief Technology Officer of a biotech company specializing in computerized tests for measuring the symptoms of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD) and he is now Research Associate at the Developmental Biopsychiatry Research Program at McLean Hospital.

He is a Senior Member of the ACM and a Member of LACS, IEEE Computer Society, SIGWEB, SIGCSE and SIGACT's electronic publication board. He also serves on the WEBIST 2009 Program Committee and is the Wellesley representative of the CRA.

His research interests are currently in Web Science, Web Spam and Cognitive Hacking. He has also published in the areas of Parallel Computing, Multimedia, Algorithm Visualization, and Computer Science Education. Specifically: Parallel Graph and Combinatorial Algorithms, Parallel Algorithmic Techniques and Paradigms, Computer Interfaces for Cultural and Educational Multimedia, CS Curriculum Development, Teaching Methods and Tools.

Panagiotis Takis Metaxas Beyond Wellesley Resources Department course descriptions Research major/minor requirements opportunities beyond Events faculty Multimedia course dependencies History of CS at Wellesley CS Newsletters Socio-Techno Web Media Arts & Sciences CS215 CS courses CS315 Wellesley College People

PUBLICATIONS

Available in postscript , HTML , PDF or CD-ROM formats.

On Cybetrust, Cognitive Hacking and Critical Thinking
Using Propagation of Distrust to find Untrustworthy Web Neighborhoods. Best Paper Award, Social and Legal Aspect of Internet Computing, ICIW 2009 Conference, Venice, Italy, May, 2009.
On the Evolution of Search Engine Rankings. WEBIST 2009 Conference, Lisbon, Portugal, March, 2009.
The use of online videos in the 2008 US congressional elections with Eni Mustafaraj and Catherine Grevet. SocialComm 2009 Conference, Vancouver, Canada, August, 2009.
Sponsored Search for Political Campaigning during the 2008 US Elections with Eni Mustafaraj. SIGIR 2009 -IRA, Boston, July, 2009.
The Battle for the 2008 US Congressional Elections on the Web with Eni Mustafaraj. WebScience 2009 Conference, Athens, Greece, March, 2009.
COVERAGE AND INDEPENDENCE: Defining Quality in Web Search Results with Lilia Ivanova. Best Paper Award WEBIST 2008 Conference, May, 2008.
Pay Attention Search Engine! My web site is important Talk at the WAAM Meeting, February 11, 2007.
How Google works (and why you should care) Keynote speech slides at the World Usability Day 2006, November 14.
Web Spam, Propaganda and Trust with Joe DeStefano. Presented at the AIRWeb05, May 10, 2005, Chiba, Japan. (With slides from the AIRWeb talk on Web Spam Detection.)
Of course it is true; I saw it on the internet. Critical Thinking in the internet Era. with Leah Graham. In the Communications of the ACM, May, 2003.

On Parallel Computing and Dithering / Halftoning
Parallel Digital Halftoning by Error-Diffusion, In the Proc. of the FCRC2003 Paris C. Kanellakis Workshop, San Diego, CA, June, 2003. An earlier version appeared in the Proceedings of the Parallel and Distributed Systems.
Automatic Methods for Hiding Latency in Parallel and Distributed Computation. In the SIAM Journal of Computing. (2000)
Optimal Parallel Error-Diffusion Dithering, Proceedings of the 1999 Electronic Imaging, SPIE, San Jose, CA, January, 1999.
A Note on Parallel Algorithms for Optimal h-v Drawings of Binary Trees, with G.E. Pantziou and A. Symvonis, Computational Geometry: Theory and Applications 9 (1998) 145-158.
Connected Components in $O(\log^{3/2} n)$ Parallel Time for the CREW PRAM. Journal of Systems Sciences 54 (2):227-242 (1997). An earlier version appeared in FOCS'91.
Optimal Parallel and Sequential Algorithms for the Single and Multiple Vertex Updating Problem of a MST. Algorithmica 16: 633-648. 1997.
Automatic Methods for Hiding Latency in High Bandwidth Networks. Appeared in the Proceedings of STOC'96.
Improved Methods for Hiding Latency in High Bandwidth Networks. Appeared in the Proceedings of SPAA'96.
A Parallel Algorithm for Computing Minimum Spanning Trees. Journal of Algorithms, 19:383-410 (1995). An earlier version appeared in SPAA'92.
How Difficult is it to Think in Parallel?. A New Approach for Introducing Parallelism. Proceedings of the First Wellesley Forum on Parallel Computing Curricula, 1995.
Parallel Algorithms for Drawing Trees. Appeared in the Proceedings of ISAAC'94.
From Parallel to Sequential: Keeping Optimality in Algorithms. Appeared in the Proceedings of HERMIS'92.

On Multimedia and Algorithm Visualization
Experiences from Teaching an Interdisciplinary Multimedia Course, with N. Ribner. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Multimedia Computing and Systems (ICMCS'99), Florence, Italy, June, 1999
The Art and Science of Multimedia, with N. Ribner. Proceedings of the 25th ACM International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques (SIGGRAPH98), Orlando, FL, August, 1998. For the last two pages in color, click here.
Assessing Instructional Technology. In: Building Electronic Educational Environments, S.D. Franklin and E. Strenski (Eds.), IFIP Conf. Proc., vol 166, Kluwer, 2000. ISBN 0-7923-7832-6.
The Roles of Video in the Design, Use, and Construction of Interactive Electronic Conference Proceedings with S. Rebelsky et.al. Journal of Universal Computer Science 4 (6), 1998.
Towards Multimedia Conference Proceedings. Appeared in the January 1996 issue of the CACM.
On User Interfaces for Educational Multimedia Applications, Proceedings of the 2nd IEEE International Conference on Multimedia in Education, Melbourne, Australia, August, 1996.
Conference on a Disk: A Successful Experiment in Hypermedia Publishing.. Appeared in ED-MEDIA '94.
A LaTeX to HyperCard Translator. In the Proceedings of ED-MEDIA '95.
vG: A System for Visualizing Graphs and Graph Algorithms. Interface in Macromedia Shockwave. Software written in C. Beta installation requires gcc, X Motif and UNIX. We are working to port vG as a Java applet. If you want to be notified or if you would like to become a beta tester, please send us email.
A Visualization System for Correctness Proofs of Graph Algorithms Computer Science Education (1993).

On Education and Curricula
A 2007 Model Curriculum for a Liberal Arts Degree in Computer Science by the Liberal Arts Computer Science Consortium (LACS). In the Journal on Educational Resources in Computing (JERIC), 2007
Introductory Lectures in Data-Parallel Computing March 1996. Interactive Multimedia CD-ROM. Published by AKPeters, Ltd.
Proceedings of the First Forum on Parallel Computing Curricula, 1995.
Proceedings of the Second Forum on Parallel Computing Curricula, 1997.
Parallel Computation: Practical Implementation of Algorithms and Machines, electronic publication on Interactive CD, TELOS/ Springer-Verlag, Santa Clara, CA, 1993.

Ph.D. Thesis
Parallel Algorithms for Graph Problems.

US Patent
Method and System for Parallel Error-Diffusion Dithering (Pat. Num 6,307,978 Awarder Oct 23, 2001). "A system is disclosed for error diffusion dithering. The system includes an input for receiving an input matrix representative of image data, and a plurality of processors. The plurality of processors processes the input matrix and provides output data. Each of the processors is in communication with at least a portion of the input matrix. At least one processor processes a portion of the input matrix defined at least in part by a substantially diagonal edge within the image matrix." This work is expected to lead to inexpensive faster printers and larger monitors.