CISE News & Events
Assistant Professor My T. Thai receives the prestigious NSF CAREER Award
February 24, 2010
My T. Thai, an assistant professor in the CISE Department, received the prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award for her research project entitled “CAREER: Optimization Models and Approximation Algorithms for Network Vulnerability and Adaptability.” The CAREER Award is considered one of NSF's most prestigious awards honoring scholars who are likely to become academic leaders in the future. NSF has given this award since 1996 to “junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations.”
According to Dr. Thai, complex network systems are extremely vulnerable. This vulnerability may be propagated, leading to a much more devastating consequence. A failure within a single component may have a profound impact on large parts of the system. The nodes’ failures may change the balance of flows and lead to a global redistribution of loads over the entire network. This can trigger a cascade of overload failures. An example for the consequences of vulnerability propagation in complex systems is the large blackout that occurred in August 2003 in the northeastern part of the US. The initial breakdown of one power station caused a cascade of switch-offs of other power stations and finally left 50 million people without electricity, for up to 48 hours. Another example of overload failures is the shutdown of the Internet where the initial breakdown caused the redistribution of loads, leading to a severe congestion in the entire network. Furthermore, several network algorithms must be adaptable to changes in order to maintain their functions. In the presence of uncertainty, network vulnerability and adaptability are two major aspects that must be deeply investigated.
This CAREER project aims to use the optimization theory and approximation techniques to address several fundamental problems about network vulnerability and adaptability which still remain unexplored. Since understanding the interdependency of network structures can reveal the behavior of vulnerability propagation, this study focuses on developing a theoretical framework characterizing the inter- and intra-dependencies between network components. In addition, Dr. Thai also proposes a new concept and technique called adaptive approximation algorithm which is to approximate (with a theoretical performance bound) a new solution based on the solution of previous network snapshot via the proposed adaptive strategies and compression techniques. The success of this approach will have a profound impact on the performance of adaptive network algorithms, thus enhancing the network adaptability to changes and advancing the theory of approximation algorithms.
Dr. Thai received her Ph.D. degree from the University of Minnesota and joined the CISE department of the University of Florida in 2006. Her research group has been working on combinatorial optimization and its application in networks, including computer networks, online social networks, and biological networks. She is an associate editor of Optimization Letters and Journal of Combinatorial Optimization. In 2009, she received a DTRA Young Investigator Award.
