Recent News

	(10/13/08) This week's Colloquium features Prof. Piotr Indyk from MIT. He will be speaking on Sparse Recovery Using Sparse Random Matrices . The colloquium is on Wednesdays in Moore Filene Auditorium at 4:30 PM following the Weekly Tea at 4 PM.
	(10/06/08) This week's Colloquium features Prof. Tamal Dey from The Ohio State University. He will be speaking on Delaunay Mesh Generation for Piecewise Smooth Domains. The colloquium is on Wednesdays in Moore Filene Auditorium at 4:30 PM following the Weekly Tea at 4 PM.

(10/03/08) Ph.D. students Ranganath Kondapally and Wei Pan were given this year's Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award. Ranganath was the TA for Discrete Mathematics (COSC 19) and Algorithms (COSC 25) last winter and spring, respectively. Wei was the TA for Software Design and Implementation (COSC 23) both terms. The award includes a cash prize of $400 per person. Congratulations to both!

Recent Technical Reports

• October 2008: BLAC: Revoking Repeatedly Misbehaving Anonymous Users Without Relying on TTPs
• September 2008: LZfuzz: a fast compression-based fuzzer for poorly documented protocols
• August 2008: Attribute-Based, Usefully Secure Email
• August 2008: TwoKind Authentication: Protecting Private Information in Untrustworthy Environments (Extended Version)
•    August 2008: Pas de Deux avec les Microrobots (Video)

Featured Research

Robotic Origami Folding

Prof. Devin Balkcom

Thin materials like sheet metal, paper, and cardboard are lightweight, inexpensive, and can be stored and shipped in bulk. Folding allows the construction of semi-rigid 3-D structures, including fast-food containers, paper bags, and file cabinets. Folding can also allow a single large surface or chain to be stored in a small volume; motivating examples include car airbags, space-telescope mirrors, and proteins. Finally, folding allows reconfiguration, without the need for disassembly and reassembly.

We have built the first origami-folding robot (left), capable of folding a paper hat, paper airplane, and paper cup. We have also analyzed more complicated folding techniques; work with Erik and Martin Demaine questions whether ordinary paper shopping bags can be mathematically folded.

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