Courellis, who joined the university in 2004,
plunged into Cal State Fullerton’s academic life with
equal gusto. Shortly into his first semester he and four other
faculty members paired up with professors from Nara University.
The Japanese visitors spent four weeks working with their
CSUF peers, honing their English-language skills and studying
the American teaching style of actively engaging students
in the classroom. It is an experience Courellis remembers
well because the Nara professor discussed quantum computing
with Courellis’ classes and some of the students were
so impressed they talked about it for weeks. It’s one
of the reasons he enjoys being in the classroom, sharing experiences
and delving into issues.
| Q: |
You’ve spent several years as a director
of technology and a technologist with local companies.
Now you teach and conduct research with both graduate
and undergraduate students. Is that a hard adjustment
to make? |
| A: |
I’ve had experience in both industry and in
teaching and, no matter where you are, you’re
involved in teaching and mentoring. One aspect of research
is dissemination and sharing of the work. It’s
always very interactive. Doing research in isolation
just doesn’t bring about the benefits that can
be achieved when you work with others.
Working at a university is an excellent place to be
a researcher. What better place to be where students
are fresh, unbiased and eager to learn? And when they
graduate they increase the university, the college,
the department’s sphere of influence. |
|
| Q: |
What are your research interests? |
| A: |
I have been studying distributed computation —
that is computation performed by small, intelligent
computing devices that communicate with each other.
An example of this is a set or group of sensors that
gather information and send it back to a central location,
such as what Caltrans uses on freeways and roads. This
information helps them learn where bottlenecks occur.
Something that we may see happening in the future are
sensors embedded in our bodies that would monitor things
like blood pressure and heart rate, and send information
to our doctors who can track how well we are physically
without having to make a visit to their offices. The
sensor would alert the doctor if something is wrong.
|
|
| Q: |
Sounds like an interesting concept. |
| A: |
Currently there is a trend that is called pervasive
computing. What that means is to enable, computationally,
the majority of devices around us. Wouldn’t it
be nice if our refrigerators could keep track of when
we’re running out of something? There is technology
being developed that would scan the storage area of
your refrigerator and track what is there and what isn’t.
And then you could order items online — without
having to spend a Sunday afternoon in long grocery lines!
To take it to another level: You have hundreds of acres
of farmland — how do you know how much water or
fertilizer the fields need? Or which fields even need
water? Right now, farmers just open the gates and flood
the fields — but that’s a waste of water.
You can have systems that measure the amount of moisture
in the soil and tell you what area to water. |
|
| Q: |
How would you do this? |
| A: |
Through embedded systems. In order to be successful,
embedded systems have to have a very small footprint.
Your computer is nice but you need small devices to
do this type of work. Also, these devices have to be
able to communicate with each other, they must be reliable
or cheap to replace and, very importantly, they must
be able to run on low power. It wouldn’t be very
practical if the sensor in your chest needed so much
power that it burned or damaged the skin surrounding
it.
Another special twist for these systems is that each
unit in the system must be able to do some of the work
on its own, as well as part of a group. That is a plan
based on what happens in nature. Neurons and cells process
information and communicate to other parts of the body,
such as the brain. Ants and bees as individuals each
have their own tasks but they work as a unit as well.
So it is with embedded systems. |
|
| Q: |
What are you working on right now? |
| A: |
I’m exploring how to build a secure, real-time,
embedded operating system. Why do we want this? When
you have so many small units, you don’t want an
external factor either accidently or purposely being
able to disrupt the system. Security is a key to the
operation and communication of many systems.
I’m investigating encryption algorithms that
are scalable. You can adjust their strength and complexity
depending on application.
I am also researching the communication network made
up from small devices. We are looking at algorithms
that move information reliably from one small device
to the other and optimize the performance of the network. |
|
| Q: |
And you are doing the research with the assistance
of students? |
| A: |
Yes, I have very good graduate students who are working
with me on all these projects. I also work with undergraduate
students and am trying to introduce some industrial-type
relationships. My goal is to create a resource that
will focus on applied interdisciplinary research and
development. Education and local industry — there
should be connections between the two.
The potential to do great things is there. |
