Welcome
I recently completed my MSc degree in Computer Science at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. I'm originally from the other side of the world, South Africa, where I studied at Wits University. My honours thesis supervisor was Scott Hazelhurst who also did his PhD at UBC.
During my MSc (from August 2003 to September 2005) I was a member of the Distributed Systems Group where I worked with Norm Hutchinson. My interests cover a wide variety of systems issues, with an emphasis on distributed systems, networking, wireless and ad-hoc networks and ubiquitous computing. My MSc thesis topic explored using an additional layer of names to bridge disconnected or intermittently connected, possibily heterogeneous, networks.
Publications
- Kempe, G. and Hutchinson, N., Networks without Borders: Communication Despite Disconnection, In Proceedings of the Advanced International Conference on Telecommunications and International Conference on Internet and Web Applications and Services (AICT/ICIW 2006), Guadeloupe, February 2006
- Kempe, G. Communication in Intermittently-Connected Networks, MSc Thesis, September 2005.
Stuff
Info on systems conferences:
- List of upcoming deadlines
- Links to systems conferences
- Stats on paper acceptance rates (and other things)
Here are some pointers and links I've found useful.
- Writing a systems paper
- How to Have a Bad Career In Research/Academia and other talks on being in academia/research
- Bias in Presentation of Research Results -- finding a balance between promotion and criticism of your work
- Info for South Africans doing Postgraduate Studies Overseas
Courses
- 538A - Topics in Computer Systems: Distributed Applications
- 506 - Complexity of Computation
- 533B - Animation Physics
- 414 - Computer Graphics
- 508 - Distributed Systems
- 540 - Machine Learning
In the past I have been a TA for 314 Computer Graphics (summer 2005), 315 Introduction to Operating Systems (spring 2005), 417 Computer Communications (summer 2004) and 111 Introduction to Computation (winter 2003, winter 2004). Here's a funny TA comic strip.
