Ian Munro,
Canada Research Chair in Algorithm Design, University of Waterloo

Title: "Computer Science Research for Text Analysis"

This talk will focus on several lines of research in data organization that do or will have applications to text analysis. These include techniques for creating indices that are very efficient both in terms of space and in the time required to perform searches, automata based approaches, and text compression. The methods discussed have arisen in diverse contexts ranging from tools for lexicography to bioinformatics.

Biography

Ian Munro is University Professor and Canada Research Chair in Algorithm Design in the D.R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo, where he has been a faculty member since completing his PhD at the University of Toronto in 1971. His research has concentrated on the efficiency of algorithms and data structures, with an emphasis on text searching and indexing. He has authored about 150 research papers and supervised more than a dozen Ph.D.'s on the subject. Dr. Munro has held visiting positions at a number of major universities and research labs, including AT&T Bell Labs, Princeton University and the Max Planck Institute for Informatics. His consulting activities have included work with government and several major computer companies. He has served on the editorial boards of CACM, Inf & Comp, and B.I.T., and the program committees of most of the major conferences in his area. He is a former Director of Waterloo's Institute for Computer Research. He is presently a member of the board of the Centre for Education in Mathematics and Computing. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2003 and made University Professor in 2006.