Hanan Samet

Distinguished University Professor

4252 Iribe Center

(301) 405-1755

Academic Web Page

Research Group(s):

CfAR - Center for Automation Research

CVL - Computer Vision Laboratory

GVIL - Graphics and Visual Informatics Laboratory

Education:

Ph.D., Stanford University

Special Awards/Honors:

ACM Fellow, IAPR Fellow, IEEE Fellow, AAAS Fellow, 2009 University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) Research Award, 2011 Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award

Biography:

Hanan Samet is a Distinguished University Professor of computer science.

He leads a number of research projects on the use of hierarchical data structures for database applications involving multimedia data such as spatial and image databases. Samet's research group has developed the SAND spatial browser, the VASCO system of JAVA applets for visualizing and animating spatial indexes, and the MARCO system for map retrieval by content, which enables pictorial queries on a symbolic image database system.

He is the author of "Foundations of Multidimensional and Metric Data Structures" (Morgan-Kaufmann, San Francisco, CA, 2006), which received an Honorable Mention Award (one of two with one first place winner) in the 2006 best book in Computer and Information Science competition from the Professional and Scholarly Publishers (PSP) Group of the American Publishers Association (AAP). Samet is also the author of "Design and Analysis of Spatial Data Structures" and "Applications of Spatial Data Structures: Computer Graphics, Image Processing and GIS" (Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1990), which are the first two books on spatial data structures.

He is a fellow of the ACM, IEEE, and the International Association of Pattern Recognition (IAPR). From 1989 to 1991 he served as the Capital region representative on the ACM Council.

He is the recipient of the 2009 UCGIS Research Award and received best paper awards in the 2008 SIGMOD Conference, the 2008 SIGSPATIAL ACMGIS'08 Conference, and the 2007 Computers & Graphics Journal. Samet's paper at the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE) was selected as one of the best papers for publication in the IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering.

In his pioneering research since the 1980s on quadtrees and other data structures, as well as his well-received books, Samet has profoundly influenced the theory and application of multidimensional spatial data structures. His contributions to, and application of, incremental nearest neighbor search, metric navigation of spatial structures, and spatial data mining exemplify the breadth of his work, the impact of which can be seen in a wide array of practical applications.

In addition to this body of work, his 1975 doctoral thesis on formal proofs of correctness of compilers, and the symbolic execution of compiled execution sequences, was among the earliest contributions to the field that twenty years later became known as translation validation for compilers.

He has a doctorate from Stanford University.

Go here to view Samet's academic publications listed on Google Scholar.

Publications

2012

Samet H, Fruin BC, Nutanong S. 2012. Duking it out at the smartphone mobile app mapping API corral: Apple, Google, and the competition. 1st ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on Mobile Geographic Information Systems (MobiGIS 2012).

2011

Nutanong S, Jacox EH, Samet H. 2011. An incremental Hausdorff distance calculation algorithm. Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment. 4(8):506-517.

Samet H, Teitler BE, Adelfio MD, Lieberman MD. 2011. Adapting a map query interface for a gesturing touch screen interface. Proceedings of the 20th international conference companion on World wide web. :257-260.

2010

Samet H. 2010. Techniques for similarity searching in multimedia databases. Proc. VLDB Endow.. 3(1-2):1649-1650.

Sankaranarayanan J, Samet H. 2010. Query Processing Using Distance Oracles for Spatial Networks. Knowledge and Data Engineering, IEEE Transactions on. 22(8):1158-1175.

Sankaranarayanan J, Samet H. 2010. Images in News. Pattern Recognition (ICPR), 2010 20th International Conference on. :3240-3243.

Lieberman MD, Samet H, Sankaranarayanan J. 2010. Geotagging with local lexicons to build indexes for textually-specified spatial data. Data Engineering (ICDE), 2010 IEEE 26th International Conference on. :201-212.

Tahmoush D, Samet H. 2010. A Web Database for Computer-Aided Detection and Diagnosis of Medical Images. Digital Mammography. :265-272.

Samet H. 2010. Roads Belong in Databases. Data Engineering. :4-4.

Samet H. 2010. Sorting in space: multidimensional, spatial, and metric data structures for computer graphics applications. ACM SIGGRAPH ASIA 2010 Courses. :3:1–3:52-3:1–3:52.

Samet H. 2010. Multidimensional data structures for spatial applications. Algorithms and theory of computation handbookAlgorithms and theory of computation handbook. :6-6.

Quercini G, Samet H, Sankaranarayanan J, Lieberman MD. 2010. Determining the spatial reader scopes of news sources using local lexicons. Proceedings of the 18th SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems. :43-52.

Lieberman MD, Samet H, Sankaranayananan J. 2010. Geotagging: using proximity, sibling, and prominence clues to understand comma groups. Proceedings of the 6th Workshop on Geographic Information Retrieval. :6:1–6:8-6:1–6:8.

Adelfio MD, Lieberman MD, Samet H, Firozvi KA. 2010. Ontuition: intuitive data exploration via ontology navigation. Proceedings of the 18th SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems. :540-541.

2009

Sankaranarayanan J, Samet H, Teitler BE, Lieberman MD, Sperling J. 2009. TwitterStand: news in tweets. Proceedings of the 17th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems. :42-51.

Samet H. 2009. Sorting Spatial Data by Spatial Occupancy. GeoSpatial Visual Analytics. :31-43.

Samet H. 2009. Database and Representation Issues in Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Web and Wireless Geographical Information Systems. :1-6.

Lieberman MD, Samet H, Sankaranarayanan J, Sperling J. 2009. Spatio-textual spreadsheets: geotagging via spatial coherence. Proceedings of the 17th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems. :524-527.

Sankaranarayanan J, Samet H, Alborzi H. 2009. Path oracles for spatial networks. Proc. VLDB Endow.. 2(1):1210-1221.

Samet H. 2009. Review of Spatial Databases and Geographic Information Systems. Proceedings of the 17th Italian Symposium on Advanced Database Systems (SEBD’09). 23:26-26.

Sankaranarayanan J, Samet H. 2009. Distance Oracles for Spatial Networks. Data Engineering, 2009. ICDE '09. IEEE 25th International Conference on. :652-663.

2008

Samet H. 2008. 3. Similarity searching: Indexing, nearest neighbor finding, dimensionality reduction, and embedding methods for applications in multimedia databases. Pattern Recognition, 2008. ICPR 2008. 19th International Conference on. :1-1.

Jacox EH, Samet H. 2008. Metric space similarity joins. ACM Trans. Database Syst.. 33(2):7:1–7:38-7:1–7:38.

Tahmoush D, Samet H. 2008. High-Dimensional Similarity Retrieval Using Dimensional Choice. Similarity Search and Applications, 2008. SISAP 2008. First International Workshop on. :35-42.

Lieberman MD, Sankaranarayanan J, Samet H, Sperling J. 2008. Augmenting spatio-textual search with an infectious disease ontology. Data Engineering Workshop, 2008. ICDEW 2008. IEEE 24th International Conference on. :266-269.

Lieberman MD, Sankaranarayanan J, Samet H. 2008. A Fast Similarity Join Algorithm Using Graphics Processing Units. Data Engineering, 2008. ICDE 2008. IEEE 24th International Conference on. :1111-1120.

Teitler BE, Lieberman MD, Panozzo D, Sankaranarayanan J, Samet H, Sperling J. 2008. NewsStand: a new view on news. Proceedings of the 16th ACM SIGSPATIAL international conference on Advances in geographic information systems. :18:1–18:10-18:1–18:10.

Samet H, Sankaranarayanan J, Alborzi H. 2008. Scalable network distance browsing in spatial databases. Proceedings of the 2008 ACM SIGMOD international conference on Management of data. :43-54.

Samet H. 2008. A sorting approach to indexing spatial data. ACM SIGGRAPH 2008 classes. :91:1–91:15-91:1–91:15.

Samet H. 2008. Complexity and Accessibility: Sorting in space: multidimensional, spatial, and metric data structures for CG applications. International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques.

Cranston CB, Samet H. 2008. Indexing planar point quartets via geometric attributes. Proceedings of the 16th ACM SIGSPATIAL international conference on Advances in geographic information systems. :71:1–71:4-71:1–71:4.

Brabec F, Samet H. 2008. Hierarchical infrastructure for internet mapping services. Geospatial Services and Applications for the Internet. :1-30.

2007

Tanin E, Harwood A, Samet H. 2007. Using a distributed quadtree index in peer-to-peer networks. The VLDB Journal. 16(2):165-178.

Cranston CB, Samet H. 2007. Indexing Point Triples Via Triangle Geometry. Data Engineering, 2007. ICDE 2007. IEEE 23rd International Conference on. :936-945.

Tahmoush D, Samet H. 2007. An improved asymmetry measure to detect breast cancer. Proceedings of SPIE. 6514(1):65141Q-65141Q-9-65141Q-65141Q-9.

Jacox EH, Samet H. 2007. Spatial join techniques. ACM Trans. Database Syst.. 32(1)

Alborzi H, Samet H. 2007. Execution time analysis of a top-down R-tree construction algorithm. Information Processing Letters. 101(1):6-12.

Sankaranarayanan J, Samet H, Varshney A. 2007. A fast all nearest neighbor algorithm for applications involving large point-clouds. Computers & Graphics. 31(2):157-174.

Tahmoush D, Samet H. 2007. A new database for medical images and information. Proceedings of SPIE-Medical Imaging.

Tahmoush D, Samet H. 2007. A web collaboration system for content-based image retrieval of medical images. Proceedings of SPIE–Medical Imaging. 6516

Samet H, Phillippy A, Sankaranarayanan J. 2007. Knowledge discovery using the sand spatial browser. Proceedings of the 8th annual international conference on Digital government research: bridging disciplines & domains. :284-285.

Samet H, Lieberman MD, Sankaranarayanan J, Sperling J. 2007. STEWARD: demo of spatio-textual extraction on the web aiding the retrieval of documents. Proceedings of the 8th annual international conference on Digital government research: bridging disciplines & domains. :300-301.

Samet H. 2007. Sorting in space: multidimensional, spatial, and metric data structures for computer graphics applications. International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques.

Samet H. 2007. Fundamentals of Multidimensional and Metric data structure.

Samet H. 2007. K-nearest neighbor finding using MaxNearestDist. IEEE transactions on pattern analysis and machine intelligence. :243-252.

Lieberman MD, Samet H, Sankaranarayanan J, Sperling J. 2007. STEWARD: architecture of a spatio-textual search engine. Proceedings of the 15th annual ACM international symposium on Advances in geographic information systems. :25:1–25:8-25:1–25:8.

Danovaro E, De Floriani L, Puppo E, Samet H. 2007. Out-of-core Multi-resolution Terrain Modeling. Spatial data on the Web: modeling and management. :43-43.

Brabec F, Samet H. 2007. Client-Based Spatial Browsing on the World Wide Web. IEEE Internet Computing. 11(1):52-59.

Samet H. 2007. Indexing Methods for Similarity Searching. Current Trends in Computer Science, 2007. ENC 2007. Eighth Mexican International Conference on. :xv-xv.

Brabec F, Samet H. 2007. Autonomic computing. IEEE internet computing. 11(1):52-59.

2006

Samet H. 2006. Foundations of Multidimensional And Metric Data Structures.

Iwerks GS, Samet H, Smith KP. 2006. Maintenance of K-nn and spatial join queries on continuously moving points. ACM Trans. Database Syst.. 31(2):485-536.

Sankaranarayanan J, Alborzi H, Samet H. 2006. Enabling Query Processing on Spatial Networks. Data Engineering, 2006. ICDE '06. Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on. :163-163.

Tanin E, Harwood A, Samet H, Nayar D, Nutanong S. 2006. Building and querying a P2P virtual world. Geoinformatica. 10(1):91-116.

Tahmoush D, Samet H. 2006. Image Similarity and Asymmetry to Improve Computer-Aided Detection of Breast Cancer. Digital Mammography. :221-228.

Tahmoush D, Samet H. 2006. Archimedes, an archive of medical images. American Medical Informatics Association 2006 Annual Symposium Proceedings Biomedical and Health Informatics: From Foundations to Applications to Policy, Washington, DC, DW Bates, JH Holmes, and G. Kuperman, editors.

Tahmoush D, Samet H. 2006. Using image similarity and asymmetry to detect breast cancer. Proc. of SPIE Vol. 6144:61441S–1-61441S–1.

Sankaranarayanan J, Alborzi H, Samet H. 2006. Distance join queries on spatial networks. Proceedings of the 14th annual ACM international symposium on Advances in geographic information systems. :211-218.

Samet H. 2006. Foundations of Multidimensional And Metric Data Structures. :1023.

Sankaranarayanan J, Samet H, Varshney A. 2006. A Fast k-Neighborhood Algorithm for Large Point-Clouds. Proceedings of the 3rd IEEE/Eurographics Symposium on Point-Based Graphics. ACM, Boston, MA, USA.

Samet H, Soffer A. 2006. Image Database Systems and Techniques: A Symbolic Approach.

Samet H, Golubchik L. 2006. Scalable data collection and retrieval infrastructure for digital government applications. Proceedings of the 2006 international conference on Digital government research. :301-302.

Samet H, Webber RE. 2006. Extending the SAND Spatial Database System for the Visualization of Three-Dimensional Scientific Data. Geographical Analysis. 38(1):87-101.

Lindenbaum M, Samet H, Hjaltason GR. 2006. A probabilistic analysis of trie-based sorting of large collections of line segments in spatial databases. SIAM Journal on Computing. 35(1):22-58.

Danovaro E, De Floriani L, Puppo E, Samet H. 2006. Out–of–Core Multiresolution Terrain Modeling. Modeling and Management of Geographical Data over Distributed Architectures. Springer–Verlag.

Cranston CB, Samet H. 2006. Efficient position-independent iconic search using an R-theta index. Proceedings of the 14th annual ACM international symposium on Advances in geographic information systems. :27-34.

2005

Sankaranarayanan J, Alborzi H, Samet H. 2005. Efficient query processing on spatial networks. Proceedings of the 13th annual ACM international workshop on Geographic information systems. :200-209.

Samet H, Tanin E, Golubchik L. 2005. Scalable data collection infrastructure for digital government applications. Proceedings of the 2005 national conference on Digital government research. :305-306.

Samet H. 2005. Indexing issues in supporting similarity searching. Advances in Multimedia Information Processing-PCM 2004. :463-470.

Danovaro E, De Floriani L, Puppo E, Samet H. 2005. Clustering Techniques for Out-of-Core Multi-resolution Modeling. Visualization Conference, IEEE. :113-113.