Curriculum Vitae of Ulrich Matthias Speidel (né Günther)

Date: 08/08/2017

General Info

Born: 1967 in Essen
Citizenship: German; Permanent Resident of New Zealand

Secondary Education

1977-1986 Immanuel-Kant-Gymnasium , Heiligenhaus, Germany. Graduated in 1986 with the "Abitur", Germany's university entry qualification. Core subjects were Mathematics and Physics, secondary subjects were English and History.

Tertiary Education

1988 March-August: visiting student at the University of Adelaide, Australia. Courses taken included undergradute papers in mathematics, statistics, physics, and chemistry.
1988-1992: Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen - Nuremberg, Germany. Main course of study was physics. The minimum degree with graduation available from German universities in physics at the time was a "Diplom" (diploma), roughly equivalent to a Masters, which took about 5 years to complete. I completed a non-graduation degree, the so-called "Vordiplom" (pre-diploma) in 1990, roughly equivalent to a BSc.
1992-1994: completion of an MSc at the Physics Department with first class honours at the University of Auckland , New Zealand. My MSc topic was on signal processing and simulation of the Heard Island experimental data, an underwater acoustics approach to the measurement of possible global warming known as ATOC.
1994-1998: work on a PhD in the Computer Science Department at the then Division of Science and Technology on Tamaki Campus at the University of Auckland . The thesis was accepted in late 1998.

Work Experience

1986-1988: civil service as a technician in the automation technology department at the Berufsförderungszentrum Essen e.V., a non profit vocational training organization. This included PCB assembly on prototypes and small series of electronic and microprocessor circuits used in teaching as well as appliance mains wiring work.
1989: work as a summer student in the same institution.
1991-1992: summer student and part-time work for Siemens AG in their medical technology research center (GG-UBMed) at Erlangen on simulation of a-Si x-ray detectors.
1995-1999 Part-time tutor in the Computer Science Department (now School of Computer Science) at the University of Auckland.
1998-present: Director of Technology Transfer Consulting Ltd., Auckland
2000 Temporary Lecturer in the Computer Science Department at the University of Auckland.
2001-2005: Lecturer in the above Department
2006-present: Senior Lecturer in the above Department (now School of Computer Science)
2010 (July-October): Associate Professor (paid visiting position) at the University of Tokyo, Japan
2017 (September): Visiting Scientist at the Research Laboratory for Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
2017 (October-December): Visiting Scientist at Institut für Nachrichtentechnik, Ulm University, Germany

Research

I specialise in data communication, information theory and its applications, including but not restricted to:

simulation of Internet satellite links
network coding for satellite Internet links
variable-length codes and variable-length code synchronisation
relationship between codes and strings, in particular string complexity and entropy
network measurement in communication networks
information measurement and estimation, and applications thereof (e.g., in heart sound analysis)

Recent publications

Note: Author order on paper may differ depending on retrieval source.

Denny, P., Manoharan, S., Speidel, U., Russello, G., Chang, A. (2019), On the Fairness of Multiple-Variant Multiple-Choice Examinations. SIGCSE ’19 (pp. 426-468), February 27-March 2, 2019, Minneapolis, MN, USA.
Speidel, U., Qian, L. (2018). Striking a balance between bufferbloat and TCP queue oscillation in satellite input buffers. IEEE GlobeCom (pp. 1-6), Abu Dhabi. doi: 10.1109/GLOCOM.2018.8647662
Gulliver, T.A., Speidel, U., Rebenich, N. (2018). A Note on Lempel-Ziv Parser Tails and Substring Lengths, International Symposium on Information Theory and Its Applications (ISITA) (pp. 550-554), Singapore, doi:10.23919/ISITA.2018.8664395
Speidel, U., Qian, L. (2018). Simulating Satellite Internet Performance on a Small Island. APAN – Research Workshop (pp. 14-21), Auckland, ISBN 978-4-9905448-8-1. (best paper award)
Liu, X., Speidel, U., Tu, W. (2018). RAODV: An Entropy-based Congestion Control for the AODV Routing Protocol, APAN – Research Workshop (pp. 27-31), Auckland, ISBN 978-4-9905448-8-1.
Speidel, U., Puchinger, S., Bossert, M. (2017). Constraints for coded tunnels across long latency bottlenecks with ARQ-based congestion control. IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, June 25 - 30, 2017 - Aachen, Germany.
Rebenich, N., Gulliver, T.A., Neville, S., Speidel, U. (2017). An analog of the prime number theorem for finite fields via truncated polylogarithm expansions. Mathematics of Computation, published electronically May 2017, https://doi.org/10.1090/mcom/3247
Speidel, U., Cocker, E., Médard, M., Vingelmann, P., Heide, J. (2017). Topologies for the Provision of Network-Coded Services via Shared Satellite Channels. In 9th International Conference on Advances in Satellite and Space Communications, SPACOMM 2017, April 23 - 27, 2017 - Venice, Italy. This paper won a best paper award.
Speidel, U., Lei Qian, Cocker, E., Vingelmann, P., Heide, J., Médard, M. (2016). Making the best of satellite links to Pacific Islands. APRICOT2016. Auckland.
Speidel, U. M. (2015). Classifying Distributions via Symbolic Entropy Estimation. In 10th International Conference on Information, Communications and Signal Processing. Singapore.
Cocker, E., Ghazzi, F., & Speidel, U. M. (2015). Quality Trend Measurement of Long-distance VoIP Communication via Estimated Mean Opinion Score. In 10th International Conference on Information, Communications and Signal Processing. Singapore.
Speidel, U. M., Qian, L., Cocker, E., Vingelmann, P., Heide, J., & Médard, M. (2015). Can network coding mitigate TCP-induced queue oscillation on narrowband satellite links?. In P. Pillai, F. Hu, I. Otung, & G. Giambene (Eds.), Wireless and Satellite Systems - 7th International Conference, WiSATS 2015, Bradford, UK, July 6-7, 2015. Revised Selected Papers (pp. 301-314). Springer International Publishing. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-25479-1
Speidel, U. M., Cocker, E., Vingelmann, P., Heide, J., & Médard, M. (2015). Can network coding bridge the digital divide in the Pacific?. In Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum 2015. Macau.
Speidel, U. M., Qian, L., Cocker, E., Vingelmann, P., Heide, J., & Médard, M. (2015). Can network coding mitigate TCP-induced queue oscillation on narrowband satellite links?. In 7th EAI International Conference on Wireless and Satellite Systems. Bradford, UK. Retrieved from http://www.psats.eu/2015/show/program-final
Speidel, U. M., Cocker, E., Vingelmann, P., Heide, J., & Médard, M. (2015). Can network coding bridge the digital divide in the Pacific? In 2015 International Symposium on Network Coding (pp. 86-90). Sydney, Australia. doi:10.1109/NETCOD.2015.7176795
Speidel, U. M., Gulliver, A., Makhdoumi, A., & Médard, M. (2014). Using T-Codes as Locally Decodable Source Codes. In U. Mitra, & E. Viterbo (Eds.), 2014 IEEE Information Theory Workshop (pp. 218-222). Hobart, Australia. doi:10.1109/ITW.2014.6970824
Speidel, U. (2014). An Extended Similarity Distance for Use with Computable Information Estimators. In 2014 INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON INFORMATION THEORY AND ITS APPLICATIONS (ISITA) (pp. 304-308). Melbourne, AUSTRALIA: IEEE. Retrieved from http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/
Manoharan, S., Master, A., & Speidel, U. (2014). Complexity-based Steganalysis. In 2014 INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON INFORMATION THEORY AND ITS APPLICATIONS (ISITA) (pp. 40-44). Melbourne, AUSTRALIA: IEEE. Retrieved from http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/
Cocker, E., Ghazzi, F., Speidel, U. M., et al. (2014). Measurement of buffer requirement trends for real time traffic over TCP. In 2014 IEEE 15th International Conference on High Performance Switching and Routing (HPSR). Vancouver. doi:10.1109/HPSR.2014.6900891
Rebenich, N., Speidel, U., Neville, S. W., & Gulliver, T. A. (2014). FLOTT - A Fast, Low Memory T-Transform Algorithm for Measuring String Complexity. IEEE Transactions on Computers, 63(4), 917-926. doi:10.1109/TC.2013.29
Cocker, E., Speidel, U. et al. (2013). Measurement of Packet Train Arrival Conditions in High Latency Networks. In B. P. Ng, C. H. Yeh, & W. D. Zhong (Eds.), Information, Communications and Signal Processing (ICICS) 2013 9th International Conference on. Tainan, Taiwan. doi:10.1109/ICICS.2013.6782947
Gulliver, T. A. & Speidel, U. (2012). On the ratio between the maximal T-complexity and the T-complexity of random strings. In 2012 INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON INFORMATION THEORY AND ITS APPLICATIONS (ISITA 2012) (pp. 498-500). Honolulu, HI: IEEE. Retrieved from http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/
Speidel, U., & Gulliver, T. A. (2012). An Analytic Upper Bound on T-Complexity. In 2012 IEEE INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON INFORMATION THEORY PROCEEDINGS (ISIT) (pp. 5 pages). Cambridge, MA: IEEE. Retrieved from http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/
Speidel, U., & Gulliver, T. A. (2012). On the Codeword Length Distribution of T-Codes. IEICE Transactions on Fundamentals of Electronics, Communications and Computer Sciences, E95.A(5), 909-917. doi:10.1587/transfun.E95.A.909
Speidel, U., Gulliver, T. A. & Shongwe, T. (2011). Multicarrier Error Correction using T-codes. In 2011 IEEE PACIFIC RIM CONFERENCE ON COMMUNICATIONS, COMPUTERS AND SIGNAL PROCESSING (PACRIM) (pp. 877-880). Univ Victoria, Victoria, CANADA: IEEE. Retrieved from http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/
Speidel, U. M., Shongwe, T., Swart, T. G. & Ferreira, H. C. (2011). The effect of hamming distances on permutation codes for multiuser communication in the power line communications channel. In IEEE AFRICON 2011. Zambia. doi:10.1109/AFRCON.2011.6072141
Speidel, U. M. (2011). A Forward-Parsing Randomness Test Based on the Expected Codeword Length of T-Codes. In 8th International Conference on Information, Communications and Signal Processing (ICICS 2011). Singapore.
Ohzeki, K., Okumura, H., Wei, Y. Y., Iwata, E., & Speidel, U. (2011). A lossless re-encoding of MPEG-2 coded file by integrating four motion vectors. International Journal of Computer Science and Applications, 8(1), 14-35. Retrieved from http://www.tmrfindia.org/ijcsa/v8i12.pdf
Ohzeki, K., Wei, Y. Y. & Speidel, U. M. (2010). Basic consideration for lossless re-encoding of MPEG coded files using V-V codes. In IADIS INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON COMPUTER GRAPHICS, VISUALIZATION, COMPUTER VISION AND IMAGE PROCESSING 2010. Freiburg, Germany.
Ohzeki, K., Wei, Y. Y., Iwata, E. & Speidel, U. M. (2010). Basic Consideration of MPEG-2 Coded File Entropy and Lossless Re-encoding. In Proceedings of the International Multiconference on Computer Science and Information Technology, IMCSIT 2010 Vol. 5 (pp. 741-748). Wisła, Poland: IEEE Computer Society.
Speidel, U. M. (2010). Cyclic Equivalence Classes and Code Synchronisation of Variable-Length Codes. In 6th Asian-European Workshop on Information Theory. Ishigaki, Japan.
Speidel, U. M., & Gulliver, T. A. (2010). A secure authentication system based on variable-length codes. In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Information Theory and its Applications 2010 (pp. 684-689). Taichung, Taiwan: IEEE Computer Society. doi:10.1109/ISITA.2010.5649672
Speidel, U. M. (2009). A Note on the Estimation of String Complexity for Short Strings. In Proceedings of the7th International Conference on Information, Communications, and Signal Processing (pp. 1-5). Macau. doi:10.1109/ICICS.2009.5397536
Speidel, U. (2008). On the bounds of the Titchener T-complexity. In E. Leitgeb, W. Kogler, & Z. Ghassemlooy (Eds.), CSNDSP 08: PROCEEDINGS OF THE SIXTH INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS, NETWORKS AND DIGITAL SIGNAL PROCESSING (pp. 321-325). Graz Univ Technol, Graz, AUSTRIA: IEEE.
Speidel, U. M., Brownlee, J. N., & Eimann, R. E. A. (2008). Entropy Techniques for Network Event Detection. Mediterranean Journal of Computers and Networks, 4(1), 20-29.
Gulliver, T. A., Makwakwa, I., & Speidel, U. M. (2008). On the Generation of Aperiodic and Periodic Necklaces via T-augmentation. Fundamenta Informaticae, 83(12), 91-107. Retrieved from http://iospress.metapress.com/content/un6283886px02555/fulltext.pdf

Teaching

I have taught: COMPSCI101, COMPSCI110, COMPSCI210, COMPSCI215, COMPSCI220, COMPSCI230, SOFTENG254, COMPSCI280, COMPSCI314, COMPSCI334 (no longer offered), COMPSCI710/SOFTENG711, COMPSCI742, covering a diverse range of topics from introductory programming to databases and software quality assurance, from theoretical computer science to hardware and advanced data communications.

I also supervise graduate students at all levels.

My PhD graduates

'Etuate Cocker (the first Tongan to earn a PhD in Computer Science)
Raimund Eimann
Yang Jia

I have also supervised a number of MSc students and other dissertations to successful completion.

Other Qualifications and Experiences

Languages: German, English, some rudimentary French and Japanese
Driver's Licence
PLC automation and computer interface technology (courses taken at the Berufsförderungszentrum Essen e.V. during 1987).
Amateur Radio Licence (DL1NDB, ZL1DDL), radio communications, especially digital.
German Restricted Aeronautical Radiotelephone Operator's Certificate BZF II.

Hobbies and Interests

Electronics
Solar energy
Puppy raising prospective guide dogs for the Blind Foundation.
Bushwalking
Cartography
Movies and Music
Travel