The PageRank Problem in Google: A Systems and Control Viewpoint

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Event details

Date 02.10.2015
Hour 10:1511:15
Speaker Roberto Tempo
Location
Category Conferences - Seminars
In this lecture, we study the PageRank problem and illustrate it using the Google search engine as a paradigmatic example. To this end, we introduce PageRank by means of the so-called random surfer model and the teleportation matrix.  Subsequently, we present new distributed randomized algorithms (of Las Vegas type) for its efficient computation and we show the main properties of these algorithms utilizing results of the theory of positive matrices and Markov Chains. Finally, we discuss how these ideas can be extended to different problems of interest to the systems and control community, including ranking of scientific journals, aggregation techniques and consensus of multi-agent systems.

Bio: Roberto Tempo  is currently a Director of Research of Systems and Computer Engineering at CNR-IEIIT, Politecnico di Torino, Italy. He has held visiting positions at Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, Kyoto University, The University of Tokyo, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, German Aerospace Research Organization in Oberpfaffenhofen and Columbia University in New York. His research activities are focused on the analysis and design of complex systems with uncertainty, and various applications within information technology. On these topics, he has published more than 200 research papers in international journals, books and conferences. He is also a co-author of the book Randomized Algorithms for Analysis and Control of Uncertain Systems, with Applications, Springer-Verlag, London, published in two editions in 2005 and 2013.

Dr. Tempo is a Fellow of the IEEE and a Fellow of the IFAC. He is a recipient of the IFAC Outstanding Paper Prize Award for a paper published in Automatica and of the Distinguished Member Award from the IEEE Control Systems Society. He is a Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences, Institute of Bologna, Italy, Class Engineering Sciences.

In 2010 Dr. Tempo was President of the IEEE Control Systems Society. He is currently serving as Editor-in-Chief of Automatica. He has been Editor for Technical Notes and Correspondence of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control in 2005-2009 and a Senior Editor of the same journal in 2011-2014. He is a member of the Advisory Board of Systems & Control: Foundations & Applications, Birkhauser. He was General Co-Chair for the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, Florence, Italy, 2013 and Program Chair of the first joint IEEE Conference on Decision and Control and  European Control Conference, Seville, Spain, 2005.