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Two Computer
Scientists Who Follow the Roads Less Traveled
By Dorothy Wright
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Rebecca
Mercuri
Photo: Peter Olson
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The roads less traveled are
the ones that beckon two new tenure-track assistant
professors in computer science at Bryn Mawr: Rebecca
Mercuri and Douglas S. Blank.
Rebecca Mercuri became interested
in the esoteric field of electronic voting in
the late 1980s, when she was a committeewoman
in Bucks County, Pa. "The county commissioners
in Doylestown were considering purchasing voting
machines," she recalls. "Researching
the technology, I got to know a lot of the people
involved in computer security, including the noted
risk expert Peter Neumann, and I became convinced
I didn’t want electronic voting machines
for our area."
Only weeks before the 2000
presidential election became ensnared in controversy
over recounts in Florida, Mercuri had defended
her doctoral dissertation, "Electronic Voting
Machine Checks & Balances" at the University
of Pennsylvania’s School of Engineering.
As one of a handful of experts on the subject,
she was sought after for her views.
Cited in numerous publications
from the Wall Street Journal to the Los
Angeles Times, Mercuri’s opposition to
exclusively electronic voting methods is now well
known. "People can program a computer to
do pretty much anything," she says. "But
while we can ascertain that a computer may be
doing something correctly, we can’t say it
is not doing something undesirable. If we could,
then we would be able to eradicate viruses."
To prove the point to her
Bryn Mawr students, last spring Mercuri had a
class create bogus voting machines, which looked
as if they were accepting votes as intended by
the citizens but tallied them inaccurately.
The Need
for a Paper Trail
Mercuri is particularly concerned
about Internet voting. "The Internet in its
present configuration is a very dangerous way
of running elections because anyone can tamper
with it," she asserts. "We really need
a paper trail to confirm an electronic vote. Otherwise
we have no checks and balances."
Recently Mercuri testified
before the House Science Committee on voting system
standards and consulted for the General Accounting
Office on Internet voting. She is writing detailed
comments on a proposed new standard of the Federal
Election Commission.
A self-described eclectic,
Mercuri earned two bachelor’s degrees, one
in classical guitar from the Philadelphia College
of the Performing Arts (now the University of
the Arts) and one in computer science at Pennsylvania
State University. At Princeton’s David Sarnoff
Research Center in the 1980s, she was among the
few people working in the area of interactive
video. And, as owner and senior staff consultant
of Notable Software, she worked with Immaculata
College to pioneer multimedia software for application
in arts therapy. "I guess I’m always
looking at the next latest, greatest," she
says.
At Bryn Mawr, Mercuri serves
as acting chair of computer science while Chair
Deepak Kumar is on sabbatical. She is teaching
an introduction to computer science section and
a course in data structures, and she hopes to
offer an upper-level course in digital multimedia.
She’ll also work with three undergraduates
to research common Java programming errors.
A champion of women in math
and computer science, Mercuri is excited about
teaching at Bryn Mawr. "Helping women prepare
for what has become the career of the century
is very important to me," she says. "It’s
great to have the opportunity to do it at Bryn
Mawr."
A Different
Take on AI
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Douglas
S. Blank
Photo: Paola Tagliamonte
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Like many students of his
generation, Doug Blank was inspired to become
a computer scientist by Gödel, Escher
and Bach, the 1980 Pulitzer prize-winning
book by Douglas R. Hofstadter, which explored
the human mind and the development of artificial
intelligence.
With a bachelor’s degree
in anthropology from Indiana University and an
interest in the problem-solving mechanism of evolution,
Blank had intended to do graduate work in anthropology.
"Then I read Hofstadter’s book about
what it means to be a person and what it would
take for a computer to duplicate those attributes,"
he recalls.
Returning to Indiana University,
Blank earned a second bachelor’s degree in
computer science and a joint doctoral degree in
computer science and cognitive science, a relatively
new field that comprises psychology, philosophy
and computer science. "It’s a fascinating
area," he observes.
Blank is one of the few computer
scientists who have remained solidly in Hofstadter’s
camp. "Hostadter believes the ability to
perceive analogy is at the core of intelligence.
A lot of people try to do an AI project concentrating
on only one aspect of the problem, but Hofstadter
would say you must incorporate all aspects of
intelligence. I’ve taken that to heart."
Intelligence
as Emergent
Learning is as important to
intelligence as the perception of analogy, Blank
believes. "I am working on a lot of the same
practical problems as other people in AI, but
I am doing them in a very different way, using
evolutionary techniques and neural metaphors,"
he says. "I’d like to do the whole enchilada
— to create an intelligent system or robot
— and that’s going to take a long time."
Blank says his basic philosophy
also differs from others in his field. "I
don’t believe we will be able to program
these systems at all," he says. "Consequently,
we won’t understand the fundamental way in
which they work. That is, there won’t be
a way to abstract what they do or to develop a
model for intelligence. Intelligence simply would
be emergent — it would just ‘be.’
I think that’s true for the human brain as
well."
In addition to sharing Kumar’s
duties with Mercuri, Blank will teach introductory
computer science and Bryn Mawr’s first cognitive
science course.
Blank is optimistic about
women’s potential in the traditionally male-dominated
field of computer science. "As an all-women’s
college, Bryn Mawr offers an opportunity to help
women find their ‘spot’ in computer
science," he says. "I really believe
this is going to be a great program."
About the Author
Dorothy Wright contributes
news and feature articles on science, technology,
engineering and general interest topics to a variety
of publications, including Civil Engineering,
Engineering News Record and Bryn Mawr
Now.
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