ICEX Program featured in Think Magazine

The ICEX Program is featured in the new issue of Think Magazine. Think is the new quarterly research magazine that opens a window to the University of Malta. It tells the stories of students, alumni, researchers, and professors. Read the article at:

"Maps, Bots, and a Neolithic Site: The Underwater World Beneath Tas Silg" (pp. 40-46)

http://issuu.com/thinkuni/docs/think02

Back Home! (and missing Malta...)

We are all safe at home and missing Malta. I hope everyone enjoyed the trip, and I want to thank you all for working so hard these last few weeks. My appreciation for our Maltese hosts cannot be overstated. The time, effort and dedication that they committed to this project are the critical pieces to our success.

I am still amazed at the type of learning and success achieved. As a team we collect data in the field (sometimes literally a field, other times in castle tunnels...), we manage the data, we develop algorithms to process the data, and we use these algorithms to produce archeological maps (all before the day's end). As usual, the students have impressed me with their ability to do this in a foreign setting. Lets hope we get lucky again next year...

Thanks again!

Ciao Ciao!

Thank you everyone for the unforgettable experience that was ICEX 2012. While I am happy to have a plentiful supply of water and a reliable internet connection back at Princeton, I still deeply miss Malta and the trip in general. Although I was only there for a little over a week, I had a great time getting to know all of the Cal Poly students as well as working with them and our friends in Malta. Above all, this trip has shown me how interdisciplinary and collaborative computer science can be. Having the opportunity to work with archaeologists and scientists on another continent was not something I thought I would get to experience while in college. It was also nice to be able to do some sightseeing in addition to working all day and all night. Malta is a beautiful country and I was lucky enough to have had my first visit to Europe include this island. Thank you to Prof. Clark as well as Profs. Lehr and Wood and Dr. Gambin for making this trip possible!

Goodbye Everyone

As Austin and Anna have already said, I also really enjoyed the trip to Malta and am very thankful for this unique opportunity to not only travel to a different country and learn about their culture and history as well as collaborating with all the students and professors from Cal Poly. Even though we came late, the Cal Poly students helped us become comfortable in this new environment quickly and answered any questions we had.

Even though I appreciate the comfort of my own room, I really do miss working with everyone in Malta (coding at night, taking data and doing outreach during the day, and playing cards on those rare nights people unglued themselves from their computer screens). The most important things I learned was how to adapt to unexpected problems in the field and to persevere no matter what. There were many examples where we had to improvise, like when we could not get into a site in Mdina or when it seemed like we would not be able to find the shipwreck, but we tried new things and eventually worked through it.

This trip was stressful at times, but also strangely relaxing, not having to worry about other classes or meetings or having to answer a hundred emails a day. It's too bad we couldn't stay for longer and get to know Jane and Zoey better! Thanks for sharing with us your experiences and I hope to see some of you guys again in the future!

Goodbye, and thanks for all the fish!

After a long week, I managed to survive the long flight home (though I'm sure the Cal Poly students had it much worse), and I'm now back home in Princeton. I had a blast in Malta; I saw great sights, had great food, got a lot of good data, and made some good friends.

I'm going to miss a lot of things about Malta: better soda, the metric system, and living next to the beach. However, I think the thing I will miss most is being able to experience a different culture first hand. You only get a few opportunities to talk with people who have a very different background and perspective on the world, and I really enjoyed it this time.

I also really loved getting to know all the Cal Poly students; they were a ton of fun to work with. I wish them all the best of luck with your research projects and in everything you do.

Goodbye, and thanks for a great trip!

Computer Science and Information Technology in Malta Part 2

I was lucky enough to have the chance to interview Dr. Matthew Montebello, a professor in the Information and Communication Technology Department at the University of Malta. He was an invaluable resource for my project. Here is some of the information I learned from him and other resources.

One could argue that the status of Computer Science and Information Technology in Malta all starts with education. The University of Malta offers a three year full time Bachelor's Degree, a five year part time Bachelor's Degree and a two year Master's Degree. The Master's Degree can either be awarded based on research or teaching[2]. For a Ph. D., Dr. Montebello said that it is more customary for students to travel abroad but recently the University of Malta has started offering some Ph. D.'s in the fields of Computer Science and Information Technology[3].

I asked him about the change in the number of students in the department. He replied that the number of students have increased over the past 10 years but just very recently has plateaued and started to decline[3]. When questioned as to the cause of this phenomena he believed that the number of students has reached its maximum for the country[3]. I also asked him about the number of women students in the department and he estimated it to be less than 10%[3].

He also told me that since Malta is such a small country, much of the faculty have contacts in industry. This allows the them to arrange job placement within industry for many of the students. Industry is itself so important to the Information and Communication Technology Department of the University of Malta that they have their own committee dedicated to it[3].

We then started to discuss the industry itself. He told me that there is a massive demand for developers especially in testing and Information Technology consulting[3]. He also mentioned that casino style gaming is one heavily present part of industry in Malta[3].

It turns out that Information and Communication Technology isn't just important to the university but also to the Maltese government. They even have a Ministry for Investment, Industry and Information Technology[1]. Dr. Montebello even told me that the Maltese Government have made a push for international companies to come to Malta with laws exempting these companies from taxation upon for building a branch in Malta[3].

From my research I believe that I can conclude that Computer Science and Information Technology has been and will be a significant industry in Malta as seen by the advantages of the few resources needed, the investment in research in both the public and private sectors, the status of education and the role the government is taking in the industry.

Works Sited

[1]"Department of Information." Department of Information. Web. 26 Mar. 2012. .

[2] "Faculty of ICT - Faculty of ICT - University of Malta." University of Malta. Web. 26 Mar. 2012. <http://www.um.edu.mt/ict/>.

[3] "Interview with Dr. Matthew Montebello." Personal interview. 23 Mar. 2012

Continuing the Water Battle

In Dr. Gordon Knox’s article “Water – A Crisis?” published in October 2008, 2.5% of Earth’s surface water is in the form of freshwater, the rest is considered salt water. Of the 2.5%, 68.9% is locked in ice, 30.8% is groundwater and 0.3% is in lakes and rivers spread across the world. A very small amount of freshwater is available for the world, and we are running out.

The last few days in Malta were jam packed with information about Malta's position and future concerning water and the limited amount within the boundaries of the tiny country. The Malta Water Association is focusing on spreading the awareness about the critical condition that Malta is in. I was able to meet with 4 of the about 15 members of the Malta Water Association (MWA) and discuss their opinions.

In an interview, Mr. Julian Mamo, Water Engineer and Member of the MWA, described the decrease in knowledge about water scarcity. He described how his grandparents were very aware of the water levels, because they were required to use the rivers and cisterns spread throughout the island. When the three reverse osmosis plants that currently run were built, however, many people stopped worrying about water. Where as before you had to walk down to the local cistern or river, now all that needed to be done was turn the faucet on. Water became more accessible, more easily attainable, and therefore less of a concern.

According to the members of the MWA, Malta's freshwater aquifers will not last, with it even being predicted that it's end will be during our lifetime. There are two freshwater aquifers in Malta, the Perched and the Mean Sea Level. The Perched Aquifer sits above Malta's Blue Clay layer and the Mean Sea Level lies just under the island, above the very salty, very dense sea water of the Mediterranean and under the Lower Coralline Limestone layer.

In the recent past and today, the freshwater aquifers are being depleted faster than they can be replenished by rainwater, due to numerous boreholes that have been drilled through the layers of rock and clay and pump up unknown amounts of water daily. There are about 8,000 registered boreholes, with thousands of other unregistered, and unwatched. One would think that the solution, then, is simple; register all the boreholes and use technology to watch the amounts of water that are being pumped up through them. However, questions arise on how to do this. How would you find every unregistered borehole? Could you make people register something they don’t claim to have? How much money would have to go into a project like this to see a successful completion? The answer: a lot. Short of visiting every home in Malta, there is no for sure way to record how many boreholes there are or whether or not people have them.

According to “Water – A Crisis?” in 2007, the measured ground water that was being extracted through registered boreholes was about 13.4 million cubic meters per year. Estimating for the unregistered boreholes, add 16 million cubic meters and there is a grand total of about 29.4 million cubic meters per year being pumped up from the freshwater aquifers.

Another threat to the aquifers is contamination. The Perched Aquifer sits just below many farms and fields, and with the increasing use of pesticides and chemicals for growing crops is in danger of being contaminated. The chemicals used for plants and fertilizers seep down through the rock layers and into the Perched Aquifer, and as Dr. Gordon Knox stated during an interview, once an aquifer is contaminated, there is nothing you can do to clean it there. You would need to pump up the water and clean it through a plant, taking millions of dollars and a lot of time.

The Mean Sea Level Aquifer is also in danger of being contaminated, but by multiple factors. The first factor is the same as the Perched Aquifer, chemicals from fertilizers and pesticides. In the same way that the chemicals seep through to get to the Perched Aquifer, the Mean Sea Level Aquifer has chemicals dripping into it through the rock layers above. It has been estimated that it can take up to 40 years for the farming chemicals to filter through the rock layers and into the aquifers, which means that the chemicals that are reaching the aquifers now, are from the 1970s. Usage of chemicals and pesticides has only increased since that time, which would implicate that there are many more chemicals dripping through the rock and will infiltrate the aquifer in the near future.

As if this wasn’t concerning enough, another factor that plays a large role in the contamination of the Mean Sea Level Aquifer is the sea itself. The freshwater that sits above the dense, salty seawater is a lens, protected by the bottommost rock layer. Currently only the edges of the freshwater lens gets contaminated by the salt water, however as the freshwater is depleted, more and more freshwater is mixed with salt water, making the aquifer less and less usable for the Maltese without first going through the reverse osmosis plants, taking time and money.

There are numerous other opinions and questions that arise when discussing the Malta water situation. However, one detail has come up time and time again, something must be done. The MWA specifically is trying to spread awareness about the increasingly concerning situation. The educational system has also begun to put effort into changing this lack of awareness, by adding a new chapter to the teaching curriculum and teaching young children about water and Malta. Thus the process has begun, but its not enough. For people to simply be aware isn’t enough to solve the problem, action must be taken and taken quickly.

The future of Malta at this moment is cloudy. There is no way to confidently predict what will happen when. So whether Malta will be able to begin saving its aquifers and using its own water or whether the reverse osmosis plants will be run at full power and glass bottles of water will be continually shipped from Italy, is uncertain. At the rate that Malta is going, it seems that rescued aquifers are a long shot and the reverse osmosis plants will need to increase production to serve the islands of Malta.