Welcome to cybershields.com, the cyberspace home page of Ian Shields.
I am a senior programmer
working with Linux developer outreach for IBM
developerWorks
in Research
Triangle Park, North Carolina. I write how-to
articles for developerWorks and
moderate a Linux
tech support forum, among other
things.
After nine years of part-time work, I completed a Ph.D. at North Carolina State University (NCSU) in the Computer Science Department in 2004. Although I had been determined to finish before any of my children graduated from college, an accident of timing allowed my daughter to graduate six days before me. My undergraduate studies were in Mathematics and Philosophy at the Australian National University back when Mathematics was part of the Arts faculty. I completed an M.S. in Computer Science at NCSU in 1995. My research interests are in combinatorics and graph theory, particularly Hamilton paths and cycles. Using a personal computer we have been able to find Hamilton cycles in graphs with over 125 million vertices and in graphs with over 80 billion edges. These interests give rise to my Erdös Number of 2.
![[Polk St in the snow - click for larger JPEG version]](snow/snow002a.jpg)
I live in the Historic Oakwood section of Raleigh, just north-east
of the downtown area. It is a couple of miles to NCSU and about 18
miles to work at RTP. The climate in Raleigh, is mostly warm, but we do
get snow
sometimes as this picture of our street in the big snow of January 2000
shows. With about 21 inches of snow in the area, this was the largest
snowfall here in almost 100 years. Schools were closed for over a week
and many businesses
were closed for several days. Click here
or the
picture to see a larger version.
Outside work, I'm active in the scouting movement with Troop 346, and several neighborhood projects with the Society for the Preservation of Historic Oakwood. I like photography, classical music, and finding bargains in computer stuff. We are fortunate to have a 24 hour classical radio station, WCPE, in the area. Don't despair if you're not in the area, as WCPE also broadcasts over the Internet and satellite.
An update on the middle levels problem;
Ian Shields,
Brendan J. Shields, and
Carla D. Savage;
Submitted.
Hamilton Cycle Heuristics in Hard Graphs;
Ian Shields;
Ph.D dissertation, NCSU, 2004.
A Note on Hamilton Cycles in Kneser Graphs;
I. Shields and C.D.
Savage;
Bulletin of the ICA, Vol. 40(2004) 13-22.
On the existence of Hamiltonian paths in the Cover Graph of M(n);
C.D.
Savage, I. Shields, and D.B.
West;
Discrete Mathematics, Vol. 262, Nos. 1-3 (2003) 241-252.
Emulator Express: A system for optimizing emulator
performance for wireless networks;
B. C. Housel and I. Shields;
IBM
Systems Journal Vol. 39 No. 2, 2000 pp. 384-402
A Hamilton Path Heuristic with Applications to
the Middle Two Levels Problem;
Ian Shields and
Carla
D. Savage;
Congressus Numerantium, 140 (1999), pp.161-178.
Accelerating telnet performance in wireless networks;
Barron Housel and Ian Shields;
Proceedings of the ACM International Workshop on Data Engineering for
Wireless and Mobile Access, 1999, Pages 69 - 76
Contact
me.