Introduction to the Education Center on Computational Science & Engineering

National Science Foundation's Division of Advanced Scientific Computing made five year awards supporting two High Performance Computing (HPC) Centers in San Diego ( www.npaci.edu) and Champaign-Urbana (alliance.ncsa.uiuc.edu ), to build the national infrastructure in HPC through partnerships. NSF also supports two HPC Centers in Pittsburgh and Cornell as they "ramp down" their service to the national community and transition their users, as appropriate, to San Diego and/or Champaign-Urbana.

A Brief Introduction - for follow on discussion

Kris Stewart

What is the mission of the EC/CSE?

Foster the incorporation of high performance research tools for scientific investigation into the undergraduate curriculum to better prepare learners for post-Baccalaureate activities where

• collaborative, interdisciplinary teams,
• sophisticated computer tools and
• effective communication among the team members and with others

are used in research and problem solving.

SDSU Activities - Spring Semester 1998

• Interdisciplinary Masters Degree in Computational Science (Dr. Steve Day on the committee)
• CS 575 Supercomputing for the Sciences - Do you have projects?
• CS 205 Computational Programming and Visualization

Overview of NPACI

Ilya and I will travel to San Jose next week to attend SC97: High Performance Networking and Computing (Supercomputing '97) and we'd like to know your interests and needs better since many NPACI partners will also be there.

SDSC Gather Scatter www.sdsc.edu/GatherScatter online signup form to get bi-monthly hard copy

• U. Texas/Austin - Oil Reservoir Simulation - Hydrology interests?
• U. Texas/Austin - Earth Structure Tomograpy - Earthquake application?
• UCLA - Hydrodynamic models of Monterey Bay, San Diego Bay

Large Data Sets

MOU between SDSC and SDSU (with Eric Frost) for data archiving - just need fast network now (vBNS?) 

Ilya Zaslavsky

GIS Workshops (Michigan GIS Institute, Western Michigan University)
• learning materials, training databases, the workshop CD ROM
• the focus is not on mechanics, but on principles of GIS, with ArcView (including Spatial and Network Analyst extensions) and PC Arc/Info as illustrations, and a survey of web-based GIS. SDSU has a site license for ArcView and Arc/Info (on NT and UNIX platforms)
 
Distance Learning from the Desktop
• During Fall'97 Ilya Zaslavsky is teaching two senior-level geography classes at WMU, using desktop videoconferencing and Web-based discussions. The two classes are Geographic Information Systems, and Computerized Geodata Handling and Mapping. Both classes are computer and data-intensive.
• All communication in the two classes is channeled through computer. The additional hardware/software is inexpensive and replicable.
• Some preliminary results (with the class log for first half of the semester, and discussion of the used interaction techniques and problems) is here (presentation to East Lakes Division of AAG, East Lansing, October 18, 1997)
• live demo: link to Michigan (141.218.61.132, 139), and to the Ed.Center machine (130.191.18.203).
• within-campus connections should be less problematic (the setup can be used for office hours, students can call the instructor's machine from residence halls, etc.)

        also: experiments with VRML, query interfaces, etc.

How can the faculty become involved?

The Education Center staff (myself, Dr. Ilya Zaslavsky and Ms. Dolores Candelario) have prepared descriptions of the opportunities that SDSC and the NPACI offer to the nation, with a focus on identifying opportunities to enhance undergraduate education.

Computer Time at SDSC

Computer time is available from SDSC from the remaining Block Grant of time on the Cray C90 (vector supercomputer) and Cray T3E (parallel supercomputer). This can be obtained by submitting a short application ( www.rohan.sdsu.edu/0520Cray.pdf) designed for start-up, investigations (typically 5 hours of Cray C90 time). October 1 signaled the start of NPACI and no new time will be allocated to the SDSU Block Grant. NPACI Resources are allocated quarterly. Education applications are essentially a slam dunk and research applications are peer-review. A first time, 50 hour allocation, can be obtained through the expedited review process, submitted anytime.

Examples of collaborations already formed:

EC/CSE is client in ET 644 Instructional Design course (Roxanna & Lance)

National Endowment for the Humanities proposal with Dr. Bob Hoffman (Ed Tech)

Using the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) to simulate the California mission so that 4th grade students can become dosens of the mission and conduct virtual tours. This provides a context and motivation for one of the required curricular topics in California Primiary Schools and uses VRML. SDSC hosts the national repository for VRML.

vBNS proposal participatation by SDSU within the CSU

CS 575 Supercomputing for the Sciences

Using Cray T90, Cray T3E, Berkeley NOW, Dec Alpha Farm from NPACI. This course will be taught as a group ware experiment to not only introduce students to the tools and technologies at SDSC, but also to how science is done now in collaborative teams. If you have small projects that you can share for use in this course, this will make a more realistic experience for our students. I do ask the projects be small, since we are focussing on learning how to effectively use high performance computers, at the undergraduate level.

Integrated, Experimental Curriculum Committee (SDSU campus)

Supercomputer Teacher Enhancement Program (STEP)

Begun with NSF funding to UCSD Extension in 1992, the participants are now sponsored by the EC/CSE for continued access to the SDSC for follow-on work through SWAPS and California Science Program.

Maryland Virtual Highschool in Science & Mathematics

Dr. Kris Stewart (stewart@sdsu.edu), Director of the 
Education Center on Computational Science & Engineering, located at
San Diego State University a Partnership Activity of the 
National Partnership for Advanced Computing Infrastructure (NPACI) for the 
California State University using resources from the NPACI partnership and its Leading Edge Site, the 
San Diego Supercomputer Center