Enhancing Undergraduate Curricula with High
Performance Computing Tools and Technologies
Introduction to the Education Center on Computational Science &
Engineering
A Summary with Special Focus on Social Sciences Applications
Presented at the Blalock Lecture Series on Advanced Topics
in Social Research
ICPSR Summer Program
Ann Arbor, Michigan, July 7, 1998
Ilya Zaslavsky, GIS Staff Scientist
Outline
- NPACI Overview, NPACI and NCSA
- Examples of SDSC and NPACI projects
- The Ed Center model and activities
- More information
National Science Foundation's Division of Advanced Scientific Computing
made five year awards supporting two High Performance Computing (HPC) partnerships led by
the San Diego Supercomputer Center (www.npaci.edu)
and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois (alliance.ncsa.uiuc.edu), to
build the national infrastructure in HPC through partnerships.
The Ed Center opened on the
SDSU campus October 10, 1997. It has three staff members: Kris Stewart, Director; Ilya
Zaslavsky, GIS Staff Scientist; and Dolores Candelario, Assistant to the Director. At this
time, we also employ 4 student assistants: Xiangwei Li,
Phil Deacon, Jason
Tate and Ivan Bajic.
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1. Overview of the
National Partnership for Advanced Computing Infrastructure
NPACI is an association of 39 universities and research
centers from 18 states, with SDSC as the leading edge site. The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC)
conducts and supports activities in computational science, a third fundamental
method for conducting scientific research (in addition to laboratory experimentation and
theoretical investigation). Computational Science is defined as using computers (in this
context, high performance computers) and related computing technologies (such as
applications software, high speed networking, scientific visualization technologies, and
large data storage systems) to visualize, analyze, and simulate natural and social
phenomena.
Application Thrust Areas of NPACI include
Technology Thrust Areas of NPACI include
AND Education,
Outreach and Training
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2. Some examples of past
and current projects of SDSC and NPACI:
- Alexandria
Digital Library A distributed digital library
for geographically-referenced information, being developed at UC Santa Barbara and
mirrored at SDSC. Focus on providing information retrieval based on geographic location
and proximity.
- ELib (UC
Berkeley Digital Library) Also, part of the NSF/DARPA/NASA Digital
Library Initiative and the
California Environment Resource Evaluation System (CERES) with the goal "to develop the technologies for intelligent
access to massive distributed collections of photographs, satellite images, maps, full
text documents and 'multivalent' documents." Focus on
environmental documents of various kinds. Mirrored at SDSC
- University of Michigan Digital
Library "In UMDL, we are embracing the
open, evolving, decentralized advantages of the web and introducing computational
mechanisms to temper its inherent chaos. However, we are also embracing the traditional
values of service, organization and access that have made libraries powerful intellectual
institutions." Focus on storing information from scientific journals, periodicals,
etc. Mirrored at SDSC starting June 1998.
There are three other Universities working on Digital Libraries, as part of
NSF/DARPA/NASA project: Stanford University (the InfoBus
project, focus on interoperability of digital libraries), Carnegie
Melon University
(the InforMedia Digital Video Library),
and University of Illinois (The Interspace
Digital Library Infrastructure)
Collaboration between SDSC and Shoah Foundation, in Digital Assest Management and
Distribution Technology for Recorded Visual History.
This project followed a talk by Sam Gustman, director of technology for
Survivors of the
<Shoah> Visual History
Foundation (founded by Steven Spielberg.) A part of the VHF's
project is digital recording of
testimonies of 50,000 of
the nearly 300,000 survivors of the Holocaust.
On-line digital resources for social sciences: ICPSR Archive, on-line
access to GSS data (in Ann Arbor,
Berkeley, San Diego) A collection of sociology
data archives is available at Princeton
Interaction Environments
- Work on Interaction
Infrastructure (II) - two software frameworks to enable (1) network access to
distributed services, and (2) consistent user interfaces for distributed services
- Specialized collaborative environments, such as MICE (Molecular Interactive Collaboration
Environment), Biology
Workbench (developed at NCSA), MPIRE (Massively Parallel
Interactive Rendering Environment - see a quicktime movie example of MPIRE, and a gallery)
- General-purpose Web-based collaboration: Tango (from NPAC, Syracuse University), Habanero (from NCSA), and
similar (like DistView from University of Michigan): Java-based frameworks
for synchronous and asynchronous collaboration
Visualization in social sciences
- US
Economic History, a 3D visualization: A simulation of main
economic indicators, in 3D coordinates (boom, stagflation, depression), to convey the
extreme fluctuations during the first half of the century and the stability of the economy
since World War II. Developed by Bernard Pailthorpe, Sydney Vislab/SDSC, and Richard
Carson, University of California, San Diego/SDSC.
- Telemanufacturing facility, a way
to provide automated rapid prototyping (RP) capability on the Internet. Also, 3D languages
for the Web (Java3D, VRML) gain
popularity. Examples of
VRML in social sciences will be below.
Resource repositories, and GIS
- San
Diego Bay Project: A
collection of databases, resources, models, software, and literature, related to San
Diego Bay, water quality issues in particular. The databases are searchable, some models
can be run on-line, their results are visualized on maps and in VRML. More information and
links related to the project are accessible from the National Center for Ecological
Analysis and Synthesis page at SDSC. LiveNet San Diego CAM is here
- Biodiversity
Insight System (BIS):
This system for analysis and visualisation (and mapping) of
biodiversity data is being
developed by the University of Kansas and the San Diego Supercomputer
Center
- EarthRise:
This is an online collection of over 100,000 of photographic images of different parts of
the Earth taken by astronauts during the Space Shuttle flights in the
last 15 years.
We 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.
Regular reviews of NPACI and SDSC research and resources are published online at NPACI Online and enVision (formerly Gather/Scatter).
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3. The
Ed Center model and activities.
The task is to incorporate all this wonderful
research, and the novel research tools and technologies, into university teaching.
There are several challenges on this route. We
identified at least ten such “Grand Challenges”, of
pedagogical, psychological, organizational, and technical
origins.
Curriculum development in
high-performance computing and networking
Sample curricula developed in house based on Stewart/Zaslavsky teaching
responsibilities:
- High Performance Computing CS 575
Supercomputing, upper division, undergraduate course at SDSU, emphasis: evaluating
performance (accuracy and work), validating computed results, responsible computer use,
group-work on computational experiments
- Bridging Environments, CS 205
Computational Problem Solving and Visualization, sophomore level at SDSU, emphasis: first
programming language C within MATLAB environment, cross-platform visualization (Mac, PC,
Unix), taught in a hands-on Xterminal (UNIX) Lab.
- Learners' Problem Solving
Skills, Bottom-Up Design of Computational Experiments
- Group-based work on
Responsible Computer Use, a Case Study
Distance education experiments
- The "Virtual Professor" project:
Distance
Teaching in computationally intensive geography courses. A collection of materials (related papers, presentations, comparison of
web-based collaborative environments) is available on-line. The two experimental classes
(GIS, and spatial analysis) were taught by instructor at the Ed
Center, SDSU, to geography students at Western Michigan University.
- Testbed for distance learning collaboratory techniques [Tango, NetMeeting, Habanero,
SciViz] We installed and compared several Web collaborative tools, results
of comparison and other workshop materials are available on-line
Examples of other projects
at the Ed Center:
- Prototype Web-based analysis in sociology
We are experimenting with new ways of on-line analysis of
social data, similar to examination of rules as implemented in Determinacy analysis. This is a new
approach to extracting rules from matrices of qualitative data, and
examining them in
various contexts.
- VRML and JAVA resources for scientists
and engineers
Our growing repository of VRML scenes and Java applets
arranged by disciplines, is available at http://www.edcenter.sdsu.edu/repository/
- GIS in social research
There are numerous examples of how GIS can be used in social science research and
instruction. It is easier than ever to put your results on maps, and even
examine spatial relationships numerically. Here are just a few examples of our activities:
another example: simulation
modeling of metropolitan areas (time
permitting...)
- Collaboration with IATH
Institute for
Advance Technology in the Humanities (IATH), University of Virginia, is our partner
with extensive experience in developing research and instructional materials at the
intersection of humanities and high-performance computing. Here are some examples of what they do.
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More information:
Dr. Kris Stewart (stewart@sdsu.edu), Director
Dr. Ilya Zaslavsky (zaslavsk@rohan.sdsu.edu), GIS Staff Scientist
Education Center on Computational Science & Engineering
San Diego State University, Love Library Addition, Rm 73
www.edcenter.sdsu.edu
Phone: 619-594-0491