Overview of NPACI: Association of 37 universities and research centers from 18 states, with SDSC as the leading edge site.

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.

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.

Established SDSC-SDSU cooperative activities

• MOU between SDSC and SDSU (with Eric Frost) for archiving large data sets - just need fast network now (vBNS?)
• Computer Time at SDSC: Computer time is available from the remaining SDSU Block Grant of time on the Cray T90 (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 (maximum 5 hours of Cray T90 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-reviewed. A first time, 50 hour allocation, can be obtained through the expedited review process, submitted anytime.

Examples of collaborations already formed by EC/CSE

• vBNS proposal participatation by SDSU within the CSU (currently under negotiation)
• NSF proposal by Doug Deutschman, on chaparral ecosystem simulation modeling and visualization with the SORTIE-like model (with interfaces tuned to student exploration, in particular) - involves EC/CSE (January 1998)
• Industrial partnership with Mathworks (MATLAB, which now has MapTools) (November 1997)
• National Endowment for the Humanities proposal with Dr. Bob Hoffman (Ed Tech) on using VRML to simulate the California mission so that 4th grade students can become docents of the mission and conduct virtual tours. (October 1997)
• EC/CSE was client in ET 644 Instructional Design course (Roxanna Springer & Lance Larson) (Fall 1997)
• NSF CAREER proposal by Janet Bowers on developmental research in technology-enhanced classrooms to support the devlopment of individual and collective conceptions of algebra and geometry (July 1997)
• Collaboratory use of GIS over the Internet in instruction (together with NPAC - Syracuse, Dr. Geoffrey Fox), and the experiment in distance teaching of GIS and spatial analysis over the Web (EC/CSE, SDSU  to Geography, WMU, on-going)
 

The suggested mechanism of collaboration with CSU and SDSU faculty

• The Education Center staff (Dr. Kris Stewart, 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 (accessible from Ed. Center web pages)
• many SDSC and NPACI (and NCSA) resources are related to biology:
• Telemicroscopy: Web-based collaboration in visualizing 3D cellular structures with a 400,000-volt electron microscope
• Biology Workbench (NCSA) and MICE (SDSC): Web-based biology collaboratories
• the Protein Kinase Resource
• Nucleic Acid Database (all known DNA structures, and more)
• Finding 3-D Similarities in protein structures with the Conformational Likeness (CL) method
• MEME: a tool for discovering motifs (repeatedly occurring sequence patterns) in a group of related DNA or protein sequences.
• NBCR: The National Biomedical Computation Resource (collection of resources for molecular modeling)
• regular reviews of NPACI and SDSC research and resources are published online at NPACI Online and enVision (formerly Gather/Scatter)
• look up the Gather/Scatter issue devoted to biological research

 
• The NPACI "all-hands" meeting (early January'98)  brought together all NPACI partners, to identify collaborations between institutions in both research and outreach activities, in particular focused on molecular biology, neurosciences, collaborative environments, etc. Next meeting of the National EOT (focused heavily on biology-related collaboratories) is February 19-21. The next joint NPACI-NCSA  Education Workshop will occur in late Spring'98.
• We would need input from you on your interests to allow us to research the possible tools, technologies and projects from the NPACI and SDSC that are most likely to fit into your undergraduate curricula. The presentations and workshops can be followed by individual collaboration with faculty on selected projects related to undergraduate teaching. Graduate and undergraduate student assistants are available to help faculty and their instructional support staff with educational projects related to high-performance computing in the undergraduate curriculum.

What can the EC/CSE do for you?