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.

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 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 (maximum 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-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

• EC/CSE is client in ET 644 Instructional Design course (Roxanna Springer & Lance Larson)
• 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.
• vBNS proposal participatation by SDSU within the CSU
• Industrial partnership with Mathworks (MATLAB, which now has MapTools)
• Collaboratory use of GIS over the Internet in instruction (together with NPAC - Syracuse, Dr. Geoffrey Fox)
 

The suggested mechanism of collaboration with CSU 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)
• Travel funds are available to allow the Ed. Center staff to travel to CSU campuses to make focussed presentations to your interested faculty. 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.
• The NPACI "all-hands" meeting (early January'98) will bring together all NPACI partners, to identify collaborations between institutions in both research and outreach activities. Your feedback will be beneficial in helping us articulate the needs and interests of CSU geographers at the meeting.
• GIS is an important visualization and analytical tool for undergraduate curricula, and we will focus on its use in classroom problem-solving in combination with other tools (such as MATLAB, interactive Web-based environments, etc.) The interfaces between high-performance computing and geographic problem-solving that we will focus on include: VRML, Web-based collaborative decision-making and instruction, spatio-temporal modeling and decision support, digital libraries  and processing of large spatial datasets.

What can the EC/CSE do for you?

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