news
AHPCRC Summer Institute in Computational Science and Engineering
Photos, projects, and curriculum...
The inaugural AHPCRC Undergraduate Summer Institute in Computational Science and Engineering was held at Stanford University from June 22 to August 14, 2009. Participants included 16 undergraduate students from five universities. Seventeen Stanford professors, research associates, postdocs, and graduate students served as instructors and mentors. This institute represents a key part of the AHPCRC mission: to foster the education of the next generation of scientists and engineers—including those from racially and economically disadvantaged backgrounds—in the fundamental theories and best practices of simulation-based engineering sciences and high performance computing.
At this summer's institute, undergraduate students spent their mornings learning computational science and engineering concepts from experts in these fields. Several AHPCRC Stanford researchers offered instruction, including members of the research groups led by Charbel Farhat, Wei Cai, Eric Darve, and Pat Hanrahan. In addition, computer scientists from AHPCRC consortium member High Performance Technologies, Inc. and NVIDIA Corp. instructed the students in their own areas of expertise.
In the afternoons, students worked directly with AHPCRC researchers from groups led by Farhat, Darve, Cai, Hanrahan, and Leonidas Guibas. They simulated aircraft wings, submarines, bulletproof fabrics, and advanced nanoscale materials. They taught camera networks to recognize and report their locations. And they helped to design the underlying computer algorithms and architectures that made the other projects possible. The students learned about numerical methods used in computational science and engineering, and they received an introduction to computational engineering methods and modeling, meshing computational domains, ordinary and partial differential equations, and optimization problems. They also learned to program in several commonly used computer languages and systems, including C, MATLAB, MPI, and specialized programming for GPU processors.
On August 14, the students presented the results of their research at a seminar, to which representatives from the U.S. Army were invited. Introductory remarks were given by Charbel Farhat, AHPCRC Director; Raju Namburu, Army Research Laboratory AHPCRC Cooperative Agreement Manager; and Barbara Bryan, AHPCRC Research and Outreach Manager. LTC Fredrick C. Ludden, Military Deputy, Army Research Laboratory Computational and Information Sciences Directorate, offered concluding remarks.
AHPCRC 2009 Education Program at UTEP
The 2009 AHPCRC Education Program at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) aims to increase the number of middle-school students capable of and interested in technical subjects by equipping middle-school teachers of mathematics and their students with appropriate motivating examples of the usefulness of mathematical concepts and by providing both the teachers and students with interactive computational technologies that can be used to refine associated mathematical knowledge and skills. In some cases different instances of an example are encapsulated in a computational tool, while in other cases the examples stand by themselves and can be, if desired, paired with computational tools.
The project was launched on 30 April 2009 by a visit from Dr. Robert M. Panoff, founder and Executive Director of Shodor, a non-profit education and research corporation dedicated to the reform and improvement of mathematics and science education by appropriate incorporation of computational and communication technologies. Our project uses the Shodor Web site as a main resource of computational tools, especially the hands-on, exploratory-learning tools associated with Project Interactivate (www.shodor.org/Interactivate).
A team of three undergraduate students (Victor Jordan Barraza, Fernando Nava, and Jason Shultes), one graduate student (Oscar Andrade), two faculty members (David Novick and Patricia Teller), and one research staff member (Sarala Arunagiri) in the Department of Computer Science worked through the summer to develop a set of prototypes to motivate concepts related to probability and to refine the understanding and application of these concepts. The examples and associated computational tools that the team produced have been mapped to lessons and problems in the mathematics textbooks used by the El Paso Independent School District (EPISD) in the 6th, 7th, and 8th grades.
A Web site associated with the project will disseminate the project’s products—the motivating examples and computational tools—as well as the mappings of examples and tools to textbook lessons and problems. Specific dissemination is aimed at middle-school teachers in EPISD, at faculty and staff who conduct outreach programs, and at AHPCRC partners. A section of the Web site will enable users of the examples and tools to provide feedback on the educational materials and their usefulness.
The project team worked with the staff of UTEP’s Educational Talent Search (ETS) program—a TRIO program (see below) working with more than 600 low-income middle- and high-school youth in the El Paso area to provide information about college admission, careers, scholarships, financial aid and SAT/ACT preparation. ETS staff and the project team held a workshop for middle-school students on Monday, 10 August 2009, to get feedback on the prototypes developed to date. Eighteen 7th and 8th grade students from two schools participated. The ETS staff recruited the students (we developed brochures for this purpose), brought the students to campus, fed them breakfast, brought them to the workshop, and then took them to lunch, provided a campus tour in the form of a scavenger hunt, and returned them to the schools. In the workshop, the team’s undergraduate students presented some of the examples they developed, along with some of the computational tools they identified. The examples included:
• the “yield” of the iPod manufacturing process (i.e., the percentage of iPods produced that meet the specified standards of manufacture, which can be estimated by testing a sample set)—a study of sample spaces, probabilities, and algebra;
• the creation of an enhanced version of the paper, rock, scissors game—a study of probabilities and fairness; and
• the evolution of the solution of Rubik’s cube—a study of the number of possible permutations
At the end of the workshop, each student was given a certificate of participation and a Rubik’s cube.
As part of the workshop, the middle-school participants provided feedback on the motivating examples and the tools that they tried out, and the project team compiled simple descriptive statistics from their responses. The most popular computational tools were a simulation of fire in a forest using a grid populated with trees and a simulation of the population trends of a world of grass, rabbits, and foxes, again using a grid to implement the simulation. Preliminary review of the feedback and the reaction of the students and staff indicated that the project has an excellent chance of success!
The project's next step, slated for this Fall, is a workshop for middle-school math teachers. This workshop is being designed to motivate the teachers to adopt the examples developed by the project and to develop examples of their own. In addition, the teachers will be encouraged to adopt the computational tools identified by the project, and to identify other computational tools that support their lesson plans. The workshop will give the teachers opportunities to provide the project team with feedback and to influence the direction of the project. During the Fall semester, the project's undergraduate students will be available to work with the teachers and visit the schools to aid the teachers in the use of the teaching materials.
AHPCRC Director Receives 2009 John von Neumann Medal
Professor Charbel Farhat, AHPCRC program director, has received the 2009 John von Neumann Medal from the U.S. Association of Computational Mechanics (USACM) for “outstanding and sustained contributions in high performance computing, fluid–structure interaction, and computational acoustics and their impact on real-world engineering applications.”
Charbel Farhat, the Vivian Church Hoff Professor of Aircraft Structures and Chair of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University, was named director of the AHPCRC in 2007. He is internationally known for his outstanding research contributions to computational mechanics, numerical analysis, and high performance computing.
He has pioneered the development of parallel finite element solution methods that have enabled faster and more accurate analyses of a broad range of engineering and pathfinder systems such as re-entry vehicles, modern fighter aircraft, advanced Formula 1 cars, aircraft carriers, underwater systems, electronic packages, and nano-scale optical shutters. His achievements in this area have been recognized by several professional societies, including the IEEE Computer Society, which awarded him the Fernbach Award for “outstanding contributions to the development of parallel numerical algorithms and parallel software packages that have helped the mechanical engineering world to embrace parallel processing technology.”
His innovative theoretical and computational works on computational fluid dynamics on moving grids and fluid–structure interaction phenomena have contributed to a renaissance of research on nonlinear computational aeroelasticity. These works have also had a profound impact on practitioners such as the flight test engineers at the Edwards Air Force Base, who stated that Farhat’s research has enabled them “to better simulate certain structural and aerodynamic flight qualities with the improved models.” They stated that this should allow them”to perform fewer flight tests and save time when we are flight testing.”
Computational Mechanics is concerned with the use of computational methods and devices to study events governed by the principles of mechanics. It is a fundamentally important part of computational science and engineering, concerned with the use of computational approaches to characterize, predict, and simulate physical events and engineering systems governed by the laws of mechanics. The USACM is a prominent association that promotes U.S. research, commercial, and academic activities in the general area of computational mechanics. The John von Neumann Medal is the highest award it bestows to honor individuals who have made outstanding, sustained contributions in the field of computational mechanics, generally over periods representing substantial portions of their professional careers. The medal is awarded every two years at the time of the National Congress of the Association.
Cook Receives Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers
Jeanine Cook, a principal investigator for the Army High Performance Computing Research Center (AHPCRC), has received the prestigious Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). President George W. Bush presented the award to Cook on December 19, 2008, at the White House.
Cook, an associate professor at New Mexico State University’s Klipsch School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, specializes in micro-architecture simulation techniques, performance modeling and analysis, workload characterization, and micro-architectural power optimizations for high performance computing systems. She directs the Advanced Computer Architecture Performance and Simulation Laboratory at NMSU.
The PECASE award is one of the highest honors that the United States government bestows on outstanding scientists and engineers beginning their independent careers. About 50 U.S. researchers receive PECASE awards each year, and an individual can receive only one such award during his or her career.
Cook’s work with the AHPCRC consortium focuses on time-efficient performance modeling and analysis of Army HPC applications, with the intention of reducing the amount of time and money necessary to configure computer systems and make procurement decisions. Such modeling and analysis can also assist in identifying optimal application-to-architecture mappings and optimizing code performance, operating system services, and hardware design. She has worked with researchers at the University of Texas, El Paso, to design and implement Chimera, an AHPCRC-sponsored heterogeneous computing cluster that links commercial multicore processors, GPUs, FPGAs, and accelerators. Chimera is used to test applications for their ability to perform well on a variety of processors, and to identify ways of reducing execution time using specialized resources.
Cook was nominated for the PECASE award by her colleagues at Sandia National Laboratories for her work in performance analysis. Cook built a simulator to pinpoint the sources of Sandia application performance problems.
In an NMSU press release, Cook, who was paralyzed from the waist down after a 1982 automobile accident, stated, “I want [the award] to heighten attention for people with disabilities and secondly, I want it to heighten attention for young women. I want young women to have role models to say, ‘If she did that, I can do that too.’ I really want the world to see that people with disabilities are people—we are people—we’re not to be afraid of. We can be treated just like anybody else. We’re not stupid, we’re not helpless, we’re just people.”
In the press release, NMSU interim president Waded Cruzado praised Cook, the daughter of an Italian father and a Hispanic mother: “Jeanine is a prime example of the outstanding faculty talent New Mexico State University strives to recruit and retain to help this land-grant university’s mission and commitment to providing the highest quality of education for its students. The NMSU family is very proud of Jeanine’s accomplishments and the honor and recognition that she has brought to herself and this university. The distinction of receiving the PECASE award demonstrates how women, minorities and persons with physical challenges can overcome the many obstacles placed before them to succeed and exceed in their careers.”
