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Past Summer Fellows Awardees |
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2007 AwardeesYaohang Li (Computer Science, North Carolina A&T State University) plans to work with NCSA's Eric Jakobsson and Rick Kufrin in an effort to improve the resolution of computationally predicted protein structures. Farzad Mashayek (Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Illinois at Chicago) will work with NCSA's Nahil Sobh and David Bock on the simulation of novel biofuel liquid combustors. Vetle Torvik (Psychiatry, University of Illinois at Chicago) will work with Noshir Contractor, leader of the Science of Networks in Communities research group at NCSA, to identify and quantify factors that influence the formation of scientific collaborations. Thanh Truong (Chemistry, University of Utah) will build on the work initiated during his 2006 summer fellowship. He will again work with NCSA's Tim Cockerill and Doru Marcusiu on the CSE-Online cyberenvironment, focusing on integrating a database of molecular properties derived from quantum chemistry calculations. Shaowen Wang (Geography, University of Iowa) will work with Luc Anselin, an NCSA senior researcher and professor in the Geography Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Wang and Anselin will develop new features for GISolve, a TeraGrid Science Gateway for geographic information science. Paul Woodward (Astronomy, University of Minnesota) has adapted his PPM gas dynamics applications to run on a novel computer architecture, the IBM Cell processor. During his fellowship he will work with NCSA's Innovative Systems Laboratory and with NCSA chief science officer Bob Wilhelmson, an atmospheric scientist, with the goal of better understanding how applications will need to be adapted for future petascale computing systems. 2006 AwardeesWendy Cho Frederico Fonseca Timothy Huerta Thanh Truong
Wendy Cho All analyses of bias (partisan and otherwise) in electoral maps require some baseline. Most works on partisan gerrymandering use only aggregate data on seats and votes, and make comparisons against ideal standards of proportionality or seat responsiveness to vote change. They are thus subject to the complaint that their baselines unrealistically take no account of the idiosyncratic features of the given state. We propose a scientific basis for judging redistricting plans based on generating the full distribution of all possible redistricting configurations.
Frederico Fonseca In this research we combine the gathering of provenance information with upcoming trends in research on semantic models, namely ontologies. We will analyze all measured provenance information to research and develop an optimal ontology-driven model for the most efficient utilization of the gathered provenance information. The proposed research builds on two main lines of work. First, it leverages NCSA current efforts on information gathering about decision processes using geospatial electronic records and medical images. Second, it adds on my previous research on ontologies of geo-spatial phenomena and imagery. NCSA provides a unique opportunity for doing this research because of its high performance computing capabilities to deal with massive amounts of data and CPU intensive processes, as well as the availability of the software to gather the provenance information. This proposed research cannot reach the optimal ontology-based model without having all NCSA resources. Therefore, the use of NCSA computer infrastructure and the joint work with NCSA's research staff will lead to enhanced results both for NCSA's research and for my own research on the use of ontologies for integration of geo-spatial information. This follows up on Bajcsy and Clutter's work, "Information Gathering about Decision Processes Using Geospatial Electronic Records". There, they claim that a "future direction for this research could be to embed provenance into a workflow engine [....] The provenance data are represented currently as triples with (subject, predicate and object). More elaborate taxonomy and ontology representations, as well mechanisms for interfacing the provenance meta-data would be considered in the future". In this research we will focus on multiple types of data and process provenance information collected by previous NCSA research using computer-centric and human-centric information gathering mechanisms. We will create a hierarchical organization of provenance information in the form of ontologies.
Timothy Huerta NCSA can and will play in the future of public health. Through the use of the CI-KNOW (Cyberinfrastructure Knowledge Networks on the Web), tuned to the needs of public health, the impact on clarifying and identifying system knowledge, enabling a more rapid deployment of evidence-informed policy, and the dissolution of disciplinary silos for the purposes of generating synergy can be staggering. In developing cyberinfrastructure to support cybercommunity through the implementation of a multidimentional analysis of data in a network analytic architecture, CI-KNOW has the capability not only to link the right inputs to the right outputs, but provide quality indicators to determine which of the inputs would be better to more effectively move research to planned outputs. The advent of sophisticated cyberinfrastructure holds the technological promise of enabling individuals to seamlessly (i) collaborate with other individuals located anywhere around the globe, (ii) access and analyze data located anywhere on earth and (iii) execute programs using computing cycles residing on computers anywhere. However, the same suite of technologies that enable these global capabilities, impairs the ability of researchers to know which other researchers have similar (or complementary) expertise, what data sets are most relevant to their research, what analytic tools are most appropriate to investigate these data sets, and what related concepts might they be interested in investigating. Even were such an infrastructure to be put into place tomorrow, these tools and services would need context-appropriate user interfaces and portals for easy interaction with the applications, and workflow and collaboration software to support complex, collaborative projects. This fellowship offers a novel opportunity to address three critical basic research questions. What are the essential informational elements of a network data structure that supports collaboration outcomes? What structural incentives will engage users to building a "community of practice" that optimizes the performance of the network referral tools? What data elements are to necessary effectively measure the impact of CI projects on network outcomes? If, as the NCSA suggests, "social networking services help communities function as communities" then providing the tools the enable communities in the language that means something to the participants is key. Unlike traditional bench science, much of the work of health research takes place on a continuum that includes bench research (basic sciences), clinical research and population-level studies. Public health is complicated by the lack of common language that is often available in other problem domains, simply because it is transdisciplinary in nature. This proposal will focus on developing meaningful criteria for engagement that will foster adoption rather than simply being neutral to the subject.
Thanh Truong Taking advantage of the NCSA Summer Fellowship, I will explore the possibility for several collaborative projects with scientists at NCSA during my visit. One project is to develop a Grid-enabled Cyberinfrastructure for Education in Computational Chemistry from K-16 level and beyond and to help co-organizing a Workshop in Computational Chemistry. Another project will be to collaborate with NCSA in developing a scientific workflow for computational science. This is in conjunction with our on-going Computational Science and Engineering Online (http://cse-online.net/) project at the University of Utah. |
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