CENTER FOR COMPUTATION & TECHNOLOGY

CCT Features IBM Consultant for IT Eminent Lecture Series Today CCT, in conjunction with the LSU Department of Computer Science, will host an IT Eminent Lecture Series TODAY, featuring Alfred Spector, Ph.D., a consultant for IBM. Spector's lecture will take place at 3:30 p.m. in the Life Sciences Building Annex A101 Auditorium. He will discuss the need in the computer science community for a research field aimed specifically at software design. Spector will discuss the integrative, collaborative process that would be necessary to study software design, as well as current design trends. Prior to becoming an independent IT consultant, Spector was chief technology officer and vice president of strategy & technology for IBM's Software Group, where he was responsible for IBM's technical and business strategy, standards, software development methodologies, advanced technology and leading-edge technical engagements. Spector earned his Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University and also received a degree in applied mathematics from Harvard University. LSU Hosts High-School Student IGERT Workshop on HPC and CFD LSU researchers with the National Science Foundation's Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship, or IGERT, program and the Center for Computation & Technology, or CCT, will host a computing workshop on Friday, April 20, for more than 30 high school students and their high-school teachers. The IGERT on Computational Fluid Dynamics at LSU is a National Science Foundation program that provides doctoral students with an enhanced, multidisciplinary education and training to prepare them for research in multiscale computational fluid dynamics and its application to complex problems in science and engineering. The one-day workshop will take place at the University beginning at 8 a.m. on Friday, April 20. It is designed to introduce high school students to the tools scientists use today to conduct research, particularly those used in high-performance computing and computational fluid dynamics. The workshop has been primarily organized by the students in the IGERT program, as part of their training experience at LSU. IGERT and CCT researchers will give presentations to the students to help them become more familiar with the center and the research being conducted. Students also will work through two tutorials. A visualization tutorial will teach students to visualize results of a glaucoma computer model developed by the LSU Computational Fluid Dynamics group that simulates fluid flow and pressure distribution in the eye using the visualization software tool Amira. Students at the workshop also will take part in a high-performance computing tutorial using the Cactus Framework, using which they will run simulations of black holes on the large scale computing resources of the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative. One of the main developers of Cactus was CCT researcher Gabrielle Allen, Ph.D. Cactus has been used for more than 100 research publications in the field of numerical relativity alone, and is now being extended partly though the IGERT program to be used for fluid dynamics applications. “These tutorials will give students a chance to get some hands-on experience at working with real scientific research data and tools that they could not get in a regular high school classroom setting,” Allen said. “Also, through this workshop, the students will get the chance to see what computational research is really about --- and we hope the experience will help inspire them to study science and engineering at university.” CCT in the News
LSU Helps Unravel Code of Rhesus DNA
4-14-2007/The Advocate
LSU has played a key role in unlocking primate DNA that could help develop vaccines to combat AIDS and other diseases. http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/7022317.html LSU Adds Supercomputer
4-10-2007/Business Report
LSU's Center for Computation and Technology has added LSU's largest current supercomputer, SuperMike, which triples the computing capacity of the Southeastern Universities Research Association's regional grid service, SURAgrid. http://www.businessreport.com/newsDetail.cfm?aid=11274 Pats on the Back
• Horst R. Beyer's book, “Beyond Partial Differential Equations,” is now available for purchase. You can order the book at: http://www.springer.com/east/home?SGWID=5-102-22-173725724-0. • CCT and LSU Department of Computer Science Researcher Brygg Ullmer's work on the Rhesus monkey DNA sequencing project was featured as the front cover article in “Science.” Ullmer worked with other LSU researchers, including Mark Batzer and Miriam Konkel, on this project. • Robert Twilley, who works with the CCT on coastal and environmental studies, had an article featured in “Science” as well. Twilley is part of an international team working to develop an environmental monitoring system to predict climate and atmosphere changes for India. Both articles can be viewed online at http://www.sciencemag.org/. • The lead article on the LSU homepage “Highlights” section features profiles on women in science, and includes interviews with Elena Caraba, Shalini Venkataraman and Irina Craciun. The article was written for Highlights in Spring 2006 and can be viewed at http://www.lsu.edu/highlights/062/women.html. Upcoming Guest Lectures:
• CCT Professor Paul Saylor will host a special Math Club Lecture on Thursday, April 19, at 5 p.m. in Lockett Hall. Saylor will discuss “Numerical Analysis: Do computers really compute? Who knows? Google? YouTube? Math Knows!” All undergraduate students are invited, and pizza will be served. • The CCT Colloquium Series will feature Bruce Walker, of the Georgia Institute of Technology, who will lecture on “Auditory Displays, Auditory Graphs and Sonifications: Research and Design” on Friday, April 20 at 3 p.m. in Johnston 338. • The CCT Colloquium Series will feature H.J. Siegel, Ph.D., from Colorado State University, to discuss “An Introduction to Research Issues in Heterogeneous Parallel and Distributed Computing.” Siegel will lecture at 3 p.m. on Friday, April 27, in Johnston 338. Please Note:
• The LSU IGERT newsletter is published and can be viewed online at http://www.cct.lsu.edu/IGERT/Newsletter.htm. • Red Stick International Animation Festival is this week, April 18-22. On Wednesday, April 18, the Science Day lineup will take place, featuring presentations by Werner Benger and Shalini Venkataraman. Please visit www.redstickfestival.org for a list of all events. • CCT staff are invited to the Red Stick Festival VIP parties. There will be a members' reception at the LSU Museum of Art in the Shaw Center on Thursday, April 19 at 6:30 p.m. The Festival VIP party will take place Friday, April 20, at 7 p.m. at the Louisiana Art and Science Museum. • If you have any news for the CCT Weekly, please e-mail PR Manager Kristen Sunde directly at kmeyer@cct.lsu.edu. Upcoming Grant Deadlines:
NSF Advanced Learning Technologies NSF ALT April 25 2007 5:00 pm A Portion Of $ 2,800,000.00 available http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2006/nsf06535/nsf06535.htm Interfaces in Science: Career Awards at the Scientific Interface May 01 2007 12:00 am At Most $ 500,000.00 available http://www.bwfund.org/programs/interfaces/career_awards_background.html