CENTER FOR COMPUTATION & TECHNOLOGY

CCT Weekly Feb. 4-10, 2007 Team with CCT Staff Submit Petascale Computing Proposal to NSF CCT is part of a team led by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois—Urbana-Champaign, which submitted a proposal to the National Science Foundation (NSF) last week to build the world's most powerful computing facility. Responding to NSF's "Track 1" solicitation, this is one of a small number of proposals to build a $200 million machine that will be deployed in 2011. This machine has the potential to revolutionize science and engineering. The proposed national facility would be housed at University of Illinois—Urbana-Champaign and managed by NCSA and its partners, including CCT. “We all feel that we have a good chance to win," said CCT Director Ed Seidel. "It has been a real pleasure to work the University of Illinois --- Urbana-Champaign team. I feel we have a serious partnership that will bring many benefits to LSU and Louisiana, whether we win or not. This would be roughly a half-billion dollar project, when one considers what all the partners bring to it.” University of University of Illinois- Urbana -Champaign leads the collaborative proposal, and although there are many national partners, LSU is the only external partner included in the principal investigators. This proposal will also strengthen CCT's recent $30 million dollar Delta proposal submitted to NSF in a solicitation for a smaller machine "on the path to petascale". NCSA was a supporting partner for Delta, along with LONI, Tulane, Louisiana Tech, and the Southeast Universities Research Association (SURA). “The CCT team all contributed immensely to this Track 1 proposal, and I want to thank you all for your critical roles in this,” Seidel said. “Good luck to us all!” CCT Hosts Google for Student Recruitment, Tech Talk The LSU Center for Computation & Technology hosted a “Tech Talk” and job recruitment event with Google, the company that created the world's largest search engine, on Wednesday, Jan. 31. More than 300 students registered to attend the event, which CCT sponsored with assistance from Career Services. Google came to LSU to meet with students majoring in ISDS, engineering and computer science to tell them about the company and give them information on how to apply for job and internship openings. The evening began with a “Tech Talk,” in which Google software engineer Jonathan Kennell explained how Google was created. The company formed between 1996 and 1998, not long after the Internet had become a mainstream research tool. The engineers who created Google were among the first to realize a search engine could be a useful commodity on the Web and set out to create a search engine in which the world's material could be universally accessible and understood, Kennell said. Google's engineers created or adapted several software elements to make Google a usable search engine, such as creating ways to interpret the meaning of bad or misspelled “input.” For example, Kennell showed the crowd an example of some of the more than 800 ways people have misspelled “Britney Spears,” one of Google's top search phrases. The software is able to pull the most likely meaning from incorrect input, and users are likely to get the data they are looking for anyway, Kennell explained. Following the “Tech Talk,” Kennell and Google Tech Engineer Manager Zuri Kemp, who organized the event at LSU, told the crowd about working for Google. They explained that Google's creators abide by the philosophy that if workers are happy, they will be productive. Therefore, Google offers many benefits to its employees such as on-site childcare, medical treatment and laundry services, in addition to competitive salaries and benefits. The company's headquarters is in California, but Google has nearly 10,000 employs in several countries, Kemp said. Students who attended were allowed to ask questions and meet with the engineers, and they received information on how to begin the process of submitting a resume' to Google for consideration. Kemp encouraged students to visit google.com/about/jobs/students for more information. For more information on future CCT events for students, please visit cct.lsu.edu. CCT in the News LSU, Tech join Open Science Grid Network will connect scientists 2-1-2007/The Reveille LSU and Louisiana Tech University have joined the Open Science Grid, an international computing network designed for scientific research. http://media.www.lsureveille.com/media/storage/paper868/news/2007/02/01/News/Lsu-Tech.Join.Open.Science.Grid-2691032.shtml?sourcedomain=www.lsureveille.com&MIIHost=media.collegepublisher.com Pats on the Back • Thomas Sterling hosted a visit last week from the National Security Administration on the LSU campus. While the NSA representatives were on campus, they saw demonstrations of Katrina visualization, SCOOP, Lake Pontchartrain Forecast System, tangible devices, high-definition video broadcast with University of Arkansas and remote visualization. • Visiting professor Ian Taylor was awarded two grants recently: DART: Distributed Audio Retrieval Using Triana, £72,174 (around $145,000). The "DART: Distributed Audio Retrieval Using Triana" project will produce a "proof of concept" software product that can be used to evaluate potential markets for a user driven music recommendation system. Taylor also received WHIP: The myExperiment Workflow Companion, approx £177,888 (around $355,000.) WHIP (Workflows Hosted In Portals) will build a Web Services software plug-in that enables interactive workflow integration with portals. CCT staff were instrumental in writing letters and other support work to help Taylor earn these grants, and Ian Kelley is helping coordinate the WHIP proposal. • Manuel Tiglio et. al. submitted a proposal to the National Science Foundation for 3 million hours of supercomputer time to support black hole and neutron star collisions. This would be equivalent to using all 1024 processors of SuperMike continuously for four months. • Rakesh Yadev has accepted a position with Google as a software engineer, having just received his master's degree in system science, supervised by Gabrielle Allen and Hartmut Kaiser. • Sirish Tummala had a paper accepted for publication in the next issue of the Journal of Coastal Research. The title of the paper is "Data Management Challenges in Coastal Applications". • Mehmet Balman and Esma Yildirim received student scholarships to attend the Open Grid Forum (OGF19), which was held in North Carolina Jan. 29 –Feb. 2. Upcoming Special Guest Lectures: • Tobias Riser, Ph.D. Student at the University of Innsbruck, will discuss Image Processing at the Infmath Imaging Group – University of Innsbruck. Riser will lecture Tuesday, Feb. 13, in 338 Johnston at 1:30 p.m. • Wolfgang Kapferer, Ph.D., University of Innsbruck, will discuss metal enrichment of the intra-cluster medium over a Hubble time for merging and relaxed galaxy clusters. Kapferer will lecture Wednesday, Feb. 14, in 338 Johnston at 2 p.m. • Fengyan Li, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, will discuss recent development in nonconforming methods for Maxwell equations. Li will lecture Monday, Feb. 19, in 338 Johnston at 11 a.m. • On Friday, Feb. 9, the CCT Colloquium Series will focus on “Visualizing Data Through Sound,” featuring Brian Willkie, Ph.D. candidate, LSU Laboratory for Creative Arts and Technologies (LCAT). This colloquium will take place at 3 p.m. in Johnston 338. Please Note: • The All CCT Meetings have been scheduled through July. The All CCT meetings will be on Feb. 7; March 14; April 25; May 16; June 20; and July 18. All meetings will take place at 3 p.m. in Johnston 338 unless otherwise noted. • The Quantum Krispy Kreme Seminar featuring Claude Fabre, Ph.D., Ecole Normale Superieure and University Pierre et Marie Curie, will take place on Wednesday, Feb. 7, at 3:40 p.m. at 435 Nicholson Annex. The seminar will cover highly multimode quantum optics. Free coffee and doughnuts will be provided to all participants. • The LSU Department of Physics and Astronomy will host Moses Chan, Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University, as the Max Goodrich lecture series speaker. Chen will lecture Wednesday, Feb. 7 at 5 p.m. in 130 Nicholson Hall. • The Louisiana Academy of Sciences will host its annual meeting on Friday, March 16, at Southern University. Faculty, staff and students are welcome to attend. The deadline for pre-registration and abstract submissions is Friday, Feb. 16. Visit www.laacademy.org for more information on the meeting and to see for which tracks abstracts are being accepted. Upcoming Grant Deadlines: NSF Human and Social Dynamics: Competition for FY 2007 NSF HSD February 07 2007 5:00 pm At Most $ 1,250,000.00 available http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2006/nsf06604/nsf06604.htm NSF Human and Social Dynamics: Competition for FY 2007 (Type 2) NSF HSD February 07 2007 5:00 pm At Most $ 1,250,000.00 available http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2006/nsf06604/nsf06604.htm