Engineers for Exploration

Engineers for Exploration (http://e4e.ucsd.edu) is a one of kind program that matches engineering students with scientific collaborators from domains including archaeology, biology, ecology, and oceanography. The projects aim to develop new technological solutions for the problems faced by the scientists. These include create high resolution topographic maps of important ecological areas, developing 3D models of ancient artifacts, finding and tracking endangered animals, and understanding the behaviors of captive animals in zoos and wildlife.

These projects require a substantial amount of computation. For example, we heavily utilize a technique called "structure from motion" that stitches hundreds of images taken from aerial robotic platforms into a topological model. Or we combine billions of points from close to one hundred LIDAR scans of tunnels and tombs underneath Maya temples into a coherent and accurate 3D model. Finally, we use advanced digital signal processing to post process videos captured at zoos from around the country in order to develop machine learning techniques that can subsequently be utilized to classify the animals behaviors.

Access to the FutureGrid infrastructure will allow us to run significantly more experiments. And those experiments can individually handle more data. The end results are more accurate models and techniques which ultimately enable our scientific collaborators to better understand our environment and our cultural heritage.