NPAC REU 94 - Available Projects

1. INTERACTIVE TV
   Project Mentor: Joan Deppa (jadeppa@mailbox)
   This project will evaluate technologies required to deliver video segments from a central server as requested interactively by remote viewers.

2. INTERACTIVE MULTIMEDIA INFORMATION SYSTEMS
   Project Mentor: Joan Deppa (jadeppa@mailbox)
   This project will involve the development of an interactive multimedia information system for Rome Laboratory. A system developed previously for Syracuse University (OrangeSource) will provide the basis for this project.

3. OPTIMIZATION USING SIMULATED ANNEALING AND TEMPERING
   Project Mentor: Paul Coddington (paulc@npac)
   Simulated annealing is a very powerful and general optimization technique. We are working on improving simulated annealing by using ideas from statistical mechanics, including a new technique known as simulated tempering.

4. RANDOM NUMBER GENERATORS/MONTE CARLO SIMULATION
   Project Mentor: Paul Coddington (paulc@npac)
   Random number generators are widely used in computer simulation, but high quality (i.e. good randomness properties) generators are hard to find, as are good tests for randomness. This is especially true for parallel computers. This project will develop and test (using Monte Carlo simulations) a variety of parallel algorithms for generating random numbers, including an intrinsic function for High Performance Fortran.

5. DR LINK NATURAL LANGUAGE TEXT RETRIEVAL
   Project Mentor: Nancy McCracken (nancy@npac)
   The DR Link system provides intelligent text retrieval by using natural language processing to find linguistic characteristics of the query and use them in retrieving text. This approach requires more processing power than traditional methods based on word matching and high performance computing may help achieve good performance. A student working in this area would help port the text retrieval system to the IBM SP1 from its current workstation base or participate in ongoing research in detecting meaningful linguistic characteristics through natural language processing (or both). The student would participate with the DR Link research group in the Information Studies department.

6. MULTIMEDIA SCRAPBOOK USING MOSAIC
   Project Mentor: Paul Coddington (paulc@npac)
   Create an on-line multimedia scrapbook using Mosaic, including articles (text and images) from magazines and newspapers, and digitized videos. This involves learning how to create, edit and display digitized images and video, use optical character recognition (OCR) software to create electronic text from hardcopies, and use Mosaic to format and display the multimedia documents. The project also requires the creation of an interface to the scrapbook to allow it to be easily searched and browsed.

7. THE LIVING TEXTBOOK
   Project Mentors: Nancy McCracken (nancy@npac) and E.A. Bogucz (bogucz@npac)
   The Living Textbook Project is a joint project between NPAC, the School of Education, NYNEX, and Columbia University to define how new communication technologies will enhance the quality of teaching and learning. Several pilot projects design multimedia educational applications and tools appropriate for high-speed comuting and communications networks. Possible student projects include designing the interface for a meteorological education module that would allow students in the classroom to explore tornados from the classroom by running a simulation on a parallel computer over a high-speed network, or redesigning the computational organization of the MapPower Geographic Information System system by sending some of the computation from a Macintosh to a Unix host.

8. REAL-TIME TERRAIN RENDERING FOR A GIS
   Project Mentor: Paul Coddington (paulc@npac)
   Use Geographic Information System (GIS) terrain elevation and Landsat data to construct a realistic real-time 3D rendering to simulate an interactive flight over New York state. This will involve investigation of parallel rendering algorithms.

9. VIRTUAL REALITY
   Project mentor: Wojtek Furmanski (furm@npac)
   Install and investigate available public domain VR packages and develop demonstrations using these systems.

10. PARALLEL METHODS FOR COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS
    Project Mentors: Thong Q. Dang (tqdang@mailbox) and E.A. Bogucz (bogucz@npac)
    This project involves the evaluation of different solution schemes for computational fluid dynamics. The REU participant will modify an existing simulation program for supersonic mixing layers to evaluate effects of alternate approximation schemes.

11. VISUALIZATION OF UNSTEADY FLOWS
    Project Mentor: Ammar Degani (degani@npac)
    The purpose of this project is to develop an environment for the visualization of unsteady fluid flow simulations. Input data will be obtained from existing codes. The REU participant will learn to use visualization software and prepare modules for visualizing instantaneous flow fields and animating sequences of images.

12. VIDEO DATABASE BROWSING/INDEXING
    Project Mentors: Marek Podgorny (podgorny@npac) and Roman Markowski (roman@npac)
    Use speech recognition software for automatic indexing of a video database based on the audio content, with either text or audio keyword input from the user.

13. CREATING AND PORTING APPLICATION KERNELS
    Project Mentor: Ken Hawick (hawick@npac)
    The student would work on a subset of a large project to create exemplar program kernels for a wide range of applications, in sequential and parallel (message-passing and High Performance Fortran) versions. Many of the targeted applications concern Computational Fluid Dynamics but the application areas can be contingent on the student's background and interests. This project would provide good experience in writing parallel programs.

14. APPLICATION FOR THE VIRTUAL COMPUTING ENVIRONMENT
    Project Mentor: Salim Hariri (hariri@cat)
    A network of supercomputers and high-performance workstations appears to be a cost-effective approach to provide adequate computing resources for the Grand National Challenge problems. Such a collection of computers and supporting software environment is called a Virtual Computing Environment (VCE). This project will involve development of an application that can utilize dynamically the computing resources of different parallel computers available at NPAC.