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THE
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$20 Million in New Computing Research
Photos this page by Brian Morri
The Viterbi School of Engineering is taking the lead in more than $20 million in new research programs announced by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and the school shares in two other grants. The DOE programs deal with extremely large (petascale) computing systems. Petascale computing involves a thousand trillion computations per second. Robert F. Lucas, director of the division of computational sciences at the Information Sciences Institute, is the lead investigator on a $15 million ($3 million per year for five years) study of “Performance Engineering Research: Enhancing the Performance of SciDAC Applications on Petascale Systems,” aimed at optimizing performance of such systems. Lucas will work with ISI computer scientists Mary Hall and Jacqueline Chame on the project, which will also involve collaborations with researchers in nine other institutions. Priya Vashishta, who has a joint appointment in the Viterbi School’s department of computer science and the Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, and in
the USC College department of physics and astronomy, will lead a $5.5 million study ($1.1 million per year for five years) on “Cracking Under Stress: Developing a Petascale Simulation Framework for Stress
Corrosion Cracking.” Vashishta will work with his longtime colleagues Rajiv K. Kalia and Aiichiro Nakano at USC, and with investigators at five other institutions. In addition, grid computing pioneer Carl Kesselman and Ann Chervenak, both of ISI, will work on two other DOE projects: “Getting the Science out of the Data” is a project “to improve scientific data management so that scientists can spend more time studying their results and less time managing data.” The project is a $12 million effort ($2.4 million per year). Kesselman worked with the study’s lead, Ian Foster, of Argonne National Laboratories, in developing the Globus grid computing open software system. In addition to ISI and Argonne, three other institutions are participating. “Scaling the Earth Systems Grid to Petascale Data” is a $13.75 million
project to deal with the “massive amounts of data that are distributed across the globe” relating to climate and climate change. Researchers will receive $2.75 million per year. Kesselman is participating in the project, which is led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, CA. A list of the DOE projects can be found at: http://www.scidac.gov/highlights/06list.html Top: (left to right) Rajiv K. Kalia, study leader Priya Vashishta and Aiichiro Nakano. Middle: ISI researchers Carl Kesselman and Ann Chervenak. Left: ISI researchers Jacqueline Chame, Mary Hall and Robert F. Lucas.
USC Viterbi Engineer
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