Center for Computation & Technology

Campuswide Retreat January 28, 2005

Ed Seidel, Director, CCTProfessor, Depts. of Physics and Computer

Science

& CCT Team

Preliminaries & Agenda• Thanks to many for making time• Followup to Retreat in October, January

– Refined our focus and goals, started developing strategies

• Get internal house in order, then connect across campus

• Retreat Notes, Org Chart• Agenda

– Overview by Ed– Breakout Sessions

• Increasing interaction with campus units• Defining areas for strategic investment of CCT resources

– Strategic Plan developed over coming months.

The Center for Computation & Technology is an innovative and interdisciplinary research

environment for advancing computational sciences, technologies, and the disciplines

they touch. Our efforts branch out from the center to serve

Louisiana through international collaboration, promoting progress in leading edge and

revolutionary technologies in academia and industry.

Our Mission

• Research • Education• Leading Facilities

– Supermike, LONI

• Economic Development • Partnerships

– AEI, Cisco, LBL/NERSC, KISTI, other

• Focal Point for– Interdisciplinary Research

in Arts, Sciences, Engineering and Humanities

– Collaboration

– InnovationAccess Grid: Connecting People

What is the CCT?

Themes of Previous Retreats

• Refine our focus: more computational

• Increase interactions

• Lots of startup - trying to make it count!– Cactus, GAT, Portals– Numrel, CFD, math postdocs, LCAT– Here now, gone tomorrow…

• Planning Documents: make them stick!– Everyone involved

NCSA as Example• NCSA was a special place with special

opportunities: seize them• We were all privileged to be there• We had a duty to

– Push the envelope of the possible• You are not here just to do your physics

– Make use of the technology– Lead our communities

• Extra effort pays off– You will do better science, CS, Engineering,

Art…

“Original Plan”• $9M Interdisciplinary Res. Center

– Comp. sciences <---> Apps– Really 9 = 7 + 2

• Many FAs in “CoreIT”, Materials, Bio, Business, LCAT– Staff to come from this, Bus. already done

• Joint Faculty: 50-50 split, possible 5 year seed model

• Programs– Visitor, Postdoc, Grads, Fac. Dev

• HPC staff: close connection to FAs– Major HPC funding from outside

• CCT Themes: Grids for FY04-06, be nimble!

Philosophy• Collaborations

• Open projects

• Reduce hierarchies, but need structure

• Increase computational ability across campus, state– Need campus wide hires in related areas– Participating units must bring something to

the table

Problems lead to OpportunityRefocus on Mission

• Long Term Shift– Must be more focused on Computation– Need some more staff– Alignment with strategic plans critical, deal with legacies

• Stronger Core CS priority• Need this first! Other built on top of foundation. LONI!

– Leverage startups• Math, CFD, Numrel, Cactus, Grids, Portals

– Focus (3-4!) fac. hires: crit. areas (CS, ECE, Math, Art)• Communicate new CCT strategy: not LSF!

– Work with units to develop comprehensive plan

Org Chart

Business

Focus Areas

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Expenditure by College

Mass Communication

2%

Residential Life1%

Coast & Environment

1%

Arts & Sciences8%

Basic Sciences16%

Engineering42%

Business30%

CCT 51%Colleges 49%

Org Chart• Research Groups organized into Focus Areas

– FA Heads: Intellectual Leadership• Coordinate research group leaders

– Old Groups: Review every year• Will make adjustments

– New ones: • Leverage, alignment, commitment, impact• Proposals

• Cross cutting topics• E.g., Elliptic equations

• Centerwide themes: Grids

Faculty Searches• Computer Science

– Park, Sensor Networks and Security– Ullmer, Scientific Visualization– Current search in grids

• Physics– Tiglio, Numerical Relativity– Future search in Optics

• VIDA– Lance Porter, Mass Comm– Art and Design begun, Music planned

• ECE– Ongoing search for 1 position this year, more next

• Math– Computational math this year, plan 4 joint appointments

• Joint appointment model ---> 15-20 additional additional faculty appointments after this year

• An international collaboration of scientists, mathematicians, computer scientists, and artists

• This will be a model for CCT

• Goal: Be able to do similar things in different fields next year

Grand Challenge Collaborations

Collaborations for Complex Problems

NASA Neutron Star Grand Challenge

• 5 US Institutions• Attack colliding

neutron star problem

EU Astrophysics Network

• 10 EU Institutions• 3 years• Continue these

problems

NSF Black Hole Grand Challenge

• 8 US Institutions• 5 years• Attack colliding

black hole problem

Examples of Future of Science & Engineering

• Require large scale data, simulations, beyond reach of any machine

• Require large geo-distributed cross-disciplinary collaborations

• Require Grid technologies

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The GridHot Area in Computational Science

• Computational DevicesScattered Across the World

– Compute servers (double 18 months)– Handhelds– Networks (double each 9 months)– Playstations, cell phones– Sensors

• How to take advantage of this forscience, engineering, business, art?

– Harness multiple sites and devices– Make it accessible to scientists,

engineers, artists– Integrate people across State

and World for new possibilities

LONILouisiana Optical Network Initiative

Grid Theme: 2004-2006

• We want to define themes for the entire CCT – CCT had leading groups in Grid application

technologies– Develop coherence across disciplines– take advantage of thematic funding streams for

hot research areas

• LONI, Grid Activity needs to be exploited– LONI Institute, statewide collaborations– Consider how we can use this to advantage

NLR, LONI Positions LA• EnLIGHTened Computing (Proposed, $1M)

– Gigi Karmous-Edwards, Dan Reed (NC), Gabrielle Allen (LSU), et al

– “Just-inTime” Optical Network provisioning: P-to-P bandwidth on demand

– Dynamic, adaptive resource-aware applications– EU GridLab, Cisco as partners

• GridChem: Cyberinfrastructure for Computational Chemisty– $2.7M NSF project between Illinois, Kentucky,

Ohio, Texas, LSU (Allen, PI)– Using Grids to advance chemistry research– Of interest to Dow, others

CCT Tools support New Apps• Core Infrastructure

– Testbeds & Grids (e.g., OSG, TeraGrid)

• Grid Application Toolkits– GAT, SAGA effort in GGF

• Application Frameworks– Cactus, Triana

• Portals– Gridsphere Framework

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Remote Viz/Steering for Applications

Remote Viz data

HTTP

Streaming HDF5Autodownsample

Amira

Any Viz Client:LCA Vision, OpenDX

Changing any steerable parameter• Parameters• Physics, algorithms• Performance

Remote Viz data

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Notification

Funding Opportunities

• Paradigm shift requires funding shift

• Agencies respond: $B’s– NSF, DOE, NASA, NIH, NOAA, DOD,

etc– European Commission, UK, Germany…– Asian Agencies

• Louisiana will be prepared with leading facility on the planet

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Funding IdeasTurn areas of strength into Centers of Excellence

• DOE’s (rumored) Computational End Stations– Community based installations– Center at disadvantage for some (nano,

climate, plasma)– Gravitational Wave Sources?

• NSF, NASA, NSF, LIGO, Cactus, GWEN, etc

– Coastal Erosion, River Basin, Ocean Observing?

• NSF, Congress, State, NOAA, NASA, etc

Projects may seed strategic areas

• UCoMS (Petroleum Engineering)– Deploy sensor networks across

Gulf– Data collected to provide input to

simulations, tasks farmed out– Results collected (transmitted

back)– http://www.ucoms.org

• SCOOP (Ocean Observing)– Data coming in from sensors all

over Gulf Realtime Operational Grid

– Feeds in to models on Grid sites

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Computational

Fluids

• CCT funding several postdocs in Prof. Acharya’s group

– Biological Systems: Flow and transport in the human eye, Glaucoma studies (LSU Eye Center), Silverman work on fluid around cilia

• Overlap with biology, numerical relativity, L-CAT, applied math, CS, etc.

Examples of Major Opportunities

• Each of these – Could lead to huge amounts of funding or entire

institutes– Are state and national/international priorities– Push computational and interdisciplinary mission– Draw on existing strengths at LSU, state, region– Are major growth areas– Have potential economic development impact

• Want to define future areas that meet these criteria– Bio-medical computing, materials, petrochemicals,

coastal sciences, business/finance

Strategic (Bio) Initiatives• Want to develop a strategic plan

– Not piecemeal faculty hires– Must exploit assets in computation, technology, other

strengths at LSU and across region through LONI

• Seminar series for computational approaches to (biomedical) work

• Bring in visiting professor to help anchor searches?

• Could not start searches until 2005-6– Number depends on budget– Looking at 50-50 hiring model

Programs to Help Build

• Visitors: $150K - $250K per year– Students, postdocs, faculty– Weeks to year

• Faculty development– Bring on campus faculty to CCT for semester

• CCT Postdoc program: few hundred K $$– Previously ad hoc, now competitive program

• Graduate students: roughly a dozen• Undergoing formal development

– Suggestions welcome

Findings from Previous Internal Retreats

• Three Focus Groups– Themes:

• Building an Environment for Interdisciplinary Research

• Training a New Generation of Skilled Researchers

• Leveraging and Pushing our Enabling Technologies

Building an Environment for Interdisciplinary Research

• Biggest disconnection was in harnessing the power of groups

• Difficulty because of specialized (not-integrated) tool development

• There are major overlaps in the types of tools used by different groups.

Building an Environment for Interdisciplinary Research

• Impediments:– Promotion & tenure issues for junior

faculty– No clear definitions of “Excellence”– Differing definitions of “Success”

• Big grants vs. publication• Small grants typical in some disciplines

Building an Environment for Interdisciplinary Research

• Suggestions:– Foster knowledge of infrastructure, personnel

and computational resources– Better Communication between departments

and CCT– Widen the visitors program– Help groups become world-leaders

• Partner with existing groups of excellence• Help “tip” a group- give it the extra support to make

the whole package come together• Find Grand Challenge Questions and help people

come together

Training a New Generation of Skilled Researchers

• We must train ourselves first! (The campus)

• Train faculty so that they will bring tools & technology into the classroom

• Hold regular faculty meetings

• Collaborate with OCS

• Leverage the Visitors Program

Training a New Generation of Skilled Researchers

• Impediments (But worth the challenge!)– Not enough people on campus know about the

tools– Tool integration is difficult and time consuming– Timing is difficult

• Scheduling• Sufficient time to work on something new• Often easier to stick with something old that is

familiar, rather than learn something new- despite greater power and innovation.

Training a New Generation of Skilled Researchers

• Suggestions:– Hold regular training in core technologies and tools– These will become more necessary as LONI is

deployed/• Cactus Code• How to run a job on Supermike• CVS, Latex for collaboration on proposals and papers• Triana• Grid Application Toolkit• Linux• Many others

Leveraging and Pushing our Enabling Technologies

• More Outreach and Training• Need support for Visualization• SuperMike needs to be in Production Mode• Insufficient Documentation to help with

SuperMike• Need to Increase support-level staff

– Trainers– System administrators– Scientific computing staff

Leveraging and Pushing our Enabling Technologies

• Impediments– Insufficient staff at the CCT– Need to raise the level of expertise on

the campus for better integration– Many of the tools are in Alpha and Beta

stages– Limited awareness of CCT goals– Isolated Research is difficult to support

Leveraging and Pushing our Enabling Technologies

• Suggestions:– Need to improve campus curriculum for

scientific computing– Develop internal heroic applications with

help of other disciplines– Need more software and tool support– Need to identify ways to support tool

development, potential cooperative research proposals

Today’s Breakout Sessions

• Developing better interactions with units– Using tools, facilities– Startup research projects

• Creating strategic plans for future CCT investments– Leverage strengths in the discipline– Relationship to computation and technology– Growth and funding potential– Coherence with other areas in the CCT– Economic Development relevance– Importance to the State and /or Region