Center for High Performance Scientific Computing (CHIPS-Comp)  A Beowulf-type cluster of 20 dual Alpha EV6 833, 750 and 667 MHz workstations with a Scalable Coherent Interface (SCI) network accelerates the progression of parallel programming tasks and exchange of information across the processors. This architecture allows for an extremely powerful supercomputing capability that may be used by researchers in diverse fields to process data at rates not achievable with conventional computing systems. The center can support research in materials science, nuclear physics, parallel computing, and can offer know-how as well as consulting services in material science and nuclear physics and access to computational methods development expertise. |
Real Time GIS Data Tool, GeoData Web Editor  This technology is an open source GIS data tool. GIS provides a mechanism for management, analysis, and display of geographic knowledge, which is represented using a series of information sets such as maps and globes, geographic data sets, processing and work flow models, data models, and metadata. This technology utilizes an existing platform technology from ESRI Inc., ArcIMS. The ArcIMS platform technology is a server-based product that provides a scalable framework for distributing GIS services and data over the Web. The tool provides Web publishing capability for GIS maps, data, and metadata for access by users inside and outside an organization. ArcIMS enables Web sites to offer GIS data, interactive maps, metadata catalogs, and focused GIS applications. The GeoData function allows a real time editor application to be used for mapping and visualizing changes in location. The technology is similar to MapQuest, but differs in that it interprets street anomalies more accurately and further inputs those changes automatically into the information center responsible for data tracking (in Michigan, as an example, it is the Michigan Information System). |
Web Enabled Urban Planning Teaching Tool Called Web Polis Web Polis is an interactive tool developed to encourage and facilitate community participation through an online portal. This technology provides a direct link for local communities through an open information sharing environment. Web Polis offers a suite of applications including online discussion forums, newsletters, consensus builders, real estate analysis, a mapping/GIS component for spatial analysis, and community online survey prototypes with integral statistical analyses. The targeted users of the tool include city officials, economic development groups, the educational community (to teach politics and city government), and urban planning groups. |
Chaotic run time encryption system  Chaotic Run Time Encryptor uses discrete chaotic maps and/or simulated chaotic ODE systems to create a cipher text from any given plaintext using a simple process. Even when the plain text for a given cipher text is known the encryption keys are not compromised.
Compared to other encryption methods, the Chaos encryption system has a higher memory footprint with much higher key space, allowing for many different people to use the system without ever using the same key. It would be extremely difficult for anyone to use a brute force attack against the encryption algorithm. The system experiences run speeds faster than the most popular encryption system in use today – RSA. |
PCAP- Parallel Contig Assembly Program (formerly CAP3 - Method for solving repeating problems with constraints) The PCAP whole-genome assembly program, developed at Michigan Tech, can process tens of millions of reads into long sequences. The PCAP package is a set of programs for generating a genome assembly from a set of reads and a set of forward-reverse read pairs. PCAP can handle a genome of 30 Mb on a computer with one processor, a genome of 300 Mb on a shared-memory computer with 10 processors, and a genome of 3 Gb on a distributed computer cluster of 100 processors. The program has several features to address issues in whole-genome assembly increasing efficiency and accuracy. Test results completed on a mouse whole-genome data set of 30 million reads, show that the assembly computation was efficient enough to handle a whole-genome data set. Accuracy tests performed on a human chromosome 20 data set of 1.7 million reads indicated acceptable accuracy rates.
PCAP contains a few major programs for generating an assembly and a few minor programs for formatting an assembly and collecting statistics on an assembly. In addition, PCAP contains several Perl Scripts for automatically running the major and minor programs in the proper order. PCAP produces a contiguous assembly with a low global misassembly rate and is efficient in computer memory. An assembly in .ace file format produced by PCAP can be viewed and edited in Consed. |
Fault Tolerant Computing Dr. Kieckhafer is heading an area focused on fault tolerant distributed computing. The core of this work involves voting algorithms that allow redundant computers to come to agreement by eliminating the most unlikely fault mode. This work has a broad range of relevance. |
MEMS Center in Wireless Integrated Microsystems A multi-university National Engineering Research Center in Wireless Integrated Microsystems funded by the National Science Foundation gives MTU a strong base for microtechnology research. Among its first projects, the center will design a next generation cochlear implant for which MTU will design and build a |
Location and Tracking Technology Development and Testing Service  This is one of the few laboratories across the country that specializes in antenna location and tracking systems. Efforts are focused on developing and promoting a location technology development and research Center of Excellence. The Center will offer a research service component to advance the development and design of new products in the location and tracking space. In addition, the Center would become one of only ten facilities in the world to provide antenna testing facilities aimed at the automotive market. The program is supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation. |
Design Optimization and Design Under Uncertainty Technology This research is focused on noise, vibration and harshness (NVH) and design under uncertainty. One outcome of this reseach is a design optimization tool that has potential application in a number of industry sectors. Although the graphical user interface is at an early stage of development, the algorithm design is sufficiently functional to solve series of complex problems. The research offers the opportunity to provide engineering services to numerous organizations on a consulting basis. |
Soft Computing and Embedded Systems This program of research is focused on two areas. The first involves the development of soft computing techniques and their applications to computer learning and pattern recognition. Specific research topics include classification and regression trees, fuzzy systems, global optimization algorithms, and fuzzy-neural computing. The second involves the development of an interactive, subroutine-threaded programming language for embedded systems. It also includes the study of issues related to the design of embedded systems including hardware/software co-design, microcontrollers, and FPGA synthesis using VHDL. |
Text, Image and Video Databases This research program focuses on a topics associated with motion analysis and object tracking, document image processing, pattern recognition and machine learning. More generally, issues under investigation include data mining in text, image and video databases as well as neural networks design and application. |
Information System Modeling, Management and Efficient Data Retrieval This research is focused at correlating the application level data-modeling requirements to the data-representation power of the database system architectures. Complex applications in engineering, financial, and biological systems are being studied with their systemic implementations using the relational, object-relational, object-oriented, and deductive database models. The challenge faced in efficient evaluation of complex content-based queries constitutes a significant component of this research. |
Stable Set Polytopes and Interconnection Networks The major focus of this research program is on interconnection networks—the architecture underlying parallel processing. Specifically, the work is designed to investigate the structural properties of these networks including connectivity problems, routing algorithms and vulnerability issues. |
µMRI Techniques for Detection and Investigation of Articular Cartilage This research program is generally designed to use high resolution MRI and other microscopic imaging techniques to study a number of important engineering, biological and biomedical problems. More specifically, the research is focused on detecting cartilage degradation, an early event in osteoarthritis using µMRI. The techniques developed are capable of a transverse resolution of 14 microns across the full depth of the cartilage tissue layer. This microscopic resolution allows examination of tissue properties in individual histological zones in cartilage non-invasively and non-destructively. |
Statistical Modeling and Inference for Computational Imaging and Signal Analysis This is an extensive research program exploring the application of statistical modeling and inference to problems in computational imaging and signal analysis. Formative work was conducted in the area of multi-frame blind deconvolution with physical system-constraints. More recently, the program has been oriented toward system design and analysis for computational sensing and imaging; image restoration and synthesis with system uncertainties; active imaging with sparse arrays; multi-spectral mine detection; and image recovery from intensity measurements. The work has cross-cutting application including aeronautical and aerospace engineering. |
Sensor, Ad Hoc and Wireless Network Security and Vulnerability This research and technology development program is focused on sensor networks including issues related to vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET), wireless ad hoc networks and sensor networks, cross-layer network design, dependable computing and communication systems, as well as network resource allocation & management. Most recent activity has been focused on tireless network security: cyber security assessment, systematic security design as well as vulnerability analysis and trust models for wireless ad hoc and sensor networks. |
Memory Controller Interconnect and Policy Determination This research program is focused on developing novel interconnect techniques and DRAM controller management policies to reduce the latency to memory access. The research examines the potential for improved performance when the memory controller changes from a static control policy to a dynamic control scheme. For example, as the amount of state present in DRAM devices increases, the available set of memory controller policy decisions also increases; this increased flexibility allows an intelligent memory controller to optimize controller policies to achieve increased performance. This impact is simulated over a variety of interconnection topologies from the current NorthBridge to a CMP architecture with multiple DRAM busses. |
GIS Software Development for Optimization of Web Map Services This work is focused on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology that enables the research team to collate and analyze information from diverse data sets very rapidly. This GIS integrating technology draws upon and extends existing techniques. Other areas of interest include Cartography, GeoComputation, and Economic Geography. |
Electronic structure and transport properties of thermoelectric materials This work is focused on computational condensed matter physics and materials science, in particular the electronic structure problem in semiconductors and complex materials. Computers are used as powerful microscopes to investigate the quantum properties that technology exploits to build new solid state devices. Solar cells, lasers and IR-detectors use semiconductor materials that are created ad hoc to optimize functions like light emission and detection. The research is aimed at optimizing the interesting properties of these materials by performing both semi-empirical and first principles calculations. |
Language and Location: A Map Annotation Project Unlike objects such as vases or pieces of jewelry, languages move primarily when a group of people speaking them migrates and settles in a new area. Thus, information about language boundaries and language relationships can provide critical insights into the migrations, interactions, cultures, and genetics of populations. However, such insights can only be realized in a system that melds language information with information from the physical and social sciences. The most effective way to do this is through a Geographical Information System (GIS), which can flexibly organize a wide range of heterogeneous data, presenting the assembled information according to the topography of geographical regions. This allows language data to be integrated with geographical, political, demographic, zoological, botanical and archaeological data in ways which are immediately visually interpretable.
The LL-MAP project will build a database of linguistic information which is integrated into such a geographically-based system and is made freely available through Internet-based tools. These will allow users to generate customized maps showing the relationships between language and diverse kinds of non-linguistic data. They will also allow researchers to add annotations to map-oriented data, and to discuss the relationships the system manifests. In this way LL-MAP will encourage collaboration between linguists, historians, archaeologists, ethnographers and geneticists, as they explore the relationships between language and cultural adaptation and change. The integrated data approach embodied in LL-MAP will thus promote innovative research methods, and these in turn may lead to new insights into the prehistoric relationships among human populations. |
Dena'ina Archiving, Training, and Access This is a cooperative project between the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska and the LINGUIST List program at Eastern Michigan University to preserve Arctic Languages. This proposal creates the "DATA" (Dena'ina: Archiving, Digitization, and Access) project to digitize existing collections of Dena'ina documentation using the standards and software developed by The LINGUIST List as part of the E-Meld project. The E-Meld project had developed and implemented recommendations of digital best practice for linguistics data. Through E-Meld the DATA project will create long-lasting archival formats and standardize linguistic data digitization of Dena'ina. In addition, the proposal will train both Native and non-Native students in linguistic research practices, applied computational linguistics, and linguistic analysis for the future preservation and revitalization of Dena'ina. This project will not only facilitate the preservation of Dena'ina for community members, but also standardize the linguistics information so as to make it accessible and useful for scientific computational analyses. |
Cluster of Advanced Symmetric Multiprocessing Computers for High Performance Scientific Calculations cquisition of a Cluster of Advanced Symmetric Multiprocessing Computers for High Performance Scientific Calculations will help to meet the needs of active and productive CMU scientists in the computationally demanding fields of theoretical nuclear and condensed matter physics, and mesoscale numerical meteorology. Targeted applications in this project include problems of nuclear structure, nuclear reaction rates, and thermonuclear reaction rates in supernovae. Applications in condensed matter and materials physics include studying the physical and chemical properties of nanometer-scale atomic clusters, and the functional properties of defective materials, including semiconductor systems proposed for use in quantum computing. These studies will involve calculations of unusual complexity that require access to advanced, high performance resources.
Integration of the proposed research with education and training efforts is a major goal of the project. A series of hands-on workshops in High Performance Computing will be develop and deliver to fill a void that exists in the current curriculum at Central Michigan University. The workshops will be open to students and faculty from across the college. This project will also provide many opportunities to engage students directly in research. Dissemination of the research results is another important component of the project. |
Numerical Speedup Using Flowpaths Applications for computer simulations include many research areas such as weather prediction, tracking the location and concentrations of contaminants in groundwater, oil recovery, studying disease processes, designing experiments, and developing medications. In these and several other applications, it is desirable to achieve speedup of numerical code. Current work in speeding up numerical simulations has several disadvantages. Considering the various disadvantages of each method, project will develop methods that increases the speed and (1) does not require rewriting an existing algorithm, although could be improved even further by making minor coding modification, (2) does not require algorithms written in traditional languages to be rewritten in other language, (3) executes portions of the code in parallel but does not suffer from the overhead of either a single microprocessor or multi-processor architecture, and (4)does not require time and effort to engineer and implement a special circuit for different types of numerical algorithms. This work proposes to develop such a technology using flowpaths where, starting with a C (or potentially FORTRAN) description of a numerical algorithm, a compiler will generate an executable that can be downloaded and will run on the Power PC embedded in an FPGA with parallel flowpaths to speedup the bottleneck loops in the numerical algorithm automatically.
With such a speed-up, some simulations that require real-time execution that can not currently be achieved by a PC will be able to run at a higher speed and achieve a real-time pace. The success of this research will result in future investigation including deriving optimizations for the compiler and resulting circuits, improving numerical schemes for optimal implementation in hardware and enhancing the compiler to support other popular languages.
The intellectual merit of this research project from a scientific computational standpoint lies in the discovery of new coding techniques that make optimal use of flowpaths in order to achieve higher simulation speeds. The intellectual merit in hardware design for speedup lies in the unique use of flowpaths for creating special-purpose processors for new and existing numerical code, automatically. This project serves as a novel interdisciplinary approach, combining expertise in scientific computation of numerical algorithms and high-speed embedded systems for significantly increasing the performance of numerical code, with impact both in software as well as in hardware technologies. |
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