Jason Leigh - US grants

EIA-0115809
Thomas A. DeFanti
University of Illinois at Chicago

MRI: Development of Instrumentation for AGAVE: the Access Grid Autostereo Virtual Environment

This is a proposal for instrumentation development under the Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) program to support research and student training in tele-immersion technologies for a networked, collaborative virtual-reality environment. The focus is on AGAVE, a tiled, high-resolution autostereo display that integrates well with very-high-speed networks.

At the end of this decade, national and international-scale scientific collaborative applications will need intelligent signaling and dynamic control of very-high-performance optical networks. The software proposed here will allow scientific applications to directly control an advanced, all-optical, IP-over-wavelength metropolitan-scale network, based on Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM) and photonic switching.
Optical networking technology is rapidly migrating from ultra-expensive long-haul implementations to regional- and metro-area networks. The trend is to provide a general infrastructure with a wide range of common services. However, the flexibility inherent in these new technologies provides the research community with an opportunity to move beyond general requirements and support large-scale e-science applications that require advanced networking capabilities. We propose a software development effort that will lead to 21st-century applications over 1000-fiber, 1000-wavelength photonic networks.
These evolving, extreme applications requiring optical networks include high-energy physics, astrophysics, climate modeling, oceanographic modeling, architectural design, molecular modeling, industrial design, advanced photon source experimentation, materials science, and industrial engineering. Underlying such applications are cross-cutting support technologies, such as advanced digital video, remote access to scientific instruments, specialized visualization displays, data-mining, cluster supercomputing and high-performance distributed computational systems. To enable the full potential of such applications, it is not sufficient to simply provide high-performance networks; these applications need intelligent, dynamic controls to adjust network resources. The proposed software development efforts will leverage the significant potential of a newly installed metro optical testbed for application-level dynamic control of resource discovery, allocation and adjustment. Efforts at many levels are required to make such flexibility available in service provisioning, infrastructure and service resource management:
Research into the behavior of advanced scientific applications, not just on extremely high-performance
optical network, but on one that can be dynamically adjusted at a granular level
Identify application-level networking requirements, investigate management techniques for optical
networks, and study new service provisioning models related to application needs
Research new methods for application signaling
Investigate interconnections between application signaling and IP-based control-plane methods, such as
through GMPLS Test deployment of those techniques on an advanced testbed and analyze results
Experiment with multiple-service provisioning to ensure gateways to traditional networks and protocols
Develop a system for performance metrics, monitoring and analysis
Create a testbed for StarLight, the next-generation, optically based STAR TAP, and for other advanced
research networks.
The testbed for this project is an a four-node optical network, OMNInet, initially linking a core node on
Northwestern University's Chicago campus with a node at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the Canadian
Network for the Advancement of Research, Industry and Education (CANARIE) CA*net4 node at its Chicago Point of Presence and a node at Northwestern's Evanston campus. The sites are separated by distances of 5 to 20 miles, connected by dedicated technology trial-fiber service provided by SBC/Ameritech. Each node includes a Nortel Networks WDM photonic switch, an Optical Fiber Amplifier (OFA) and high performance router/switches. These sites will also have access to Nortel and SBC/Ameritech testing personnel, expertise, and equipment. Participants in this project, led by the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago, include the International Center for Advanced Internet Research at Northwestern University, CANARIE, Argonne National Laboratory, MREN (Metropolitan Area Research and Education Network), Nortel and Ameritech.

EIA 02-24306
DeFanti, Thomas A.
Grossman, Robert L.; Leigh, Jason; Nelson, Peter C.; Yu, Oliver
University of Illinois Chicago

CISE RR: Matching Advanced Visualization and Intelligent Data Mining to High-Performance Experimental Networks

This project, developing techniques for advanced grid computing with focus on visualization and data-mining applications, aims at setting up a high-performance, high-bandwidth Grid matched with Visualization and Data Mining Research. The Grid is made up of Lambdas (clusters of PCs) that are connected by high-bandwidths connections to other clusters. Software and toolkits to enable high-performance applications will be built with the goal of attaining a high-speed optical metropolitan-area network to be used in the data mining and visualization applications. The project expands grid technology to infrastructure, protocols, network memory and distributed control, and applications in constraint logic programming. Since optical networking technology is rapidly migrating from ultra-expensive long-haul carrier implementations to affordable regional- and metro-area community networks, this project explores inherent flexibilities in these new technologies to support large-scale data, visualization, and collaboration-intensive applications with very advanced real-time demands. Thus, application-aware software and middleware will be created to help interconnect tomorrow's terascale-class machines with distributed petabyte data stores, remote sensors, instrumentation and visualization over gigabit/sec to terabit/sec networks. LambdaNodes, defined as PC clusters with storage and visualization coupled to like clusters by numerous wavelengths (called lambdas), will be used connected by lambda networks to create a prototype metropolitan-scale LambdaGrid. With the goal of optimally matching data mining and visualization to high-performance optical networks with e-Science and homeland security model applications as expected drivers (achieving a 10x or greater end-to-end improvement over today), the equipment and support enables the following:
1. Matching data-mining and visualization capabilities on clusters to emerging wavelength-rich networks,
2. Distributing parallel computation and rendering for high-resolution volume visualization,
3. Providing applications signaling and control of both electronically and optically switched lambdas,
4. Measuring and monitoring multi-gigabit circuits over multiple wavelengths,
5. Providing users with networks that have known and knowable bandwidth and latency,
6. Investigating high-availability/uninterrupted cluster computing to support time-critical collaborations,
7. Addressing real-time applications in security domain, and, eventually, security of the data as well,
8. Integrating metropolitan-scale LambdaGrids with the emerging Global Grid and the National TeraGrid, and
9. Incorporating distributed data mining and visualization into undergraduate African-American-centered coursework and research through the Virtual Harlem Project.

The Intellectual Merit of StarLight: StarLight is a research support facility planned by researchers for researchers that follows the mode of Research and Operations now established by the "STARTAP" project. These researchers are networking engineers, electrical engineers, computer engineers, computer scientists, e-Scientists and application programmers. StarLight will anchor future wavelength-rich LambdaGrids, with switching and routing at the highest experimental levels, laying the foundation for fully optical switching in three years. Following the tradition of the earlier "STARTAP" project, this project will enable the next cycle of network operations growth with researchers.

Optical networking technology is rapidly migrating from ultra-expensive long-haul carrier implementations to affordable regional- and metro-area community networks. The next step is to expand, integrate and tune these resources with specific large-scale scientific applications. The commercial trend is to provide a general infrastructure with a wide range of common services for a very broad client base. However, optical networking technologies provide networking researchers with an opportunity to move far beyond general requirements, and support large-scale e-Science applications that exploit very advanced networking to tackle complex problems.

Until recently, STAR TAP, an NSF-funded project providing interoperability and interconnectivity of advanced networks, adequately served the ATM connections in Chicago among the US Federal Networks (Fednets), Internet2.s Abilene, Chicago's Metropolitan Research and Education Network, and several international networks.
However, several months ago, as domestic and foreign networks began to request 1-to-10Gb switched connections in Chicago, STAR TAP quickly migrated its focus and connections to StarLight, a new colocation facility.

The Nation needs a persistent facility, staffed and equipped, to serve researchers using IP-over-lambda networks, addressing restoration issues, building LambdaGrids, optimizing DNS services, and testing novel protocols for long, fat connections. StarLight will be a persistent meeting point as a node on various LambdaGrids and will support advanced applications and middleware research, and aggressive advanced services. StarLight will grow into a:

(1) Multi-vendor, multi-lambda 1Gb, 2.5Gb, 10Gb (and perhaps higher) experimental exchange and LambdaGrid nodal point that provides the "other end" or switching point for National and international experiments; Starlight has 3-year plans to make available 60 fully-powered and fiber-optic-connected racks to researchers.
(2) Facility to support 3D protocol stack development (for optical management, control and data planes).
(3) Middleware research environment, in which application-oriented middleware, like Globus, and data transport protocols are implemented and tested by the middleware community with major experimental e-Science drivers.
(4) Host for national and global research activities in application-centric network measurement and monitoring.
(5) Inter-domain security testbed to research and deploy encryption at lambda speeds and to test getting data out to crisis management personnel involved in natural or human-caused disasters.
(6) Laboratory for developing/testing means for high-performance application provisioning on optical networks.
(7) Facilitator of broad outreach efforts to communities, using a cultural heritage project to bring in under-represented communities as content developers, providers and users of data and visualization LambdaGrids.
(8) Metro-scale laboratory for CISE students' access to the interdependent worlds of computing and networking.

QUANTA is a toolkit for supporting TeraNode applications over optical
networks.

Getting terascale collaborative applications to work optimally on a high
speed optical network is not as simple as connecting ones computer to the
Internet. Today's protocol stacks and scientific applications cannot and do
not know how to utilize this extreme level of bandwidth even when it is
available. We intend to address this problem with Quanta, a cross-platform
adaptive networking toolkit for supporting the extraordinary networking
requirements of terascale collaborative applications. Quanta will consist of
a collection of novel networking protocols that are designed for handling a
wide variety of extremely high bandwidth application traffic flows; and a
Quality of Service (QoS) architecture to flexibly control these protocols
and support electronic and optical QoS mechanisms such as Generalized Multi
Protocol Label/Lambda Switching (GMPLS). The goal is to provide an easy to
use system that will allow programmers to specify the data transfer
characteristics of their application at a high level, and let Quanta
transparently translate these requirements into the appropriate transmission
protocol and network QoS services.

This project, supporting collaboration among co-located and remote experts requiring interactive ultra-high-resolution imagery, aims at developing a high-end visualization "LambdaVision" multipanel display as a means to advance both scientific research and public safety as validated by users in various disciplines and training exercises in disaster response. LambdaVision will target applications requiring extremely high data rates and very large, high-resolution images, such as earth surface imagery. Applications include scientific simulations and disaster response. Plans included the development of smaller versions for use in the classroom and in the field. The following research applications will use the system:
Geoscience Research ,The US Geological Survey, Integrated Ocean Drilling Program
US National Lacustrine Core Repository, Computer Science Research in Visualization, Advanced Networking Middleware, and Multi-User Collaboration ,Scalable Adaptive Graphics,Advanced Networking Middleware,Collaborative Methods for Display-Rich Environments
Research Instrumentation Development, LambdaVision and Lambda Table Architecture LambdaVision and Lambda Tabel Seamless Display Technology ,LambdaTable Tracking System

Broader Impact: PIs have a history of developing technology that domain scientists use. The work includes designing systems suitable for use in the field, classroom, and lab.

In broad collaboration with the IODP, ICDP, ice-core, limnogeology and paleolimnology research communities, the CoreWall Consortium (the LacCore at the U. of Minnesota, Borehole Research Group at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Electronic Visualization Laboratory at U. of Illinois at Chicago, and INSTAAR at the U. of Colorado) will jointly develop CoreWall Suite, a real-time stratigraphic correlation, core description (CD) and data visualization system to be used by the marine, terrestrial and Antarctic science communities. The work model forged by the CoreWall Suite will significantly alter and enhance the current approaches used for core description and analysis of sediment and rock cores by providing an integrated environment for these activities, for both field and repository environments. In particular, the CoreWall Suite will incorporate the new NCLIP software, the updated version of CLIP (e.g.,Sagan and Splicer) that was developed by the Lamont group more than 10 years ago. The CoreWall Suite will be portable, able to work on a variety of display platforms such as laptops and tiled displays, hence allowing it to be used in the field, laboratory and individual office settings. This project entails a variety of significant broader impacts including involvement of undergraduate and graduate students. The CoreWall Suite will be useful for a variety of outreach activities as well as classroom use.

This collaborative project, developing and evaluating lifelike, natural computer interfaces as portals to intelligent programs in the context of Decision Support System (DSS), aims at providing a natural interface that supports realistic spoken dialog, non-verbal cues, and the capability of learning to maintain its knowledge current and correct. The research objectives focus around the development of an avatar-based interface with which the DDS user can interact. Communication with the avatar takes place in spoken natural language combined with gesture expressions or by pointing on the screen. The system supports speaker-independent continuous speech input as a spontaneous dialog within the specified DSS domain. A robust backend that can respond intelligently to the questions asked by the DDS user is expected to generate the responses spoken in reply by the avatar with realistic inflection and visual expressions.

The work develops, prototypes, and evaluates the desired user interface capabilities by using the model of a program officer to create a realistic avatar that can answer users' questions and respond in a humanly natural manner. The project extends a current sponsored project on information gathered related to a centers program where a program officer serves as subject matter expert. The recently-developed AlexDSS system that answers questions to users about the I/UCRC program provides the baseline intelligent system behind the avatar. The avatar interfaces are targeted for both general users as well as for experts responsible for updating/correcting the domain knowledge therein.

The work represents a collaborative project between the Intelligent Systems Laboratory (ISL) at UCF and the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at UIC. The EVL team focuses on avatar development encompassing Visualization and Interaction with Realistic Avatars and Evaluation of System Naturalness and Usability. The ISL team concentrates on Natural Language Recognition and on Automated Knowledge Update and Refinement.

Proposal #: CNS 08-21121
PI(s): Leigh, Jason
Brown, Maxine D.; Johnson, Andre E.; Renambot, Luc
Institution: University of Illinois - Chicago
Chicago, IL 60612-7227
Title: MRI/Dev.: Dev. of OmegaTable and OmegaDesk ? Instruments for Interactive Visual Data Exploration and Collaboration
Project Proposed:
This project, developing instruments for interactive visual data exploration and visualization, provides a powerful, easy-to-use information-rich cyberinfrastructure instrumentation in support of scientific discovery. Advanced visualization instruments serve as the eyepieces of a telescope or microscope, enabling researchers to view their data in cyberspace, and better manage the increased scale and complexity of accessing and analyzing the data. The OmegaTable and OmegaDesk are such eyepieces. The former supports multiple users sitting or standing around a table, and the latter is a single-user device that will ultimately replace the desk in one?s office. Both unify ultra-high resolution computer-enhanced collaboration workspaces and autostereoscopic virtual environments with multi-touch-sensitive surfaces so that users can intuitively point, write, touch, and manipulate the information displayed, and communicate and share this information with remote colleagues. These instruments act as digital assistants, anticipating and enabling those who work with them, benefiting global scientific collaboratories as well as providing a foundation for new computer science research. For the Electronic Visualization Lab (EVL) at UIC, these instruments represent the culmination of decades of experience and expertise developing immersive environments, from the room-size CAVE in the early 1990s, to the office-sized Immersa Desk in 1994, to GeoWall in 2000, and the more recent ultra-high resolution Lambda Vision tiled display wall and autosteoscopic Varrier tiled-display wall. Each new generation of display technology provides some advanced features ? higher resolution, unencumbered autostereoscopic viewing, multi-Gigabit network connectivity, and intuitive user interfaces - better coupling worldwide scientific virtual organizations, and better integrating scientific workplaces with advanced cyberinfrastructure. OmegaTable and OmegaDesk combine all this functionality in one set of instruments, enabling communities to view and share high-resolution 2D, 2.5D, and 3D stereoscopic imagery over distance and to manipulate the imagery with an intuitive touch interface. The most unique capability lies in their ability to display 2D and 3D stereoscopic imagery simultaneously, without users needing to wear 3D glasses of head-tracking equipment. The instruments open new opportunities in virtual reality, human-computer interaction, high-speed networking, scientific visualization, and Grid computing.

Broader Impacts: This project enables state-of-the-art equipment, opportunities, and supervision to enhance student education (providing scientific communities with highly integrated virtual-reality collaboration environments), to work with industry to commercialize new technologies that advance science and engineering, and to continue on-going partnerships with domain scientists world-wide. In addition to enhancing education, the instrument provides summer internships and enables jobs upon graduation. Society as a whole has much to gain by the possibilities to solve complex environmental, medical, and economic issues that these instruments offer.

This proposal will be awarded using funds made available by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5), and meets the requirements established in Section 2 of the White House Memorandum entitled, Ensuring Responsible Spending of Recovery Act Funds, dated March 20, 2009.


As globally distributed research teams work more closely to solve complex problems utilizing high-performance cyberinfrastructure, from petascale computers to specialized instrumentation generating massive amounts of data, the need for high-resolution visualization is becoming more critical for analysis, and is propelling the worldwide adoption of "OptIPortals". An OptIPortal is an ultra-resolution visualization display instrument interconnected by optical networks that enables the creation of "cyber-mashups," or juxtapositions, of data visualizations, enabling greater insight. SAGE, the Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment, is cross-platform middleware that enables users worldwide to have a common operating environment, or framework, for accessing, streaming and juxtaposing high-resolution visualizations on one or more OptIPortals. This project will transition SAGE from a transformative research prototype to a hardened technology that provides production-quality, community-driven open services for visualization and collaboration utilizing shared national and international cyberinfrastructure, for the advancement of scientific research and education.

Intellectual Merit
Coping with complexity and scale in data is a problem that spans all of e-science. Using OptIPortals and SAGE, scientists can create visualization pipelines from multiple sources - whether supercomputers, data storage systems and/or instruments (such as high-definition cameras), as well as laptop screens and the Web - to access and share a variety of information, in a variety of resolutions and formats, and create giant Cyber-Mashups.

Broader Impact
Our Nation already invests in network-connected, middleware-enabled cyberinfrastructure to generate and disseminate petabytes (ultimately exabytes) of data among researchers worldwide. What is missing, however, is a globally integrated collaborative work environment to facilitate data analysis and high productivity. Funding to provide a production-quality SAGE will make cyberinfrastructure more accessible to broader communities of scientists and students, and help maintain US leadership in high-performance computing.

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).

The project consists of an upgrade to part of the campus network and to the campus' network connection to the Starlight facility. This upgrade is designed to support computer science research in networking, visualization and data-mining, primarily at the University's National Center for Data Mining and Electronic Visualization Laboratory. To that end, the upgraded connection to Starlight will be implemented with 100 Gigabit-per-second networking infrastructure.

The renovation will facilitate research on the development and use of cloud computing and cloud data storage. Developing data management and computing services that scale to very large datasets is a fundamental research problem, as is developing services for visualizing and collaboratively analyzing these datasets. The renovated network will also provide researchers on campus with remote access to a new magnetic resonance imaging system as well as facilitating participation in the analysis of data from the Large Hadron Collider.

In addition to providing infrastructure for research, the renovation is likely to enable students from under-represented groups to participate in advanced research, since approximately half of the National Center for Data Mining's Ph.D. students come from underrepresented groups and almost half of the supported research assistants in the Electronic Visualization Laboratory come from underrepresented groups.

"This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5)."
Proposal #: 09-59053
PI(s): Johnson, Andrew E.; Brown, Maxine, Leigh, Jason, Peterka, Tom
Institution: University of Illinois - Chicago
Title: MRI/Dev.: Dev. of the Next Generation CAVE Virtual Environment (NG-CAVE)
Project Proposed:
This project, developing the Next Generation CAVE (NG-CAVE), supports 15 research projects from local institutions. These projects in multiple domains (Astronomy, Astrophysics, Art, Bioengineering, Earth Science, High Performance Computing, Homeland Security, Neuroscience, Rehabilitation, etc.) are poised to use NG-CAVE for their large visualization needs. Just as cyberinfrastructure provides better access to greater volumes and varieties of data, from data storage systems, online instrumentation, and/or major computational resources like the TeraGrid and future Petascale facility, advanced visualization instruments serve as the eyepieces of a telescope or microscope, enabling researchers to view their data in cyberspaces and to better manage the increased scale and complexity of accessing and analyzing the data. NG-CAVE is such an eyepiece, providing researchers with powerful and easy to use information-rich instrumentation in support of cyberinfrastructure-enabled scientific discovery. It provides users with the ability to see 3D content at nearly 106 Megapixels.
For the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the institution, NG-CAVE represents the culmination of decades of experience and expertise developing immersive environments, from the room-sized CAVE virtual environment in 1992, to the office-sized ImmersaDesk in 1994, to the GeoWall in 2000, and the more recent ultra-high-resolution LamdaVision tiled-display wall and autostereoscopic Varrier-tiled-display wall. Each new generation of visualization instrumentation has provided scientific communities with one or more advanced features (higher resolution, unencumbered stereoscopic viewing, multi-Gigabit connectivity, and intuitive user interfaces), better coupling worldwide scientific virtual organizations, and better integrating scientific workplaces with globally distributed cyberinfrastructure.
NG-CAVE provides an alternative approach to constructing CAVEs by using new near-seamless flat LCD technology augmented with micropolarization, rather than traditional projection technologies. The net effect is a new CAVE that has 3D acuity to match human vision, can be scaled near-seamless to even greater resolution, is affordable compared to projection-based approaches, requires little maintenance, can be used for both 2D and 3D stereoscopic viewing, and can support multiple simultaneous viewers. The instrument also opens new opportunities in computer science research at the intersection of large-scale data visualization, human computer interaction, virtual reality, and high-speed networking,
Broader Impacts:
This project provides state-of-the-art equipment, opportunities, and supervision to enhance undergraduate and graduate research and education. The new NG-CAVE supports 10 classes in Computer Science, Art and Design, and Biomedical Science departments. It provides scientific communities with highly integrated virtual-reality collaboration environments; it enables working with industry to commercialize new technologies for the advancement of science and engineering and to continue ongoing partnerships with many of the world's best domain scientists and computer scientists in academia and industry, who readily become early adopters of new instrumentation and who provide students with summer internships and jobs upon graduation. Thus, this instrument enables US to maintain its leadership position in high performance computing and contributes in the advancement of complex global issues (e.g., environment, health, homeland security, economy, etc.), which, in turn, benefit society as a whole.

Cyberinfrastructure runs the gamut - from computing, networks, data stores, instruments, observatories, and sensors, to software and application codes - and promises to enable research at unprecedented scales, complexity, resolution, and accuracy. However, it is the research community that must make sense of all the data being amassed, so the SAGEnext (Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment) framework is an innovative user-centered platform that connects people to their data and colleagues, locally and remotely, via tiled display walls, creating a portal, or wide-aperture "digital lens," with which to view their data and one another. It enables Cyber-Mashups, or the ability to juxtapose and integrate information from multiple sources in a variety of resolutions, as easily as the Web makes access to lower-resolution images today.

SAGEnext expands on a vibrant partnership among national and international universities, supercomputer centers, government laboratories and industry; 100 institutions worldwide use the current version of SAGE. For computational scientists, from such diverse fields as biology, earth science, genomics, or physics, SAGEnext will transform the way they manage the scale and complexity of their data. For computer scientists, SAGEnext is a platform for conducting research in human-computer interaction, cloud computing, and advanced networking. SAGEnext capabilities, integrating visualization application codes, cloud documents, stereo 3D, and new user-interaction paradigms, is unprecedented and heretofore not available, and will have a transformative effect on data exploration and collaboration, making cyberinfrastructure more accessible to end users, in both the laboratory and in the classroom. SAGEnext, integrated with advanced cyberinfrastructure tools, will transform the way today's scientists and future scientists manage the scale and complexity of their data, enabling them to more rapidly address problems of national priority - such as global climate change or homeland security - which benefits all mankind. These same tools can better communicate scientific concepts to public policy and government officials, and via museum exhibitions, to the general public.

Nearly one third of the human brain is devoted to processing visual information. Vision is the dominant sense for the acquisition of information from our everyday world. It is therefore no surprise that visualization, even in its simplest forms, remains the most effective means for converting large volumes of raw data into insight, a process that can support scientific discovery. However a key challenge hindering scientific users from adopting the latest visualization tools and techniques is the steep learning curve that has to be overcome in order to make use of them. The tendency then is to resort to the simplest tools, such as bar charts and line graphs, even though they may lack the expressive power necessary to bring scientific data into focus.

The notion that scientists would ideally like to simply speak with a computer to ask questions about their data, and have the computer automatically generate visualizations that answer their queries, has been well known since at least the NSF 2007 report "Enabling Science Discoveries through Visual Exploration." This is the motivation for the current project, which involves a collaboration among researchers at two institutions, given that scientists still are unable to do so. The PIs' ultimate goal is to implement a Virtual Visualization Expert to translate the language of science into the language of visualization. To demonstrate the concept is indeed viable, the PIs previously developed and evaluated a small prototype, which supported their argument that by relieving the user of the burden of having to learn how to use a complex interface one could enable them to focus on articulating better scientific questions.

Given this initial success, the focus of this exploratory research is to establish the foundations of a more generalizable approach that can encompass techniques used in scientific visualization. To this end, the PIs will research the steps needed for mapping natural language requests, which may be accompanied by gestures, into meaningful visualizations and for enabling incremental creation and modifications of visualizations. They will develop innovative models to understand the intent of the user and the objects s/he is referring to, and they will explore how best to design user interfaces for creating and modifying visualizations using language and direct manipulation. The PIs' initial study showed that all these capabilities are crucial to enabling users to make the best use of a dialogic interface for data visualization. Although project outcomes will be geared in the short term to serving the scientific community, the techniques should be applicable more broadly to consumers of information, such as citizen scientists, public policy decision makers, and students.

This project, developing CyberCANOE (Cyber-enabled Collaboration Analysis Navigation and Observation Environment), aims to serve as an eyepiece, providing researchers with powerful and easy-to-use information-rich instrumentation in support of cyberinfrastructure-enabled data-intensive scientific discovery. CyberCANOE will provide users with the ability to see both 2D and 3D stereoscopic content in a completely seamless display environment with almost 50 Megapixels of resolution.

CyberCANOE provides a unique alternative approach to constructing ultra-resolution display environments by using new and completely seamless direct view Light Emitting Diode displays, rather than traditional projection technologies or Liquid Crystal Displays. The net effect is a visual instrument that exceeds the capabilities and overcomes the limitations of the current best-in-class systems such as the CAVE2 at EVL and the WAVE at CALIT2 at UC San Diego. Immediately 46 researchers, 28 postdocs, 833 undergraduates, 45 graduate students spanning disciplines that include Oceanography, Astrobiology, Mathematics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Biomedical Research, Archeology, and Computational Media are poised to use the CyberCANOE for their large-scale data visualization needs. The instrument opens up new opportunities in computer science research at the intersection of data-intensive analysis and visualization, human-computer interaction, and virtual reality. It enables the Laboratory for Advanced Visualization and Applications (LAVA) at the University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM), to provide an EPSCoR and Native Hawaiian Serving Institution, with state-of-the-art equipment, opportunities, and supervision to enhance undergraduate and graduate research and education; to provide scientific communities with highly integrated visually rich collaboration environments; to work with industry to facilitate the creation of new technologies for the advancement of science and engineering; and to continue ongoing partnerships with many of the worlds best domain scientists and computer scientists in academia and industry, who readily become early adopters of new instrumentation, and who provide students with summer internships and jobs upon graduation.

NetSage is an open privacy-aware network measurement, analysis, and visualization service designed to address the needs of today's international networks. Modern science is increasingly data-driven and collaborative in nature, producing petabytes of data that can be shared by tens to thousands of scientists all over the world. The NSF-supported International Research Network Connection (IRNC) links have been essential to performing these science experiments.

Providing near real-time monitoring and visualization of international data transfers will help ensure that scientific workflows are operating at maximum efficiency. NetSage services provide an unprecedented combination of passive measurements, including SNMP data, flow data, and Bro-based traffic analysis, as well as active measurements, mainly perfSONAR, and longitudinal network performance data visualization. User privacy is a significant concern in this project given the data flowing through the exchange points. NetSage addresses these concerns through the use of a privacy advisory board that will ensure the data gathering activities are conducted to meet all community standards. The proposed work is a partnership between Indiana University, University of California at Davis, and University of Hawaii at Manoa. This uniquely strong team combines backgrounds in production international network support, networking measurement and prediction tools, network-intensive applications and data visualization.

The Big Data revolution necessitates the use of sophisticated tools such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Data Visualization to harness the sheer volume, velocity and variety of datasets that are becoming the norm. However, it is the research community that must make sense of the data being amassed, so cyberinfrastructure must extend to people. SAGE3 (Smart Amplified Group Environment) puts the human in the loop by providing scientists with an intuitive framework that integrates state-of-the-art AI technologies with applications, workflows, smart visualizations and collaboration services to help them access, share, explore and analyze their data, come to conclusions, and make decisions with greater speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and confidence. SAGE3 augments every step of the scientific discovery enterprise - from quickly summarizing large data, to finding trends and similarities or anomalies among one or more linked datasets, to communicating findings to scientists, public policy and government officials, and the general public, to educating the next-generation workforce. Ultimately, it is the scientists and future scientists who must Harness the Big Data revolution to solve the nation's grand challenge problems that will benefit society as a whole - from studying the diversity of life on Earth, to understanding the Earth and its systems from satellite imagery of its poles, to developing response scenarios for natural disasters such as landslides and pandemics that impact the citizens and economies of the world.

SAGE3 development focuses on two fundamental components: AI-enhanced smart services and advanced computing resource orchestration to support reproducible work models for secure collaborative work. SAGE3 amplifies user productivity, providing them with commercially available and open-source AI solutions, which autonomously and transparently analyze data while continually learning and improving through user interactions. SAGE3 makes AI technologies broadly accessible, not just a privilege for the technically savvy. SAGE3 further democratizes AI by using Data Visualization to help interpret and explain AI models so users better understand how AI came to its decisions, which engenders user trust and can help identify potentially prejudiced or biased models.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

The SX-TransPORT Pacific Islands Research and Education Network (PIREN) project supports the primary Research & Education (R&E) network backbone connecting Australia, New Zealand, Guam, and points beyond. Based in Hawaii, the project enables major advances in astronomy, oceanography, coral reef research, high energy physics, biomedical research, and data science. Primary PIREN partners are the Pacific Wave distributed exchange, which ensures that all PIREN-connect networks have full access to the entire domestic and global R&E network fabric, and the Network Startup Research Center (NSRC), which supports the development of campus networks as well as training and education for Pacific Islander network engineers, a highly underrepresented group in STEM.

the PIREN project leverages both the international fiber optic systems that connect to multiple Hawaiian islands as well as the unparalleled international astronomy resources on Maunakea and Haleakala. The PIREN project also established and operates, in partnership with the University of Guam, the Guam Open Research and Education Exchange (GOREX), strategic new R&E network infrastructure in the Pacific that interconnects multiple submarine cable systems from the US, Asia and Australia to provide more resilient and lower latency paths among major research partners including Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Southeast Asia. PIREN is also the principal U.S. initiative to advance R&E networking among underserved Pacific Islands, which now have increased access to fiber-optic systems that interconnect in major hub locations such as Hawaii and Guam, and which are on the forefront of sustainability challenges arising from climate change and sea-level rise.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

The project will support Cyberinfrastructure (CI) training for environmental science research, education, and practice in the Hawaii-Pacific region. Environmental issues in the region affect health, economic stability, and ways of life for Indigenous and other communities. This project will create workshops and curriculum modules for undergraduate and graduate students to increase CI skills across the environmental science domain. By providing the next generation of environmental scientists and practitioners with advanced CI skills, these future professionals will have the ability to use CI to transform science in the region across academic research institutions, public agencies, and community stakeholders.

The project will build a multi-level capacity enhancement program for CI training and skills development that will serve CI users, contributors, and professionals in the environmental and climate science communities. The training materials in the workshops and curriculum modules will be incorporated in undergraduate and graduate courses in order to promote CI skills development and awareness. The project will increase the pool of CI professionals and facilitate knowledge transfer from existing CI professionals to the environmental and climate science communities. As well, it will advance domain-specific CI skills development to position students as CI contributors in their future professional careers. The project will deliver important impacts to the environmental and climate science communities in the Pacific Island region, as there are unique aspects to the region, as well as to others in and beyond the region.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).

The University of Hawaii (UH) aims to establish the CC* Compute: Koa - A High Performance and Flexible Research Computing Resource to support computationally intensive research, education and practice across the UH ten-campus system. The project aims to install a compute cluster Koa, which is architected in response to current resource constraints, particularly scratch storage. The cluster hardware includes scratch storage of 750TB, 2 Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) nodes comprising 10x Nvidia A4000 cards, and a total of 384 CPU cores across 8 compute nodes. Koa provides UH faculty, researchers and students state-of-the-art computational resources focused towards machine learning, artificial intelligence and large scale simulation. The Koa computing cluster is a shared inter-campus resource available to all UH researchers. Koa focuses to support researchers in the specialties of astronomy, atmospheric science, ocean science, microbiome science, and computer & data science, across UH's ten-campus system. Koa resources enable researchers to scale up research to process larger datasets and models in addition to accelerating existing workflows through the new advanced architecture that ties extremely fast storage to the compute resources over a high-speed network, which enables a shorter time to result. The strategic partnership with the Open Science Grid allows for efficient usage of unused Koa resources by the national research community as well as a gateway to a national compute platform for Koa users. Additionally, the Koa resource aids hands-on training in data science and computational science for the next generation of researchers and data scientists through partnership with the Hawaii data science institute and local community for workshops and classroom access.

Koa enables a larger scope and scale of analysis by providing 750TB of high-speed Lustre parallel scratch storage capacity accessible from all compute and GPU accelerated resources. Koa’s 200Gb HDR infiniband network enables Koa’s Lustre to achieve I/O speeds up to 96Gb/s and provide increased computational throughput for I/O heavy workflows. Koa’s external network connections increase data transfer speeds to national, commercial cloud and academic resources via the combination of 100Gb/s data transfer node connection and high-speed parallel file system, enhancing end-to-end big data workflows. Koa also provides virtualized infrastructure to support specialized computational use cases such as: immersive analytics and science gateways. The strategic partnership with the Open Science Grid allows for harvesting unused cycles on Koa by the national research community as well as a gateway to national compute platform for Koa users. The integration of Koa’s high speed file system with the regional Jestream2 NSF Cloud infrastructure hosted at UH allows researchers to easily span computing environments and modalities between the cloud and local Koa computing resources to support new deep learning and artificial intelligence workflows, visualizations and applications.

This project is funded through the collaborative efforts of the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC) and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.