Shinji Shimojo

Susumu Date

This year there are three labs interested in hosting PRIME students. These include

• The lab of Professor Shinji Shimojo of the Cybermedia Center, with key projects on Tiled Display wall, Networking, E-science Grid applications.

• The lab of Professor Haruo Takemura, Director of the Cybermedia Center, with key projects on Tiled Display Wall, cave, SAGE, 3-D User Interface, Video-see-thorugh Augmented Reality and so on.

• The lab of Professor Toru Fujiwara of the Graduate School of Information Sciences and Technology, with a projects involved information security, in particular with performance analysis of error correcting codes for digital watermarking.

Haruo Takemura

Toru Fujiwara

"NiCT is an incorporated administrative agency that conducts general research and development on information technology supporting the ubiquitous society towards the future. NiCT is located in Tokyo. NiCT would be interested in hosting students in applications of tile display walls, in particular to art analysis, cultural heritage, and visualization. Also, NiCT projects would often be carried out in collaboration with researchers at Osaka University and the National Center for High-performance Computing in Taiwan. Researchers involved include Drs. Morinobu, Sakai (key contacts); Rieko Kadobayashi, Fukunaga, Kobayashi, Morinobu, Shimojo. Dr. Shinji Shimojo is Executive Researcher, National Institute for Information and Communications Technology; Professor, Cybermedia Center, Osaka University; and co-lead of the PRAGMA Telesciences Working Group.

Doshisha University is located in Kyoto Japan. It was founded in 1875 as Doshisha English Studies (Doshisha Eigakko). There are 26,000 students registered at Doshisha University, 500 of whom are international students. PRIME projects at Doshisha University will focus on Biomedical Imaging and Biomechanics. In particular the projects will involve image processing of high resolution CT and MRI data. One project will focus on spine motion and another will focus on articular cartilage surface localization. Key contact at Doshisha University is Dr. Nozomu Inoue, Department of Biomedical Engineering.

Dr. Lin has been an active participant in distributed computing, telescience (control of remote instruments), SARS Grid (installation of Access Grid nodes in hospitals in Taiwan for doctors who were isolated to consult with each other and consult with patients as well as the telescience portal developed by the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research) http://antisars.nchc.gov.tw/, and EcoGrid (a project to put in sensors into ecological parks and control them via a wireless network). There are many researchers and activities in their labs.

Additional projects could involve:

• Visualization

• Tile Display Wall Technology, with applications to Coral Reef (see NMMBA)

• Virtualization and Cloud computing

National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium, Taiwan
http://eng.nmmba.gov.tw/

Tony Fan
 

National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium (NMMBA) is an aquarium located on the west coast of Taiwan near Kenting. The lead PRIME researcher this is Dr. Tony Fan, who has been working with Dr. Fang-Pang Lin to integrate Information Technology into the study of coral reefs, both off the coast of Taiwan, but also in the unique experimental tanks that grow coral reefs. NMMBA is also a major tourist attraction because of its collection. Projects with NMMBA could be joint with NCHC.

David Abramson (http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~davida/) is a well respected researcher in software for CI, and a developer of Nimrod/G (http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~davida/nimrod/index.htm), a software tool to access compute cycles from resources across the world, incorporate quality-of-service metrics, and set deadlines and budgets for computation.

Baoping Yan holds the position of Chief Engineer of the Computer Network Information Center (CNIC). In addition, she serves as the supervisor of Ph.D. students at CNIC.

Dr. Yan has long been engaged in the R&D and construction of computer network system engineering, large-scale scientific database technology and applications. She has completed analysis and design of computer network system, research and implementation of industrial automation and CIMS network technology, ATM-based workstation cluster system, standard management of large-scale network and system integration, Internet/Intranet comprehensive information management system, etc.

Dr. Yan has published over 50 research papers at home and abroad, and graduated more than 30 Master and Ph.D. students. She has in-depth research and understanding of the application and supporting technologies of large-scale scientific database. The government has granted her special allowance for her outstanding contributions.

Kai Nan is currently serving as Associate Researcher in Computer Network Information Center (CNIC), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). He received his B.S. in electronics engineering from Peking University in 1996 and his M.S. and Ph. D. in computer science from the Institute of Computing Technology of CAS in 1999 and 2006 respectively.

He has worked for CNIC since 1999. At present he is the Director of Collaboration Environment Research Center, which is a department dedicated to research and development for Collaboration Technology and e-Science Applications under CNIC. His research interests include data grid, collaborative computing and e-Science applications.

Nan has served as technical lead on many projects funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology, China and the National Science Foundation of China. Currently he is responsible for the System Platform for Scientific Database of CAS, a key project of the CAS 10th five-year Informatization Program, and co-lead of Scientific Data Grid, a project of the 863 Program.  With respect to academic activities, he serves on the Steering Committee of Pacific Rim Applications and Grid Middleware Assembly (PRAGMA). He is also co-chair for Application Working Group of APAN IPv6 Task Force.
 

Over the years since it was established in 1974, University of Hyderabad (www.uohyd.ernet.in) has emerged as a top ranking institute of higher education and research in India. The University is located about 20 kilometers from the city of Hyderabad—a center of the information technology in India. Stretching over nearly 2300 acres of land, the sprawling, scenic, serene campus is the home of a variety of birds. The University also has a city campus - The Golden Threshold - the residence of the late Sarojini Naidu.
Geosciences has been a great interest of the University. Professor Arun Agarwal, Director of Center for Modeling, Simulation, and Design (http://cmsd.uohyd.ernet.in/),  and  Prof. K. V. Subba Rao, Chairman and Professor-in-Charge, University Centre for Earth and Space Sciences, are keen to build strong interactions in the geosciences, both within India and with researchers around the world.

To date Dr Agarwal, lead PRIME mentor at U of Hyderabad, has been an active participate in PRAGMA and serves as a member of the steering committee and has helped established an international GEOsciences Network (iGEON, www.geongrid.org/igeon/) node in Hyderabad, and in other universities in India.

PRIME students would work at the interface of computer science and geosciences, to help expand both GEON (www.geongrid.org) and PRAGMA (www.pragma-grid.net) activities in India. Furthermore they will be able to participate in the Study in India Program, SIP, http://www.uohyd.ernet.in/academic/academic_outreach /study_in_india_prog/index.html.

A list of possible projects is linked here

Universiti Sains Malaysia 
http://www.usm.my/en/

Located in the Pearl of the Orient is Malaysia’s top university, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM, www.usm.my) or the Science University of Malaysia. It is one of the first universities to embark on grid-computing research in Malaysia. In 2002 the first grid testbed was established through an e-science project involving USM, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) and Universiti Malaya (UM) in drug discovery and liquid crystal simulation.

USM, through Dr. Habibah Wahab, has been a founding member of PRAGMA. Dr Wahab is the lead PRIME mentor at USM, and has a great interest in computational chemistry and grid computing. She is a co-lead of the Biosciences Working Group in PRAGMA, and is involved in the Avian Flu Grid Project (http://avianflugrid.pragma-grid.net/).

Dr. Wahab is currently an Associate Professor and Deputy Dean in the School of Pharmaceutical Science (www.pha.usm.my/pharmacy). She has a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Technology, and has an interest in use of grid technologies to understand chemistry and biology, and is keenly interested in engaging students in middle school in the education process.

Finally, USM has portrayed itself as a University in a Garden, a concept as conceptualized by USM is designed to depict the close affinity between its role and function as an institution of higher learning and nature amidst a garden setting.

University of Waikato
http://www.waikato.ac.nz/

The University of Waikato http://www.waikato.ac.nz/, is one of New Zealand's most modern and innovative universities, based in the beautiful river city of Hamilton.  It is home to more than 13,000 students including close to 2,200 international students from over 70 countries.

David Hamilton (http://sci.waikato.ac.nz/staff/biol/davidh), the PRIME mentor at the University of Waikato, currently holds the Environment Bay of Plenty Chair in Lakes Management and Restoration at Waikato University. In this role he provides advice and underpinning research expertise to Environment Bay of Plenty to support their programme of managing the Rotorua lakes. His specific areas of research interest are in algal bloom formation, sediment resuspension in shallow lakes and lake management generally. He has been an active modeler, and has been an advocate for use of sensor technology to observe lakes.

He is a founding member of the Global Lake Ecological Observatory Network (GLEON, gleon.org) and is a current GLEON Steering Committee Member.  PRIME students would work on projects of benefit to GLEON.

Jason Ingham

Mark Gahegan

Located in Auckland, New Zealand, there are two groups interested in hosting PRIME students in 2009.

• Structural Engineering: Two projects in this area would be directed by Associate Professor Jason Ingham of the Structural Engineering Department and Deputy Head (Research), Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. One project would build on an international effort, the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES), and involved aspects of archiving data that could be shared international ( http://www.nznees.auckland.ac.nz/). Another project would consider aspects of a major Seismic retrofit solutions project, which aims at developing superior seismic assessment and retrofit techniques for substandard buildings ( http://www.retrofitsolutions.org.nz/index.shtm).
  
  

• eResearch / Geographic Information Systems - Remote Sensing. The projects in this area would be overseen by Professor Mark Gahegan of the School of Geography, Geology & Environmental Science ( http://cartography.org.nz/the_school/our_people/gahegan_mark/index.shtm), and Director of the eScience Center at the University of Auckland. Projects could be in the areas of CyberInfrastructure, in the general area of Geographic Information Systems / Science or Remote Sensing, and in the area of GeoInformatics or GeoVisualisation.