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

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.
 

Kevin Dong

Kejun (Kevin) Dong is currently serving as an associate researcher at the Computer Network Information Center (CNIC), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). He received his B.S. from Peking University in 1999, his M.S. from CNIC and his Ph.D. from the Institute of Computer Technology (ICT) of CAS in Computer Science in 2003 and 2007 respectively. He was a visiting scholar at UC San Diego in 2010. His current research interests include collaboration technology, grid computing, mass data storage and tiled display wall visualization. Kevin has been actively involved in Pacific Rim Applications and Grid Middleware Assembly (PRAGMA) since 2003, and served as the co-chair of the PRAGMA 21 Workshop Program Committee in Sapporo, Japan in 2010.

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.

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.

Jung-hsin Lin

Located in Taipei, Taiwan, National Taiwan University started hosting PRIME students in 2009.

Pharmacoinformatics: Directed by Assistant Professor Jung-Hsin Lin, School of Pharmacy. Pharmacoinformatics Laboratory. Dr. Lin's research area focuses on statistical mechanics of biological macromoleculese. e.g, proteins, nucleic acids, membranes, and drugs. A major effort has been on the development and application of computer models and simulation methods for molecular systems. Particular research problems include study of atomic mobility in proteins and membranes by molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo computer simulations; quantitative modeling of recognition and binding in ligand-receptor systems with solvation effects; development of methods for computing free energy change efficiently in solution phase processes; calculation of diffusion constants and diffusion encounter rates of rigid and flexible molecules in solution and onto biomembranes by Brownian dynamics simulations; modeling of subcellular and cellular processes, including signal transduction, gene expression, and cytoskeletal dynamics.

Xiaohui Wei

Located in Changchun, China, Jilin University started hosting PRIME students in 2010. Directed by Professor Xiaohui Wei, Laboratory of Distributed Computing and System Architecture (DCSA), College of Computer Science and Technology (CCST), DCSA Laboratory.

Professor Wei is Vice Dean of CCST and Director of Super Computing Center of Jilin University (239 in 2010 Top 500 list). Prof. Wei’s research direction focuses on distributed systems, cluster computing, cloud computing and numerical simulation applications. He leads the research and development of community scheduler framework (CSF4), a metascheduler for distributed systems, and involves in China Grid development activities. Professor Wei’s team actively pursues research in virtualization technology, distributed resource allocation and management and applications of high performance computing, such as biomedical applications and geology numerical simulations.

Chau Chin Lin

Eco-Informatics Working Group Taiwan Forestry Research Institute

--Bridging communications between scientists of ecological/forest domains and information technologists for research information long-term archiving, retrieving, integrating and analyzing on ecology and forestry.

About the Working Group

The Ecological Informatics Working Group of Taiwan Forestry Research Institute (TFRI) was established in 2004. This group consists of ecologists, forestry researchers, and information mangers. The group searches and collects available open source tools to help domain scientists managing their own research data. Furthermore, the group attempts to facilitate information exchange through a standard schema. The work not only promotes the application of information technologies in Taiwan but also helps the East Asian and Pacific International Long Term Ecological Network (EAP-ILTER) to enhance the information management capability in the region. Since 2004, the Working Group has provided a web-enabled, publicly accessible resource for integrated and value-added information on ecology and forestry and actively promoted collaboration in applied research and capacity building in ecological informatics.

Our Objectives

1. Assemble, organize and disseminate the ecological metadata language (EML) document and data of ecological, environmental, and forestry research in the public domain for use by researchers, educators, resource managers.
2. Build capacity among ecological and forestry researchers to use wireless senor networks and handle their research datasets by well documented metadata.
3. Acquire large numbers of datasets and other research information through data turbine server and the metadata catalog system, and develop interfaces and tools that enable researchers discovering datasets and running basic analyses online or locally.
4. Using scientific workflow as the automatic integrating tool for researchers who focus on ecological or forestry modeling.
5. Enhance the capability of ecological information management for all the EAP-ILTER through holding workshops and collaborations.
   
   

Dr. Chau Chin Lin, Senior scientist of TFRI, is a fire ecologist and programmer. He is currently leading the information management project of Taiwan Ecological Research Network(TERN) and TFRI. He also chairs the information management committee of EAP-ILTER. His work focuses on promoting cyberinfrstructure application on ecology research such as senor network and data turbine services. He also works on developing multi-lingual open source software for ecologists.

Dr. Sheng Shan Lu, associate scientist of TFRI. His research background is in entomology. In 2004 he became involved in long term ecological information management and works closely with US LTER colleagues on metadata standards. He focuses on using sensor network to collect bee image data and analyze through new technology bee defense behavior.