Session: Pacific Wave Applications Meeting
"Building
International e-Communities in Cyber-infrastructure,
Research, and Education"
Speaker: Dr. Yoshio Tanaka (AIST,
Japan)
Abstract
In 2002 several institutions around the Pacific Rim
founded the Pacific Rim Application and Grid Middleware
Assembly (PRAGMA, http://www.pragma-grid.net).
This group is focused on developing grid technology
by focusing on team building and by running applications
on the emerging international cyber-infrastructure.
Over this time, PRAGMA has grown and gained experience
in running applications on its heterogeneous grid.
In addition, it has spun off several other projects.
We will introduce PRAGMA and summarize
some of its accomplishments. We will describe other
activities, including the Pacific Rim Experiences
for Undergraduate (PRIME, http://prime.ucsd.edu),
an international research apprenticeship for undergraduates
and the Pacific Rim International UniverSities (PRIUS, http://prius.ics.es.osaka-u.ac.jp/en/index.html),
an international enhancement on graduate education
in cyber-infrastructure. We will highlight involvement
of Southeast Asia participants, in current activities
and future plans, and challenges for network activities
in the region. Key to the successes of these projects
is the focus on collaborative interactions.
Biodata
Yoshio Tanaka received his B.E. in 1987, his M.E.
in 1989 and his Ph.D.(Eng.) degree in 1995 all
in mathematics from Keio University. He was working
at Real World Computing Partnership from 1996 to
1999. He is currently a team leader of Grid Infraware
Team at Grid Technology Research Center, National
Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology
and the chair of the Asia Pacific Grid Policy Management
Authority. His current research interests include
Grid programming tools, developments and managements
of Grid Testbed, and Grid security.
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"Recent
Advanced Grid Network Research Experiments & Results"
Speaker: Prof. Joel Mambretti (Northwestern
University, USA)
Abstract
This presentation provides an overview of several
promising experimental research projects that are
redesigning the basic concepts an architecture
of Grid networks. Multiple new applications and
services, especially those that are data intensive,
require capabilities that cannot been provided
by traditional Grids, which are generally based
on non-deterministic packet routed networks, used
as external resources. In response, the Grid research
community has been creating new architecture and
technologies that allow external networks to be
used as deterministic "first class" resources.
In addition, these new concepts provide methods
not only for directly controlling Layer 3 resources,
but also for Layer 2 and Layer 1 resources, such
as lightpaths. Several major research projects
will be described, including those implemented
on national and international testbeds.
Biodata
Joel Mambretti is Director of the International Center
for Advanced Internet Research at Northwestern
University, which is focused on developing digital
communications for the 21st Century. The Center,
which was created in partnership with a number
of major high tech corporations (www.icair.org),
designs and implements large scale infrastructure
and applications (metro, regional, national, and
global). He is also Director of the Metropolitan
Research and Education Network (MREN, http://www.mren.org),
an advanced high-performance network interlinking
organizations in seven upper-midwest states. MREN,
which designed and developed the world's first
GigaPOP. With its research partners, iCAIR has
established several major testbeds, including OMNInet,
to develop new architecture and technology for
dynamic lightpath switching. iCAIR has partnered
with the Electronic Visualization Lab of the University
of Illinois at Chicago to create StarLight (www.startap.net/starlight)
a unique global optical network exchange in Chicago.
He is also an OptIPuter research partner, one of
the PIs of the TeraFlow testbed and on I-WIRE (a
state-wide optical research network in the Illinois),
a founding member of the Global Integrated Lambda
Facility, a world wide distributed infrastructure,
a member of Chicago's Council of Technology Advisors
(MCTA), and Chair of the Council's Committee on Information
Technology Infrastructure. He has been a member of
numerous committees, projects, and initiatives directed
at shaping national, state, local and international
communications policy related to large-scale communications
infrastructure. He has served on the advisory boards
of major technology corporations, and he is a frequent
speaker at national and international communications
technology forums. He has published multiple articles
in peer-reviewed scholarly journals. Among his publications
are two books published by Wiley,
"Next Generation Internet," and "Grid
Networks: Enabling Grids with Advanced Communication
Technology."
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"The
Bright and Dark Side of Bioinformatics"
Speaker: Prof. Wong Limsoon (National
University of Singapore)
Abstract
Bioinformatics has attracted considerable attention
in the life sciences and related industry in the
past decade due to the accumulation of huge amount
of biomedical data and the imminent need to turn
such data into useful knowledge. The knowledge
gained can lead to improved understanding, improved
drug target, improved diagnostics, and improved
treatment plan. I will present my research on several
bioinformatics problems. I hope this will give
you a better appreciation of their bright and dark
side, and identify interesting opportunities for
applying grid technologies to these problems.
Biodata
Limsoon Wong is a Professor of Computer Science and
a Professor of Pathology at the National University
of Singapore. He is currently working mostly on
knowledge discovery technologies and is especially
interested in their application to biomedicine.
Prior to that, he has done significant research
in database query language theory and finite model
theory, as well as significant development work
in broad-scale data integration systems. Limsoon
has written about 100 research papers, a few of
which are among the best cited of their respective
fields. He serves on the editorial boards of Journal
of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (ICP),
Bioinformatics (OUP), and Drug Discovery Today
(Elsevier).
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"CAMERA:
Building a "Community Cyber-infrastructure
for Advanced Marine Microbial Ecology Research & Analysis"
Speaker: Dr. Kayo Arima (University
of California San Diego, USA)
Abstract
The volume of genomic data in public repositories
for DNA and RNA sequence data has recently passed
the milestone of 100 gigabases of genomic sequence
and continues to double at almost a yearly frequency.
Metagenomics, a rapidly emerging field, will further
accelerate this trend by sequencing samples of
the entire environment en masse using
novel sequencing technologies. The environmental
sequence data can be associated with a considerable
range of metadata such as the temperature, chemistry
(available nutrients), weather, time and spatial
location of the sampling site. The breadth and
amount of metadata notably open entirely new avenues
to the study of complex ecosystems and their evolution.
At the same time, a new internet is emerging, one
in which dedicated fiber optical circuits allow
researchers to connect at bandwidth speeds 1000
times greater than today's traditional shared internet.
The convergence of these two trends has already
opened a door to remarkable opportunities and appears
certain to launch a voyage of discovery empowered
by the development of new software tools, new experimental
approaches to data-intensive analysis, and even
a new perspective in biological research
The CAMERA project, through the
robust implementation of this convergence, was started
to serve specifically the metagenomics and microbial
ecology research community. More generally, the project
will help to build the metagenomics community and
develop a suite of software tools and computing resources
enabling the entire scientific community to use the
rapidly growing treasure of metagenomic data and,
in particular, their associated metadata. Our interdisciplinary
database will create a platform for innovative solutions
to the challenges of health care, the environment
and alternative energies. The distributed architecture
of the CAMERA computational engine is based on the
NSF-funded OptIPuter project, which will allow up
to a hundred-fold increase in bandwidth to end-users
accessing our facility over the new National Lamba
Rail (NLR) cyberinfrastructure backplane. Tiled display
walls, used as termination devices for the OptIPuter
backplane, will enable researchers to share, analyze
and visualize scientific data interactively on very
high resolution (multi-mega-pixel) scales.
The CAMERA website, launched in
January, 2007, currently provides three marine metagenomic
datasets, including around 8 million sequence reads
and their assorted metadata from the Global Ocean
Sampling expedition (3-5), the ocean viruses (1)
and Hawaii ocean time series data set (2), along
with BLAST sequence comparison tools. The website
will routinely add additional environmental datasets
and will also enhance the available collection of
extant and new public software. This growing resource
will enable the community, as end-users, to conduct
rigorous analysis of the metagenomic data in order
to obtain deeper insight into biology.
Biodata
Kayo Arima received her Ph.D. in Nutritional
Science and Genetics from the University of Arizona
in 2002. Her thesis work, conducted with Fayez K.
Gishan, involved characterizing the type IIb sodium
dependent phosphate cotransporter in mouse intestines.
She then pursued postdoctoral work with Bruce Blumberg
in the department of Developmental and Cell Biology
at University of California, Irvine. There she continued
her interests in nutrient effects on vertebrate development.
In 2005, She joined the PRAGMA-AIST Joint Program
at California Institute of Telecommunication and
Information Technology (Calit2)-University of California,
San Diego (UCSD) division to learn grid computation,
instructed by Peter Arzberger at UCSD and Satoshi
Sekiguchi at AIST, Japan. Currently she is a Metagenomics
Scientist with the CAMERA project, conducted by Larry
Smarr and Paul Gilna, at the same institution to
ask biological questions by metagenomics approach.
She is also working together with John Wooley to
organize the annual international metagenomics conference
and a series of metagenomics workshops.
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"BeSTGRID
- An e-Research Nexus for New Zealand Bioscience"
Speaker: Prof. Neil Gemmell (University
of Canterbury, NZ)
Abstract
BeSTGRID, Broadband Enabled Science and Technology
grid (www.bestgrid.org),
is a joint initiative by the University of Auckland,
University of Canterbury and Massey University
to establish New Zealand's first grid computing
capability and integrated data grid. We are currently
developing a grid computing framework to share
a variety of geographically and institutionally
separate high-end computational resources (such
as supercomputers and compute clusters), to create
a single unified resource for solving large-scale
compute and data intensive computing applications
in spheres like bioinformatics and phylogenetics.
In addition we are creating a data grid of shared
computational tools and scientific databases, with
a particular focus on bioinformatic and phylogenetic
resources, all of which will be made available
over a high-speed network. In this talk I will
highlight some of the opportunities emerging from
this initiative for the biological community.
Biodata
Prof Gemmell's research uses advanced molecular genetic
technologies to elucidate complex ecological and
evolutionary problems in organisms ranging from
yeasts to marine mammals. His past work ranges
from phylogenetic reconstruction of the evolutionary
relationships of mammals through to the identification
of sequences associated with meiotic recombination
hotpots. Much of this work requires simple but
highly repetitive computation, which has increasingly
led him into the realm of GRID computing. His background
is in genomic sciences with postgraduate training
in comparative genetics at La Trobe University
in Australia, followed by postdoctoral appointments
in Cambridge and Leicester in the U.K. In 1998
he returned to New Zealand to take up a post at
the University of Canterbury where he heads a flourishing
research group working broadly in the area of genetics
and genomics. Currently he leads the development
of the BeSTGRID project's datagrid initiative,
which seeks to establish a set shared computational
tools and scientific databases, with a particular
focus on bioinformatic and phylogenetic resources.
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"Globus
MEDICUS - Federation of DICOM Imaging Devices into
HealthGrids"
Speaker: Dr. Jonathan Silverstein (University
of Chicago)
Abstract
The Digital Imaging and Communications in
Medicine (DICOM) standard defines Radiology medical
device interoperability and image data exchange between
modalities, image databases - Picture Archiving and
Communication Systems (PACS) - and image review end-points.
However the scope of DICOM and PACS technology is
currently limited to the trusted and static environment
of the hospital. In order to meet the demand for
ad-hoc image sharing among global healthcare enterprises,
a new technology must provide mobility, security,
flexible scale of operations, and rapid responsiveness
for DICOM medical devices and associated image data.
Grid technology, an approach to securely federate
independently operated computing, storage, and data
management resources at the global scale over public
networks, meets these core requirements. Here we
present an approach using Grid technology to federate
DICOM and PACS devices for large-scale medical image
workflows among global healthcare enterprises.
Biodata
Dr. Jonathan C. Silverstein is Assistant
Professor of Surgery and Radiology, and Associate
Director of the Computation Institute of the University
of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory. He Directs
the Center for Clinical Information at the Medical
Center, which provides leadership for information
technology initiatives. He holds a BS in Microbiology
from the University of Illinois (Urbana), a MD from
Washington University (St. Louis), general surgery
residency at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's (Chicago),
and a MS in Clinical Epidemiology from the Harvard
School of Public Health (Boston). After six years
as an attending academic surgeon, recognizing the
administrative crisis in U.S. medicine, special opportunities
in biomedical informatics, and his unusual skills
in anticipating and translating information needs
among clinicians, scientists, educators, and administrators,
he now focuses exclusively on academic and operational
activities in biomedical informatics.
His research focuses on the integration of advanced
computing and communication technologies into biomedicine.
He is a proponent of the use of grid computing to
improve patient safety and academic efficiency and
specializes in the application of computers and other
technology to the analysis of vast biomedical databases,
as well as the design, implementation and evaluation
of high-performance collaboration environments. In
concert with Argonne scientists, he has developed
unique cluster-based networked visualization technologies
over which he has demonstrated that complex three-dimensional
anatomy can be better understood by stereo interactive
displays than by traditional teaching methods. He
now uses the systems to teach anatomy from clinical
data rather than cadavers and to conduct surgical
treatm
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"Network
Resilience in R&E network: Post Boxing Day
Fiber cut"
Speaker: A/Prof. Lee Bu-Sung (SingAREN)
Abstract
26 Dec 2006, was remembered as the time when Internet
access for the region was drastically affected
by the earthquake in Taiwan. The importance of
the Internet has never been so clearly missed.
The academic community as a whole was only minimally
affected. This is partially due to the design of
the Internet protocol but also to the communal
spirit of the internationally REN. Through the
diversity in routes and peering, network traffic
was quickly redirected and balanced out. This talk
will cover the sequence of events and activities
during the period that has ensured the continued
Internet access of the R&E community.
Biodata
A/Prof.
Bu-Sung Lee is the Associate Chair for Research
in the School of Computer Engineering, Nanyang
Technological University. He has been actively
involved in the International and National Research
and Education Network community. He is the founding
President of Singapore Advance Research and Education
Network from 2003-2007, which is the NREN that
connects the Singapore research and education community
to the international R&E community. He is a
member of the technical committee of Trans EuAsia
Information Network (TEIN-2) which connects the
ASEM countries together as well as to Europe via
high speed link.
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"Frameworks
to Exploit Regional & Global Networks"
Speaker: George McLaughlin (Pacific
North West Giga Pop)
Abstract
Two phenomena have been occurring in international
research and education networking in recent years.
One is the incresing number of muti-gigabit circuits
being deployed, generally between the developed
economies, and often involving optical technology.
The other is an accelerating deployment of R&E
connectivity, generally at lower capacity, to countries
that have previously had no, or limited, R&E
networking capability. The combination of these
two phenomena provide enormous potential to exploit
the increased power and increased reach of recently
deployed R&E network infrastructure to foster
much broader and better enabled global research
collaboration communities, but experience shows
that such expoitation doesn't happen of its own
accord. This presentation describes the types of
framesworks that can help to optimise the value
of new R&E network intrastructure by applicatins
communities.
Biodata
George McLaughlin has played key roles in Australian,
Asia-Pacific and Global R&E networking. He
guided the establishment of AARNet Pty Ltd as the
organisation responsible for managing and developing
the Australian Research and Education Network;
was instrumental in establishing the substantial
connectivity from Australia to the global R&E
networks. He has taken a lead role in the exploitation
of advanced networks to enhance scientific research,
and in demonstrating the societal benefit of high
capacity networks and novel application approaches
to politicians and government advisers. He is one
of the Vice-Chairs of APAN; Director of International
Partnerships for the Pacific Northwest GigaPoP;
is engaged by DANTE on the TEIN2 initiative; and
serves on the board of the Internet Educational
Equal Access Foundation. He received the Sir Ernest
Fisk Award and the ATUG Chairman's Award for outstanding
contributions to the Australian telecommunications
industry.
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. .
"Research
Directions for Computer Gaming and Artificial Intelligence"
Speaker: Dr. Alexander Nareyek (National
University of Singapore)
Abstract
Gaming is one of the very hot areas in industry
as well as research. This talk focuses on future
directions from the research perspective, covering
topics like automated storytelling, virtual actors,
and procedural content generation.
Biodata
Alexander
Nareyek directs the interactive
intelligence Labs (ii Labs) and the multi-disciplinary Games
Lab at the National University of Singapore,
where he also holds an assistant professorship.
He received his diploma and Ph.D. from the TU Berlin/Germany,
held positions at GMD-FIRST/Germany, Carnegie Mellon
University/USA, and the Cork Constraint Computation
Centre/Ireland, and served as CEO and CTO for Digital
Drama Studios/Czech Republic. He is one of the
leading figures in the field of game AI and serves
on numerous academic and industrial committees.
For the International Game Developers Association
(IGDA), he is responsible for matters regarding
artificial intelligence, and serves as chairperson
of the IGDA's Artificial Intelligence Interface
Standards Committee.
. .
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"Game Intelligence & Behavior
Modeling: Computational Learning and Binary Neural
Networks"
Speaker: A/Prof. Narendra S.
Chaudhari (Nanyang
Technological University)
Abstract
It is well
known that many computationally intensive techniques
in traditional AI are not useful in game AI. Computational
learning in traditional AI involves many negative
results dealing with the "impossibility" of construction
of learning models, and compute-intensive algorithms
for constructive learning models. Existing behavior
modeling in games uses mostly table-based structures,
and Finite Automata (FA) based approaches; however,
most existing game AI models do not exploit the mechanism
to modify such structures "on the fly". Use of positive
results in computational learning makes such "evolving"
learning models possible, and in this talk, we cover
few such possible techniques. Various soft computing
techniques like neural networks, genetic algorithms,
etc. are well-established techniques for learning.
For example, neural networks (NN) exploit continuous
nonlinearity, and "learn" in the form of weights of
interconnections. NN models like back-propagation
(BP) and its variants, Hopfield nets, support vector
machines (SVMs), etc. have successfully been applied
for many problems. However, such NN models remain too
compute intensive for game AI. In the last two decades,
interesting constructive models for Binary Neural Networks
(BNNs) have been developed by many researches, and
they are not compute intensive, which makes them attractive
for applications in game AI. We cover a few constructive
techniques for BNNs in this talk.
Biodata
Narendra S. Chaudhari is currently an Associate
Professor of Computer Engineering and Deputy Director,
gameLAB, in School of Computer Engineering (SCE),
Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore.
His long term interests are in NP-Complete problems;
for his doctoral work, he worked on graph isomorphism
problem where, besides other heuristic approaches,
he developed an approach for distinguishing strongly
regular graphs based on interior point approach (applied
on polytopes defined on eigenspaces of graphs). His
current research interests are in the areas of game
AI, specialized neural networks (e.g., binary neural
networks), Fuzzy inference, optimization algorithms,
computational learning, and theoretical computer science.
He has been an Associate Editor of International Journal
of Computer Games Technology (IJCGT) (Hindawi
Pub. Co., New York). He
has more than 145 publications and four books to
his credit. He has supervised more than 15 doctoral
students in Computer Science and Engg. He teaches
courses on Discrete Structures, Algorithms, Database
Systems, Formal Languages, Automata and Computability,
Programming Languages, and Compiler Construction.
(More information is available on his personal website: http://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/asnanrendra).
. .
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"Cluster/PC-Grid
rendering in Temasek Polytechnic"
Speaker: Allan Toh (Temasek
Polytechnic, Singapore)
Abstract
The Cluster rendering platform has made it's first
inroads to the School of Engineering's 3D Media
Studio. Together with MAXON's Cinema 4D animation/visualization
software suite, it has made possible for students
and staff to submit their work and projects via
a web portal and tap on the resources available
in cluster computing. This presentation will also
share with participants how a PC-Grid POVRAY renderer
was implemented and used by the school to harness
the power of pc-grid computing.
Biodata
Allan
Toh graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in Electrical
Engineering from University of Calgary, Canada.
He obtained the Master of Science in Artificial
Intelligence and have published a paper in IEEE-IAS
journal on Neural Networks, and is a member of
IEEE. His past working experience includes working
as a special projects engineer at Agilis Communication
Technologies Pte Ltd dealing with RF technologies.
As a project manager in the Telco manufacturing
industry and IT consultancy firm, he has also experience
in managing projects from conception to delivery.
At Temasek Polytechnic, he is involved in teaching
subjects like Telecommunication principles, basic
networking technologies and other first year fundamental
subjects. He is currently with 3D Media Studio
developing 3D animation and computer graphics (CG)
course curriculum for training. Current interests
includes operation systems, networking, cluster
and grid computing with special attention to its
use for CG rendering.
. .
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"CACAni - Next Generation
of Digital Animation"
Speaker: Dr. Tian Feng (Nanyang
Technological University)
Abstract
Digital media technology is Singapore's latest economic
venture. The establishment of companies like Lucasfilm
and TQ Global in Singapore reaffirms the drive
of the digital media movement here. There was however
issue with current animation production, particularly
time costly and labor intensive. This talk will
present an innovative research and development
on computer assisted cel animation (CACAni). With
CACAni, animators need only draw keyframes as in-between
frames are automatically generated. Given a colored
frame, the CACAni will also auto-color the other
frames in that sequence. The automation process
can cut down large amount of time and cost on animation
production, thus gives Singapore an edge over other
countries where labor is abundant.
Biodata
Dr. Tian
Feng is currently an Assistant Professor of the School
of Computer Engineering (SCE), Nanyang Technological
University (NTU), Singapore. He
has been working for years in the areas of Computer
Graphics, Computer Assisted Cartoon Animation, Animation,
Computer Vision and 3D Profilometry, etc. In recent
two years, he has been granted a few A*STAR Science
and Engineering Council funding and DSTA funding,
amounting up to S$2million. Up to date, he has
published over 30 journal articles and conference
papers. Dr Tian is also a management committee member
of ACM Siggraph Singapore Chapter, Chair of Asia
Pacific Digital Art and Animation Competition and
Advisor for ACM Siggraph NTU Student Chapter.
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