September 17, 2003
CSE researchers will receive over $7 million in funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for five new projects in the information-technology arena. This funding is a subset more than $14.3 million that twenty-one UCSD researchers will receive from NSF to investigate topics ranging from how to make cryptography easier to use to the development of better computer simulations of cell physiology.
NSF announced eight large awards from its Information Technology Research (ITR) program, with CSE participating in two of UCSD's three projects. Large ITR projects focus on long-term innovations through coordinated research and education efforts at the intersection of computer science and other science and engineering fields. Apart from the large ITRs, the NSF is also funding a wide range of smaller projects. The projects were selected from a landslide of more than 2,500 merit-reviewed proposals from the academic community. CSE participants (PIs are pictured) in these awards include the following (all dollar figures represent funding to UCSD entities):
Large ITRs
Constructing a "Family Tree" for Life on Earth
($4.1 million) - 2003-08
PI: Francine Berman (San Diego Supercomputer Center [SDSC] and CSE)
Co-PI: Philip Bourne (SDSC, School of Medicine/Pharmacology)
This project is part of a wider $11.6 million collaborative ITR led University of New Mexico professor Bernard Moret, and involves ten other universities and the American Museum of Natural History. This project will develop new analytical techniques and harness the power of many supercomputers around the world to map the evolutionary relationships among all species of living organisms.
Simplifying the Development of Grid Applications
($1.7 million) - 2003-2008
Senior Personnel: Francine Berman, Henri Casanova (SDSC and CSE) and Andrew Chien (CSE)
The researchers from UCSD and six other universities will work on this overall $8.2 million project led by Ken Kennedy of Rice University. This project will create software tools to simplify and accelerate the development of grid applications and services. It will also look at novel scheduling techniques based on abstract "virtual grids" to deliver high efficiency on grids of real machines.
Medium and Small ITRs
Asynchronous Execution for Scalable Simulation of Cell Physiology
($550,000) - 2003-06
PI: Scott Baden (CSE)
This project will develop novel programming methodology and a run-time library for large-scale biological simulations. More generally, it is expected to yield new knowledge about software techniques in support of scheduling and latency-tolerant formulation.
Querying Sequentially Accessed XML Data
($375,000) - 2003-06
PI: Yannis Papakonstantinou (CSE)
Co-PI's: Alin Deutsch (CSE), Victor Vianu (CSE) and Bertram Ludäescher (SDSC and CSE)
High-volume data streams exchanged in XML form are becoming crucial to a wide range of applications in the scientific, government and business domains. This project will develop a comprehensive approach to querying data streams in XML form, covering the spectrum from formal foundations all the way to systems. The expected outcome of the project will be a qualitatively new architecture, technology and query processor for XML data streams, with impact on a wide range of applications. The approach will be tested on seismic data provided by the UCSD-based ROADNet project, but the research is expected to have a broad impact on voluminous XML data streams.
Cryptography: from user needs to protocol design
($300,000) - 2003-05
PI: Daniele Micciancio (CSE)
Co-PI: Russell Impagliazzo (CSE)
This project investigates approaches to making cryptography easier to use at three levels: easier for the protocol designer, for the software applications, and the policy maker. In doing so, researchers aim to facilitate increased and better informed use of cryptography.
Links
Story Adapted from UCSD Press Release
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Media Contacts:
Jacobs Schools of Engineering - Doug Ramsey, (858) 822-5825
San Diego Supercomputer Center Greg Lund (858) 534-8314
