Stephen Beck, PhD - US grants

The scanning electron microscope acquired is helping students taking introductory and advanced courses in biology the ability to directly visualize cell and tissue microanatomy in three dimensions. The scanning electron microscopy course developed complements a course in transmission electron microscopy, and together they form the basis for developing an A.S. degree program in Electron Microscopy sciences that will attract a larger audience from the teaching and research community of the region.

The project is a collaboration with Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Alfred State College, Bergen Community College, Jamestown Community College, Nassau Community College, Rochester Institute of Technology, and Suffolk Community College to provide unique real-world scientific and technological experiences to a diverse mix of science and technology undergraduate students and teachers. Teams of three will participate from each institution for two consecutive 10-week summer internships. Additionally, the project will simultaneously build and disseminate exemplary pedagogical strategies based on the experience gained from a previous ATE project.

The focus of their efforts will be to work with BNL staff to create novel applications with its unique three dimensional (3D) visualization technology as a teaching tool, and to export these new 3D applications back to the community colleges. Problem selection will be driven by the needs and expertise of the participating educational institutions in consultation with the BNL staff. At the end of the project, a collection of user-friendly techniques will be available that will allow college teachers to easily use the new 3D visualization theaters to deliver lessons spanning disciplines from architecture to protein chemistry.

This project, developing a new kind of research instrument and tools for interactive, collaborative, networked 3D visualization, creates a new genre of physical interaction devices, called "viz tangibles." These devices allow users to load and save data, steer parameters, navigate in time, control teleconference links, and perform other key operations. The system can be easily moved between conference rooms or offices, and can be connected with mono or stereo projectors. The effort enables scientists to significantly enhance the utility, usability, and collaborative potential for scientific visualization in research, education, collaboration, and interaction with the general public. The resulting tools will be deployed, utilized, and integrated into research and education at five Louisiana campuses which are already linked together by numerous academic collaborations. The central elements of these platforms, the "viz tangibles," are small, modular interaction devices, typically embedded with different interactors, indicators, and networked microcontrollers. So far, three basic and three specialized viz tangibles, interconnected physically and functionally following a simple grammar, have been implemented. One device loads and saves online information, applications, and parameters, which are referenced with RFID-tagged cards. Another device includes a rebindable "parameter wheel," that supports the manipulation of continuous discrete parameters. A third device provides VCR-like button controls that may drive a variety of interactions. Together, these devices provide core operations for a wide variety of visualization and simulation applications, with functionality resembling the GUI "file" and "edit" menus, but optimized for simple, collaborative, semi-immersive, divided-attention use. The development includes researchers with expertise in visualization, human-computer-interaction, grid computing, software engineering, and electronic, mechanical, and product design. Collaborators include faculty in biomechanics from LSU Medical, Southern U., LaTech; chemistry; computational fluid dynamics; coastal and hurricane modeling; and numerical relativity.

Broader Impact: Application of these viz tangibles range from the laboratory to the science education center. The network links research institutions, a medical center, a historically black university, and a supercomputer center.

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

This project is to renovate the research component of Louisiana State University's (LSU's) campus network. The network includes a bypass feature which allows traffic between researchers and pre-cleared network addresses to bypass the institution's primary firewall and traffic-shaping devices. Such traffic flows between the border router and the campus network core through a router dedicated to bypass traffic, rather than through the campus firewall and traffic shaper. This architecture was created by LSU to address two primary concerns associated with the older network architecture, lack of adequate bandwidth over the 'last mile' to researchers with equipment generating or consuming large amounts of data in facilities in distributed locations, and the hindrance to high bandwidth, low-latency data flows imposed by various network security and integrity controls. The renovation involves upgrading multiple levels within the campus network. The goal is to upgrade the campus network in such a way that when, subsequently, a new high-bandwidth, low-latency connection is required at some location on campus, this can be deployed rapidly and inexpensively.

The upgraded network will enhance research in many areas, including coastal modeling, the visualization of coastal models, computational biology, relativistic astrophysics, computer science, advanced networking research, and nontraditional areas of computational study such as music, theatre, and the visual arts.

In addition to providing infrastructure for research, the upgraded network will also have an impact outside of science and engineering, on research related to technologies for use in the arts and digital media. The infrastructure will support research training since many of the people using the network in research activities will be graduate and undergraduate students.