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The scope of the Education and Outreach (E/O) program of the iVDGL
project is to enhance grid-related research capabilities of faculty
and students at other universities and institutions. In particular, it
intends to promote learning and inclusion via the integration of
faculty and (K-12, undergraduate, and beginning graduate) students of
a diverse set of minority and under-represented institutions (MSI)
into the scientific program of participating physics and computer
science experiments.
The overall strategy of our program is therefore
based on the direct integration of those MSI sites and personnel into
the laboratory that already have research ties to the participating
physics experiments and prior experience in E/O activities, but also
some computing and networking infrastructure build on. In Spring
2002, three MSIs (called Tier3 centers) received funds from the iVDGL
project for hardware and personnel to upgrade or construct small
(32-node) clusters, thus bringing a large number of additional
minority students directly into contact with large-scale grid
research. These Tier3 centers are:
The University of Texas at Brownsville
(UTB), a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) involved in
LIGO research (LSC member Institution),
Hampton University, a
Historically Black College and University (HBCU) involved in ALTAS/CMS
research, and Salish Kootenai College (SKC),
a Tribal College that has recently joined the LCS (LIGO Scientific Collaboration).
Associated with each Tier 3 center, are responsible work team members,
consisting of Manuela Campanelli
(UTB), who is also coordinating the E/O activities of the GriPhyN project,
Keith Baker (HU),
Tim Olson
(SKC), and several undergraduate and graduate students (e.g. Santiago
Pena, Jose Zamora and Sean Morris at UTB, Howard Brown at HU, etc). To
facilitate the coordination of the E/O activities among the Tier3
centers, Manuela Campanelli will also lead the overall E/O effort for
iVDGL integrating it with the one of the GriPhyN project. Keith Baker
will be helping her as co-lead deputy. All work team members are
expected to collaborate to the overall effort by actively interacting
with each other (through mailing list, regular telecons and meetings),
byleveraging on existing E/O programs (QuarkNet, EOT-PACI, ThinkQuest,
etc) and by collaborating with the E/O efforts in other national
projects (e. g. PPDG etc) and international projects in Europe
(e.g. DataGrid etc), and possibly in Asia and South America. In order
to achieve these goals, the work team members will carry out the
activities described in the following sections.
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As one of her first E/O projects,
Manuela Campanelli created an active web site
(GriPhyN Education and Outreach
Center), linked from the main
GriPhyN web page. At this stage of
year 2, the E/O web site contains basic educational material
about data grids and the participating physics experiments, and
provides some technical support information (e.g.,
documentation, user manuals, how-to guides, etc.) for grid software
(like Globus and Condor). During the following years,
Manuela
plans to expand this site to illustrate the concept of virtual data.
The web site will also provide examples of scientific projects for
students at various educational levels, which can be directly linked
to the E/O activities of existing programs (e.g.,
Quarknet,
ThinkQuest,
EOT-PACI, etc.).
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During Fall 2001, UTB completed the construction of a 96-node Beowulf
Linux-cluster `Lobizon'. Although
this cluster was constructed primarily for LIGO data analysis use, it
will also serve as a testbed for GriPhyN/iVDGL software and can be
used to introduce the Hispanic minority students at UTB to distributed
computing and grid-related technology. During spring 2002, with the
help of Scott Koranda
from University of Wisconsin,
Milwaukee an undergraduate student (Sean Morris) has learned to
install and use Condor on the cluster. A list of steps for installing
and running Condor and Globus will be posted soon on the E/O web
pages. Two other undergraduate students are currently installing the
VDT on the same cluster (a list of step-by-step procedure for
installing and running the VDT compiled by these sutdents is posted in
the toolkit web page). During Fall
2002, UTB will be able to support one additional graduate student
(Santiago Pena), who is interested in learning and testing the VDT
grid software (including Globus and Condor) on the cluster. UTB
expects to participate as a VDT testbed in Fall 2002. As a long-term,
the UTB group plans to extend their cluster to 128 nodes and do some
additional benchmarking. UTB will also help Ahktar Mahmood (UT Pan American) and Kaushik De (UT
Arlington) to grid-enable their clusters and who are possibly
interested in joining the iVDGL E/O effort.
During this year, all work team members will participate at the iVDGL
facilities work team
telecons to discuss and plan issues related to the purchasing and
construction of the Tier3 center hardware. This will provide the
necessary training and preparation for next year, when most of the
funds from the iVDGL subcontracts necessary for the actual
construction of the clusters will be available. In particular, Tim
Olson (SKC) has been attending several cluster construction workshops
and plans to attend more meetings this upcoming fall. He will start a
detailed planning of the construction of the Linux cluster by this
summer. Thanks to a fast Internet2 connection, HU faculty and students
are currently using a 50-node Intel-Linux computing facility at the
US-ATLAS host laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), which
use a for their simulation work.
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SDSS Skyserver: SkyServer is a project
lead by Alex Szalay (Johns Hopkins University) and Jim Gray
(Microsoft) to provide Internet access to the public of SDSS data for
both astronomers and for science education. This project is well under
development, and it appears to be an excellent educational
tool. Jordan Raddick
(Web designer) is the contact person for E/O in
SDSS. During the E/O meeting at UTB in March 2002, Carol Lutsinger and
Andy Miller (local BISD elementary and middle school teachers in
Brownsville) talked to Jordan about testing SkyServer projects in
their classrooms. Tim is now also using Skyserver as an SDSS
educational tool in his astronomy and astrophysics courses at SKC.
EOT-PACI: The EOT-PACI program (Education, Outreach,
and Training Partnership for Advanced Computing Infrastructure) has
expressed interest on ways to link the E/O activities of GriPhyN/iVDGL
with their program. At this stage, Roscoe Giles (EOT Team Leader), Scott Lathrop, (EOT Program
Manager), Mary Bea Walker
(Associate Director for EOT at NCSA), and Valerie Taylor (PI of Coalition to
Diversify Computing), who is also a senior investigator in the GriPhyN
project, have been already in contact with Campanelli and Romano to
discuss some initial ideas for a possible collaboration
Here are some initial ideas:
(a) Joint participation at major educational conferences
and All-Hands meetings. (A list of conferences is available
here).
(b) Exploring opportunities for workshops on GriPhyN tools/resources
with the Advanced Networking with Minority Serving Institutions
(ANMSI). ANMSI is helping to engage
faculty from MSIs with HPC research centers and activities; workshops
on cluster technologies are underway. The contact people for the ANMSI
project are: Allison Clark
(PI for the project for EOT-PACI) and
Stephenie McLean
(project manager).
(c) Linking our web sites to on-line tutorials.
ThinkQuest:
Last year, Campanelli and Romano began
talks with ThinkQuest
to develop special challenge projects based on the application sciences
and grid technology. GriPhyN/iVDGL would provide resources
in the form of interesting data sets (e.g., SDSS images or LIGO data)
and/or "sandbox" CPUs that students could use when creating innovative
web-based educational tools for ThinkQuest competitions that will be
directly linked to our E/O Web site.
Harvey B Newman and
Eric Alakson at Caltech
have expressed interest in linking GriPhyN/iVDGL E/O with ThinkQuest.
They have a VRVS reflector set up specially for ThinkQuest at Advanced.org;
in Armonk near IBM Headquarters.
The contact people at ThinkQuest are:
Kristin Mortensen,
Amela Sadagic,
Al Weis,
Terry Rogers.
QuarkNet: QuarkNet QuarkNet is an ambitious
(and highly successful) NSF-funded program that introduces large
numbers of high school students across the US in particle physics
research techniques. High school teachers are invited to an eight-week
summer program for intensive study at host institutions where they
work closely with particle physics faculty and staff. These teachers
then take their experience (and enthusiasm) from this program back to
their classrooms after the end of the summer. HU was one of the
founding institutions of the national QuarkNet program. In addition,
HU is one of the leading institutions in the US for training large
numbers of African-American students in the sciences. There is also
substantial outreach to K-12 teachers and students, exposing them to
forefront research and education in the sciences. Indiana University
and The University of Florida are also active QuarkNet
centers. Therefore GriPhyN and iVDGL researchers at these institutions
are encouraged to provide a grid-related componentto the already
existing QuarkNet activities.
In particular, Keith Baker, who is
the lead person for the HU, and a principal investigator for QuarkNet,
will provide a directlink between the QuarkNet, ATLAS/CMS and
GriPhyN/iVDGL E/O programs. Ken Cicere (a QuarkNet investigator) and
Howard Brown (an
undergraduate student) at HU will help Keith in this effort. The
ATLAS group at HU consists of three faculty member, one postdoc, six
technicians, and one engineering supervisor. The motivation for
becoming a part of the iVDGL was to enhance the research capabilities
within the ATLAS collaboration. The long-term goals are to: (1) Get
improved access to simulation tools for physics and detector
simulations in he high-energy physics community. (2) Get improved
access to ATLAS data once the experiment begins in 2007. (3) Train
Hampton University students and staff in the use of modern Internet
tools and methods. (4) Contribute to the development of this
revolution in Internet use. (5) Expose nonscientists, especially K-12
students and teachers to grid technology. From the first two of these
goals, Hampton University contributes to grid development by being a
testbed for iVDGL performance. Key short-term milestones are: (a)
Complete GEANT4 simulation of simple detector compared with data from
bench tests at Hampton University (Fall 2002). (b) Complete first
physics simulations using ATLFAST++ (Fall 2002). (c) Report written by
K-12 student on iVDGL work at Hampton University (Summer 2003).
ATLAS Outreach:
Rob Gardner from Indiana University
also suggested to exploring the following possible connection to ATLAS E/O activities
(a) Possible connection to QuarkNet activities - perhaps develop
a summer program which explores ATLAS simulations on the grid.
Longer term: develop simple web-based portal for simulation of
Higgs events in ATLAS, showing an event display.
(b) Develop ATLAS - GriPhyN Outreach website which discusses
contributions that GriPhyN and iVDGL are making for ATLAS
and LHC grid computing in general. This could be connected
to the ATLAS outreach website, and could provide a portal
to all the major grid excitement, viewed from an ATLAS physicist's
perspective. The contact person for
ATLAS Outreach
is Michael Barnett.
(c) Building an iVDGL compute site - develop procedures for adding
Tier 3 sites to the iVDGL.
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In order to give undergraduate students the opportunity to participate
in grid-related research at Griphyn/iVDGL institutions,
Manuela Campanelli
plans to submit a proposal for an NSF Research Experience for
Undergraduate
(REU)
supplement, during Fall 2002. The idea is to
request support for several undergraduate students (10 to 20)
doing grid-related research during the summer months at
participating GriPhyN/iVDGL institutions. Students themselves
will apply and choose the mentoring institutions on the basis of the
research projects proposed by each institution.
At the end of each year, the students would
present posters or give talks at a conference specifically designed to
showcase their work. Preparation of an REU proposal will require input
from GriPhyN/iVDGL institutions interested in mentoring students
during the summer.
Institutions interested in participating in this program should
indicate who is willing to mentor students and what projects they
think the students could work on.
The following institutions have already expressed their interests:
Indiana University:
James Williams and
John Hicks at
Indiana University
would like to develop a Minority
Serving Institution (MSI) "view" of the grid via the
iGOC. They have had experience with REUs
in the past for the international networking project,
TransPAC. One idea for a summer
project would be to have students develop a scaled-down, simple to
install VDT that high school teachers and students could
use to grid-enable a small cluster or single computer.
The primary goal of a summer REU at the iGOC would be to collect, organize
and publish (via the web) information to make the iVDGL (and the iGOC)
more accessible by the Minority Serving Institutions (MSI). The
rationale for this request is that the MSIs have fewer technical
resources than the larger institutions. To effectively interact with
the iVDGL, the MSIs will need more assistance. If properly prepared,
the iGOC can furnish that assistance (or at least point questions
toward the appropriate destination). As a beneficial side effect
should be simplification of access to the iVDGL for everyone.
This project might need to be carried out in collaboration with
Miron Livny at the
University of Wisconsin, Madison.
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee:
Bruce Allen at
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
(UWM) said that he would be happy to mentor several undergraduates.
They already had
one REU student working on their beowulf cluster last year. He proposed
some possible projects titles: `Automated hardware monitoring on a large
linux cluster'; `Automated software propagation on a large linux cluster';
`Automated account management on a large linux cluster';
`Networking performance testing on a large linux cluster';
`Automated file replication using grid tools'.
A detailed description of these projects as well as the possible
involvement of the
University of Wisconsin, Madison
need to be developed.
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Caltech NSF ITR grant:
Harvey B Newman
is also applying for an NSF ITR grant.
In the proposal they mentioned that they would also like to work with
one or two students from Brownsville to do a short grid software
project at Caltech. Work on components as given in Physiology of the Grid,
or later building small proto-higher-level services could be a focus.
UTB is hiring a new graduate student,
Santiago Pena who
would be very happy to spend the summer in Caltech.
CRA grant:
Ann Chervenak
from the University of Southern California will apply for the
Computing Research Association's
(CRA)
Distributed Mentor Program for Women Undergraduates to support
high-quality women undergraduate students with GriPhyN/iVDGL related
research projects.
NISBA grant: The SKC
administration has submitted a proposal for the creation of a NISBAS
Center for Excellence in Teaching. The focus is to develop a training
center for K-12 teachers to improve, science, math and technology
education in the National Indian School Board Association School
(NISBAS). If funded, next year SKC will be able to hold summer
workshops and national educational meetings at SKC, where
GriPhyN/iVDGL researchers could participate by giving talks and
tutorials.
The COSM Physics Frontier
Center: The NSF recently awarded a Physics Frontiers Center
Hampton University (HU): the Center for the Study of the Origin and
Structure of Matter (COSM). Currently, the resources devoted to iVDGL
at HU are minimal: there is only one undergraduate student involved
(paid by iVDGL funds) and part of one faculty member's time. COSM will
devote some of its resources to iVDGL activities when it is fully set
up; currently Keith Baker is still in negotiations with the NSF.
It is expected that COSM funding will commence before Summer 2003.
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Each GriPhyN/iVDGL senior investigator is encouraged to include grid
concepts in his/her physics or IT courses.
In addition, each GriPhyN/iVDGL senior
investigator is committed to lecturing and mentoring activities at other
at other (in particular minority serving) U.S. universities and institutions
to grid-related research. These activities are very important as they are
specifically targeted to promote and improve the education of students
regarding grid-related activities.
Campanelli is currently
keeping a record and making available a list of talks and course development.
activities that are going on at GriPhyN/iVDGL institutions.
At present, the site includes:
(a) a partial list of talks that
GriPhyN/iVDGL researcher have already given at other universities,
(b) a list of universities interested in hearing talks, with the relevant
contact info for those universities,
(c) information about several interesting
opportunities to do E/O for GriPhyN/iVDGL by giving
talks at the several Educational Conferences,
(d) links to course development work going on at UTB and UTPA.
In addition, GriPhyN/iVDGL investigators are also encouraged to give educational talks
at major national and international conferences, meetings and workshops.
A suggestive list of conferences, meetings and workshops is available at the following
site.
All GriPhyN and
iVDGL members will be reminded
periodically to send the information to
Manuela Campanelli or to
provide links to material that they are developing for their course.
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On March1, 2002, Manuela
Campanelli and Joe
Romano organized the First
GriPhyN/iVDGL E/O Meeting at UTB. The meeting successfully served
to the main purpose of spreading the news about GriPhyN and iVDGL to
UTB students and faculty and to local high school and middle school
teachers (e.g. via the inauguration of UTB cluster `Lobizon?, direct
participation of K-12 teachers, students and the local press), but
also it served as an opportunity to begin to coordinate the E/O
activities among the various Tier3 Centers participating in iVDGL.
We expect that more E/O meetings will be organized at least once or
twice a year and will rotate locations between UTB, HU, SKC, and
others Tier3 centers. Each Tier3 center team leader is responsible for
organizing a workshop and/or tutorial at his/her Tier3
institutions. HU would like to host the next meeting (possibly in Fall
2002), while high school teachers participating QuarkNet activities
are still on campus.
In order to facilitate the participation of all senior investigators
and given the limited E/O budget, we propose to hold one of the E/O
workshops in conjunction with one of the "All-hands GriPhyN Meetings."
This would
allow a more direct and larger participation of minority students,
without needing additional travel money for students. UT Brownsville
has volunteered to hold such a meeting in Spring 2003.
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In spring 2001, Campanelli has made contact with
Susanna Tosi from the
DataGrid project, and Emanuela Piervitali from the EUDG, who have
agreed to exchange ideas and information on E/O activities.
One interesting idea arising from this collaboration is the creation
of an educational documentary about the
computational data grids, which would require significant budgetary
and human resources that are not presently available in the GriPhyN
E/O program alone. Such a documentary would certainly produce a
worldwide impact on the general public, and could also be used as a
powerful media to reach high school students and teachers.
In December 2001, Campanelli released an interview about GriPhyN and
grid research in general that has been published in several magazines
in Germany, among them an article in
Financial Times. In March 2002 she also released an interview with the
Herald of Brownsville and wrote an article in letter in Matters of Gravity.
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Documents Page
Please contact the Coordinators,
Manuela Campanelli &
Joe Romano for more information.
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