Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering

CSEE Colloquium

A Novel Dynamic Task Scheduling Environment
for High Performance Distributed Systems

Tyler Simon

Faculty Research Assistant, UMBC

1:00pm Friday, 21 September 2012, ITE 227, UMBC

The number of concurrently executing tasks required for a single application to perform at the petascale is on the order of hundreds of thousands. Given current manycore hardware trends, future peta- and exa-scale class systems will require applications to run tasks on the order of hundreds of millions to billions. To address the problem of creating, running and managing jobs of this scale, both from a system user and administration perspective we have developed, ARRIA, an Autonomic Runtime for Resource Intensive Applications. ARRIA uses a decentralized bag of tasks and workload scheduler that increases individual job priorities based on weighed factors that are of interest to the application programmer or the system administrator. ARRIA is designed to run millions of independent tasks reliably and efficiently without explicit message passing from the user. In previous work, using the ARRIA scheduler for scientific MapReduce workloads, we have shown a 2.1x speedup over the Hadoop Fair Share scheduler. We investigate novel scheduling parameters and strategies that guarantee efficient job execution for a wide range of realistic and simulated workloads with both user and administrator objectives, such as increased throughput and maximized utilization with minimal wait times for specific job classes. Finally our experiments investigate the long tail phenomenon for mixed workloads and the overheads incurred for increased system size.

Mr. Simon has undergraduate degrees in Computer Science and Philosophy with a Master of Science in Computer Science from the University of Mississippi, he is currently pursuing a PhD in Computer Science at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Mr. Simon has worked professionally in the high performance computing (HPC) field for over a decade. In 2005 he earned a Department of Energy graduate research fellowship at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where he worked for in the Computer Science and Mathematics Division developing and implementing the Freeloader distributed storage system. Mr. Simon has worked as a computational scientist for the Department of Defense High Performance Computing Modernization Office based at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center in Vicksburg, MS, evaluating both current and future HPC system requirements for applications of interest to the Department of Defense. Since 2009 Mr. Simon has been a computational scientist and manager of HPC user services at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation at Goddard Space Flight Center and is currently a Faculty Research Assistant at the University of Maryland Baltimore County working at the NSF Center for Hybrid Multicore Productivity Research. Mr. Simon’s research involves the study of dynamic distributed runtime environments, parallelization strategies and scheduling of large scale scientific applications for current petascale and future HPC architectures.

For more information and directions see http://bit.ly/UMBCtalks.

CSEE Colloquium

Computational Brain Connectivity Using Diffusion MRI

Ҫağatay Demiralp
Brown University

1:30pm Tuesday, 18 September 2012, ITE 325B

In my talk, I’ll present examples from modeling, visualization, and analysis of diffusion-derived structural brain connectivity. I’ll first introduce two interactive visual analysis tools that use novel planar representations of the brain. I’ll show that two-dimensional map representations that are viewed, interacted with, and enriched like online geographical maps result in faster and more accurate exploration of brain connectivity.

Second, I’ll introduce neural tract-based probability density functions, including joint densities of tract arc length and scalar diffusivity measures, as biomarkers. I’ll demonstrate their simple and effective use in detecting individual and group differences. I’ll also describe a new coherence measure for neural tract clusters based on geometric slicing. I’ll show that a refinement of neural tract clustering based on this measure leads to a significant improvement in clustering results that is not possible directly using standard methods.

Third, I’ll describe a new coloring method for three-dimensional line fields based on Boy's real projective plane immersion. This coloring method is smooth and one-to-one, except on a set of measure zero. I’ll demonstrate its use in visualization of neural tracts and cross-sectional diffusion MRI brain images.

Çağatay Demiralp is a PhD candidate in computer science at Brown University. His research interests are in characterizing patterned structures in data both qualitatively and quantitatively using topological, geometric as well as statistical approaches. While computational brain connectivity using diffusion MRI has been the focus of his thesis research, he has published on a diverse set of topics ranging from surface deformation to semantic segmentation. He received Brown University’s Brain Sciences Research award, IEEE Vis Best Poster award, and ASSH Best Layout and Best Scientific Presentation awards.

Four students in UMBC's Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering have been selected for major scholarships to study cybersecurity in the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Scholarship for Service (SFS) CyberCorps program.   Each student will receive full tuition, fees, and a nine-month stipend ($20,000 for undergraduates, $25,000 for MS/MPS students, and $30,000 for PhD students) for up to  two years (three years for PhD).  For this first year of the program at UMBC, recipients are Oliver Kubik (BS student in computer science), Brendan Masiar and Brandyn Schult (MPS students in cybersecurity), and Mary Mathews (PhD student in computer science).  

While in the program at UMBC, each student will participate in paid summer internships and have opportunities to engage in mentored research opportunities at the UMBC Center for Information Security and Assurance (CISA) and its partners from industry and government.  Following graduation, each student must work for the government (for pay) for one year for each year of scholarship received.  Drs. Alan T. Sherman and Richard Forno direct the program using support they received from their recently awarded $2.5 million NSF grant.  The CyberCorps program will produce highly-qualified professionals to meet the increasing need to protect American's cyber infrastructure.

Each year students may apply for SFS CyberCorps scholarships at UMBC, with application deadline in mid January.  For details, see www.cisa.umbc.edu.  In each of the next three years, UMBC expects to make six new awards.   Applicants must be accepted to a full-time degree program in a cybersecurity-related field (CS, CE, cyber, EE, IS, math, physics, education, public policy).

UMBC CSEE Colloquium

Human Sensor Networks for Improved Modeling
of Natural and Human-Caused Disasters

Oleg Aulov, Computer Science Ph.D. Student, UMBC

1:00pm Friday, 14 September 2012, ITE 227, UMBC

This talk will discuss the importance of different roles that social media can play in management, monitoring, modeling and mitigation of natural and human-caused disasters. We will present a novel approach that views social media data as a human sensor network. These data can serve as a low-cost augmentation to an observing system, which can be incorporated into geophysical models together with other scientific data such as satellite observations and sensor measurements. As a use case scenario, we analyze the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster. We gather the social media data that mention sightings of oil from Flickr, geolocate them, and use them as boundary forcings in the General NOAA Oil Modeling Environment (GNOME) software for oil spill predictions. We show how social media data can be incorporated into the GNOME model to obtain improved estimates of the model parameters such as rates of oil spill, couplings between surface winds and ocean currents, diffusion coefficient, and other model parameters. Other social media mining and citizen science projects performed by groups outside of UMBC, on air quality, earthquakes and the Fukushima disaster will also be summarized as related work.

Oleg Aulov received B.S. degree in mathematics from the University of Central Missouri, Warrensburg, MO, in 2004 and M.S. degree in Computer Science with a concentration in Computer Security and Information Assurance from George Washington University, Washington, DC, in 2006. He is currently working toward a Ph.D. degree in the Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD. His topics of interest include social media mining, citizen science, machine learning, trust establishment and management, information assurance, and social engineering.

For more information and directions see http://bit.ly/UMBCtalks

Do you aspire to become the next Mark Zuckerberg?

Give you dream a shot at Startup Weekend Baltimore, which takes place September 28-30 in Locust Point.

The weekend brings together developers, coders, designers, marketing gurus, and businesspeople for a high-energy weekend where aspiring entrepreneurs pitch ideas, form teams, and then present their progress to their peers at the end of the day Sunday. Participants leave with a business model, a website, and a range of business connections to help get their start-up off the ground. 55% of participants continue to work on the project with their team.

A worldwide movement, Startup Weekend has branches in over 200 cities around the globe, from Anchorage, Alaska to Marrakech, Morocco. The weekend has helped conceive successful companies including Foodspotting, a smartphone application that allows foodies around the world to recommend favorite dishes rather than restaurants.    

To learn more about the weekend and to register, visit Baltimore.startupweekend.org.

COLLOQUIUM
Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
University of Maryland, Baltimore County

The Advanced Computing Systems Research Program

David J. Mountain
Technical Director, Center for Exceptional Computing

1:00pm Friday, 7 September 2012, ITE 227, UMBC

The Advanced Computing Systems (ACS) Research Program recently relocated from Adelphi, Maryland, to the Research Park complex next to UMBC. What type of computing research does ACS focus on? How is it organized? What opportunities for collaboration exist for UMBC? This talk will provide answers to these questions, explain how ACS tackles its research challenges, and provide a sneak preview of upcoming ACS presentations on specific research projects.

David J. Mountain is the Technical Director at the Center for Exceptional Computing (CEC), a Department of Defense research laboratory in the UMBC Research Park. The mission of the CEC is to collaborate with industry, academia, and the government to drive innovative research that will impact advanced computing systems at the multi-petaflop scale and beyond. His responsibilities include directing research activities in technical thrusts including power efficiency, chip IO, system level interconnects, file system IO, productivity, and resilience.

Mr. Mountain’s personal research projects have included radiation effects studies, hot carrier reliability characterization, and chip-on-flex process development utilizing ultra-thin circuits. He has been actively involved with 3D electronics research for nearly two decades. Mr. Mountain is the author of seven papers, has been awarded eight patents, and is a Senior Member of the IEEE.

Host: Yaacov Yesha,

Directions and more information on recent and upcoming talks.

The Web is one of the most important technical innovations of our generation. It has changed the way we communicate, learn, shop, do business, and entertain ourselves. The Web is still evolving, becoming more ubiquitous and smarter, and will probably be a driving force in the development of our lives and societies for the coming decades. The Web is an artifact that we all have helped to create: the engineers who design the underlying computing, communication, and software infrastructure, the startups and businesses that develop use cases and applications and the billions of users who create content and serve as perpetual beta testers.

The World-Wide Web Foundation has launched the Web Index as a multi-dimensional measure of the Web’s growth, utility and impact on people and nations. It covers 61 countries with indicators assessing the political, economic and social impact of the Web along with metrics of Web connectivity and infrastructure.

The W3F explains why they have created the index this way.

"Much of the Web research that exists today measures quantifiable metrics, such as the number of Web users, speed of access to the Web, the number of broadband subscribers, or covers particular single-dimensions such as economic impact or censorship. Tim Berners-Lee recognized that in order to better measure progress to developing a more open and meaningful Web, and for the Web to attain its full potential as a transformative tool that can improve living standards, reduce conflict and improve governance and well-being, it is important to understand how the Web impacts social, developmental, economic and political dimensions as well. By compiling data across many different dimensions of Web health and making it freely available, the Web Index will help deepen and broaden our understanding of how countries can maximise the impact of this powerful tool. The results can be utilized by decision makers across the public and private sectors, as well as academia, NGOs, and the technology industry itself."

The Web index measures and ranks countries along three dimensions:

• "Web Readiness: The Index examines the quality and extent of Communications Infrastructure (facilitating connectivity to the Web) and Institutional Infrastructure (policies regulating Web access and skill and educational levels enabling the full benefit of the Web).
• Web Use: The Index looks both at Web usage within countries (such as the percentage of individuals who use the Internet) and the content available to these Web users.
• The Impact of the Web: The Index uses social, economic and political indicators to evaluate the impact of the Web on these dimensions. This includes measures of social networks, business internet use and e-participation."

The Web index is based on an impressive collection of data (available for downloading, including an RDF linked data version) and some thoughtful analysis. The site is well worth exploring.

If you’d like to be part of Maryland’s biggest Cybersecurity battle this October, then don’t forget to register before September 19, 2012.

In its second year, The Maryland Cyber Challenge & Competition (MDC3) will pit teams of high schoolers, college students, and industry professionals against one another in a series of “hackathons” that test their problem solving mettle.

Last year 150 finalists competed for the MDC3 title and more than $100,000 in prizes. In the end, three teams prevailed, one at each level: Team ICF (Industry level), Towson University (College level), and the Sherwood Cyber Warriors from Sherwood High School.

To be held at the Baltimore Convention Center on October 16 and 17,  MDC3 features a series workshops, panels and talks by industry professionals, including a keynote speech from UMBC president Dr. Freeman Hrabowski  called “Creating the Cyber Generation.”

You can learn more about the competition at a special Information session this Friday, September 7, 2012 at the UMBC Training Centers in Columbia, MD. The session will go over rules, format, and scoring of the competition, as well as the CyberNEXS competition platform.

To learn more and to register for the Maryland Cyber Challenge & Competition, visit the CyberMaryland 2012 website.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The Center for Women in Technology (CWIT) invites all students, and the faculty and staff in the College of Engineering and Information Technology to their annual beginning of the year Ice Cream Social. It takes place tomorrow Wednesday, September 5 from 11:30-1:30 p.m. in the atrium of the Engineering/Computer Science (ECS) Building.

Stop to meet other women and men majoring in Engineering, Computer Science, and Information Technology. Plus, who can say no to free ice cream?

**Involvement Fest has been postponed until Monday, September 10th, due to the rain**

"Pirates" is the theme of this year's Involvement Fest, which takes place Monday, September 10th from 12-3 p.m. on the Quad.

For Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Electrical Engineering majors ready to dive into UMBC's vast sea of extracurricular activities, there will be plenty to choose from among the more than 250 clubs and organizations. Those targeted toward tech-minded individuals include:

• Amateur Radio Club
• Chess Club
• CWIT Student Council
• Cyber Defense Team
• DEVICE
• Engineers Without Borders
• Entrepreneurial Society
• Game Developer's Club
• Linux User's Group
• National Society of Black Engineers
• Society of Women Engineers

and, more….