Contact: Dr Nicole Bordes (nb@maths.uq.edu.au - tel: (07) 3365 7506)
Contact: Prof.Bernard Pailthorpe, Chair of Computational Science (bap at uq.edu.au)
This list is evolving: more projects will be added later during
the year. The projects span diverse application domains: medicine,
ecology, computational science, high resolution display,
access grid technologies, etc.
Some projects are more suited to science students, some to IT students,
some to science students. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact us!
If you are interested in doing a PhD in one of these application domains do not hesitate to contact us!
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Ecology and Geographic Information System (GIS): representation and analysis of Great Barrier Reef geographical data |
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Many reefs around the world including the Great Barrier Reef (GBR)
are under pressure from high water temperatures and also human activity (agriculture,
fishing, tourism, etc). In 1998 and in 2002 the GBR has been experiencing
major coral bleaching events (whitening of coral colonies due to the
loss of symbiotic microscopic plant cells from the tissues of polyps).
Scientists are worried about the future of tropical corals reefs
with the prediction of continued rising temperatures due to global warming,
We currently have 10 years worth of observations of the reef (satellite remote sensing) from which
sea surface temperatures can be derived. This project aims to understand
the data using visualisation and GIS techniques and to detect and predict
geographic patterns and rates of change in the reef.
This project is in collaboration with AIMS
and you will have a chance to work
on a current problem that affect not only the Australian reefs but also worldwide reefs.
 Coral after bleaching event (photo by Mary Wakeford, AIMS) |
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Computational Statistics: Analysis of physiological data from intensive care unit |
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A series of physiological data have been acquired over time in the
Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of an Australian hospital. Several of
the variables are inter-related. If a problem arises, the doctor or
nurse will look at a "high level" variable and if it is abnormal will
look at the inter-related variables that could shed some light on why
the high level variable is abnormal. (for instance ph is the high
level variable, and the other related variables are levels of levels of CO2 and HCO3).
This project aims to use statistical data analysis and simple visualisation techniques to understand and represent physiological ICU data in ways that are physiologically consistent and psychologically relevant to doctors and nurses in ICU, where mission critical decision may be required 24/7. |
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Scientific visualisation: Visualisation of geophysical data |
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The Earth Systems Simulation and Computational Centre (ESSCC) situated at the University of Queensland is part of the ACcESS Major
National Research Facility (MNRF).
ESSCC is leading the development of a a system integrating new numerical simulation technologies for the modeling of earth processes, including earthquakes, mantle convection, plate tectonics, fluid dynamics and granular/particle behaviour. These new numerical simulation technologies utilise a dedicated supercomputer, the Earth Systems Simulator (ESS) which has hardware of sufficient capacity to establish ESSCC and the ACcESS MNRF as an international focal point for earth systems research and consulting activities. As a result of recent advances, ESSCC is producing a large and diverse volume of data requiring processing for advanced scientific visualisation. There is a longer-term vision for an integrated high-performance interface for scripting graphs, movies and fly-overs of results (arbitrary and variable glyphs and composition) and manipulating/integrating external data-sets in standard formats. Such an interface is required to be object-oriented, computationally efficient, and permit the use of the most modern visualisation hardware. In this project you will develop a python or C++ interface to creating dynamic visualisations from geophysical simulation data. Focusing on design, tools and hardware, you will have access to leading edge tools and platforms to make you honours project a success, and place you in demand for a career in booming field of High Performance Computing (HPC) in science. We are looking for ITEE students in computer science who are ready for a challenge. For more information, please contact: For more information, please contact: Dr Nicole Bordes (nb@maths.uq.edu.au) or Matt Davies (matt@esscc.uq.edu.au) |
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Scientific visualisation - Algorithms - Computer graphics: Detection of blood vessels from liver CT scans for surgery planning |
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One of the treatments of liver cancer is resection or ablation of one or
several tumours and of an area of healthy tissue around it. The extraction
of the essential information from Computed Tomography (CT) X-ray scans is time-consuming:
the radiologist must trace the contour of the liver manually as well as the
tumour(s) and the main vessels. In addition blood vessels and liver tissue
show similar contrast on the CT scans: the challenge is low contrast image processing. This project aims to use efficient algorithms to extract automatically the blood vessels from the CT scans of the liver.
  Figure 1: a) view of the major blood vessels with respect to the tumour. b) view of the major blood vessels with respect to the tumour and the liver. |
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Electrical engineering: Haptic interfaces |
| This new project aims to explore and develop simple haptic force feedback interfaces by modifying input devices such as stylus, computer game joystick, etc. |
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Computer graphics - Scientific visualisation: 3D volume rendering and quantification of features from biological imaging |
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Advanced imaging instruments such as confocal microscopy or electron tomography
allow scientists to understand the 3D ultrastructure of biological materials.
3D reconstruction software applications provide qualitative information and little
quantitative information (for instance length or thickness). This project aims to implement routines to calculate the surface, volume, etc o f features from biological imaging. It is based on previous work that we did at the San Diego Supercomputer Center and led to a cover of Science in 2000. In this project you would have access to some of the UQ supercomputers.
 Allosteric effects of Pit-1 DNA sites on long-term repression in cell type specification (Science cover 2000 Nov 10, 290:1127-31) K.M. Scully et al. , UC San Diego Visualisation: San Diego Supercomputer Center. |
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Computer graphics - Scientific visualisation: Visualisation of large multi-resolution images |
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Visualisation of multi-resolution images, such as those obtained in
microscopy or astronomy, is a challenging problem. Surface methods such
as height fields generate large meshes resulting in high use of
memory and processing and loss of interactivity. A possible solution is displacement shading: a technique used in computer graphics. A displacement shader displaces each point on a surface by a small amount, before the rendering is performed. This offers significant performance advantages over creating and manipulating a large mesh. We propose to develop a displacement shading algorithm to visualise such images and to compare this technique with traditional height fields visualisations.
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Digital libraries - Databases: Creation of a database for archaeologists |
| The aim of this project is to create an efficient and easy to use multimedia database that allows the efficient searching of scientific images, 3D objects, videos and text data for archaeologists. |
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Scientific Computing - Material science: Molecular dynamics of ion impacts in amorphous carbon thin films |
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Molecular Dynamics simulations of carbon atom depositions are used to
investigate energy diffusion from the impact zone. This project builds on previous work by Prof. Pailthorpe.
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Software development - Computer graphics: Access Grid and Tiled display: application sharing across multiple sites (project 1) Tiled display: chromium (tiled OpenGL) (project 2) |
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The Access Grid project originated out of Argonne National Lab's "Futures Lab".
Leveraging off-the-shelf components and open software, the Access Grid is more
than a video conferencing facility using voice and video over IP and multicast
enabled, it allows room to room remote collaborations. The first Australian Access
Grid was built by Willing, Bordes and Pailthorpe in
VisLab, University of Sydney.
The access grid node at UQ is in GPS (ITEE building). Our contribution
is a Linux based Access Grid whereas the original version uses a mixed
Windows/Linux system.
This project builds on previous work by Willing and aims to develop collaborative applications allowing the sharing of 3D objects and images. An Access Grid can also be used as a graphics cluster system. With the addition of graphics cards, it becomes an OpenGL tiled display with a resolution of 3840x1024 pixels, also known as a PowerWall. Another project will consist in making OpenGL applications work under Chromium, an interactive rendering application for clusters of graphics workstations
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Scientific Computing - Non linear Dynamics: Scientific modelling of the growth and decay of ancient cities |
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Scientific modelling of the growth and decay of ancient cities
15000 years ago permanent sedentary settlements occupied 1 to 2 ha in extent.
Agrarian urban communities passed the 100 ha limit some 2000 years ago and
grew. In the 19th century industrialised cities grew larger than about 100 km2.
Some settlements managed these transitions successfully, some stopped growing and others collapsed.
This project aims to build a model for the growth and decay of ancient cities using based on logistic models. "Experimental" data for some great ancient cities are available.
 Baghdad in 850 AD (VisLab) |
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Scientific Computing - Non linear Dynamics: Turbulences and lattice Boltzman |
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Lattice-Boltzman simulation is a method of simulating thermal and hydrodynamics processes that
is particularly attractive for modelling microscale phenomena. This project will require high performance simulations using the UQ supercomputers. |
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Information visualisation: Graphical interface for bioinformatics data |
| More info soon. |