| VisLab 10th
Anniversary |
November 19 |
| Sydney VisLab will celebrate
ten years of Scientific Visualisation and High Performance Computing on
the 3rd December 2002! TEN YEARS! This
celebration will co-incide with the OzViz Workshop,
to be held at Sydney VisLab on 3-4 December 2002. |
|
| NSF workshop |
Saturday, September
22 |
| Bernard Pailthorpe was
invited to join over the Access Grid an NSF workshop: "Extensible
terascale facility workshop". The discussions ranged from High
Performance Computing to Grid Computing through to the next domains of
research. |
|
| VisLab Mirrors Side
Effects' Houdini Apprentice Software |
September 10 |
| VisLab has provided a fast
download site for the Houdini Apprentice edition, the non-commercial
version of Houdini. Free Download is available
here! This service received more than a million hits in its
first month of operation. Houdini Apprentice is the learning edition
of the popular 3D animation software from Side Effects, Toronto Canada.
|
|
| NCSA visit |
September 13 - 16 |
| Sydney VisLab hosted the
visit of Dr Radha Nandkumar, Senior Research Scientist and Program
Director of the NCSA International Affiliates Program. She gave a
presentation on the latest developments at NCSA. |
|
| SciVis Class |
July 29 - August 2 |
| The 4th SV3 class started
again. About 15 science students will work on scientific visualisation
projects such as medical imaging, photonic bandgap simulations,
bio-informatics. |
|
| COSC Class |
July 29 - August 2 |
| 200 1st year students joined
the new cosc classes: scientific computing with C and matlab. This is a
new joint initiative between VisLab and the school of physics. |
|
| PRAGMA and Grid Forum
Korea |
July 10-12 |
| Bernard Pailthorpe attended
and gave talks on grid initiatives and research in Australia at the second PRAGMA workshop and the Grid Forum Korea in Seoul,
Korea. |
|
| Telstra IT Managers |
Monday July 8 |
| Executives from Telstra
visited VisLab and had an access grid session with another Telstra
manager at Townsville. |
|
| Biotechnology Showcase |
Monday July 8 |
| Bernard Pailthorpe and Nicole
Bordes were invited to give a talk on the visualisation challenges at
the Biotechnology Showcase organised by Lars Jermiin at the University
of Sydney. |
|
| Visit of Dr Ian
Foster |
Friday July 5 |
|
We are honoured to have an eminent
visitor to our computing/physics community. He hails from NZ originally
and these days has a joint appointment between the Math and Computer
Science Division of Argonne National Laboratory and Dept. of Computer
Science at The University of Chicago. He is Associate Division Director
at ANL and Professor of Computer Science at Chicago.
He has become quite famous, co-authoring the #1 cited
published paper in Computer Science in 2001 (ref. citeseer.nj.nec.com/articles2001.html)
Some of you may have experienced the "virtual" conference", SC-Global
last November via our Access
Grid node at Vislab-ATP: Ian was the general chair of that
conference.
These "Grid" ideas that were promulgated by Ian, and
his collaborator Carl Kesselman who visited last year, are viewed
widely as presaging the next phase of the Internet. Many nations are
adopting these in their science policy and large scale funding
programs:
EU Data Grid [out of CERN]
UK e-Science program [Ministry of Industry]
US Tera-Grid initiative
Similar companies, like IBM and others, have adoipted Grid business
initiatives.
Background
More info at: www-fp.mcs.anl.gov/~foster/.
In summary: he " leads computer science projects developing advanced
distributed computing ("Grid") technologies, and computational science
efforts applying these tools to problems in areas ranging from the
analysis of data from physics experiments to remote access to
earthquake engineering facilities".
Ian is in Australia courtesy of IBM as the keynote
speaker at QUESTnet on the Gold Coast in July 2-4 (see questnet.scu.edu.au/).
Some reading:
- "The Grid: A New Infrastructure for 21st Century
Science", Physics Today, (Feb, 2002).
- Foster, I and Kesselman, C. "The anatomy of the
Grid", Int. J. Supercomputer Applic. 15(3), (2001).
- I. Foster and C. Kesselman, "The Grid: Blueprint for
a new Computing Infrastructure" Morgan K, 1999.
Some of Ian's previous projects:
- co-PI on the DOE Grand Challenge project
"Supercomputer Solution of Massive Crystallographic and
Microtomographic Structural Problems."
- The X-ray source grand challenge project, developing
advanced methods for analysis of data from high-energy X-ray sources.
- Center for Research on Parallel Computation,
including development of systems such as Program Composition Notation
and HPF/MPI.
- ChemIO: Parallel I/O for computational chemistry
applications.
- ACPI Avant Garde: This is one (of two) experimental
projects in DOE's Accelerated Climate Prediction Initiative (ACPI),
which focuses on global climate modeling. The goal is the creation of a
performance-portable parallel coupled climate system model.
|
|
| Seminar by Dr Ian
Foster |
Friday July 5 |
- Friday, July 5, 2002, 10am
- Slade lecture Theatre [LT8],
- Physics Building, University of Sydney.
Title: Grid Computing as a Consumer and Driver of New
Infrastructure
Abstract
By enabling the integration of services and resources within and across
enterprises, the Grid promises to deliver new ways of doing business
and practicing science, powered by on-demand access to computing,
seamless access to data, and dynamic outsourcing to service providers.
The Grid also both places new demands on network infrastructures and
expands the notion of infrastructure to new domains. In this talk, I
analyze Grid infrastructure requirements and approaches that may be
taken to realizing those requirements. I illustrate the discussion with
reference to significant contemporary infrastructure efforts, including
TeraGrid, I-WIRE, iVDGL, the Globus Toolkit, and the Open Grid Services
Architecture.
Biography
Ian Foster is the Associate Division Director, Senior Scientist Head at
Distributed Systems Lab Mathematics & Computer Science, Argonne
National Laboratory in Argonne, Illinois. Ian is also Professor of
Computer Science at The University of Chicago.
Ian leads a computer science projects developing advanced distributed
computing technologies and parallel tools, and computational science
efforts applying advanced computing techniques to scientific problems
in areas such as climate modeling and the analysis of data from physics
experiments. - Directions: /about/local_info/map/usyd_map.html.
The Slade lecture Theatre is located on the ground floor half-way
through the physics building.
- Morning tea will be served at 11am, after the talk,
courtesy of IBM.
More info on Ian here
This seminar is sponsored by IBM and Sydney VisLab.
|
|
| University of Texas -
Austin |
Wednesday July 3 |
| An access grid session took
place between researchers from the University of Texas - Austin and
Prof. Bernard Pailthorpe, University of Sydney to establish future
research collaborations. |
|
| Work experience:
Nicky Ringland |
July 1 - 5 |
| Nicky spent a week in VisLab
as a work experience student. She learnt html and worked on her web page. In
addition she is working on a redesign of our map in the VisLab web
site. |
|
| USyd Information
Technology Services |
Friday June 21 |
| Four ITS managers of the
University of Sydney visited the VisLab - ATP facility. |
|
| Informal celebration
of the opening of the JCU access grid |
Friday May 24 |
| Dr Ian Atkinson from James
Cook University, along with students and researchers celebrated the
opening of their access grid and held a demonstration session with
Sydney University. |
|
| Archaeology seminar |
Friday May 17 |
| The friday archaeology
seminar was held at Sydney VisLab. Prof. Roland Fletcher presented his
research on Angkor Wat. |
|
| APAC research meeting |
Monday May 13 |
| An APAC research meeting to discuss
future directions in computing in Australia was held at Sydney VisLab.
Participants included Prof. B. Pailthorpe (Sydney VisLab), Prof. K.
Burrage, (QPSF - University of
Queensland), Prof. R. Stanton (Pro Vice-Chancellor Australian
National University), Prof. W. Appelbe (VPAC - RMIT) and K. Smith (IVEC - University of
Western Australia). |
|
| University of Texas -
Austin |
Monday May 13 |
| An access grid session took
place between Prof. Chandrajit Bajaj from the University of Texas -
Austin and Prof. Bernard Pailthorpe, University of Sydney to talk about
visualisation research. |
|
| Sydney University
Architecture class with JCU |
Friday May 10 |
| Architecture students from
Sydney University interacted with researchers at James Cook University
using the Access Grid. Some
pictures here. |
|
| Work experience:
Ishnima Naidu |
May 6 - 10 |
| Isha spent a week in VisLab
as a work experience student. She is learning html and working on her web page and the
design of the ozvis 02 web site. Some
pictures here. |
|
| University of
Melbourne - IT department |
Friday May 3 |
| Prof. Bernard Pailthorpe was
invited to give a talk in Visualisation and grid computing at the
University of Melbourne. |
|
| Queensland Department
of Innovation and Information Economy seminar |
Tuesday April 30 |
Prof. Pailthorpe gave an
invited talk at the "Seeking a Competitive Edge" seminar organised by
the Queensland Department of Innovation and Information Economy, James
Cook University and the Queensland Parallel Supercomputing Foundation.
The seminar was aimed at local industry and government.
Click here for more
details (pdf file). |
|
| University of
Queensland |
Monday April 29 |
| Bernard Pailthorpe and Nicole
Bordes visited the University of Queensland to talk of various
opportunities in grid computing and bio-informatics. |
|
| Inauguration
of the 2nd Access Grid at Townsville |
Tuesday April 30 |
| The Honourable
Paul Lucas MP, Queensland Minister for Innovation and Information
Economy inaugurated the second Australian Access Grid at James Cook
University (JCU) - Townsville.
Professor Alan Baxter, Comparative Genetics Centre
(University of Sydney), Professor Leonard Lindoy, Inorganic Chemistry
(University of Sydney) and George McLaughlin, CEO AARNet using the Access Grid at VisLab
(Sydney) participated in a session with Professor Norman Palmer, PVC
Research and International (JCU), Dr Ian Atkinson, Deputy Director QPSF
(JCU), Professor Bernard Pailthorpe, Director of Vislab (University of
Sydney), Ms Jayne Seebeck, Department of Innovation and Information
Economy (DIIE) and the Honourable Paul Lucas.
Chris Willing (VisLab) installed the Access Grid at
JCU. There are plans for new nodes at the University of Queensland and
Cairns.
Queensland
DIIE media release
Some
pictures of the inauguration
|
|
| Rural Fire Services |
Friday April 12 |
| Bernard Pailthorpe and Nicole
Bordes visited the Rural Fire Services headquarters at Rosehill to
discuss possible future collaborations between VisLab and the RFS in
the area of visualisation and communications. |
|
| Prof. Bernard
Pailthorpe, Director of the Science
Foundation for Physics |
Thursday April 11 |
Prof. Bernard Pailthorpe has
been appointed Director of the Science
Foundation. The Science Foundation for Physics (formerly Nuclear
Research Foundation) was the first foundation established within the
University of Sydney in 1954. The Foundation aims to support
fundamental and applied research in the School of Physics as well as
promote the role of Physics in the Australian society.
Former directors include Prof. R. Collins, Prof. L. Cram, Prof. M.
Brennan and Prof. H. Messel. |
|
| Aerosense conference |
April 1 - 5 |
| Bernard Pailthorpe attended
the SPIE
Aerosense 2002 conference in Orlando, USA. He gave an invited
presentation on the high
resolution display installed in VisLab. |
|
| Berry Vircoe - MIT |
Thursday April 4 |
| Barry Vercoe, Professor of
Media Arts and Sciences at MIT visited VisLab at the ATP. Barry Vercoe is one of the
founding Member of the MIT Media Lab |
|
| New staff |
Monday March 25 |
| Michelle Doherty who
completed Honors in Astrophysics in 2001, has joined VisLab. She will
be working on image processing of the liver CT scans. |
|
| Lecture for Faculty
of Architecture DESC9097 course |
Saturday March 23 |
Chris Willing gave a lecture
to students as part of the Faculty of Architecture course DESC9097,
"Digital Communication in Design" which teaches concepts in computer
mediated communication and computer-supported collaborative design.
This is a unit in the Master of Design Science (Design Computing)
tought by Mary Lou Maher ( http://www.arch.usyd.edu.au/~mary/home.html).
The lecture topic was "The Access Grid at Uni of Sydney Vislab". |
|
| International
representatives of ACM Siggraph
in VisLab |
Wednesday March 20 |
Ben Simons and the Sydney ACM Siggraph Chapter
organised the visit of Alan Chalmers, Reader in the Department of
Computer Science at the University of Bristol, Judith R. Brown,
visualization specialist, author, and President of ACM SIGGRAPH,
Thierry Frey, ACM SIGGRAPH Director for Chapters and David Arnold, ACM
Chair of Membership Activities Board and and Professor at the School of
Information Systems, University of East Anglia.
Brown, Chalmers and Arnold gave a talk entitled "Realism in Real Time: The Future of Computer
Graphics" and visited VisLab at the ATP. |
|
| Talented Student in
VisLab |
Monday March 18 |
| 2nd year computer science
Scott McMillan will work in VisLab as part of the talented student
program. Scott will work on openGL software for the tield displays. |
|
| Inaugural PRAGMA
Workshop at UCSD |
March 11 - 12 |
| Bernard Pailthorpe attended
the inaugural workshop of the Pacific Rim Applications and Grid
Middleware Assembly (PRAGMA), an
international initiative to establish sustained collaborations and
advance the use of the computational grid among a community of
investigators at the leading research institutions around the Pacific
Rim.
VisLab from the University of Sydney is one of the
member research institutions through the APAC programme.
|
|
| Classes using the
Access Grid held between Sydney and Boston |
Friday March 8 |
| A second architecture class
was held using the access grid between students at Sydney University
and Boston University. |
|
| NPACI All Hands
meeting |
March 7 - 9 |
| Bernard Pailthorpe attended
the NPACI All Hands meeting at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. |
|
| Colour Society of New
South Wales |
Tuesday March 5 |
Nicole Bordes and Bernard
Pailthorpe gave a talk to Colour Society of New South Wales on
scientific visualisation.
The title of the presentation was: "Frontiers
of Scientific Visualisation and Advances in Computer Displays" |
|
| Access Grid workshop |
March 4 - 5 |
| Chris Willling attended the
Access Grid workshop held at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. |
|
| New staff |
March 4 |
| Shelley Wickam and Nathan
Ford started work in VisLab. Shelley will be working on the displays in
physics and at the ATP. Nathan will be working on system
administration. |
|
| Napier is back:
bigger and better than before! |
Thursday 28 February |
| The Power Challenge located
at ANU has been decommissioned: Sydney and Townsville will share the
"bits and pieces". As a result Napier (the Sydney Power Challenge) is
now a 28 processor machine, with 4 Gbytes of RAM and 124 Gbytes of disk
space. Peak performance: 11.2 GigaFlops.
If you require access to Napier, contact the VisLab
office at (02) 9351 3005 or office@vislab.usyd.edu.au for more
information.
|
|
| SHB - Royal Society
of New South Wales |
Thursday 21 February |
| Bernard Pailthorpe and Nicole
Bordes gave a talk to the Southern Highland Branch of the Royal Society
of New South Wales. Click
here for more information on the Royal Society of New South Wales. |
|
| Classes on Access
Grid between Sydney and Boston |
Friday 8 February |
| An architecture class was
held using the access grid between students at Sydney University and
Boston University. |
|
| Rural Fire Service |
Wednesday 6 February |
| R. Smith, assistant
commissioner of the Rural Fire Service and G. Douglas came to visit
VisLab and discuss possible opportunities between RFS and VisLab. |
|
| NSW Fire Brigade |
Tuesday 5 February |
| Bernard Pailthorpe and Nicole
Bordes along with a team of researchers from Sydney University were
invited to join officials of the NSW fire brigade to talk about
research opportunities. |
|
| VRSolutions |
Friday 1 February |
| M. Bosworth and K. Smith from
VRSolutions visited VisLab to discussed about the high resolution
display. |
|
| Canon Australia |
Wednesday 23 January |
| Dr Phil Robertson of Canon
Australia and Dr Hidey Tamura from the Mixed Reality Systems Laboratory
at Canon Japan visited VisLab-ATP. Dr Tamura presented his work on
mixed reality. |
|
| APAN Thailand Meetings |
22 - 26 January |
| Chris Willing attended the
APAN Thailand Meetings held at Phuket. |
|
| Visit of Dr Greg
Hooper |
Monday 21 January |
| Dr Greg Hooper, from
Information Environments at the University of Queensland, visited
VisLab to talk about collaborations on virtual environments. |
|
| VisLab core partner
of ICT Horizons |
Friday 11 January |
| VisLab is a core partner of
ICT Horizons led by the University of Sydney, Australian Photonics CRC,
the state government of NSW, the university of Adelaide, the Redfern
group of companies. Horizon is one of the leading bids for Australia's
information and communications technology centre. The winner will be
announced in April. |
|
