Research Page

I am always looking for students who are interested in research projects. I tend to focus on parallel programming, scientific visualization and scientific computation. If you are interested, please contact me.

Current (2017) Projects

I have been working on problems at Project Euler. I have a personal stats page if you are interested.
I am currently playing with JavaScript and scientific visualization. Thanks to Sara for getting me back to something. This is probably not research but it will do for now.

This work is split between two main topics. Visualization of Geocaching data and Visualization of Algorithms.
- Geocaching Data: I am, for the most part just creating graphs I am interested in. Mostly things I have used in the past but never implemented.
  - A map of our finds. This is a work in progress, a todo list is at the bottom of the page.
  - A heatmap of our finds. Again very much a work in progress.
- Visualization of algorithms.
  - Visualization of Dijkstra's Algorithm.
  - I have just started working on visualizing Dynamic Programming Algorithms. Very much a work in progress.
With Dr. Puharic and Dr. Meyer I played with developing an AI to play Cthulhu Dice. We need to write this up.

Some Potential Projects

Student Projects (A document archive)

2016 Sara Sheehan, Information Visualization.
Sara and I worked through several books on information visualization. This mostly included JavaScript, SVG and D3.
2010 Jonathan Conley, Programming the Cell Processor (PS-3 cpu)
Jonathan wrote a series of programs for the Cell Processor. These included several numerical integration programs and a fractal generator. Work is continuing on a ray tracer. A PACISE 2011 presentation is expected.
2009 Josh Nicely, Cluster Construction
Josh constructed Claymore, at least twice. Josh presented his work at PACISE in 2009 and won second place at CCUE ($100).
2008 Haris Ribic, Parallel Programming Languages.
Haris studied parallel programming, in particular how easy/difficult it is to produce code in MPI, OpenMP, and UPC. He wrote a number of programs and compared the performance of the final code. Haris presented at PACISE in 2008.
2007 Jeff Thomas, Parallel Buckeyball code.
In a long term project, Jeff produced an interactive system to generate all of the permutations of faces of a Buckeyball. This involved parallel computing, data base programming, and web page interfaces. Jeff presented in a number of venues including PACISE 2009 and CCUE 2009, where he won a $200 prize for his work.
2007 Jason Kotenko, Quaternions
Jason studied how Quaternions can be used in game engines. He presented at PACISE.
2005 Nate Christy,Study of Parallel Computing
Nate built the visualization cluster littlei, which has four nodes, and will be used for experiments with distributed visualization. He then worked on setting up chromium, DMX and other goodies. Nate has used OSCAR in this effort.
Nate studied MPI and built a number of example programs.
Nate and I studied molecular dynamics. Nate implemented a MPI based simulation using the Leonard-Jones potential. He presented his results at PACISE.
2004 Shawn Gabel Practices for Administering a Linux Based Beowulf Cluster
Shawn and I looked at practices in configuring and tuning cluster computers. We performed a number of performance tests on our existing clusters.
2004 Chris Oyesiku, Parallel Distributed Computing topics in distributed operating systems.
Chris and I looked at algorithms used in distributed systems. We began by looking at MPI, and Chris created a distributed fractal generating program. We then studied topics in distributed OS, including clocks, termination detection, dead lock avoidance, and check pointing. Chris took a snapshot of a running process.
2004 Christopher Falzone, Introduction to Parallel Programming with MPI.
Chris and I studied MPI, and cluster programming, as well as a good mix of parallel architectures and some classic parallel algorithms. He wrote a program to simulate "10,000 Monkeys on Typewriters", to see if they could reproduce the works of Shakespeare, (they couldn't). He presented a paper and a talk at PACISE 2004.
2002/2003 Ryan Chiles, Building A Beowulf Cluster.
Ryan rebuilt the local cluster Braveheart using the oscar resources. He presented his results at the 2002 Family and Legacy Weekend at Edinboro.
2002 Karen Huber, Clock Synchronization of a Distributed Computer System.
Karen studied Christian's and the Berkeley time synchronization algorithms. She wrote a simple program to simulate clock synchronization within a cluster, and demonstrated how these algorithms worked. Her work included a presentation at PACISE in 2001

Some Old/Inactive Projects

Some Cell Simulation Images (Red/Blue Glasses Needed)