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Browse Active Research Projects

Undergraduates can participate in projects for credits by registering in CS 4974 or 4994. Consult the Faculty Advisor or Research Supervisor before you register for this course.

Participation on a VTURCS project could also lead to an honors thesis for CS majors interested in graduating with honors.

Can't find anything that piques your curiousity? Don't be afraid to check out the Computer Science faculty list for someone who has a research interest you'd like to know more about. They might just have something for you.

Algorithms and Software for Remote Sensing

Faculty Advisor: Drs. Calvin Ribbens, Randall Wynne, Layne Watson
Research Supervisor: Same
Description of Work: This is a joint research project between Computer Science and Forestry, sponsored by the Center for Environmental Applications of Remote Sensing (CEARS). There are several projects involving data structures, image processing, parallel computing, and high performance scientific computation. The work can be either for credit or pay. Two specific needs are: (1) good data structures and I/O tools for parallel processing and/or vectorization of HDF (4&5), HDF-EOS, and GeoTiff in Fortran 95. (2) Parallel implementations of "classic" clustering (ISODATA, agglomerative hierarchical clustering, etc.) and segmentation (e.g., watershed routines) algorithms in Fortran 95/MPI.
Application Instructions: Contact either of Drs. Ribbens or Watson.
Project URL: http://cears.fw.vt.edu
Area(s) of Research: Parallel Computation
Compensation: Work for Pay
Contact: ltw@cs.vt.edu

Building a Linux Cluster

Faculty Advisor: Danesh Tafti
Research Supervisor
Description of Work: Update an existing linux cluster. Requires reconfiguration with OSCAR. The hardware is in place but needs to be reconfigured with updated software and OS. Great opportunity to get hands on experience in building clusters.
Application Instructions
Project URL: http://www.hpcfd.me.vt.edu
Area(s) of Research: Networking, Parallel Computation, Software Engineering, Systems
Compensation: Work for Pay
Contact: dtafti@vt.edu

Fermat-Number Factoring

Faculty Advisor

Layne T. Watson

Research Supervisor

Richard E. Crandall

Description of Work

Machines needed: any number from 1 to infinity.
Calendar time required: any amount, to infinity.

A typical run would be to attempt factorization
of any (or some set) of:  F12, F13, F14, F15,
F16, F17, F18, F19, F20, F21, F22 with the
candidates from F14 and up being most efficiently
attacked by the proposed executable.

Fermat numbers remain shrouded in mystery.  For
example we know that F14 (the fourteenth Fermat
number) is composite---that is,not prime---yet
not a single prime factor of F14 has ever been
found.  Similarly, F18 has two known prime
factors (see table below showing
state-of-knowledge on Fermat numbers through F_24)
so far.

There is C code ("fermat.c") developed at Apple's
Advanced Computation Group and elsewhere over the
last decade.  This code combines fast-FFT methods
and elliptic-curve methods, to attack large
Fermat numbers.  The code is suitable for
powerful machine clusters (i.e., the Mac System X
terascale computer), and is easy to port.

STATUS OF FERMAT NUMBERS (Nov 2003):

F0-F4: prime
F5-F11: completely factored
F12 = 114689 * 26017793 * 63766529 *
190274191361 * 1256132134125569 * composite
F13 = 2710954639361 * 2663848877152141313 *
3603109844542291969 * 319546020820551643220672513 *
composite
F14 = composite
F15 = 1214251009 * 2327042503868417 *
168768817029516972383024127016961 * composite
F16 = 825753601 * 188981757975021318420037633 *
composite
F17 = 31065037602817 * composite
F18 = 13631489 * 81274690703860512587777 * composite
F19 = 70525124609 * 646730219521 * composite
F20 = composite
F21 = 4485296422913 * composite
F22 = composite

This project would be a joint collaboration with
R. E. Crandall
Apple Distinguished Scientist
Advanced Computation Group
crandall@apple.com

Application Instructions

Send e-mail to Prof. Layne Watson (ltw@cs.vt.edu) or Dr. Richard Crandall (crandall@apple.com).

Project URL

http://www.perfsci.com

Area(s) of Research

Theory, Parallel Computation

Compensation

Negotiable

Contact

crandall@apple.com

High-Performance Biological Sequence Search

Faculty Advisor: Wu Feng
Research Supervisor: Jeremy Archuleta
Description of Work: Biological sequence searching has become a fundamental aspect of all bioinformatics. It can help in tasks such as sequencing the human genome, designing pathogen signatures for pathogen detection, identifying unknown viruses (e.g., the virus now known as SARS), and so on. In this project, you will be coding different modules of part of a much larger project (i.e., mpiBLAST at http://www.mpiblast.org) in order to improve functionality, maintainability, and performance.
Application Instructions: E-mail a resume to feng@cs.vt.edu. Optional, but preferred, materials include unofficial undergraduate transcript and a brief one-paragraph statement of what interests you about this project.
Project URL: http://www.mpiblast.org/
Area(s) of Research: Bioinformatics, Parallel Computation, Software Engineering, Systems, Theory, Computational Biology, Databases, Data Mining, Artificial Intelligence
Compensation: Negotiable
Contact: feng@cs.vt.edu

Parallel Algorithm and Software Development

Faculty Advisor: Cal Ribbens
Research Supervisor: Cal Ribbens
Description of Work: Assist computational scientists in parallelizing, porting, or tuning codes for System X. Students must have done well in CS 4234 or have equivalent (MPI) experience. Evaluating parallel programming tools in this context is also of interest.
Application Instructions: Contact Dr. Ribbens.
Project URL: http://
Area(s) of Research: Parallel Computation
Compensation: Work for Credit or Volunteer
Contact: ribbens@vt.edu

Parallel Programming with Video Cards and More ...

Faculty Advisor: Wu Feng
Research Supervisor
Description of Work: The world of computing is now irrevocably parallel. CPUs have "topped" out roughly 3.0 GHz. So, while performance in the past has doubled roughly every 2 years due to increases in clock frequency, future performance increases will be due to the doubling of the number of cores in a system every 2 years. As such, we are looking at programming models, environments, and applications on multicore and manycore architectures. Of particular relevance and accessibility for VTURCS students are mapping applications onto traditional multicore (Intel and AMD), hybrid multicore (Cell and PlayStation3), manycore (video cards), and reconfigurable multicore (Tilera TILE64) architectures.
Application Instructions: E-mail a resume to feng@cs.vt.edu. Optional, but preferred, materials include unofficial undergraduate transcript and a brief one-paragraph statement of what interests you about this project.
Project URL: http://synergy.cs.vt.edu/
Area(s) of Research: Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Data Mining, Human-Computer Interaction, Parallel Computation, Systems, Theory
Compensation: Negotiable
Contact: feng@cs.vt.edu

Parallel/Distributed Modeling and Tools

Faculty Advisor: Eunice Santos
Research Supervisor: Eunice Santos
Description of Work: This project is focused on determining the best way to model a system/network in order to predict performance and to incorporate important metrics into code design. Furthermore, it is important to be able to develop a performance and visualization tool set implementing these concepts. Projects span from theoretical modeling, scheduling algorithms all the way to tool design & implementation. Students will have access to a heterogeneous cluster.
Application Instructions: see Dr. Santos
Project URL: http://www.cs.vt.edu/~santos
Area(s) of Research: Theory, Networking, Parallel Computation
Compensation: Negotiable
Contact: santos@cs.vt.edu

Research in Mathematical Software

Faculty Advisor: Layne T. Watson
Research Supervisor: Layne T. Watson
Description of Work: My work is at the interface of computer science, mathematics, and engineering. The overall goal is to provide sophisticated mathematical software, justified by rigorous mathematical analysis, to attack significant practical engineering and scientific problems. Visit my research projects page for details on a number of my active projects.
Application Instructions: Send me an email.
Project URL: http://www.cs.vt.edu/~ltw/res_projs.html
Area(s) of Research: Theory, Problem Solving Environments, Parallel Computation
Compensation: Work for Credit
Contact: ltw@cs.vt.edu

Securing a Gigabit Network with a Playstation

Faculty Advisor: Dimitris Nikolopoulos
Research Supervisor
Description of Work: We will use the microprocessor of a Sony Playstation 3 (known as the Cell Broadband Engine) to perform multi-gigabit rate network packet processing to filter unwanted incoming traffic and outgoing sensitive information.
Application Instructions: Background in operating systems, parallel programming and networking is desirable but not necessary.
Project URL: http://
Area(s) of Research: Networking, Parallel Computation, Systems
Compensation: Negotiable
Contact: dsn@cs.vt.edu

Software Development for Large Complex Simulations

Faculty Advisor: Madhav Marathe
Research Supervisor: Madhav Marathe and Keith Bisset
Description of Work: The Network Dynamics and Simulation Science Laboratory (NDSSL) is actively pursuing a program to build very large scale simulations of biological, information, technical and social (BITS) systems. Examples include: transportation systems, integrated next generation telecommunication systems, epidemiology and public health, commodity markets and systems biology. Participate in the design and implementation of BIST systems. Work in a multi-disciplinary team on a range of topics, including development and testing of algorithms, web services definitions and implementations, large scale software development.
Application Instructions: Please send an email with your resume. Experience in C++ and Java is required and familiarity with Web services, algorithm design and development and high performance computing is a plus.
Project URL: http://
Area(s) of Research: Parallel Computation, Software Engineering, Theory
Compensation: Work for Pay or Credit
Contact: marathe@vt.edu or kbisset@vbi.vt.edu

Supercomputing on Video Gaming Consoles

Faculty Advisor: W. Feng
Research Supervisor: Ashwin Aji
Description of Work: Given the extreme needs of today's sophisticated video games, game consoles and video graphics cards in their own right have become supercomputers. The goal of this project is to program *and* optimize a bioinformatics application (or perhaps something else, if reasonable) on the Sony PlayStation 3 and/or the NVIDIA Tesla video graphics card using the CUDA programming environment. (For those interested in human-computer interaction, a nice interface to the above bioinformatics application would serve as a nice project as well, or an interface to our existing codes.)
Application Instructions: E-mail a resume to feng@cs.vt.edu. Optional, but preferred, materials include unofficial undergraduate transcript and a brief one-paragraph statement of what interests you about this project.
Project URL: http://
Area(s) of Research: Bioinformatics, Human-Computer Interaction, Parallel Computation, Problem Solving Environments, Software Engineering, Systems, Theory, Databases, Data Mining, Knowledge
Compensation: Negotiable
Contact: feng@cs.vt.edu

Toolset for Dynamic Optimization of High-End Hybrid Applications

Faculty Advisor: Prof. D. Tafti
Research Supervisor: Prof. D. Tafti
Description of Work: Involves working with a nationwide team of developers of state-of-the-art compilers and performance tools for OpenMP parallel applications. Tasks will involve applying compilers and performance tools for optimization of high-end applications and aiding developers in fine-tuning tools.
Application Instructions: email with resume.
Project URL: http://www2.cs.uh.edu/~copper/index.html
Area(s) of Research: Parallel Computation
Compensation: Work for Pay
Contact: dtafti@vt.edu