IT Research and Digital Library Benefit from Recent
NSF Awards
Computer science researchers at Rice University have
been awarded four grants totaling more than $3.5 million under
the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Information Technology
Research (ITR) program, and the School of Continuing Studies
received $700,000 to develop an online digital library.
“Rice is not a large school, so the fact that a department
our size received this many ITR grants—covering such a broad
range of topics—is a testimony to the quality of research
we’re involved in,” says Keith Cooper, chair of Rice’s
computer science department.
Cooper and fellow Rice computer scientists Devika Subramanian and Linda Torczon
received one of the grants, a $1.6-million award to develop adaptive compilers.
A compiler is software that processes programming instructions written in a specific
programming language, translating them into a binary set of instructions that
can be run on the computer’s processor. Two trends—the appearance
of more specialized computer chips and the need to execute software differently
in various situations in order to maximize elements like speed, battery power,
or stability—have led to a need for intelligent, adaptive compilers that
can optimize application performance. The researchers hope to develop the knowledge
and techniques needed to make adaptive compilers practical within five years.
Subramanian and political scientist Richard Stoll are working together on a separate
ITR project to develop a computer system capable of predicting when and where
international conflicts will arise. Their $400,000 grant will fund the development
of an automated system that will compile information from online news accounts
of political events and compare those with records of past events in order to
predict impending conflicts.
Another of Rice’s ITR grants, led by computer scientist Peter Druschel,
is part of a five-year, $12-million, multi-institutional program to develop a
peer-to-peer framework that will support the deployment of large, distributed
applications. The research involves a dozen teams at several universities, including
the University of California–Berkeley, New York University, and the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. Druschel says the system could ultimately support user
cooperatives dedicated to specific tasks like backup or content delivery.
Computer scientists Lydia Kavraki and Joe Warren were awarded $650,000 to develop
algorithms and representations that computer programmers need to incorporate
elastic, flexible objects into computer simulations. Such objects include cloth
and fabric, human tissue and organs, cells and cell membranes, and large molecules.
There is a growing demand to incorporate these and other virtual “deformable
objects” into scientific simulations, computer games, and movie special
effects. The mathematical complexity involved in modeling these objects requires
novel computational tools. This grant is part of a $3.9-million ITR award that
also involves researchers at Stanford University, the University of Pennsylvania,
and Rutgers University.
Outside of the ITR initiatives, the NSF also has awarded a grant of $700,000
to the School of Continuing Studies to develop an online digital library for
high school advanced placement (AP) teachers and students of biology, physics,
and chemistry.
The AP program is accepted both nationally and internationally as a demanding
undergraduate-level curriculum taught in high schools. Over the past eight summers,
the School of Continuing Studies has administered professional development institutes
for AP and pre-AP teachers. With nearly 1,400 teachers from across the country
attending this past summer, the program has grown to become one of the nation’s
largest.
The Advanced Placement Digital Library (APDL) will house a collection of Internet
resources useful for AP biology, physics, and chemistry courses. These resources
could include lecture modules, lesson plans, tests, new research, multimedia
presentations, and much-needed career guidance. The collection will be reviewed
and validated by master AP teachers and college faculty across the country and
will adhere to nationally accepted outlines and concepts for AP biology, physics,
and chemistry as well as additional topics suggested as necessary inclusions
by the National Research Council.
The APDL represents a significant contribution to the Rice Digital Library Initiative
(RDLI). “Providing access to appropriate scholarly assets in digital form
to support the Rice community is critical to the success of the teaching and
research missions of Rice,” said Geneva Henry, executive director of the
RDLI. “The APDL will be an important resource for preparing students for
their studies before they get to Rice, as well as providing background materials
for Rice students to refresh their memories on concepts they learned in their
AP courses.” The APDL also affords those students who did not have AP courses
in high school a chance to use these materials on their own as needed so they
are not at a disadvantage when their professors expect them to have already learned
prerequisite concepts covered only in AP courses.
When completed, the APDL will be made available online through the official College
Board site at http://apcentral.collegeboard.com.
—Jade Boyd and Carol Hopkins
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