Vol. 18, No. 4	Sept. 24, 1998

UD among 36 elite, connected institutions

Richard S. Sacher (left) and Dan Grim

Selected UD researchers should soon be jumping onto the new, super-fast, national data pipeline under development by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

On Sept. 18, Vice President Al Gore identified Delaware among 36 elite U.S. institutions slated to receive a High-Performance Connections grant from the NSF.

The $350,000 award will connect "meritorious research teams" at UD with the Abilene Network, which is expected to be linked with the NSF's very high-performance Backbone Network Service (vBNS), said Daniel J. Grim, Information Technologies-Network & Systems Services.

The Abilene connection will dramatically increase the speed of data moving between a number of UD research teams and other participating institutions, said Grim, codirector of the project, with Richard S. Sacher, IT-User Services.

"It's a quantum increase in bandwidth," said Grim.

In fact, UD's maximum network speed will jump to 155 million bits of information per second (bps)-up from 13 million bps, Grim said. "These UD researchers will transfer and receive data much more quickly, whether they're sending e-mail or sharing their latest research results."

Delaware was selected to receive the NSF grant based, in part, on "a wide range of outstanding UD research projects requiring high-bandwidth or low-latency network connections," Sacher reported. Researchers who will make use of the new computing capabilities are involved in projects ranging from climate analysis and investigations of cosmic rays to coastal wave modeling, supercomputer design and the development of new, video-based, sign language methods.

"These projects were selected to illustrate the high quality of scientific effort they represent, the relevance of the research to national priorities and the impact on local and national science infrastructure that their successes will achieve," Sacher said.

Within two months or sooner, Grim said, at least 16 UD research teams will begin testing the Abilene connection. Teams will be investigating, for example:

• New Sign Language Methods-To help make educational opportunities more accessible to people who are deaf, Kenneth E. Barner, electrical and computer engineering, is exploring strategies for transmitting videotaped images of messages delivered using sign language. Some 500,000 Americans use sign language, but existing technologies for transmitting video to computer users "cannot accurately represent the rapid [hand] motions," UD's NSF grant proposal explained. High-speed data connections are crucial for developing and testing improved video coding methods. Someday, Barner said, the new, national data pipeline could bring faster, more lifelike video images of sign language into classrooms and educational programs for those who are deaf.

• Ocean Events and the Global Climate-El Niño-that notorious disruption of the ocean and atmosphere within the tropical Pacific-and other highly complex environmental events are the focus of work by Xiao-Han Yan of the College of Marine Studies and the Center for Remote Sensing. Yan, a 1994 NSF Presidential Faculty Fellow, works with doctoral students, including Yun He, to create numerical models that simulate changing ocean conditions as they relate to atmospheric circulation and the climate on Earth. His models, based in part on satellite data, incorporate massive amounts of information on such events as westerly wind bursts, precipitation levels and changes in surface heat, as well as historic ocean conditions. Analyzing such detailed and dynamic data requires large file transfers and interactive monitoring of simulations at national high-performance computing centers.

• Better Chemistry Through Computers-When UD's Murray V. Johnston III, chemistry and biochemistry, collaborates with colleagues at other institutions, they often must ship him samples of polymers, airborne particulates, genetic material and proteins. Using UD's extensive collection of mass spectrometers, Johnston captures the 'fingerprint' of different chemicals by charting a sample's spectrum of ions, or charged atomic fragments, based on their relative masses and abundance. Unfortunately, collaborators from other institutions, and particularly their students, are rarely able to visit Newark. The new, high-speed network connection will make it possible to transmit live video images directly from UD laboratories to collaborating institutions, Johnston said. In addition, the new technologies "will let researchers here and at other institutions conduct joint experiments, using remote controls, in real-time," he added. Hands-on opportunities for experimentation should prove especially useful to collaborators at institutions not fortunate enough to have the level of instrumentation available at UD, he noted.

Some of the other UD researchers who will test the Abilene connection include:

• John W. Beiber, Thomas K. Gaisser, William H. Matthaeus, Norman F. Ness, Stanley P. Owocki and Gary P. Zank of the Bartol Research Institute at UD;

• Antony N. Beris, chemical engineering;

• Sandra Carberry, Daniel Chester, Keith Decker , Chandra Kambhamettu and Adarshpal Sethi, computer and information sciences;

• Richard W. Garvine, marine studies;

• James T. Kirby Jr., civil and environmental engineering and marine studies;

• David Mills, electrical and computer engineering; and

• Kryzstof Szalewicz, physics and astronomy.

Begun in 1995, the vBNS is a five-year, $50 million effort of the federal government, which is collaborating on the project with MCI Telecommunications Corp. This sophisticated telecommunications network runs at 622 million bits per second and has begun a transition to operation at 2.4 gigabits per second. Similarly, Grim said, the initial backbone speed of the Abilene Network will be 2.4 gigabits per second.

By comparison, the average home modem operates from 28,800 to 56,600 bits per second. In addition, the vBNS is expected to always be several steps ahead of commercially available networking, the NSF reported.

The high-capacity network allows scientists and engineers to collect and share vast amounts of data, collaborate better across large distances and run complex equipment remotely. Most participating institutions, like UD, will receive High-Performance Connections grants of up to $350,000 over two years to offset the cost of linking from their sites to the vBNS or related networks, such as the Abilene connection. NSF is spending about $12.25 million over two years for this round of grants.

"These connections highlight the administration's NGI efforts and the vital collaboration with university and industry partners," the vice president said. "Together, we will usher in a new age of exploration enabled by high-performance networks that link powerful computers and vast databases."

For information on Internet2, see the web site at <http://www. udel.edu/topics/internet2/>

-Ginger Pinholster, UD, and Beth Gaston, NSF
Photo by Robert Cohen