Description
Simulations of galactic events such as black hole and galaxy mergers allow scientists to understand the fundamental nature of the universe. These simulations create terabytes of data, which are extremely difficult and time consuming to analyze using traditional mathematical tools and techniques. To address these challenges, scientists often use data visualization, which provides a powerful and effective approach to understand interactions and behavior of simulations such as visualizing the radiation of gravity waves during a supermassive black hole merger. Visualization systems require high performance file-systems for efficient data management. Over the last three years, a collaborative effort between the Computer Science Department and the Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation at Rochester Institute of Technology resulted in a visualization framework called Spiegel that has been used successfully to analyze and visualize the simulation of a variety of galactic events.This REU site provides students with the opportunity, environment and support to conduct research in data visualization and high-performance file systems using Spiegel as the starting point. Working in a collaborative and interdisciplinary environment, students develop solutions to a broad set of research problems in performing computation on massive amounts of multi-dimensional data. Consequently, students gain knowledge in understanding, critiquing, and presenting research literature. This project offers students opportunities to work on state-of-the-art computing techniques that are increasingly vital for solving research problems in modern scientific disciplines. Undergraduate students are encouraged to pursue interdisciplinary graduate studies in STEM disciplines. With specific recruiting efforts that target underrepresented groups such as women, minorities, and persons with disabilities, especially deaf and hard-of-hearing students, this REU program also aims to increase the size and diversity of the scientific workforce.
