News

Today, the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) announced that researchers affiliated with the center will receive nearly $8 million in information technology research (ITR) grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

"These awards underscore key areas of commitment for SDSC," said Vijay Samalam, executive director of SDSC. "Funding for these projects will allow SDSC researchers to continue their mission of delivering the cyberinfrastructure tools necessary to enable scientific research and discovery."

Researchers from SDSC representing four projects were granted nearly $8 million in the final round of awards. SDSC projects include:

• Next-Generation Routing Protocols for Realistic Network Topologies. Improving the Integrity of Domain Name System (DNS) Monitoring and Protection. The NSF has awarded the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA) research group at SDSC a grant for $3.4 million over three years to help protect the critical infrastructure of the Internet. The Domain Name System (DNS) is a keystone of the Internet - without it, the routing of messages to their proper destinations would be crippled. The work by CAIDA and affiliated researchers at the Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) is intended to help "harden" the DNS against malicious attacks and software bugs. "The Domain Name System has scaled well past its original design goals, and now questions of security, reliability, and robustness are demanding more concerted attention," said principal investigator K. C. Claffy, the founding director of CAIDA and an Associate Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). "There are fundamental aspects of traffic dynamics of the DNS and of the Internet in general that have resisted effective modeling.":
  • execute the next step on the path toward construction of practically acceptable next-generation routing protocols based on more scalable and mathematically rigorous routing algorithms obtained recently in theoretical computer science
  • validate the applicability of the above algorithms against several sources of real Internet topology data with the emphasis on scrupulous measurement of critical statistical and graph-theoretic characteristics of the Internet topology
  • build and evaluate a model for Internet topology growth, which reflects fundamental laws of evolution of large-scale networks.

• Integration and Analysis of Reliable Networking for Remote Science, Education and First Responders. The $3 million project is part of the wide-area High Performance Wireless Research and Education Network (HPWREN) created with NSF funding four years ago. HPWREN brought high-speed Internet service to rural and remote areas of Southern California, including Native American tribal reservations. Led by Hans-Werner Braun, a research scientist at UCSD and PI on both projects, this project will build upon the network already in place and focus on quality of service and scientific applications. The systemic, interdisciplinary and multi-institutional research will address diverse networking predictability needs for remote areas, including strict real-time requirements for earthquake sensor data outrunning a seismic shock wave for advance warning systems, sensors at biological field stations, and rapidly deployable and reliable sensor and human-interface networks for real-life crisis management situations. HPWREN will also expand its education activities, notably on tribal reservations.

• A Novel Grid Architecture Integrating Real-Time Data and Intervention During Image Guided Therapy. Kim Baldridge, another SDSC researcher, is leading this project created to develop "A Novel Grid Architecture Integrating Real-Time Data and Intervention During Image Guided Therapy," over two years with expected funding of $750,000.

• Constraint-based Knowledge Systems for Grids, Digital Libraries and Persistent Archives. In this two-year, $737,000 project, researchers in the Data Grids Technologies Lab in SDSC's Data and Knowledge Systems (DAKS) program will pursue research on "Constrainted-based Knowledge Systems for Grids, Digital Libraries and Persistent Archives." Building on the proven, production quality technology of the SDSC Storage Resource Broker, researchers help implement next-generation data management technology that will help national and international facilities better manage, replicate, publish, share and preserve massive data collections. The research will build upon long-standing collaborations with projects including curricula repositories for education, distributed scientific data collections, persistent archives and others.

About SDSC

Founded in 1985, the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) has a long history of enabling science and engineering discoveries. Continuing this legacy into the next generation, SDSC's mission is to "extend the reach" of researchers and educators by serving as a core resource for cyberinfrastructure - providing them with high-end hardware technologies, integrative software technologies, and deep inter-disciplinary expertise. SDSC is an organized research unit of the University of California, San Diego and is primarily funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). With a staff of more than 400 scientists, software developers, and support personnel, SDSC is an international leader in data management, grid computing, biosciences, geosciences, and visualization. For more information, see www.sdsc.edu.

Media Contacts:

Greg Lund,
(858) 534-8314
greg@sdsc.edu

Ashley Wood,
(858)534-8363
awood@sdsc.edu