2009 - 2010 Undergraduate Research Experience (URE) [website]
A Comparison of Job Duration Utilizing High Performance Computing on a Distributed Grid
Mentor: Mr. Je'aime Powell

Abstract

The Polar Grid team was tasked with testing the central manager system on Elizabeth City State University to ensure that it was prepared for grid computing This was achieved by installing the Condor 7.4.0 client on iMac workstations computers located in Dixon Hall, Lane Hall, and E.V. Wilkins on the campus of Elizabeth City State University. Condor allowed jobs to be submitted to the central manager and distributed to one or more nodes. The job that the team submitted to Condor was the compiled Sieve of Eratoshenes in C++ code. This code generated prime numbers from 0 to 500,000, and was essential in testing the job submission process. The compiled code that was used in the script file was submitted to the central manager through Condor. These jobs were then distributed to available nodes for processing.

After each successful job submission, log files were created to record statistical data. The data was of the elapsed time it took to process each individual job. The data from these tables were imported into Minitab, which was a statistical analysis software package. Ana analysis of variance was then performed to determine if the elapsed times of the submissions carried within a 5 percent level of significance. From that a determination of if increasing the number if nodes decreased the elapsed time; thereby showing a performance increase.

Summer 2009 Undergraduate Research Experience (URE) Program [website]
A Comparative Analysis of Localized Command Line Execution, Remote Execution through Command Line, and Torque Submissions od Matlab Scripts for the Charting of CReSIS Flight Path Data
Mentor: Mr. Je'aime Powell

Abstract

The summer 2009 Polar Grid Research team will focus on two components related the support of the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets (CReSIS). Those two components are the documentation of the installation the 64-node cluster at Elizabeth City State University, and the conversion of Matlab generated code into stand-alone executable binaries.

The documentation of the Polar Grid cluster named "Madogo" will consist of the inventory and description of all components, explanation of power consumption, definition of storage ability, and description of software capabilities.

To combat implementation limitations with Matlab proprietary code, a method of converting the CReSIS SAR Processor Lite (CSARP-Lite) into binaries which can be run on any standardized cluster without the need for a Matlab Clustering component such as the Matlab Distributed Computing Toolkit is necessary. The stand-alone binaries will then be run on the Elizabeth City Madogo cluster to test for capatability.

2008 - 2009 Undergraduate Research Experience (URE) Program [website]
Evaluation and Implementation of Web 2.0 Technologies in Support of Research Projects at ECSU
Mentor: Mr. Jeff Wood

Abstract

The primary focus of this research project was to study the implementation of Web 2.0 technologies to support scientific research and provide educational resources. Web 2.0 technologies include social networking, text and data mining, knowledge incorporation environments, tagging, visualization, and mashups. These technologies are widely used in popular sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and iGoogle. Various research and government organizations such as NASA, Harvard's Science and Engineering department, and the Technology Student Association have also implemented these technologies.

The 2008 - 2009 Multimedia Team focused on specific server software packages to execute Content Management Systems (CMS) for future inclusion in several ongoing projects under the Center of Excellence in Remote Sensing Education and Research (CERSER) umbrella. Four open source software packages were evaluated, installed, and documented as models for future installations. These software packages were Joomla, WordPress, Drupal, and MediaWiki.