UNews - computing

Programming a bright future

trevor.kenney — Tue, 22 Oct 2013 21:45:36 +0000

It’s not every day that you avoid being eaten by digital zombies. But a team of ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge students has proven it’s just the way to earn a second-place finish at an international programming competition.

The university’s programming contest team participated for the first time in the prestigious annual world finals of the Association for Computing Machinery’s International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC). Sponsored by IBM, the competition was held in St. Petersburg, Russia last summer.

Hugh Ramp (left), Chris Martin (back left), Dr. Howard Cheng (front) and Darcy Best (right) put the U of L on the map at the prestigious ICPC World Finals.

The team, made up of Hugh Ramp (fourth-year physics), Chris Martin (fourth-year computer science), Darcy Best (second-year MSc mathematics) and coaches Dr. Howard Cheng (mathematics and computer science) and Dr. Kevin Grant (mathematics and computer science) took second prize in an open challenge competition that required the students to write an artificial intelligence program that would successfully play a zombie-filled video game on the team’s behalf.

The challenge was part of a larger competition in which nearly 30,000 students from around the world participated in regional contests, solving several complex computing problems within a gruelling, five-hour deadline.

In this battle of logic, strategy and mental endurance, each team had to huddle around a single computer while addressing various problems. For example, the students had to quantify the impact of water pollution and determine how to get commuters to their destinations as quickly as possible without traffic congestion. In the end, among the 120 teams that advanced to the world finals, the
U of L students placed third among the Canadian competitors, 12th out of 23 North American teams and 80th overall.

The competition, says Cheng, equips students for the real-world demands of computing.

“You must work together under intense time constraints. There’s no room for any failure,” he says.

What’s more, says Martin, preparing for the competition is often just as challenging as the contest.
U of L students spent 15 to 20 hours a week – on top of their regular studies – practising sample computing problems.

“The more time you put in, the better you will do,” he says.

It’s a sentiment echoed by Best.

“You have to learn to use new algorithms that aren’t taught in your courses. As a result, my coding skills have gone through the roof.”

Those abilities, he says, have given him an advantage over his classmates, who often must invest considerable time becoming proficient at writing computer programs.

Best, however, isn’t the only one whose ICPC experience has complemented his education. Teammate Ramp (BSc ’13), for instance, has gone on to pursue graduate studies at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Alberta, providing further evidence that hands-on learning serves as a springboard to future success.

Wieden, Wetmore earn Compute Canada space

trevor.kenney — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 22:58:31 +0000

Two ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge chemistry & biochemistry researchers have been awarded over 2.6Mio (million) processor hours and storage worth more than $380,000 as a result of the Compute Canada resource allocation competition.

Drs. Hans-Joachim Wieden and Stacey Wetmore were successful in earning two of the 212 grants given out by Compute Canada to leading Canadian research projects across the country.

In all, Compute Canada Calcul Canada (CC), Canada's national platform of High Performance Computing (HPC) resources and partners,administered grants of nearly $72 million worth of state-of-the-art computing, storage and support resources.

"Our research would not be possible without theirinfrastructure," says Wetmore, whose research isprimarily focused on understanding deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) damage and repair processes in our bodies in order to aid the design of new ways to diagnose, treat and prevent disease.

"Calculations of the complicated structure and reactions of biosystems require substantial computer resources that can only be obtained through national computing consortiums."

The grants allocate nearly one billion processor hours and 10.4 petabytes of storage to the projects over the next year.

Researchers will also have direct access to more than 40 programming and technical experts who are critical to enabling the efficient use of these state-of-the-art HPC systems.

"Compute Canada's extensive network of computing resources, data storage facilities, research tools and expertise is supporting projects that feed into a thriving Canadian R&D sector and contribute important socio-economic benefits to Canada," saysBill Appelbe, CC's incoming CEO. "This year's allocations represent the diverse and leading-edge science taking place at research institutions across the country."

The projects — which range from aerospace design and climate modeling to medical imaging and nanotechnology — produce results and breakthroughs that in many cases simply wouldn't be possible without CC's resources.

Wieden's research program is focused on unraveling the design principles underlying communication processes within biomolecular machines responsible for their functional complexity. Understanding the basis of intra- and intermolecular communication will help to understand cause-and-effect relationships in a number of chronic diseases, such as cancer or cystic fibrosis.

"Without Compute Canada Calcul Canada, this research would not be possible," says Wieden. "The research approach we are using involves the intricate combination of computational and laboratory research. For our group, it would be impossible to obtain and even more important, maintain, the required computational resources."

Wetmore echoes Wieden, saying her group's work is dependent on these resources.

"Compute Canada Calcul Canada infrastructure is vital to our work since large-scale computer models of biosystems require significant computer resources in terms of the important factors of time, memory and disk space," says Wetmore.

CC's resources are granted based on scientific merit and computational need. In addition to the grants for above average computing requirements, all Canadian researchers have access to significant default allocations of computational resources and support expertise.

O'Shea recognized as trailblazer

trevor.kenney — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 16:15:46 +0000

Dr. Seamus O'Shea, a ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge Vice–President Academic Emeritus and a well known advocate for province-wide information technology development, is being acknowledged, with colleague and fellow "Cyber Trailblazer" Dr. Brian Unger, for their long-term efforts to support and expand connectivity to the province's networking and computing infrastructure.

The two remarkable digital-era pioneers are being recognized today on the eve of their last board meeting with Cybera, which operates Alberta's Research and Education Network.

Unger, founding president of the organization, is stepping down after 19 years on the board. For six of those years he was also CEO, where he led the development of Alberta's networking and computing infrastructure.

As a computing science professor in the early days of the internet, Unger recognized the specialized needs of researchers working with this new technology.

He was one of the founders of the Western Universities Research Consortium (WURCnet), which became Netera Alliance, and later Cybera.

The organization was tasked with developing Alberta's high-end research networks, enabling access to supercomputers provided by the High Performance Computing Consortia (HPCC), and later by WestGrid, which he also co-founded.

Unger was the founding president of the Alberta Informatics Circle of Research Excellence (iCORE) from 1999-2005. During this period, iCORE invested $43 million in 17 ICT research chairs, supporting over 500 faculty, graduate students and staff.

Through these interrelated projects, he evolved Alberta from a province of remote pockets of academia to a region known for its collaborative, data-intensive research.

Unger received the IWAY "Public Leadership" Award for outstanding contributions to Canada's information society in 2004, and was named a "Canada Pioneer of Computing" at the 2005 IBM CASON conference in Toronto.

Over the same period, O'Shea was leading the IT strategies at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge, where he was Vice-President, Academic and Provost.

As chair of Cybera's Board of Directors over the past five years, he has worked to grow the organization to become a regionally and internationally-recognized leader in networking and cloud computing.

O'Shea's work in the early 1990s made the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge one of the first post-secondary institutions to make broadband widely accessible, giving every desk on campus access to the internet.

He also served as Chair of iCORE from 2006-2010 and, more recently, was co-chair of the team that designed and implemented ApplyAlberta, the province's online post-secondary application system.

"Very few researchers actually know the story of these IT pioneers, and how their everyday tools are the result of decades of commitment. Brian and Seamus have helped build the foundations of e-infrastructure in Alberta, which is among the best in the world," says President and CEO Robin Winsor.

"Through their vision and pathfinding work, they have led the research, computing and networking landscape in this province. In the process, they have ensured that Alberta researchers have the tools and networks to succeed internationally."

UNews - computing

Programming a bright future

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