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Clarkson professor awarded three-year grant from National Science Foundation

Posted 12/2/16

Chen Liu, assistant professor at Clarkson University, was recently awarded a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation to lead a four-person research team to acquire a heterogeneous …

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Clarkson professor awarded three-year grant from National Science Foundation

Posted

Chen Liu, assistant professor at Clarkson University, was recently awarded a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation to lead a four-person research team to acquire a heterogeneous high-performance computing cluster.

Why a cluster? Sometimes researchers just need a super computer instead of the increasingly tiny versions that are common nowadays. This project is big, and it calls for big technology that can support parallel processing research of biometrics and identification technology, as well as broad disciplines of engineering research, according to a press release.

“If we are not the only ones, we are among very few in the country to have this ability. We are very happy and fortunate to get this grant,” Liu said.

“This is a major research instrumentation grant, MRI for short,” he said. “Our project is a small-scale super computer with a lot of horsepower for computation ability. It has many servers, interconnected to look like one big machine. Research involving facial recognition, iris recognition and fingerprint recognition requires a lot of computing power, so we're investigating how to perfect that capability and make biometrics run faster.”

A faculty member at Clarkson University for five years, Liu is the principal investigator, while his colleagues Joseph Skufca and Stephanie Schuckers are co-principle investigators. Clarkson's Chief Information Officer Joshua Fiske rounds out the team.

The project is challenging, because in order to work with a very large database, such as faces, they need a lot of specialized hardware and software, and it needs to work quickly. Just for fun, the team will set up a demonstration machine on campus so passers-by can see their faces captured. Not to worry, their privacy will be protected, Liu said.

The instrument is meant to support two very broad categories of research. On the one hand, application with a number of complex tasks operating at the interface of the physical and the computer world (cyber physical systems) requires rapid computations, but not all of those computations are of the same type.

With a heterogeneous cluster, the diversity of the computer components allows for more efficient processing of these complex tasks, according to the press release. The face tracking and recognition problem is of this type.

The second type of research is more fundamental: if the first type of problem (the application) makes sense to tackle with a heterogeneous computer, how can the parsing of the problem be automated?

Researchers will need to develop the algorithms that allow the computer to efficiently split up these problems so that the right kinds of tasks are sent to the right component in the cluster to maximize the capability of the overall system, according to the release.

“A lot of people use computer clusters to do scientific research. Ours is a very unique concept," Liu said. "It's called heterogeneous because there are four computing elements – central processing units (CPUs), graphics processing units (GPUs), many-integrated core (MIC) co-processors, and field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), tightly integrated with a light field camera as a data-capturing front-end."

Clarkson University is the lead site of the Center for Identification Technology Research (CITeR), a multi-university National Science Foundation Industry/University Cooperative Research Center, working in partnership with government and industry stakeholders to advance the state of the art in human identification capabilities through coordinated university research, the release said.

The investigators plan to use this cluster to support research in CITeR, as well as other related areas. The team wants to involve the broader research community in this project. They can support other research across the faculty, Liu said, and Clarkson will support research at other universities that want to use the cluster.

“Our grant is for three years, but after the grant is done, the cluster will still be running,” he said.

In making the award to Liu's project, the NSF said it “supports research, innovation, and discovery that provides the foundation for economic growth in this country. By advancing the frontiers of science and engineering, our nation can develop the knowledge and cutting-edge technologies needed to address the challenges we face today and will face in the future.”

The new cluster will be located in Clarkson's primary datacenter in the newly restored Old Main building. In addition to providing a home for campus computing resources, this facility also provides businesses in the North Country with convenient local access to an enterprise-grade datacenter.

Through this new facility, Clarkson is offering “access to a secure, stable and well-connected datacenter facility that can help growing organizations meet their technology infrastructure needs,” the release said.

For more information visit http://oldmaincolo.com.