"Data and the Next Generation"

Our ubiquitous information technology has provided an unprecedented opportunity to collect, display, store, and analyze an increasing deluge of data. Understanding and analyzing this data, as well as managing it, mining it, organizing it, and preserving it, is fundamental for the next generation of science and engineering research, discovery, education, and practice.

• How will the accessibility, quality, and organization of data impact the next generation of scientific discoveries?
• How will the availability of data impact the next generation of scientists and engineers, students, and professionals?
• How can we transform the deluge of data into usable information?

In this talk, we explore some of the key issues involved in developing the data cyberinfrastructure critical for enabling the next generation of discoveries and discoverers.

About the Speaker:
Dr. Fran Berman is Director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), holder of the High Performance Computing Endowed Chair in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at UC San Diego and Fellow of the ACM. She is a pioneer and international leader in the areas of Grid Computing and Cyberinfrastructure, and has worked extensively in the areas of programming environments, adaptive middleware, scheduling and performance prediction.

Dr. Berman is one of the founding members of the Computing Research Association's subcommittee on the Status of Women in Computer Science and Engineering (CRA-W) and a past co-Chair. For her leadership and vision, Dr. Berman was recognized in 2004 as one of the top women in technology by BusinessWeek and as one of the top technologists by IEEE Spectrum. Dr. Berman lends a Cyberinfrastructure perspective to a variety of national groups and committees including the National Science Foundation's Engineering Advisory Committee and the National Institutes of Health's NIGMS Advisory Committee.

Women, minorities, and persons with disabilities remain significantly under represented in the computing disciplines. While there have been some successes, overall progress to diversify computing has been too slow. At all levels of the academic pipeline - from high school through the graduate and faculty ranks - women, African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans, as well as persons with disabilities, participate at rates far less than their proportionate representation in the population.

This under participation is not just an equity issue; it also threatens the nation's economic viability. Information technology continues to drive our economy. Despite media headlines, IT job growth is projected to remain strong, far outpacing current degree production. In light of the changing demographics of our population, who will fill these jobs? Who will bring the broad range of experiences needed to design technology aimed at global markets? Who will bring the diverse perspectives needed to best drive innovation in the research enterprise? The CS community must play a role in addressing these issues.

This talk covers National Science Foundation efforts to increase diversity in computing, focusing on the current CISE Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC) initiative. The talk includes relevant research on mechanisms to broaden participation, as well as the spectrum of existing and planned activities. Finally, it looks at the problem from a broader perspective: What long-term efforts are needed? How might efforts by academic institutions, foundations, and industry align with those of the National Science Foundation? How might we all join together to change the places where we work?

About the Speaker:
Jan Cuny is a Professor at the University of Oregon. Her research on programming environments for computational science currently focuses on support for model coupling in hydrological applications. This year, she is on leave, working for the National Science Foundation as a Program Director for the new CISE initiative, Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC).

Jan has a long term involvement in efforts to increase the participation of women in computing research. She was a member of the Computing Research Association's Committee on the Status of Women, where she served at various times as co-chair, steering committee member, and a co-director of their Career Mentoring, Grad Cohort, and Cohort for Associated Professors projects.

Jan has served on the Advisory Board for Anita Borg Institute for Woman and Technology, the Leadership Team of the National Center for Women and Information Technology, and the Executive Board of the Coalition to Diversify Computing. She has also served on the Computing Research Association's Board of Directors.

In lung cancer patients the potential for cure is achieved in only 20% of patients with standard radiotherapy doses, a major reason for the poor survival rate in these patients. These malignancies are hard to eradicate requiring a high radiation dose and they reside in the midst of lung tissue that is readily injured by even low radiation doses. Increasing the radiation dose or intensifying therapy has been limited by the risk of life-threatening lung injury. However, the radiation dose must be increased in order to increase survival from this disease. New methods to image the functioning lung and exclude it from injury are needed. We have invented an imaging method that measures the distribution of air from a single breath (ventilation) utilizing CT without contrast for patients and small animals such as rats. A deformable image registration algorithm provides the link between tissue elements on separate CT images. The corresponding CT values of each tissue element, at exhale and inhale, determine the change in fraction of air yielding the ventilation image. These imaging techniques are simple and can be easily performed in radiation oncology or radiology departments. The same kind of imaging is available in both patients and in a rodent animal model. We believe these novel imaging studies will have a broader impact in medicine beyond lung cancer treatment. This novel imaging technology has emerged from the collaborative effort of physicians, computational mathematicians, computer scientists, medical physicists, and statisticians.

About the Speaker:
Guerrero, Thomas M., M.D., Ph.D. (residency radiation oncology Stanford 1998 - 2002, M.D. Drew/UCLA 1997, Ph.D. biomedical physics UCLA 1994, M.S. radiological health physics SDSU 1987) assistant professor UT M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in radiation oncology, adjunct assistant professor Rice University in Computation and Applied Mathematics.

My research focus borders medical imaging and radiation oncology. On the imaging side, my focus is on deformable image registration algorithms and applications. Using the optical flow algorithm we have developed a new ventilation procedure from CT images which does not require contrast gases such as xenon. By matching tissue element from two breath-hold CT images, or across a 4D CT data set, we are able to calculate the difference in air volume and its distribution. On the radiation oncology side, we are applying this novel imaging to radiotherapy treatment planning and to follow radiation injury to the lung after treatment. We are developing animal models of regional pulmonary biomechanical compliance in rodents and cardiac wall motion in dogs using CT and optical flow.