Espinosa-Marzal, Work named NCSA Faculty Fellows

9/5/2014

Two CEE faculty members receive fellowships from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

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Two members of the CEE faculty have been named 2014-2015 Faculty Fellows by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). Associate Professor Rosa Espinosa-Marzal and Assistant Professor Dan Work join seven other University of Illinois faculty members in receiving fellowships. 

Rosa Espinosa-Marzal
Rosa Espinosa-Marzal
Espinosa-Marzal’s fellowship research will focus on understanding molecular interactions that are essential to biomineralization. Pointing to the self-healing properties of mollusk shells and sea spicules, she noted that the mechanisms underlying biomineral formation and self-healing are still unclear. Espinosa-Marzal will combine experimentation with simulations using Quantum Chemistry methods to investigate the molecular interactions responsible for mineral growth and transformation. NCSA provides the perfect infrastructure for the simulation work, she said.

“The proposed simulation work, although very extensive, is feasible thanks to the advanced computation and cyberinfrastructure available at NCSA/XSEDE,” she said. “Moreover, the expertise of the personnel is also a key for the success of such a challenging work.”

Dan Work’s project will focus on improving system efficiency of taxi transportation by discovering seek time predictors. Reduction of seek time, i.e., the time between when a previous passenger was dropped off and when the next one is picked up, would lead to higher profits for taxi drivers and faster service for passengers.

“We want to understand how taxi systems actually perform in the wild, and to identify opportunities to improve them,” Work said. “Recently, GPS devices on the vehicles allow us to monitor the taxis, but the devices generate massive amounts of data which is difficult to turn into practical information. The size of the data alone makes it extremely challenging and slow to compute even simple performance metrics to understand the taxi system. This NCSA award will give us the computational resources and supercomputing expertise to change that.”

NCSA's Faculty Fellowship program provides an opportunity for University of Illinois faculty to catalyze and develop long-term research collaborations between University of Illinois departments, research units and the NCSA. Awards are made based on a review panel's recommendations, the match to the strategic goals of the NCSA, and the leverage of existing NCSA resources.


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This story was published September 5, 2014.