Research Initiatives Projects

Variable Precision Computing LDRD Project

Large-scale physics simulations pose a significant challenge on the currently available computational resources, because of the costs of both communication and storage largely exceeding the cost of the actual computation. The efficient management of the Exascale data flows generated by a large-scale simulation is still an unsolved problem. This project aims to provide an initial solution to this problem.

Towards Automated Testing and Discovery of Interoperability

The difficulty of automated testing and discovery in interoperability depends on information explicitly known. Interoperability remains a challenging unsolved problem that depends on manual error-prone solutions and costs billions annually. The goal of this research is to investigate automated approach to verification and discovery of interoperability based on recently developed theory of property-based interoperability. This may enable the next generation of automatically composable and reconfigurable systems.

Funding provided by DARPA

Deep Learning-Based Self-Organizing Network for B5G Communications with Massive IoT Devices

Self-organizing network (SON) algorithms that were designed for the self-configuration, self-optimization, and self-healing of today's 4G networks exhibit various drawbacks. The two most severe drawbacks are (1) so-called SON use case coordination - the coordination of conflicting network parameter changes - which can lead to sub-optimal network configurations and, more likely, to a worsening of network performance, and (2) a qualitative and quantitative lack of input information to the SON, making reliable network management cumbersome.

Next Generation Methods and Workflow for Automated Optimal Multi-Functional Design

This collaborative project led by LLNL is part of the DARPA TRAnsforming DESign (TRADES) program, and focuses on modeling, analysis and synthesis of complex parameterized multi-scale material structures.

Interoperability Challenges and Scenarios in Computational Design and Manufacturing

A common informal definition of interoperability refers to the ability of a system, whose interfaces are completely understood, to work with other products or systems, present or future, without any restricted access or implementation. In the context of computational design and manufacturing, interoperability subsumes the problems of data sharing, exchange, and translation, as well as the problems of systems integration.

Cybermanufacturing: Abstractions and Architectures for Open Composable Services

A key ingredient of any scenario in cloud-based design and manufacturing  and, more generally, in cybermanufacturing is the notion of virtualization of software and hardware resources in terms of open, interoperable and composable services. Such virtualization has proved challenging because modern manufacturing information systems are conceived and implemented as a federated integration of proprietary software tools that communicate via customized translators or by exchanging variety of neutral file formats.

Tactile Internet Islands

Today’s wireless communications solutions provide infrastructure for delivering content. Content delivery occurs either within a constraint island of coverage, within the reach, for example, of a wireless local area network (WLAN), or ubiquitously from anywhere to anywhere using, for example, cellular infrastructure. Content delivered can be, for example, voice, videos, images, and web information. Unfortunately however, wireless communications infrastructure available to us today does not allow for the remote control of real or virtual objects, as end-to-end latency far exceeds 10ms.

Undermining Political “Scratch” Effects with Technology (UPSET)

This project leverages technology to significantly reduce the cost of political campaigns via the sharing economy, and thus undercut the impact of money on politics (http://benefunder.org/causes/84/nelson-morgan). While the technology is important, the resulting structural change is more so; designing an efficient “supply chain” of services between a skilled citizen force and the campaigns (see http://uprisecampaigns.org for the beginnings of a separate spinoff organization to implement these ideas in real campaigns).

Service Composition in Distributed Application Design and Execution

In a collaboration with the Computer Platform Research Center - CIPI (jointly established by the Universities of Genoa and Padua, Italy), researchers are investigating the service composition paradigm for distributed applications. This paradigm can be taken as a reference when a distributed application is treated as a composite service made up of atomic services. In these cases, the application designers do not need to be programmers because they can specify the distributed applications using visual Service Creation Platforms.

Limiting Manipulation in Data Centers and the Cloud

Researchers are designing algorithms to allocate resources in datacenters and clouds that can't be manipulated by users. In datacenters and clouds, computing resources or individual machines are allocated to users based on the requirements of the jobs they want to run. Users can manipulate allocations by misreporting their requirements. In this project, researchers design algorithms that are less susceptible to such manipulation. They will also use algorithmic mechanism design and game theory to develop general procedures for converting protocols so that they can't be manipulated.

Evaluating Price Mechanisms for Clouds

Researchers are studying the problems that arise in cloud computing centers that use economic models to allocate resources. In these clouds, resources, such as storage, processing, and data transfer, must be allocated to different users. In economics-based clouds, artificial economies are set up; each resource is assigned a "price" and each user is given a "budget," which they spend on the resources they need.

Finding Conserved Protein Modules

A long-term goal of computational molecular biology is to extract, from large data sets, information about how proteins work together to carry out life processes at a cellular level. We are investigating protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks, in which the vertices are the proteins within a species and the edges indicate direct interactions between proteins. Our goal is to discover conserved protein modules: richly interacting sets of proteins whose patterns of interaction are conserved across two or more species.

Analysis of Genome-Wide Association Studies for Common Diseases

In these studies, sets of cases (individuals carrying a disease) and controls (background population) are collected and genotyped for genetic variants, normally single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Our group is collaborating closely with groups of geneticists and epidimiologists who have collected such samples. We take part in the analysis of these studies, and in some cases also in the design of the studies.