Sept. 17 — For the 8th continuous year, 15 Portuguese students traded their summer vacations for an advanced computing internship at The University of Texas at Austin.

The program, International Collaboratory for Emerging Technologies (Co Lab), is an international exchange between three Portuguese institutions, University of Minho (UM), University of Porto (UP), and the Instituto Superior Tecnico (IST), and UTAustin. For four to six weeks, graduate students developed joint research projects with experts at the Institute for Computational Sciences (ICES), UT’s Department of Computer Science (CS), and the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC).

“Even though the internships only last about a month to a month and a half, the students make significant contributions to research projects at UT, and in turn, benefit from the collaboration and networking opportunities provided by this experience,” said Keshav Pingali, ICES and CS professor. “We at UT are very impressed with the quality of the students, and we look forward to continuing these internships for years to come.”

This year’s advanced computing group worked on a diverse set of projects ranging from developing applications for heterogeneous computing environments to investigating cardiovascular biomechanics to one more example.

“In 2010, my research took a major turn after my summer internship at TACC through CoLab. I was able to pursue a dual Ph.D. between UT’s CS department and institutions in Portugal fulfilling a cornerstone of CoLab, exchanging ideas through projects that bridge researchers across the Atlantic,” said Joao Barbosa, research associate at TACC.

With guidance from Donald Fussell, a professor in the CS department, Paul Navartil manager of TACC’s Scalable Visualization Technologies Group, and Joao Barbosa, a research associate at TACC, students developed several projects related to heterogeneous computing environments. The projects covered real time graphics, efficient data, and work distribution on heterogeneous resources such as TACC’s Stampede and Maverick supercomputing clusters.

“This experience was an excellent opportunity to work together with other researchers from our area of study and use computing resources that we simply do not have access to in Portugal,” said UM student John Maia.

Student Paulo Sousa added, “The opportunity to intern at UT was undoubtedly a great privilege. We worked directly with leading experts, and took advantage of today’s best computational infrastructures.”

Other students completed their internship at ICES, a program that combines computational science, engineering, and mathematics.

IST students Ricardo Xavier and Pedro Ferreira worked with ICES faculty Robert Moser to broaden their knowledge of turbulence and informatics, applying programming languages Python and Fortran90 to turbulence simulation.

“The opportunity to intern at UT was undoubtedly a great privilege. We worked directly with leading experts, and took advantage of today’s best computational infrastructures,” said Paulo Sousa, student at University of Minho.

“The structure and work environment at ICES motivated me to cultivate my self-learning, critical thinking, objectivity, and independence,” Xavier said. “It also provided experience working on a subject in which I do not possess deep prior knowledge.”

Four UP students collaborated with Pingali’s research group on the Galois project, a system that automatically executes code in parallel on shared memory machines. The students worked to implement parallel and distributed algorithms and scheduling strategies using the Galois framework.

“These programs are a valuable opportunity to meet people with different academic backgrounds and diverse cultures,” said student David Aparicio. “Last year, I worked on a topic that wasn’t directly related to my research, but was probably a differentiating aspect of my curriculum that helped me earn a Ph.D. scholarship in Portugal.”

Diana Oliveira and Ana Torrado, two IST students completing their graduate degrees in Biomedical Engineering, focused their research on biomechanics at the ICES Center for Cardiovascular Simulation. Oliveira and Torrado were integrated into professor Michael Sacks’ research team on subjects related to their interests in cardiovascular engineering, namely on advanced simulations for the study of patient specific heart valve diseases.

By the end of their internship, both students were enthusiastic about the results and eager to continue with their research after returning home.

“This internship made me fully realize the potential of this research field, and established my desire to pursue a Ph.D. in this area,” Torrado said.

The experience not only represented a unique learning opportunity, but also a cross-cultural exchange and introduction to life in the United States. And sometimes the experience is influential enough to warrant a return, just ask former CoLab participant, and current mentor Barbosa:

“In 2010, my research took a major turn after my summer internship at TACC through CoLab. I was able to pursue a dual Ph.D. between UT’s CS department and institutions in Portugal fulfilling a cornerstone of CoLab, exchanging ideas through projects that bridge researchers across the Atlantic. It has been a privilege to mentor students during the last few summers and give something back to the program.”

—

Source: TACC