This summer GridPP funded, with CERN, students taking part in the Openlab Summer Student scheme. We have been able to get them to tell us about their work and experiences living in CERN for the summer.
Louise Oakes Has a BSc in Physics with Studies in Musical Performance at Imperial College London and is starting a PhD in Particle Physics at Oxford University this year. The initial aim of my project was to port ATLAS software to BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing). This would enable users to carry out particle physics simulations for the LHC ATLAS experiment using computing power from volunteer computers over the Internet. Unfortunately, early investigation of the architecture of the program revealed that the work would be beyond the scope of a summer project so my work turned towards studying the feasibility of a BOINC port of Atlfast as part of the Athena package, and ground work for running this software in Windows through Cygwin, a Linux like environment for Windows. It was interesting to be involved with software in this was that I had previously only used for running physics analysis. As a physicist it was a steep learning curve working on a project in the IT department at CERN, and the Openlab lecture series was informative about many fields in hardware and software. As well as the lectures, there was a series of seminars and external visits. A visit to HP and Minatec in Grenoble gave insight into the ways that large international companies are using Grids. The talks I found most interesting on this programme were the seminars at Geneva University on quantum computing, and the successive tours of the laboratory there. We were told about the techniques they have been working on for quantum teleportation of photons using existing communications cables, and shown the facilities they had been using for this. I am sure that the skills and experience that I have gained at CERN this summer will be of great benefit for this. I was keen to participate in Openlab because of the opportunity it presented to learn about Grid computing, which is not an area I previously had experience in, but was interested to learn more about, and to work at CERN for the summer. In addition to improving my computing skills at CERN, living and working in Geneva for two months has been a fantastic experience. Working and socialising with people from all over the world has been enjoyable, and has expanded my awareness of international politics, language, culture and humour in addition to IT! During my time at CERN I was pleased to be able to attend some of the lectures from the physics Summer Student programme, which covered courses that I did not get chance to take in my undergraduate degree. It was particularly good to have the chance to spend time working at CERN this summer as it is an exciting time to be there. Preparations are being made for the start of operation the LHC next year; as well as learning about the work in Grid computing being done to analyse the experimental data, we had chance to see the assembly of the tunnels and detectors which will be producing it.
Tanya Sandoval Is about to start her final year of an MSci in Physics with Theoretical Physics at Imperial College London. The motivation for my project resulted from the need of scientific communities, in particular the GridPP community, to implement systems with the largest efficiency and the lowest power consumption when subjected to heavy workloads. I was aimed at investigating these two issues on the current Intel Platforms at CERN, Openlab. My task would involve carrying out performance tests using Benchmarking and Hyper-Threading Technology (HTT). It was also my task to run and manipulate configuration files, extract and interpret the output . The aim was to investigate the impact of this technology on both performance and power consumption. I was able to deduce from pure measurement analysis significant results, such as the apparent decrease in power consumption when HTT is implemented on the processors, pointing out the possibility of gaining about 10 percent on performance per watt. This result is significant in the sense that it can apply to other machines or clusters, which could in turn lead to power savings for entire computer centers while leaving overall performance constant. As a physicist, it was harder to take over this project as I first needed to familiarise myself with all the necessary computing background. Nevertheless, the programme offered a series of computing lectures that were easy to follow even if Computer Science was not your field of study. We would also have weekly meetings where students would update both supervisors and other students about their projects, giving presentations concerning their latest findings and problems encountered . In that way we were able to not only receive feedback from both supervisors and students, but also to know about the projects from other students. I would say this was a very dynamic programme. Apart from the lectures and weekly meetings, many visits around Geneva and France were organised to satisfy the interests of both Computer Scientists and Physicists. From companies of the league of HP and Minatec, to other leading physics laboratories like the Neutron Accelerator at the Institut Laue-Langevin in Grenoble and the Quantum Cryptography Laboratories at Geneva University. Other visits included the visit to the accelerator facilities at CERN like ATLAS and CMS. Seeing these makes you feel extremely motivated about your project as you realise how important your work is to help scientists develop such enormous and complex facilities. This summer was one of the best experiences in my life, not only for having the opportunity of working at CERN, but also the experience of living in a Switzerland and starting to learn a new language. In addition, socialisation between staff and students was highly encouraged at CERN, every weekend there will be trips organised for you to visit different places in Switzerland or to practise your rafting, mountaineering, hiking and even paragliding! This is definitely an opportunity I would recommend to all further science students.
Viacheslav Burenkov Is also in the final year of his degree. He is studying for an MSci in Physics at Imperial College London. The aim of my project was to develop a web interface and back-end for the application and selection procedure for the CERN School of Computing (CSC). This is an annual event, organised in different countries from year to year, where participants have a series of lectures and hands-on exercises on topics such as grid technologies and computational physics. I worked together with a student from the CERN summer student program. We had to create an application form, for people applying to the CSC in future years. The idea was to make it secure, foolproof, cross-browser compatible, user-friendly and flexible so that it can be easily modified in future years should any changes need to be made. We also developed administrative pages, such as a web based selection procedure, to make the selection process quick and easy. These were done using XHTML, PHP, SQL, JavaScript and CSS. Being a physicist and working in OpenLab at CERN where most people, including my work partner, are computer scientists had meant a lot of background reading and at times made the work challenging and frustrating. During the placement, there was a series of introductory lectures on a broad range of topics from compilers to the LCG (LHC Computing Grid). This was an excellent way of making students familiar with the various fields, and further research into them was encouraged for interested students. There were also weekly meetings, at which the OpenLab students had a chance to make a PowerPoint presentation of their project, find out about other people's projects, and stay up to date on everyone's progress. My placement included a 2-week trip to Helsinki, Finland for this year's CERN School of Computing. Together with my supervisor and work partner, we were the technical team that made all the preparations and provided technical support for the School. This involved things like setting up the computer room, students' accounts, online forum and gallery, creating registration forms, dealing with any technical problems, and setting up the online exam. It is satisfying to say that the School ran smoothly and was successful. Another good thing about the OpenLab program was the healthy balance between work and recreational activities. Several interesting trips were organised, including a visit to Minatec, quantum cryptography labs at Geneva University and the hugely impressive CMS. On top of that, the fact that the OpenLab program runs concurrently with the CERN summer student program made it ideal for creating a good atmosphere. With about 200 students on site, there was never a shortage of things to do to suit everyone's taste; a large number of sports from the usual to skydiving over the majestic Alps, exploring Switzerland/France on weekends or getting involved in CERN's clubs and societies. The nightlife program was also relentlessly active, my favourite being a series of 'national' parties (French, Latin American, Greek, Dutch) organised by the respective natives, with traditional party games, music, drinks, food and dress code. Overall, this has been a highly engaging and educational program, and a very enjoyable way to spend the summer. It has also given me direction for the future as now I have a better idea of what I want and do not want to do, and the fields I would like to learn more about, perhaps in my PhD. I sincerely hope this program continues in future years, and if possible, gets expanded so that more students have the opportunity to experience it. GridPP hopes to fund more OpenLab students in the future. If you are interested or know a student that may be interested please contact GridPP's dissemination officer Dr Sarah Pearce at s.pearce@qmul.ac.uk
