VISUALIZATION

The Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC) will be organizing a 2-day visualization camp for 352 students from 38 secondary schools from 13-16 March 2007. Due to the overwhelming response from schools, there will be 2 sessions for this year’s V-Camp to be held from 13-14 March and 15-16 March. The aim of this annual camp, which was started in 2002, is to introduce and educate students on the pervasive use of High Performance Computing (HPC) technologies in Research and Development within Singapore. Students will be able to obtain a better understanding of modeling, simulation and visualization from the demonstrations and hands-on training made available to them, including the use of supercomputers and other cutting-edge technologies. Working in collaboration with Singapore Science Centre (SSC), students will be grouped into teams and activities will be held at alternate venues of IHPC and SSC. During the camp, students will have the opportunity to learn and experience the following: - Distributed rendering using cluster and wiredGL technologies through collaborative applications and games. Students will also experience how researchers in IHPC use large scale visualization for their work using a cluster based system (COVE) and through a 2X3 tile display to visualize models of molecules, oil rigs and jet engines, etc; - Hands-on appreciation workshop using 3D modeling, animation and rendering tools - where basic concepts of 3D, rendering still images and simple animations will be taught; - Game design workshops where participants will create their own 3D worlds and use artificial intelligence to create a basic game. According to Dr Raj Thampuran, Executive Director of IHPC, “It is clear that our students in schools have strong foundation in science and are highly savvy with computers, programming and the use of the internet. At IHPC, we want to open their minds to the use of computational science in scientific discovery. With the record number of students for this year’s V-Camp intake, it certainly underscores our belief that we can capture the imagination of new generation of scientists from our student outreach efforts and share the exciting opportunities for a scientist in the era of powerful supercomputers.” IHPC is reaching out to students from secondary and JC schools with its Seminar Series talks, exciting competition on the techniques and applications of high performance computing, student attachment programs and collaborations with schools on CSE and HPC activities. As a national research institute supported by A*STAR through its Science and Engineering Council (SERC), the Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC) was established in April 1998 to provide leadership in high performance computing as a strategic resource for scientific inquiry. IHPC seeks to power discoveries through advanced methodologies, techniques and new tools in modeling, simulation and visualization. Its research focus are in the realm of complex-coupled systems, mechanics and fluid dynamics, large-scale systems, scientific computing and software development, digital modeling, adaptive and collaborative computing, data mining and analyses, computational electronics and electromagnetics, computational material and chemistry.