---
title: "UNM research at SC17"
description: "The Center for Advanced Research Computing will take a collection of digital posters highlighting computational research at UNM and partner New Mexico State University to SC17 in Denver in November."
type: News
tags:
  - News
date: "2017-11"
generated:
  by: "process:scripts/port_legacy_pages.py"
  at: "2026-09-10T00:00:00Z"
sources:
  - id: carc-web
    resource: "https://carc.unm.edu/news--events/News/unm-research-at-sc17.html"
    title: "UNM research at SC17 (carc.unm.edu)"
    author: "team:unm-carc"
---

# UNM research at SC17

<p class="carc-byline">November 2017</p>

The Center for Advanced Research Computing will take a collection of digital
posters highlighting computational research at UNM and partner New Mexico
State University to [SC17](http://sc17.supercomputing.org/){target=_blank} in
Denver in November. Topics range from race car aerodynamics to cancer
nanotherapy. Posters will be displayed on TV monitors at the UNM CARC booth
#535 on the SC17 exhibition floor.

#### UNM research posters

#### [CARC helps UNM race car team’s need for speed](https://fsae.unm.edu/index.html){target=_blank}

![](/assets/sc17-research-posters-unm-race-car.png)

The University of New Mexico Formula SAE is making race cars go faster with
the help of the university’s Center for Advanced Research Computing (CARC).
Formula SAE is an international engineering-design competition where student
teams from universities design and build a Formula-1/Indy style race car to
compete against other universities. The cars are judged on many aspects
including design, cost, acceleration, autocross, and endurance. In the
three-semester program at UNM, student teams design, build, and race a car in
international competition.

#### **[Determination and characterization of clinically obtained viral strains via next generation sequencing and post sequencing bioinformatic analysis](https://genomics.unm.edu/labs/dinwiddie/){target=_blank}**

The research focus of Dr. Darrell Dinwiddie's lab is to use genomic medicine
(a structured approach to disease diagnosis and management that prominently
features next-generation sequencing and analysis at a genome scale) to
diagnose, discover, and investigate rare monogenic genetic disorders and to
apply genomics to understand immune-mediated disorders.

#### **[Gastropod comparative genomics](http://biology.unm.edu/cmadema/){target=_blank}**

The biology and evolution of phylogenetic groups of animals is often
interpreted through the proxy of a few well-studied model organisms. Next
generation sequencing yields broad access to genomes and facilitates novel
gene discovery and evaluation of the predictive value of model species for
larger animal clades.

#### **[Gene expression signatures of acute respiratory syncytial virus infection in pediatric patients reveals insight into clinical pathogenesis](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=oxOawREAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao){target=_blank}**

The research focus of Dr. Darrell Dinwiddie's lab is to use genomic medicine
(a structured approach to disease diagnosis and management that prominently
features next-generation sequencing and analysis at a genome scale) to
diagnose, discover, and investigate rare monogenic genetic disorders and to
apply genomics to understand immune-mediated disorders.

#### **[Genomic comparisons of multipartite symbiosis: Understanding the metabolic basis of parasitism](http://bishoyh.github.io/){target=_blank}**

Massive amounts of sequence data are being generated daily, coming from
metagenome projects and microbiome projects. A major challenge today is how to
make sense of these data. We are mainly concerned with interactions among
organisms existing in multipartite symbioses. By trying to answer questions
regarding symbioses (encompassing both mutualistic and parasitic) through
understanding symbiosis as an emergent property of the metabolic
network/metabolic capacity of the whole system. Marked by genome reduction and
gene loss, most parasites lose metabolic functions as they increase their
dependence on nutrients offered by the host. The question is then: do
parasites from different phyla converge in their lost/gained metabolic
functions as they adapt to a parasitic life style? By understanding the
evolutionary patterns behind the metabolic networks of these parasites we can
evoke new methods to combat some of these medically important species.

#### **[keybin: Key-based binning for distributed clustering](http://cs.unm.edu/~xychen/keybin-cluster17.pdf){target=_blank}**

keybin is a distributed key-based binning clustering algorithm for
high-dimensional spaces. keybin locally generates a spatial key for each data
point across all dimensions without needing knowledge of other data. Then, it
performs a conceptual Map-Reduce procedure in the index space to learn a
global clustering structure with limited communication. It can scale with the
dimensionality and size of data sets and preserve privacy at the same time.

#### **[Mountain lions on the edge: Integrating conservation into urban planning through predictive modeling](http://carc.unm.edu/research/mountain-lions-on-the-edge.html){target=_blank}**

![](/assets/sc17-research-posters-mountain-lion.jpg)

Can city dwellers and wildlife coexist safely and peacefully? UNM School of
Architecture and Planning graduate student Sophia Thompson is convinced they
can. She is using the UNM Center for Advanced Research Computing resources to
do research on New Mexico mountain lions, with the goal of helping humans and
wildlife coexist.

#### **[Onload vs offload for many-core architectures](http://www.cs.unm.edu/~mdosanjh/6598a342.pdf){target=_blank}**

In this study, researchers examined the power and performance tradeoff of
Network offload. By utilizing a cluster outfitted with custom power monitoring
hardware and isolating the hardware changes to the network card they were able
to precisely measure power and performance differences between the a Mellanox
offload card and a Qlogic onload card. Utilizing dynamic voltage and frequency
scaling, they were able to approximate the performance to evaluate potential
impacts on a wide array of processors.

Microbenchmark results show an increase in performance when using offload
cards as the CPU is not a bottleneck in these cases. Offload takes less power
at high frequencies and more power at lower frequencies. Examining component
level power measurements, the offload network card leads to an increase power
use, while the CPU uses less due to decreased activity.

#### **[Optical rogue wave generation in dielectrics with correlated fluctuations of refractive index](http://mafi.unm.edu/){target=_blank}**

Rogue waves (RWs) are extreme high intensity waves that seem to appear
randomly. RWs were first studied in the context of oceanography to explain the
presence of huge and destructive waves in relatively calm water. These studies
have since been extended to other physical systems like microwaves, nonlinear
crystals, cold atoms, Bose-Einstein condensates, and even in non-physical
systems like the financial market. There is still an ongoing debate on whether
the RWs are originated due to linear or nonlinear processes. In this work,
researchers explore RW generation for the propagation of light in a dielectric
in the presence of correlated fluctuations of its refractive index. They
observe that with increasing the correlation length, the probability of RW
generation increases. This result is important because in practice most
fluctuations occur with a finite correlation length and it appears that it is
important to take this into account to get a realistic account of RW
generation.

#### **[RAMP: The Repository Analytics and Metrics Portal](http://ramp.montana.edu/){target=_blank}**

Institutional repositories (IR) contribute to the scholarly ecosystem by
providing efficient, open access to the research products of a university or
organization. They further provide a means for researchers and administrators
to assess research impact via metrics including file download counts.
Unfortunately, a lack of consistency among repository and analytics platforms
casts doubt upon the reliability of such statistics. RAMP is an easily
configured web application which integrates with the Google Search Console API
to allow participating IR administrators access to consistent, reliable
statistics about repository usage. Because the same data and analytics models
are applied across participating repositories, the RAMP prototype facilitates
the establishment of baseline statistics for comparisons between similar
repositories.

#### **[RMA-MT: A benchmark suite for assessing Message Passing Interface (MPI) multi-threaded RMA performance](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7515735/){target=_blank}**

RMA-MT is a novel benchmark suite that examines the combination of two
proposed exascale parallel programing paradigms. Multi-threading (MT) has been
suggested in the MPI+X models to deal with the high levels of intra-node
parallelism, particularly when dealing with many-core processors. Remote
Memory Access (RMA) has been proposed as a communication interface to to
provide shared memory abstractions which bypass expensive point-to-point data
structures.

#### **[Researchers seek ‘magic bullet’](http://carc.unm.edu/research/researchers-seek-magic-bullet-using-carc-systems.html){target=_blank}**

![](/assets/sc17-research-posters-nanotherapy.jpg)

UNM researchers aim to deliver chemotherapy directly to cancerous tissue,
working to encapsulate toxic chemotherapy in nanoparticles. The challenge is
that the body’s immune system interprets nano-drug-carriers as foreign bodies,
attacking and diverting them. Researchers are using CARC to search for a
solution.

#### **[Smart molecular devices for sensing and diagnostics](http://www.cs.unm.edu/~mlakin/){target=_blank}**

How can scientists design nanoscale sensors and devices to diagnose and treat
disease? Dr. Matthew Lakin, UNM Assistant Professor of Computer Science, is
using UNM’s computational resources to design synthetic DNA computing devices,
which can detect molecular inputs such as disease biomarkers, and make
diagnostic decisions based on them. This work is in collaboration with the UNM
Center for Biomedical Engineering.

#### **[Space exploration: Taken by Swarm](https://www.abqjournal.com/989912/nm-robots-ready-to-rumble-at-nasa-competition.html){target=_blank}**

If humans one day colonize Mars, perhaps the University of New Mexico will
have played a small part. UNM students were among those from across the
country participate in the NASA Swarmathon robotics competition. Learn more
about this event from UNM computer science professor Melanie Moses.

#### **[Uncertainty quantification for seismic events: Extracting uncertainty from seismic waveforms through parametric bootstrapping](https://cfwebprod.sandia.gov/cfdocs/CompResearch/index.cfm){target=_blank}**

Can scientists do a better job at detecting small seismic events? UNM
Department of Computer Science Ph.D. student Matt Peterson thinks there is a
way. Working at Sandia National Labs, he is using a combination of Physics and
Statistics to research a way to produce a probability distribution for a
Seismic Signal Arrival time.

#### NMSU research posters

#### **[A phylogenetically informed investigation of transcriptome evolution and transcriptome response of the tropical crop genus *Leucaena* to psyllid herbivores](http://biology-web.nmsu.edu/~bailey/){target=_blank}**

![](/assets/sc17-research-posters-leucaena.png)

The extensive application of next generation sequencing in agricultural
research has focused on yield improvements in the most important global food
crops. However, lesser-known crops receive comparatively little research
attention, such as the genus *Leucaena*. Leucaena can provide protein-rich
leaves for livestock feed; green manure used as nitrogen-rich fertilizer for
crops and soil stabilization, and rapidly renewable woody biomass for
construction, fuelwood, and even biofuels. One of the goals of this project is
to investigate how plant transcriptomes change through time and in association
with diversification of species.

#### **[Automated image analysis for segmenting and classifying New Mexico desert plants](https://jornada.nmsu.edu/lter){target=_blank}**

The scope of the entire project is to determine if Criollo cattle are
beneficial to the land at the Jornada Experimental Range. A camera found on
the cow’s collar captures images and tracks the vegetation that the Criollo
cattle are consuming. A mixture of image processing and machine learning are
used to correctly classify and identify the plant species found in the images.

#### **[BIGDATA: Collaborative research: F: Discovering context-sensitive impact in complex systems](https://kddlab.nmsu.edu/project/graph-mining/){target=_blank}**

Successfully tackling many urgent challenges in socio-economically critical
domains (such as sustainability, public health, and biology) requires
obtaining a deeper understanding of complex relationships and interactions
among a diverse spectrum of entities and agents in different contexts. While
some of the relationships (e.g., co-location of energy production facilities
and water delivery networks in the energy domain and scheduled flights between
two cities in the study of epidemics) in these domains are explicitly known,
the knowledge of these explicit relationships is often far from sufficient to
enable decision making. What is required instead is an understanding of
whether and (if so) in what contexts these entities impact each other. The
goal of this project is to establish the theoretical, algorithmic, and
computational foundations of big data-driven Context-Sensitive Impact
Discovery (CSID) in complex systems.

#### **[Data Storage Lab @NMSU](https://www.cs.nmsu.edu/~mzheng/publications/publications.html){target=_blank}**

Dr. Mai Zheng's research interests are in the broad areas of computer systems.
He started the Data Storage Lab@NMSU to play with the latest storage
technologies and strive to advance the reliability and performance for data,
for people.

#### [New computational chemistry methods to quantify the properties of atoms in materials](https://wordpress.nmsu.edu/tmanz/research/){target=_blank}

Atomistic properties help us understand material properties and chemical
reactivity. Netatomic charges quantify electron charge transfer between atoms.
Atomic spin moments quantify the magnetic properties of materials at the
atomistic level. Bond orders quantify the number of electrons exchanged
between two atoms in a material. Polarizability quantifies the electrical
response of a material to an applied electric field. Dispersion coefficients
describe the van der Waals forces that hold materials like non-polar
liquidstogether. This project develops more accurate methods to compute these
atomistic descriptors using the quantum mechanically computed electron and
spin density distributions of the material as input. The methods are
computationally efficient and canbe applied to a wide variety of material
types.

#### **[The Hilbert Spectrum: A general framework for time-frequency analysis](http://web.nmsu.edu/~spsandov/HSA/){target=_blank}**

![](/assets/sc17-research-posters-deleon-image.png)

This research is a contribution to the old problem of representing a signal in
the coordinates of time and frequency. We define a signal model composed of a
superposition of complex, AM-FM components that enables rigorous definition of
instantaneous amplitude and instantaneous frequency. Based on this model, the
Hilbert Spectrum (HS) was introduced as the ideal instantaneous spectrum,
which specializes to the Fourier spectrum. Numerical algorithms are given for
computing a HS where the component is assumed to be a latent intrinsic mode
function. Researchers demonstrate that the HS simultaneously exhibits fine
resolution in both the coordinates of time and frequency simultaneously.

#### **[REU site: BIGData: Big data analytics for cyber-physical systems](https://www.cs.nmsu.edu/reu/){target=_blank}**

The goal of this Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) site initiative
(BIGDatA-BIG Data Analytics for Cyber-physical Systems) is to inspire and
prepare undergraduate students to pursue academic studies and careers in STEM
with a focus on big data analytics for cyber-physical systems (CPS). The
site’s research projects will focus on equipping students with skills and
knowledge related to big data analytics in CPS. The CPS will be exemplified by
four main application areas: smart grids, wireless sensor networks, smart
homes for the elderly and disabled, and disaster response.

#### **[The technicolor dawn simulations](http://astronomy.nmsu.edu/directory/faculty/name/kristian-finlator/){target=_blank}**

![](/assets/sc17-research-posters-technicolor-dawn.png)

The way in which gas, galaxies, and light interacted during the first 1.5
billion years is a frontier both for theoretical models and for observations.
How did those faint, early galaxies go about forging gas into stars,
irradiating the Universe with energetic light, and enriching their
environments with the heavy elements that dominate our lives? This project,
led by Kristian Finlator, Assistant Professor of Astronomy at NMSU, combines
updated models for the formation of stars and galaxies with a multifrequency
radiation transport solver to compute simultaneously the formation of young
galaxies, their environments, and the growth of the nascent extraviolet
ultraviolet background.