FIU%20Facts:%20Fall%202002

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School of Computer Science Research and Education
Laboratories
Steven Luis, Assoc. Director for IT Florida
International University School of Computer
Science April 2004
2
School of Computer Science Facts

• 1000 undergraduate students in ABET/CSAB
  accredited CS BS program IT BS program
• 70 MS students, 50 Ph.D. students
• BS degree program in Jamaica, MS program in China
• 18 ranked faculty 8 instructors, 35 research
  assistants, 4 research associates, 12 staff
  members.
• Average 2 million competitive research funding
  annually

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SCS RD Programs

• Research Areas
• Database high performance semantic/object-orient
  ed DBMS, internet-based database applications,
  visualization
• Software engineering software modeling, design,
  verification and testing, component technology
  and middleware, architecture
• Computer communication and networking
• Software security
• Multimedia systems
• Internet technology and mobile computing
• Real time systems
• Multidisciplinary RD Bioinformatics,
  healthcare and medicine, disaster management,
  transportation, environment, material science,
  etc.
• Funded by NSF, NASA, AFOSR, ARO, BMDO, AFRL,
  FEMA, DOI, USGS, IBM, and other agencies and
  corporations.

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SCS Research Centers and Laboratories

• High Performance Database Research Center (HPDRC)
• POC Naphtali Rishe, rishen_at_cs.fiu.edu,
  http//hpdrc.cs.fiu.edu
• 10M funding, NSF, NASA, USGS, IBM etc.
• 20 graduate students, 6 research
  staff/postdoc/visiting professor
• Center for Advanced Distributed System
  Engineering (CADSE)
• POC Xudong He, hex_at_cs.fiu.edu,
  http//cadse.cs.fiu.edu
• 3M funding, NSF, NASA, ARO, AFOSR, etc.
• 20 graduate students, 1 postdoc
• NSF Center for Advanced Information Processing
  and High Confidence Systems (CREST) (new)
• POC Yi Deng, deng_at_cs.fiu.edu
• 4.5M funding, NSF, 10 faculty members, 20
  graduate students
• Distributed Multimedia Information System
  Laboratory (DMIS)
• POC Shu-Ching Chen, chens_at_cs.fiu.edu, 20
  graduate students
• Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
  Laboratory (BCB)
• POC Giri Narasimhan, giri_at_cs.fiu.edu, 7 graduate
  students.
• Secure Software Architecture Laboratory (SSA)
• POC Raimund Ege, ege_at_cs.fiu.edu, 9 graduate
  students

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High Performance Database Research Center

• NASA Regional Applications Center
• 27 million in research funding NSF, NASA, USGS,
  IBM and others
• 20 TB of public data (Largest public GIS-like
  DB)
• The TerraFly project
• Web-enabled GIS system for supporting
  visualization of spatial and remote sensed
  imagery data
• Featured in the Nature, Yahoos weekly picks, USA
  today
• http//terrafly.fiu.edu

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NSF Center for Advanced Information Processing
and High Confidence Systems

• 4.5M funding from NSF, joint effort with
  Computer Engineering
• Multidisciplinary Research with 4 major
  components
• High confidence real-time system design
• Multi-dimensional data modeling and query
  research
• Safety critical assistive technology research
• Information processing with neuroscience
  applications
• 10 faculty members, 20 Ph.D. students, external
  partners
• www.crest.fiu.edu

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SCS Laboratory Overview

• Multi-million dollar facility funded primarily by
  research grants and industry donations.
• 25 instructional and dedicated research labs in
  ECS.
• 350 workstations/desktops.
• Over 100 servers File, compute, web, email
• Microsoft Windows XP, Redhat Linux, and Sun
  Solaris.
• Over 1.5TB of regularly backed up storage.
• Extensive automated network and server monitoring
  24x7.

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SCS Networking Capabilities

• Laboratories interconnected by a redundant
  fiber-optic network.
• Gigabit connected servers, routers, and primary
  switches.
• Native IPV6 enabled via Abilene.
• Campus network is connected to Internet 2,
  Americas Path (South/Central American Research
  Network), Starlight/Startap and other
  international networks.
• 802.11b Wireless access in offices, research and
  instructional labs.
• Laptop bars in open labs.
• Native Multicast (PIM-SM) available.
• Access Grid, Polycomm station, and other video
  conferencing technologies.

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SCS Computing Capabilities

• 120 open lab desktop systems to run distributed
  processing experiments (in user mode).
• 20 node Linux Beowulf cluster.
• Sun and Dell enterprise servers for compute
  intensive work.
• Databases like POSTGRESQL, MySQL, and Oracle.
• Middleware technologies like Globus Toolkit,
  CORBA and other Web Services toolkits.
• Microsoft .NET Framework, IIS, MS SQL, and other
  MS technologies.
• Open Source Infrastructure. Our environment takes
  advantage of hundreds of open source software
  solutions including Apache with full mods., PHP,
  Perl, and other tools.

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SCS Undergraduate and Graduate Labs

• John C. Comfort laboratory (JCCL) 61
  workstations running Windows XP (55 seats),
  RedHat Linux (5 seats) and Mac OS X (1 seat).
• Graduate lab 18 XP and 4 Linux.
• Services 70 SCS classes.
• Students assigned accounts on semester basis.
• Intel Pentium 4, 2.0GHz,512MB of RAM, 24x CD-RW,
  19" color monitor.
• Windows XP software MS Office, MS Visual
  Studio.Net and MSDN libraries, Masm 6.15, Visio
  2002, Rational Rose 2000e, Jcreator 2.5 pro,
  Eclipse 2.1, Xwin32 X server, and a number of
  Internet connectivity tools.
• Each student is given 100MB of file storage
  space.
• Students can login remotely into several Linux
  and Solaris file and compute servers.

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Instructional Lab

• Dedicated computer training lab. 16 Intel Pentium
  4, 2.0GHz, 512MB RAM, 24x CD-RW, 17" flat panel
  display.
• Windows XP with Xwin32, X Server for Unix/Linux
  apps.
• Classroom instructional software, NetOp School,
  which allows an instructor to lockdown the
  systems, isolate one system and redisplay on the
  computer data projection system.
• Instructors can use a wired workstation in the
  room or a wireless PC tablet to operate their
  presentation.

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Service and Operations

• Support staff 4.5 full-time employees plus
  part-time lab asst.
• Project management for lab development.
• Network layer 1, 2 and 3 service.
• Server/Desktop OS installation, tune, patch,
  debug and security.
• Procurement and asset management.
• Web-based application development.
• Web-based Trouble Ticket system.
• Annual faculty and semesterly student customer
  surveys
• Free Seminars on lab relevant topics Dev. tools,
  environment.
• Free MS Software for faculty/students academic
  work.
• Free Sophos anti-virus for faculty/students.

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Challenge Linux/Microsoft Integration

• Goal Seamless heterogeneous computing.
• Current environment Separate file-systems and
  credentials with cross-mounting capacity.
• Preparing Samba 3.0 implementation
• Unified account credentials.
• Web page to change p/w.
• LDAP hooks.
• Unified file-system.
• MS Desktop, MS profile, and Linux/MS user home
  file systems can be placed under one home
  directory location.
• Improved quota management.
• One Windows domain model consolidation.
• Interoperate with Windows 2003 Server.

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Challenge Desktop Image management and deployment

• Goal On-demand OS/application installation.
• Norton Ghost 7.x.
• Image server.
• Multicasting images.
• Kernel dependencies and multiple architectures
• Intel and AMD.
• Legacy equipment and image management.
• Desktop Support end-of-life.
• LanDesk application management
• SUS vs. LanDesk Patch Manager?

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Challenge Network, Server, Desktop Security

• Goal Secure and reliable computing environment.
• Patch, patch, patch
• Minimize MS outlook.
• Consolidate IIS/ MS SQL dependency.
• Sophos antivirus on all desktops.
• Antivirus mail filtering.
• Firewall around at risk systems.
• Restricted admin account usage.
• Monitoring of all servers and network devices.
• What more can be done???
• Improved patch management.
• Advanced network monitoring tools to identify
  infected systems.
• More education

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Challenge Software Development Environment

• Goal Provide innovative environment for
  instruction and research.
• Console manageable web-hosting environment for
  students.
• Limited control of sub-domain. (Sandbox model)
• Web services management.
• Quota report on file system, compute and other
  resources.
• Open Source application installation.
• Create db and other accounts.
• Monitor activity of web services.
• User-mode Linux?
• MS 2003, Longhorn, Studio.NET, IIS and MS SQL
  tool integration.
• Java and Eclipse

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Challenge Collaboration tools

• Goal Provide collaboration infrastructure to
  improve communication and productivity.
• Courseware/Student relationship management.
• Groupware CMS, Calendaring, Forums, Blogs
• Document management
• Workflow/Authorization
• Grant proposal preparation.
• Materials archive.
• Search.
• Access control.
• PantherSoft integration.
• Intellectual Property portfolio.

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SCS Goals Five Years

• 1300 undergraduate students
• 200 graduate students
• 70 Ph.D. students
• 3M annual external research funding
• 10 new tenure-track or tenured faculty members
  
• Top 50 rank nationwide in competitive research
  funding
• The leading provider of computing and IT talent
  and resources in the region

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Contact Information

• Steven Luis, Assoc. Dir for IT
• 305-348-6215 (office)
• [phone] (fax)
• luiss_at_cs.fiu.edu
• www.cs.fiu.edu