Research and Education in Computational Science and Engineering

Over the past two decades the field of computational science and engineering (CSE) has penetrated both basic and applied research in academia, industry, and laboratories to advance discovery, optimize systems, support decision-makers, and educate the scientific and engineering workforce. Informed by centuries of theory and experiment, CSE performs computational experiments to answer questions that neither theory nor experiment alone is equipped to answer. CSE provides scientists and engineers of all persuasions with algorithmic inventions and software systems that transcend disciplines and scales. Carried on a wave of digital technology, CSE brings the power of parallelism to bear on troves of data. Mathematics-based advanced computing has become a prevalent means of discovery and innovation in essentially all areas of science, engineering, technology, and society; and the CSE community is at the core of this transformation. However, a combination of disruptive developments---including the architectural complexity of extreme-scale computing, the data revolution that engulfs the planet, and the specialization required to follow the applications to new frontiers---is redefining the scope and reach of the CSE endeavor. This report describes the rapid expansion of CSE and the challenges to sustaining its bold advances. The report also presents strategies and directions for CSE research and education for the next decade.Comment: Major revision, to appear in SIAM Revie

Effective Systems Engineering Training

The need for systems engineering training is steadily increasing, as both the defense and commercial markets take on more complex "systems of systems" work. A variety of universities and commercial training vendors have assembled courses of various lengths, format, and content to meet this need. This presentation looks at the requirements for systems engineering training, and discusses techniques for increasing its effectiveness. Several format and content options for meeting these requirements are compared and contrasted, and an experience-based curriculum is shown

Cooperative WebLab in chemical engineering between France and Brazil: Validation of the methodology

A WebLab is an experiment operated remotely via Internet. Besides the strictly technical aspects of such an experiment, which may contribute to the learning of Chemical Engineering fundamentals, there is also important feedback when teams of students of two different countries are working together: the WebLab becomes an intercultural experience, enhancing the communication skills of the students. A WebLab between Universidade Federal de São Carlos (DEQ/UFSCar) and the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Ingénieurs en Arts Chimiques et Technologiques (ENSIACET) is presented in this work. A mass transfer experiment in a bench scale reactor (stirred and aerated) had to be studied by mixed teams, thus emulating challenges that will be common in future working environments. In order to perform the experiment, students in Brazil and in France were put into groups. The students had to make decisions about the procedure for executing the experiments. All the students were able to control the equipment, no matter where they were physically. Students communicated using video conference software. The students' and teachers' opinions of this experience were very positive. This methodology is an important contribution to the education of engineers in a world integrated by modern communication technologies

Sharing software engineering resources and open source software across entities

This paper describes a number of ‘good ideas’ designed to assist staff who are involved in the management, delivery or support of student project work. The ideas were formed from a Disciplinary Commons. The good ideas discussed include online forums, a project repository, alternative project structures, project preparation, progress reviews, instant supervision, peer support and anti-cheating mechanisms. Readers are encouraged to dip in, consider the ideas and implement those of most use for their own institutions

Community space in complex learning communities : lessons learnt

Highly complex learning communities where diverse participants collaborate to achieve multiple aims through synergy have the potential to be highly creative and productive. However the diversity and multiple aims can also mean the advantages of a community - share understand, trust and direction - are difficult to achieve, resulting in few if any of the aims being realised. We review two case studies, where the learning community is trying to achieve multiple aims, in order to explore how virtual and physical space are employed to support collaborative learning and enhance synergistic potential. The analysis shows that high levels of diversity have influenced these spaces and trends towards differentiation and holistically designed hybrid, virtual and physical, collaboration space. The characteristics of theses cases are sufficiently general to lead us to draw insights for the building of collaborative space in multi-purpose complex learning communities. These are equably applicable to learning communities which share features such as heterogeneity, multiple locations or a mixture of spaces

Software Verification and Graph Similarity for Automated Evaluation of Students' Assignments

In this paper we promote introducing software verification and control flow graph similarity measurement in automated evaluation of students' programs. We present a new grading framework that merges results obtained by combination of these two approaches with results obtained by automated testing, leading to improved quality and precision of automated grading. These two approaches are also useful in providing a comprehensible feedback that can help students to improve the quality of their programs We also present our corresponding tools that are publicly available and open source. The tools are based on LLVM low-level intermediate code representation, so they could be applied to a number of programming languages. Experimental evaluation of the proposed grading framework is performed on a corpus of university students' programs written in programming language C. Results of the experiments show that automatically generated grades are highly correlated with manually determined grades suggesting that the presented tools can find real-world applications in studying and grading

Nanoinformatics: developing new computing applications for nanomedicine

Nanoinformatics has recently emerged to address the need of computing applications at the nano level. In this regard, the authors have participated in various initiatives to identify its concepts, foundations and challenges. While nanomaterials open up the possibility for developing new devices in many industrial and scientific areas, they also offer breakthrough perspectives for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases. In this paper, we analyze the different aspects of nanoinformatics and suggest five research topics to help catalyze new research and development in the area, particularly focused on nanomedicine. We also encompass the use of informatics to further the biological and clinical applications of basic research in nanoscience and nanotechnology, and the related concept of an extended ?nanotype? to coalesce information related to nanoparticles. We suggest how nanoinformatics could accelerate developments in nanomedicine, similarly to what happened with the Human Genome and other -omics projects, on issues like exchanging modeling and simulation methods and tools, linking toxicity information to clinical and personal databases or developing new approaches for scientific ontologies, among many others