Stockton Graduate Student to Participate in Data Research at Home of Leading Supercomputers

The University of Edinburgh’s Parallel Computing Centre (EPCC) in Scotland will host interns from multiple countries to do research on a data-intensive computing system this summer, and a student and Galloway resident will be a part of it.

Chrstine Harvey, 21, a second-year graduate student in the Master of Science in Computational Science Program (MSCP), will leave this Tuesday, July 3, to spend six weeks in Scotland. While there, she will oin an elite group of graduate students, faculty, and industry scientists to research data intensive cloud computing.

Cloud computing is a system that allows individuals to harness the computational power of huge clusters of computers that are connected together through the Internet. With multiple computers working together, they can solve problems in a fraction of the time.

The technology is also used to store and analyze data, with Dropbox, Google and Amazon as industry leaders in this area.

“Cloud computing is the next big thing because there is so much data companies have to store,” Harvey said.

“It allows people working at Stockton to share data with people in Japan,” Harvey said. “ … Every professor has data research. They collect an infinite amount of data. The data gets really expensive and they have nowhere to store it.”

“Christine has been my preceptee [student mentee] since joining Stockton as a freshman hockey star, and she has worked throughout her time here with me on research,” MSCP Director and Associate Professor of Computational Science Dr. Russell Manson said. “Being selected to research at the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre, which is a world leading institute for computational science, is a tremendous achievement.” 

 “I’m really excited. I didn’t expect to get in,” Harvey said. “ … This will be a really good experience. Stockton is a really good computer school, but it’s a small school with a limited number of resources and people. It will be great working with different people on a real project.”

Harvey will be one of a group of five Americans participating in the research. Three are students and employees at Florida International University, and one is a student at the University of California.

She will have the opportunity to meet Dr. Malcolm Atkinson, who founded the e-Science Institute in the United Kingdom in 2001, as the central focus for the e-Science community in the UK.

As a Stockton student, Harvey has also participated in supercomputing conferences in New Orleans and Seattle, in 2010 and 2011, respectively.

Edinburgh is home to the UK’s top supercomputers, which could solve climate change, find new inhabitable planets and solve this planet’s financial crisis, according to recent reports.

Harvey was born in Maryland, and moved to Galloway three years ago. While she was in high school, she excelled in Math and Science. Computational science combines the two disciplines. She has no specific idea for what career she’ll pursue, but she recognizes the good that computers can do.

“You can do research on diseases and disabilities,” Harvey said. “You can help people with science and computers.”

For more information on Data Clouding, visit http://www.opensciencedatacloud.org.