The following are the main research tasks that keep me busy these days (Fall 2011):
Work on the NSF EPSCoR RII funded grant Nevada Infrastructure for Climate Change Science, Education and Outreach, a state-wide project that received about $21.7 million for the period 2008-2013. I am the lead of the project's Cyberinfrastructure component, which is one of the project's six groups. The group, involving people from UNR, UNLV, and DRI, consists of 3 faculty members (Sergiu Dascalu, Fred Harris, Shahram Latifi), 2 full-time administrative faculty/software developers (Mike McMahon and Eric Fritzinger), and 3 PhD students (Sohei Okamoto, Ivan Gibbs, and Ershad Sharifahsmanian). On a rolling basis 1 or 2 Master and 1 to 4 undergraduate students are also involved. More information on the project can be found at the Nevada Climate Change Portal that we are building with funding from this grant.
Co-PI on a second NSF EPSCoR funded project, focused on Cyberinfrastructure Developments for the Western Consortium of Idaho, Nevada, and New Mexico. The project received about $6 million over three years (2009-2012) and involves collaborating with partners from New Mexico (their cyberinfrastructure group's lead is Dr. Karl Benedict, from the University of New Mexico) and Idaho (CI group lead is Dr. Dan Ames, from Idaho State University). Our Nevada group consists of two faculty members (Fred Harris and Sergiu Dascalu), one postdoctoral research associate (Adrienne Breland), two PhD students (Jigar Patel and Yan Qiping), and one Master student (Aarti Dhone).
Co-PI on an ONR-funded grant (2009-2012, $827,000) aimed at advancing neuroscience modeling and simulation. Started in the Goodman Brain Computation Laboratory at UNR by the late Professor Phil Goodman, the project is currently led by our collaborator Dr. Fred Harris. Also involved in the project are a postdoctoral research associate (Laurence Jayet Bray), one Master student (Gareth Ferneyhough) and three undergraduate students (Kim Perry, Nitish Navala, Nate Jordan). Collaborators on this grant include partners from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Laussane (EPFL), Switzerland and University of Bonn, Germany.
Co-PI on a NASA-funded grant on Exploring Planetary Surfaces: Mars, Moon, and Earth (2007-2011, Nevada-wide, UNR group funded at about $1.5 million). Project PI is Dr. Chris Fritsen and UNR PI for this project is Dr. Wendy Calvin (UNR). I collaborate mainly with Dr. Fred Harris on related research and development for virtual immersive environments. Two of our PhD students have been funded by this grant and completed their PhD dissertations on related topics: Sermsak Buntha (2009) and Muhanna Muhanna (2011).
Preparation of three grant applications, two for NSF, one for ONR.
Exploration and supervision of several software-engineering and human-computer interaction topics for graduate disserattations and theses (I currently advise 6 PhD and 3 Master students).
Work on a couple of journal publications.
Work on several conference papers on which I am either the first, the second, the third, the fourth, or the fifth author ...