GridCafé - Grid projects in the world - People behind the projects

Grid projects in the world

People behind the projects

International collaborations
National grid initiatives
Field-specific applications
Volunteer computing
Middleware projects
Grid communication
Grid business

People behind the projects

Vadapalli Ravi

Name: Ravi Vadapalli

Project: Texas Internet Grid for Research and Education

Position: Research Scientist

Institution: Texas Tech University

Nationality: Indian

Favourite IT technology: High Performance Computing

1. What's your role within grid computing?
	Identify and foster interdisciplinary and intercampus collaborations where computing is the common denominator. Areas of interest include bioscience and medicine and energy exploration.

2. Why did you get in to grid?
	Grid computing is an emerging collaborative computing. Therefore, apart from extended computational capabilities, it also offers an environment for intercampus collaborations. My role in grid computing is to take advantage of compute grids to human network.

3. What did you study at university?
	PhD (Nuclear Physics), MS (Computational Engineering).

4. What did you want to be at school?
	Engineer.

5. What are the highlights of your job?
	The complexity in research is largely due to field specific languages more than the scientific & technological advances. Therefore, grid (high performance computing for that matter) computing application recruitment is very challenging and demands for substantial outreach efforts. The highlight of my job is outreach. In this process, I visit and network with a variety of researchers in basic, engineering and medical professions and identify overlapping interests leading to innovative research projects.

6. What are the lowlights of your job?
	Given the challenges of academic business, it is often hard to moderate discussions with researchers that have potential overlapping interests. Bringing them to table for discussions is often times very challenging although very rewarding and fulfilling experience. Therefore, the lowlight of my job is moderating a dialogue between potential research groups with “no strings attached”.

7. What do you do when you’re not at work?
	Apart from hobbies, I like to help others by means of connecting people for collaborative interests. The help ranges from internship, student work opportunities to research collaborations. I also forward suitable funding opportunities and interesting/breaking news in their relevant research areas to the researchers I work with.

8. What are your goals for the next year?
	During the TIGRE development phase (2005-2007), reservoir modeling applications was demonstrated between two major research campuses using GridWay metascheduler and TIGRE client/server software stack. My goal is to extend this environment to involve more schools and work towards creating Texas energy exploration research forum. Also, within the biomedical research area for TIGRE, my goal is to demonstrate feasibility and scope of high performance computing in cancer radiation therapy modeling. This effort is expected to establish a collaborative environment between basic researchers at TTU and cancer medical researchers at TTUHSC and supports NIH vision in augmenting IT in education and research extensions in bioscience and medicine.

9. Would you encourage your children to get in to grid and IT?
	Yes.

10. What do you want to be when you grow up?
	A visionary who has broad picture of the role of high performance and grid computing technologies that can create new opportunities for scientific and engineering advancements.


	BACK

Home | About I Search I Site Map I Contacts I Credits