REPRINTED FROM: HPCS 2007 1 The Coast-to-Coast Seminar and Remote Mathematical Collaboration

Jonathan M. Borwein,David Langstroth, Mason Macklem and Scott Wilson, Veselin Jungic, University (Invited Paper)

Abstract —We describe a shared Simon Fraser University could be done in terms of high-quality content-driven com- (WestGrid) and Dalhousie (ACEnet) seminar series which munication using this new infrastructure. is now two years old, and is gradually expanding to include other Canadian universities. More generally we discuss cur- In late 2003, as WestGrid was built and began to pop- rent and future uses of AccessGrid and related technology ulate its network with users from each member univer- as a production environment. sity, the CoLab research group moved to the Faculty of Index Terms—Remote collaboration, video conferencing, Computing Science at Dalhousie, to construct a new re- AccessGrid. search environment called D-Drive (for Dalhousie Dis- tributed Research Institute and Virtual Environment), and I. Introduction with an additional goal of assisting ACEnet, a WestGrid- style shared network to connect universities throughout The C2C Seminar (short for Coast-to-Coast) is a sem- the Atlantic Provinces. During this same period, the Co- inar run jointly at universities throughout , from Lab environment at Simon Fraser was replaced by a much Simon Fraser University in , to the Uni- larger working environment called IRMACS (for Interdisci- versity of Calgary and the University of in plinary Research in the Mathematical and Computational the West, to Dalhousie, Memorial and other universities Sciences). Once D-Drive and IRMACS were completed, in the Atlantic Provinces. This seminar is simulcast to the potential for a cross-Canada video-conference was ob- all sites via the AccessGrid video-conferencing software, vious, and since 2005 the C2C seminar has enabled audi- and each seminar provides opportunities for questions and ences from throughout Canada to attend lectures by dis- comments from all of the remote locations. tinguished speakers from across the country. The concept of the C2C seminar first originated within In this paper, we will discuss the structure of the WestGrid out of work at Simon Fraser University on an C2C seminar, and will finish by briefly outlining related interactive lab and seminar environment called the CoLab projects, both within Canada and internationally, specifi- (for Collaborative Lab). This lab included a number of cally in the United Kingdom and Australia. We will also tiled touch-sensitive wall-mounted computer monitors, and provide details for how interested people can connect to was used for running courses and meetings, often remotely this seminar from their own local university. A fuller dis- in cases where speakers were unable to attend the events cussion of much of this material can be found in a forth- personally. As WestGrid progressed, the goal was to have coming book-chapter [9]. similar ‘grid-rooms’ at each member university, to serve as local communication points for researchers who were work- II. C2C Seminar: Structure and Content ing together on the WestGrid cluster from different institu- A. Structure tions; for interaction amongst and with technical support staff; for administrative purposes and much more. In order The Coast-to-Coast Seminar is an hour-long presenta- to promote the resources that were available via WestGrid, tion given on a topic from mathematics or computational a semi-regular event needed to be organized to show what science and made accessible to audiences at a number of remote sites through collaboration technology. Seminars J.M. Borwein is with the Faculty of Computing Science, Dal- are held every two weeks throughout the academic year al- housie University, Halifax, Canada,. Phone: +1 650 723–4769, e- ternating between Western Canada and Atlantic Canada1. mail: [email protected] Initially the Western and Eastern sites were IRMACS and D. Langstroth is with the Faculty of Computing Science, Dal- housie University, Halifax, Canada,. Phone: +1 650 723–4769, e- D-Drive exclusively, but as the series grew, and included mail: [email protected] other universities, presentations in the series have also M.S. Macklem is with the Faculty of Computing Science, Dal- come from Edmonton and Calgary in the West, and from housie University, Halifax, Canada,. Phone: +1 650 723–4769, e- mail: [email protected] Acadia, St. Francis Xavier and Math Resources Inc (a S. Wilson is with the Faculty of Computing Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada,. Phone: +1 650 723–4769, e-mail: 1 The current absence of Ontario and Quebec is not intentional, [email protected] and has arisen in part due to the nature of the presence of the Access V. Jungic is with the Department of Mathematics, Simon Fraser Grid technology on the WestGrid and ACEnet networks. As simi- University, , Canada. Phone: +1 604 291–3331, e-mail: larnetworksaresetupinOntarioandQuebec,welookforwardto [email protected] participation from universities from these two provinces. 2 REPRINTED FROM: HPCS 2007

Halifax-based educational mathematics software company) Hyperthreading Considered Vulnerable. in the East. In early 2007 presentations are also planned The presentations to date in the C2C seminar have been from the University of Lethbridge, Memorial University of a mix of mathematical and computational talks, with a Newfoundland and University of New Brunswick, among wide variety of topics within each field. Past talks include: others. • Ron Fitzgerald (President, Math Resources Inc), Audiences for a presentation are located at one or more Learning Infrastructures and Content Authoring - discrete sites at universities across Canada. The collabora- March 2006, presented from the Halifax offices of tion technology enables two way audio and video communi- Math Resources Inc. cation as well as a shared desktop. Thus a presenter is not • Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz (Computer Science, Uni- only audible and visible to the audience, but can also re- versity of Calgary), Computational Biology of Plants - spond to a raised hand, answer a question or interact with February 2006, presented from the University of Cal- an individual at remote sites through a shared application. gary The number of sites has increased to eight for an average • Jonathan Schaeffer (Computing Science, University of presentation, with the promise of more participants in the Alberta), Solving Checkers - January 2006, presented future. from the University of Alberta To set the stage for the presenter, we describe an out- • Arvind Gupta (Computing Science, Simon Fraser line of what a typical seminar entails. The actual presen- University), The Inverse Protein Folding Problem - tation is expected to be of a high quality, yet accessible November 2005, presented from IRMACS to a fairly general scientific audience. Accordingly, they • Peter Borwein (Executive Director, IRMACS, Si- are widely advertised and attract audiences beyond the mon Fraser University), The Riemann Hypothesis - realms of mathematics and computer science, depending September 2005, presented from IRMACS on the presenter’s topic. We emphasize that we may have • Jonathan Borwein (D-Drive Director, Computer Sci- three or thirty people at one or other of the sites, and that ence, Dalhousie University), Mathematical Visualiza- typically perhaps 60 to 80 people hear each of the talks. tion and Other Learning Tools - September 2005, pre- No one has to come just to ensure a respectable audience sented from D-Drive as is often the case in a departmental colloquium, although Following the success of the C2C Seminar Series over with the distributed nature of the seminar occasionally the the 2005-2006 academic year, we hosted a more intensive audiences may be small at one or two of the remote sites. distributed event, The Coast-to-Coast Miniconference on The main goal of the seminar is to give an opportunity the Mathematics of Computation. This day-long event to scientific communities from various Canadian universi- consisted of a series of six speakers, alternating between ties to collaborate and share their interests. We aim at IRMACS, the , and D-Drive. The an environment which is no less familiar than a new semi- event was attended by audiences in each of these locations nar room. As Ron Fitzgerald crisply puts it, “No one has as well as in some of the other remote sites, according to to explain chalk.” That said, we follow a fixed protocol interest and availability. Since then we have also experi- each time. Roughly 30 minutes before the seminar starts, mented with shared open houses and other ways to expe- designated individuals from each site confirm that all fa- rience ‘presence-at-a-distance’. cilities are working at all sites. An introduction of all sites III. Technical Overview and of the speaker is made from the speaker’s site. The speaker’s presentation is approximately 45 minutes long The technology behind the Coast-to-Coast Seminar is a and is followed by a question and answer (Q&A) session combination of open source software, standard PC hard- with all sites. The Q&A session starts with local questions ware, and audio/video components. The structure is a and then rotates through the remote sites. As with a face- client/server architecture, in which individual sites authen- to-face seminar, the host determines when to stop—and a ticate to a central coordinating server, with audio, video, good host has a first question to start things off with. and presentation data shared between all sites. The choices for the specific technology used in the Coast- The seminar organizers chose to standardize on Argonne to-Coast seminar arose out of two test sessions held during National Labs Access Grid (AG) software as the video- the summer of 2005. The first session consisted of several conferencing suite [1], [2], [7], [8], [10]. This selection was short presentations that ran from both IRMACS and D- made for three primary reasons: Drive and were given by graduate and undergraduate stu- • AG is quite flexible in site configuration, allowing full dents. The presenters were asked to use various methods auditoriums with complex audio systems and multiple and tools in delivering their talks: Power point presenta- cameras to conference with individual PCs using web- tions, PDF slides, pre-prepared transparencies, writing on cams and headsets in the same collaborative session, a white board, writing on paper and using a docucamera, • AG is platform independent, with clients available on using Maple applications, and so on. After summarizing Windows, Linux/Unix, and MacOS, and the experiences from the test session, a format for the fu- • AG is a highly scaleable video-conferencing package, ture C2C presentation had emerged. This format was tried allowing up to 30-40 remote sites simultaneously (lim- during the second test session when Colin Percival from Si- ited by available bandwidth and processing capabili- mon Fraser University gave the presentation with the title ties). BORWEIN, JUNGIC, LANGSTROTH, MACKLEM AND WILSON: REMOTE MATHEMATICAL COLLABORATION 3

Some examples of the use of Access Grid in remote collab- all of it in order to connect to the C2C seminar series - oration can be found in [5], [6]. as mentioned earlier, one can connect simply with a web Access Grid sessions are coordinated through an Access camera and the proper desktop software installed. Grid venue server, which builds upon a “rooms” and “lob- The D-Drive lab consists of five touch-sensitive computer bies” analogy to coordinate collaborative sessions. For the displays, four cameras, several microphones, an echo can- C2C Seminar, the WestGrid AG venue server is used as cellation unit, and a sound system, which together provide a meeting place for the virtual attendees, with the sites a suitable presentation and audience environment for a re- meeting in a virtual conference room on the server. Au- mote seminar. The displays, shown in Figure A, consist of dio and video from all client sites are shared through the a centrally located 73” rear-projected monitor, along with venue server, and the venue server also provides file shar- four 61” plasma screens, with two each on either side of ing, presentation syncing, and limited chat capabilities. In- the rear-projected monitor. These screens are separated formation about the Access Grid layout in WestGrid can into two sets of tiled displays as shown in Figures A: the be found in [3]. two left-most plasma screens are tiled as a single display, Client sites provide information to the venue server and are used for audio/video management and presenter about their audio and video capabilities, and this informa- video feeds, while the three remaining screens are also tiled tion is distributed to the other sites via the venue server. as a single display, and contain the presentation slides (on In the C2C Seminar, there are two primary client options: the central rear-projected display (shown in Figure 3) and Access Grid clients and InSORS clients. The Access Grid various video feeds from other remote locations. Each set client is provided by Argonne Labs as part of the Access of tiled displays has a single point of focus, meaning that Grid open source project. InSORS is a commercial ex- two users cannot simultaneously control different positions tension of the Access Grid project that provides increased on different boards within the same tiled set of displays. video quality and some additional collaboration tools, but Therefore, the five displays were separated into two tiled is only available on Windows and MacOS. Each site uses sets of displays in order to allow for local audio/video man- whichever client their site finds most appropriate for the agement and changes to video feeds (on the left tiled set) seminar series, and adjusts client settings for compatibil- without taking control away from the presenter and his ity with the other sites. The C2C Seminar is dedicated to slides on the central display. remaining platform independent due to the nature of the There are three locations for the audience within D- many different academic sites participating, and therefore Drive to view a presentation: a conference-table directly in the Seminar has standardized to toolsets that all platforms front of the displays, seating area in the centre of the lab, can use. and tables along the back wall of the lab. The conference- Desktop sharing from the presenting site (to view lecture table is generally used for multi-site meetings, where there notes, slides, and whiteboards) is provided via the open is no central presentation and where control of the discus- source Virtual Network Computing (VNC) software pack- sion frequently changes between sites; for such events, the age. The C2C Seminar makes use of a VNC server product conference table has a centrally-located microphone that called VNC Reflector to create consistent connection-point picks up general discussion by anyone seated at the table. and authentication information for all sites from week to For most C2C seminars, the central seating area will be the week, with the presenting site delivering presentation infor- primary location of the audience, with the conference-table mation to the VNC Reflector via a VNC server. The VNC and the tables along the back wall serving as “overflow” products are platform independent open source projects, in seating when necessary. During the seminar, questions by keeping with the Seminar’s technical goal of maximum flex- audience members throughout the lab are asked via a wire- ibility for connecting sites. To facilitate whiteboard view- less handheld microphone that is passed to them when they ing and presentation markup, the primary hosting sites indicate that they have a question. (Dalhousie and SFU) provide SmartTech SMART Boards The four cameras are spaced throughout the D-Drive as drawing surfaces for their lecturers, which are then dis- lab, with two mounted on the top of the front displays played over the VNC connection. It is also possible—if (shown in Figure 3) and two more in the two back cor- a little more quick and dirty—to share graphics, spread- ners of the lab. The cameras are placed in such a way sheets and the like just by taking camera shots rather than that they give a sense of room context for remote sites, via the VNC. by providing multiple points of reference for the activities within D-Drive. The two front-mounted cameras provide A. Sample Presentation Environment: D-Drive and IR- the view of the local audience to the remote sites, with MACS Layouts the left-camera being controllable by remote control in or- The component technologies driving the Coast-to-Coast der to allow for panning and zooming when local audience Seminar can best be shown by giving a description of the members ask questions to the presenter, while the right- layout for one of the site locations for the seminar series, camera has a constant position that shows an overview of namely the D-Drive lab in the Faculty of Computing Sci- the audience seating. ence at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Al- The two rear cameras provide alternate views of the lab, though this research lab shows some of this technology in and are primarily useful for when the C2C presenter is action, it would be a mistake to believe that one needs speaking from D-Drive, or when someone is interacting 4 REPRINTED FROM: HPCS 2007

Fig. 2. Sample content from the tiled displays within the D-Drive presentation environment: Shown are one of the left-plasmas con- taining the presenter’s video feed (left), and sample video-feeds from the remote audiences from the right-plasmas (right).

Fig. 1. The computer displays in the D-Drive research lab, one of the locations for the C2C Seminar series.

with the Smart Board screens. In particular, the right-rear camera is also controllable by remote, and can provide a close-up video feed of the presenter to the remote sites, whereas the left-rear camera provides a wide overview of the screens and conference table. These cameras are not generally used when the presenter is located at another

site, though they are quite useful for collaborative meetings in the facility. In addition to the displays and the seating area for the audience, the D-Drive lab also has a desk located to the right of the display environment, where the local Technical Supervisor is located. This person controls the audio and video management on the left-most plasma screens, and is in contact with the Technical Supervisors at each of the other remote sites via instant messaging software on their Fig. 3. Central rear-projected display, with two mounted front- view cameras (top, cameras circled), with view from behind the left- respective local desktop computers. In case of technical camera (bottom-left image), and video-feed of left-camera (circled in problems, solutions are determined via discussion between bottom-right) sites, in part so that sites that are new to the seminar can get suggestions from more experienced sites. IV. Lessons Learned The D-Drive presentation environment is just one of Over the course of our experience in setting-up and orga- many within the C2C Seminar Series. To highlight some nizing the C2C seminar, we have learned numerous lessons of the variety that exists within the various locations for about working with the AccessGrid software on such a the C2C series, Figure 4 shows the display/presentation large distributed project. These lessons include, but are environment at IRMACS. This environment is contained not limited to, the following: within a lecture theatre, with three touch-sensitive plasma • Audio clarity is the most critical component of a suc- displays and one or two projected displays. The presenta- cessful seminar series, and should be given top priority tion slides are shown on the larger projected display, as is when selecting audio equipment and designing room the video feed for the presenter if located at a remote site; layout. in the case where the speaker is presenting from IRMACS, • Site technicians for larger sites should have a technical only the presentations slides are shown on the top primary background in audio technologies and sounds systems displays. as well as computers and networking. Although both D-Drive and IRMACS have extensive • Site technicians should always have full access to the technology driving their respective display environments, audio system and software control panels for audio there is no expectation that universities need to have a throughout the seminar. This should be considered similar environment in order to take part in the C2C Sem- when designing the site and setting up client services inar Series. In fact, one of the goals of the seminar series is on the site PCs. to make it as easy as possible for universities to use their • Hosting sites should check audio levels in both the local space as presentation and display environments. audio control panel and via feedback from remote BORWEIN, JUNGIC, LANGSTROTH, MACKLEM AND WILSON: REMOTE MATHEMATICAL COLLABORATION 5

• If using a VNC reflector, all VNC clients must be set to “shared”. Clients not set to “shared” will experience disconnects immediately after a connection occurs. • To ensure that all audiences can see pointer events during a presentation, presenting sites are encouraged to purchase a remote pointer mouse and instruct lec- turers in its use and the necessity of using on-screen pointers during a distributed lecture. With all of these learning experiences, it is useful to note that rom a technical perspective, the basic setup for Access Grid is similar to the old-fashioned video-conference soft- ware that IBM uses (audio and video feeds). The difference is in the ability to share applications and data, with Access Fig. 4. The presentation environment at IRMACS for remote pre- sentations during the C2C seminar. Grid allowing for more flexible connectivity. In particular, Access Grid allows for home or office connectivity for video without considerable setup time required; in fact, several sites shortly after a lecture starts. It is very com- of the C2C speakers have presented from their local offices mon for a lecturer to increase in volume from initial rather than from a standard C2C presentation site. “mike-check” levels when they start actually present- In addition, the hardware entry-point for an Access Grid ing. This can cause the audio system to overdrive and seminar is consdierably lower than for the old-fashioned introduce distortions in the audio at remote sites. video-conference setups, with the only requirements being • A directional microphone is strongly encouraged for a computer (which is likely already in the environment), lecturers (whether lapel or hand-held) rather than a web-cam, and a headset microphone to join a session, having the lecturer use boundary microphones. The along with sufficient bandwidth to support the data feed. audio quality of the lecture will be reduced when us- This last requirement can be the biggest delimiter on par- ing boundary microphones since lecturers often turn ticipation from a home environment, as the performance their heads away from the microphone location. of Access Grid over ADSL in particular is unclear. • All remote audience sites should have microphones One final difference between Access Grid and standard muted during presentations until designated question video-conferencing environments is that available exper- and answer periods. This will greatly minimize site in- tise in computer IP-based video-conferencing is much more terruptions and distractions in a distributed seminar, common. In a research environment, it is much less usual as the distracting sounds picked up by microphones to have someone with expertise or experience in setting will come from the same speaker system as the lec- up an old-style video-conference environment than a small turer’s voice (rather than from behind or to the side). Access Grid site, especially with the rapid growth of single- This will make it harder for audience members to fil- user video-communication via software such as MSN or ter the distracting sounds, and therefore should be Skype. The technical setup for a small AG site is com- minimized. paratively minimal, and video-conferencing tools in IT are • Any sound errors introduced by a site should be im- becoming commonplace. mediately isolated (site muted) until they can be re- solved behind the scenes or after the talk. Remote V. Some related initiatives technicians have the capability to mute any individ- A. Atlantic Shared Curriculum Initiative (ASCI) ual site from their audio control panel, and this should be their first reaction to an unknown audio issue. The Atlantic Shared Curriculum Initiative (ASCI) is de- • Windows-based video capture devices are often limited signed to offer (starting in 2008) four fourth year/graduate to one camera per PC system, due to drivers. Care level courses in mathematics and economics to be delivered should be use when selecting video capture devices through collaborative technology, using Access Grid soft- for Windows systems if you need more than one video ware, for students simultaneously at Dalhousie University, camera per system. the University of New Brunswick and Memorial University, • DV (digital video) recorders with Firewire (1394) out- and so to enhance student learning by: put are recommended for sites purchasing new cam- • exposing the students to a more engaging presentation eras. This will allow those sites to start experimenting of mathematics, serving as a role model for those who with high-bandwidth/high quality video streams when will go on to be the math teachers of the future; using extensions to Access Grid,suchasUltra Grid. • exposing students to expertise not available at their • When using VNC for presentation, it is recommended own institution; that the VNC server be set to disallow remote mouse • exploring new ways to deliver content, design course and keyboard control. This will keep a remote site materials, and develop interaction; from inadvertently stealing the focus from the lecturer • encouraging academic collaboration between faculties when adjusting a remote display. at the AARMS participating universities. 6 REPRINTED FROM: HPCS 2007

In doing so we will enhance university and inter- faculty members and visitors, without active involvement institutional priorities by: of the graduate student population. However, it can be The ASCI project intends to create a small repertoire of difficult within a single department to organize a graduate courses in mathematics and economics to be delivered us- seminar with only graduate student presenters and audi- ing available collaborative technologies to students simul- ence, since it requires motivation amongst student orga- taneously at all involved institutions. A given course will nizers, speakers, and potential audience members in order be delivered by a professor at one of the three universities, to get the seminar past the initial start-up phase, where it with students located at all three. Courses will be created may be difficult to find enough speakers to sustain a new at the 4th year/first year graduate level on topics which are regular event. needed everywhere but for which local enrollment at each institution is small. Thus, by combining enrollment on a The graduate C2C seminar is intended to run every other given core course, savings accrue at each location. This week, and consist of two half-hour speakers from two dif- will also free up teaching resources at the universities, en- ferent sites, thus requiring approximately 12 speakers over abling them to deliver more specialist courses in their own each semester. Over the past year, we have established one special areas of expertise. faculty and one graduate-student contact at each of the In the longer term this model is scalable and appropriate universities within Atlantic Canada, and will be running for most subjects at most curriculum levels, as well as over tests over the Spring of 2007 for the purpose of launching a variety of international and cross-regional collaborations. the graduate seminar officially for the Fall of 2007. For For example, currently a computer science course is being the first semester, this seminar will focus just on the uni- designed for students in a private Karachi university, while versities within Atlantic Canada in order to simplify the both Marina Adshade and Jonathan Borwein are offering organization initially, thus requiring each university to find 4th year courses in D-Drive in 2006-07. Also, in early 2006 at most three student presenters; the regional focus is be- the Canadian Armed Forces contacted D-Drive for help in ing done initially in order to simplify the factor of dealing setting up a similar facility in Kandahar to command and with different time-zones, and once the organization of the control their operations. seminar is established the intention is to expand it to the In addition, ASCI members are already being asked to West Coast for the Spring of 2008, with additional univer- assist similar projects based in Oxford, Edinburgh, North sities to follow as per local interest. of England, and in Melbourne. All four are well-funded The “celebrity” series is based on the idea of simulcast- but have much less technical expertise than that of ASCI ing appearances by prominent researchers at universities members, through D-Drive and ACEnet (www.ace-net.ca). on the C2C network. Every year there are a number of All propose using or are already using Access Grid. The high profile ’celebrity’ lectures or presentations that take Oxford based project in particular engages five universi- place at these universities, but that may be outside of the ties and aims to offer 20 entry-level graduate courses this scope of the current series: Nobel Prize winners, captains year! Meanwhile, the Melbourne project is based at the of industry, famous politicians, and so on. These events International Centre of Excellence for Education in Math- are usually well publicized and well attended, appealing ematics (ICE-EM Australian Mathematical Sciences In- to a large cross section of the university community. We stitute, www.amsi.org.au/). As part of ICE-EM, Access have proposed that each node in the C2C network will un- Grid rooms are currently being installed across Australian dertake to select one or two (depending on the number of Mathematics departments which belong to AMSI. The first participating nodes) such events from their local university three have already concluded a semester of shared teach- and ’broadcast’ them over Access Grid to the rest of the ing. C2C network. If four universities choose to take part in B. Other C2C series this series it could create a series of 8 events. The clear virtues of the current series have lead to two Despite relying on the same technology as the current related initiatives: a graduate-run series and a “celebrity” C2C series, the structure would be quite different: such series. a series cannot occupy a regular time slot in the way the The idea for the graduate-run series arose out of efforts ’C2C Classic’ series does, it would require broadcast events to start a graduate seminar in the Faculty of Computing to be identified and selected several months in advance in Science at Dalhousie University. The goal of the gradu- order to create a schedule which gives plenty of notice to ate seminar is to give graduate students with upcoming all participants, and permission must be sought from the conference presentations or thesis defenses an opportunity speaker for both broadcast and recording, none of which to practice in order to build their presentation skills and are factors of concern in the existing C2C series. Nonethe- receive feedback on their research. This seminar is based less, there is obvious interest from the universities on the around experience from several universities, where feed- C2C network to “sharing-the-wealth” with regards to dis- back from students showed that many students would get tinguished speakers at other universities. The target for to their thesis defenses without ever having given a pre- this series is for testing to occur over the Summer of 2007, sentation, in part because research seminars within many with the first identified speakers to occur in the Fall of departments assume that the speakers and audience will be 2007. BORWEIN, JUNGIC, LANGSTROTH, MACKLEM AND WILSON: REMOTE MATHEMATICAL COLLABORATION 7

VI. How to Join the C2C Seminar Series! Jonathan M. Borwein was Shrum Professor of Science (1993-2003) and a in Information Technology (2001-08) at The C2C Seminar currently focusses on research at Simon Fraser University, and was founding Di- the four Western provinces (British Columbia, Alberta, rector of the Centre for Experimental and Con- Saskatchewan, and Manitoba) and the four Eastern structive Mathematics. In 2004, he (re-)joined the Faculty of Computer Science at Dalhousie provinces (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Is- as a Canada Research Chair in Distributed land, and Newfoundland and Labrador), and as mentioned and Collaborative Research, cross-appointed in we hope to include universities from Ontario and Qu´ebec Mathematics, with an adjunct appointment at Simon Fraser. He was born in St Andrews in in the future. In addition, the Coast-to-Coast seminar is 1951, and received his DPhil from Oxford in 1974, as a Rhodes also not intentionally limited to Canadian universities. We Scholar. Prior to joining SFU in 1993, he worked at Dalhousie (1974- welcome participation from American universities as well, 91), Carnegie-Mellon (1980-82) and Waterloo (1991-93). provided that their participation is technically and logisti- cally feasible. Veselin Jungic is a lecturer at the Depart- If you are interested in joining or attending our regular ment of Mathematics and Associate Director, Coast-to-Coast Seminar Series please contact: Research at IRMACS, Simon Fraser Univer- sity. His research interests include Ramsey • David Langstroth, D-Drive Administrator, Theory and Education in Mathematics. As [email protected] an Associate Director at IRMACS he coordi- nates research activities through out the insti- • Veselin Jungic, Associate Director, Research - IR- tute. Jungic is the creator of Math Girl, a car- MACS, [email protected] toon character who uses her superb knowledge of mathematics to protect Calculopolis. VII. Acknowledgments

Special thanks to the following organizations for their David Langstroth is the administrator of D- generous assistance and involvement in helping to build Drive and of the Atlantic Association for Re- the Coast-to-Coast seminar: ACEnet, WestGrid, CFI, CA- search in the Mathematical Sciences (AARMS). NARIE, IRMACS, D-Drive, the Canada Research Chair David holds an MBA and an MA in Education from the Open University in the UK as well as programme, NSERC, the Killam Trusts, SmartTech, all a Diploma in Computer Science and a Bachelor of the participating universities (as of November 2006: of Music Degree from McGill. David spent 17 years working as professional musician for the UBC, University of Calgary, University of Alberta, Simon BBC before coming to work for D-Drive. He Fraser University, University of Lethbridge, University of continues to work as a musician on a freelance Saskatchewan, St. Francis Xavier University, Acadia Uni- basis with Symphony Nova Scotia, Rhapsody Quintet and others, and is a teacher and founding director of Alexan- versity, Memorial University of Newfoundland, and Dal- der Technique Atlantic. housie University), and to all of the speakers for the Coast- to-Coast seminar series. Mason Macklem holds the Bachelor of Arts References (Okanagan University College, 2000) and Mas- ters of Science (Simon Fraser University, 2002), [1] Access Grid Community Site, http://www.accessgrid.org/ both in Mathematics. His Masters thesis dis- [2] Argonne National Labs Access Grid site, cussed measures of perceptual quality of digi- http://www-unix.mcs.anl.gov/fl/research/accessgrid/. tal images. During his Master’s degree, he was [3] Westgrid Access Grid Information, http://www.westgrid.ca/ also a Research Assistant at Packeteer Canada. collabvis/accessgrid/accessgrid.php. He is presently a PhD student in the Faculty [4] D-Drive Lab Access Grid layout, of Computing Science at Dalhousie University, where he is working on derivative-free optimiza- http://ddrive.cs.dal.ca:8080/internal/documents/ tion algorithms for use of parallel machines. vi- site-diagrams/vis-centre-diagrams. sion modeling. [5] Jennifer Mears, Grid Technology Helps Fight SARS, http://www.networkworld.com/news/2003/0526sargrid.html. [6] Dave Jacqu´e, Access Grid aids SARS patients,

http://www.anl.gov/Media Center/logos21-2/grid.htm. Scott Wilson is the systems manager at the [7] Alan Greenberg and Russ Colbert, Navigating the Sea of Re- D-Drive lab as well as performing technical ad- search on Video Conferencing-Based Distance Education, 2004”, ministration for other research groups at Dal- http://www.polycom.com/common/pw cmp updateDocKeywords/ housie University. Scott has been a systems 0,1687,2898,00.pdf. administrator and technical specialist for over [8] Wenjun Liu and Rick Stevens, The Access 14 years. Before joining the D-Drive lab, he Grid as Knowledge Technology,Workshopon had worked for the last 8 years as an I.T. Man- Advanced Collaborative Environments, 2004, ager for Oregon State University in the United http://www-unix.mcs.anl.gov/fl/flevents/wace/wace2004/ States. He holds two Bachelors degrees, one in papers/paper-liu.pdf Psychology and another in Theology special- [9] J. Borwein, V. Jungic, D. Langstroth, M. Macklem and S. Wil- izing in Biblical Hermeneutics and Interpreta- son, “The Coast to Coast Seminar,” to appear in Communicating tion. When not at the lab, Scott investigates quantum physics the- Mathematics in the Digital Era, AK Peters, 2007. ory, reads articles on neuroscience, practices and teaches a martial [10] L. Childers, T. Disz, R. Olson, M. Papka, R. Stevens and T. art, and experiments with the effects of cognition on biological and Udeshi, Access Grid: Immersive Group-to-Group Collaborative non-biological systems. His future plans include returning to gradu- Visualization, Proceedings of the 4th International Immersive ate school to study human/machine interactions from a neuroscience Projection Technology Workshop, 2000. perspective.