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LEARN BY DOING: MARIA PANTOJA AND PAULINE FAURE
computing through the grapevine
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MARIA PANTOJA IS USING PARALLEL COMPUTING TO MAXIMIZE VINEYARD PRODUCTION AND MORE
When Maria Pantoja grew bored waiting for feedback But Pantoja was interested in more than just graphics. on her doctoral thesis, she began looking into the many ways graphics processing units (GPU) can With the help of a Lockheed Martin Endowed Professorship speed things up with parallel computing. award, Pantoja is now using parallel computing to tackle real“At that point, very few people were using it,” said Pantoja, an ing locate endangered birds in Hawaii and helping researchers assistant professor in the Computer Science Department. “I was examine earthquake damage. right there at the right time.” world challenges, helping vineyards improve production, help“When I was little, I wanted to change the world,” she said with a GPUs are specific pieces of hardware used to accelerate graphics. laugh. “Now I think I can.”
At UC Santa Clara, her thesis was on image processing — using computers to process digital images through an algorithm. As she patiently waited for critiques, she researched parallel computing. With advances in technology, parallel computing dramatically accelerated problem-solving by using multiple elements to process data simultaneously. Previously, large amounts of data had to be processed by a single source consecutively.
In her pitch to Lockheed, Pantoja pledges to first refresh her department’s parallel computing lab, then put her practice to work, with student help and collaborations from other colleges and industry.
She has already begun working on the vineyard project.
Supported by an Agricultural Research Institute Grant, she will develop an app to categorize photos taken of grape vines at four California vineyards. In large vineyards, differences in pruning, soil fertilization and other factors create imbalances in the resulting vines. The app will create a map, identifying which areas of a vineyard are faring better, allowing farmers to adjust their practices.
“It’s called precision agriculture,” Pantoja said. “You manage more precisely the orchard to balance the production.”
Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Hawaii and the Kauai Forest Bird Recovery Project are trying to identify where three endangered birds are living by recognizing and identifying their calls. Those calls and locations will also be processed with parallel computing.
“They put microphones all over the forest, and they send us the audio, and we have to find out if we can identify the birds,” Pantoja Finally, the earthquake project sets out to help researchers minimize damage in future quakes. When major earthquakes occur, hundreds of thousands of photos are taken of the damage.
“What we want to do is identify the type of damage on the image,” she said.
Once again, an algorithm will be able to quickly process that information and allow for quicker study.
While all three projects involve challengers from other fields, Pantoja said she looks forward to problem-solving from even more disciplines.
“I know how to help others with their computational problems,” she said. n
Helping vineyards like Cal Poly’s Chorro Creek Vineyard increase production is the subject of a parallel computing project led by Computer Science Professor Maria Pantoja.
Last summer, computer engineering student Justin Nguyen and professor Pauline Faure worked with a group of Cambodian high school students to establish a ground station in Cambodia to track CubeSats.
expanding space exploration
AERO PROFESSOR AND CPE STUDENT HELP LAUNCH SPACE PROGRAM IN CAMBODIA
Last summer, an aerospace engineering professor traveled to adviser to the first Cambodian satellite project, initiated by the Cambodia with a student to help set up a ground station for Liger Leadership Academy, a school for gifted, economically watching mini-satellites. disadvantaged students. Last summer she spent 10 days there, The faculty member, Pauline Faure, has worked on mini-satellites country establish its first space program. — or CubeSats — with over 20 countries. With that goal in mind, in 2018, she became the main technical with computer engineering student Justin Nguyen, to help the Ever since CubeSats were co-created by former Cal Poly aero“My main interest is to benefit society somehow,” said Faure, who space Professor Jordi Puig-Suari, space exploration has become recently received a Lockheed Martin Professorship Award. “To considerably more accessible. And roughly 2,000 have been enable access to space to a larger number of people.” launched into space, including 10 CubeSats created at Cal Poly.
Pauline Faure, right, helped high school students at the Liger Leadership Academy in Cambodia set up an antenna array to track CubeSats.
Getting more countries involved, Faure said, increases the diversity of ideas.
“More players in space will enable more collaborations and healthy competition,” she said. she and her family watched Hale-Bopp, an unusually bright comet, soar across a night sky in 1997. After studying in France and Japan (Faure speaks French, Japanese, English, Spanish and German), Faure eventually landed at Cal Poly, where she pitched developing satellite kits to help others learn about CubeSats as part of her professorship.
She is also an advisor to the Cal Poly CubeSat Lab, where Nguyen has been a regular.
“It’s not often you get to work on something, and a couple of years later, it winds up in space,” he said.
Faure is hoping the Cambodian students will experience that same thrill. Thanks to the training from Faure and Nguyen, the Cambodian ground station — with an antenna Faure and Nguyen helped build — will soon be able to monitor Cal Poly CubeSats. Eventually, she hopes they will create their own CubeSat to monitor.
“Looking into the eyes of those kids and seeing how driven they are and how motivated they are, knowing all the difficulties they face, that gives you a different incentive and puts things in perspective,” she said. n
