OSU professors make waves

Blending Internet technology with earthquake and ocean engineering

How do three professors in two seemingly disparate departments pool brainpower and tap existing facilities to pull down a major National Science Foundation (NSF) research grant that will make OSU the premier tsunami research facility in the world?

You could almost call the way it began a fluke, or fate. But it quickly grew into an extraordinary example of the power a university can generate by crossing disciplines and departments to team up on research proposals worth millions, which ultimately help make the world a safer place.

Two years ago, OSU Computer Science Professor Cherri Pancake didn’t even know OSU Civil Engineering professors Solomon Yim or Chuck Sollitt. Pancake didn’t know much about tsunamis or wave basins or earthquake engineering, either. They all worked for the same College of Engineering, but in different buildings on opposite corners of campus.

But it was Pancake, attending an advisory council conference halfway across the country, who learned that the NSF was looking to fund a major grant aimed at establishing a high-speed, Internet-linked, world-class tsunami research center that could be used by researchers worldwide.

A light bulb blinked on.

Pancake knew that OSU was home to the O. H. Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory. “But I didn’t know much more than that the wave basin was out there on campus,” Pancake says. “In fact, I had to find out which department operated it.” But she quickly convened a meeting with Chuck Sollitt, director of the Hinsdale facility and a member of the Ocean Engineering faculty, Solomon Yim, a Structural Engineering faculty member, Associate Dean of Research Chris Bell, and the head of her own computer science department, Mike Quinn. When she described her idea to the others, they were “startled” by the concept, but ecstatic about the potential. They all agreed that OSU had the unique combination of assets to go after a slice of the $81 million, eight-year program (the NSF’s George E. Brown Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation Program, which includes 10 research sites nationwide.)

Pancake, who is world-renowned for her research in the area of remote access to huge databases and is director of NACSE (Northwest Alliance for Computational Science and Engineering), brought the computer and networking ingenuity to the table, while Yim and Sollitt provided the civil engineering and wave basin expertise. Together the team crafted a proposal that landed a $4.8 million, four-year grant to transform the Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory into the most sophisticated tsunami research facility in the world. The grant includes a provision for approximately $10 million more in funding to operate the tsunami center through 2014.

Employing advanced computing and networking technologies, the facility will allow students, researchers, and other people around the world to view tsunami simulation experiments in real time without having to travel to Corvallis. In addition, remote researchers will be able to slow down, speed up, replay, and hear and view the experiments as often as they need to. And all of the experiments will be housed in a massive data bank, indexed and made easily accessible thanks to Pancake’s cutting-edge research at NACSE.

Pancake is understandably pleased with how this proposal came together. “The NSF has cited our proposal as being THE proposal that had the vision they were looking for,” she says. “They have said that we were the ones who spelled out the marriage between advanced technology and earthquake engineering that they want to realize with this particular program.”

And this marriage, the fruit of a visionary union between two OSU engineering departments, will definitely make some very important waves—waves that will help the world better understand tsunamis, improve warning systems, and ultimately save lives.