Conference Papers: 
  • S. Masoud Sadjadi, Shu Shimizu, Javier Figueroa, Raju Rangaswami, Javier Delgado, Hector Duran, and Xabriel J. Collazo-Mojica. A modeling approach for estimating execution time of long-running Scientific Applications. In Proceedings of the 22nd IEEE International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS-2008), the Fifth High-Performance Grid Computing Workshop (HPGC-2008), Miami, Florida, April 2008.
    • In a Grid computing environment, resources are shared among a large number of applications. Brokers and schedulers find matching resources and schedule the execution of the applications by monitoring dynamic resource availability and employing policies such as first-come- first-served and back-filling. To support applications with timeliness requirements in such an environment, brokering and scheduling algorithms must address an additional problem - they must be able to estimate the execution time of the application on the currently available resources. In this paper, we present a modeling approach to estimating the execution time of long-running scientific applications. The modeling approach we propose is generic; models can be constructed by merely observing the application execution “externally” without using intrusive techniques such as code inspection or instrumentation. The model is cross-platform; it enables prediction without the need for the application to be profiled first on the target hardware. To show the feasibility and effectiveness of this approach, we developed a resource usage model that estimates the execution time of a weather forecasting application in a multi-cluster Grid computing environment. We validated the model through extensive benchmarking and profiling experiments and observed prediction errors that were within 10experience, we believe that our approach can be used to model the execution time of other time-sensitive scientific applications; thereby, enabling the development of more intelligent brokering and scheduling algorithms.
    • Keywords: High-Performance Computing, Profiling, Behavior Modeling, Weather Research and Forecasting.
  • S. Masoud Sadjadi, Liana Fong, Rosa M. Badia, Javier Figueroa, Javier Delgado, Xabriel J. Collazo-Mojica, Khalid Saleem, Raju Rangaswami, Shu Shimizu, Hector A. Duran Limon, Pat Welsh, Sandeep Pattnaik, Anthony Praino, David Villegas, Selim Kalayci, Gargi Dasgupta, Onyeka Ezenwoye, Juan Carlos Martinez, Ivan Rodero, Shuyi Chen, Javier Muñoz, Diego Lopez, Julita Corbalan, Hugh Willoughby, Michael McFail, Christine Lisetti, and Malek Adjouadi. Transparent grid enablement of weather research and forecasting. In Proceedings of the Mardi Gras Conference 2008 - Workshop on Grid-Enabling Applications, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA, January 2008.
    • The impact of hurricanes is so devastating throughout different levels of society that there is a pressing need to provide a range of users with accurate and timely information that can enable effective planning for and response to potential hurricane landfalls. The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) code is the latest numerical model that has been adopted by meteorological services worldwide. The current version of WRF has not been designed to scale out of a single organization's local computing resources. However, the high resource requirements of WRF for fine-resolution and ensemble forecasting demand a large number of computing nodes, which typically cannot be found within one organization. Therefore, there is a pressing need for the Grid-enablement of the WRF code such that it can utilize resources available in partner organizations. In this paper, we present our research on Grid enablement of WRF by leveraging our work in transparent shaping, GRID superscalar, profiling, code inspection, code modeling, meta-scheduling, and job flow management.
    • Keywords: Grid Enablement, Scientific Applications, WRF, Portal, Meta-Scheduling, Job Flow Management, Modeling, and Profiling.

Technical Papers:
  • S. Masoud Sadjadi, Javier Munoz, Diego Lopez, David Villegas, Javier Figueroa, Xabriel J. Collazo-Mojica, Michael McFail, and Alex Orta. Weather research and forecasting model 2.2 documentation: A step-by-step guide of a model run. Technical Report FIU-SCIS-2007-09-02, School of Computing and Information Sciences, Florida International University, 11200 SW 8th St., Miami, FL 33199, August 2007.
    • In Summer 2007, we, a group of four undergraduate students and three graduate students under the supervision of Dr. Masoud Sadjadi at School of Computing and Information Science (SCIS) of Florida International University (FIU), started an effort on gridifying the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) code. During this process, it became apparent to us that we needed a better understanding of the code's functionality before we start the gridification process. As the available documentation on WRF was not targeted for developers like us who would need to modify the code operation to adapt it to a grid computing environment (and not just adding a new physics model, for example), we were pushed to search through lines of the WRF’s FORTRAN and C code to discover how this code was actually functioning; especially, in parts such as domain decomposition and network interactions among the nodes. Due to the large and complex nature of the WRF code, documentation of the program flow proved necessary. With more time and thought, we decided to start a documentation effort to be useful not only for us, but also for other interested in learning the WRF operation in more dept. This guide should help developers understand basic concepts of WRF, how it executes, and how some of its functions branch into different dimensions. We hope that by the time our audience finishes reading this document they will have gained a strong understanding of how WRF operates.
    • Keywords: Weather Forecast and Reserach, WRF, Fortran, MPI, OpenMP, Grid Computing. 
  • S. Masoud Sadjadi, David Villegas, Javier Munoz, Diego Lopez, Alex Orta, Michael McFail, Xabriel J. Collazo-Mojica, and Javier Figueroa. Finding an appropriate profiler for the weather research and forecasting code. Technical Report FIU-SCIS-2007-09-03, School of Computing and Information Sciences, Florida International University, 11200 SW 8th St., Miami, FL 33199, August 2007.
    • This evaluation of profiling tools started because of a need to examine the behavior of the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF). It is currently written to run on a single cluster; our team wished to explore the options for scaling out WRF to a grid environment. This necessitated understanding how WRF works and what its resource usage patterns look like. In order to do this we required a profiler, which led us to creating this document. We began with a long list of tools, but an in depth investigation for each of them would have been both ineffective and unwarranted. Instead, we broke our evaluation of the field into three passes. In the first pass we discarded programs that did not meet our basic criteria, things like architecture and language support. The second pass was more qualitative. We came up with a list of pros and cons for each tool, and rejected those that did not have features we wanted. Those tools that were still being considered were then given an extensive trial to determine how well they worked for us. We examined things like documentation, ease of installation, whether the tool provided source code correlation and call graphs, etc. It is our hope that this information proves useful to the community, allowing researchers and professionals to learn from our experiences. 
    • Keywords: Profiler Evaluation, Weather Forecast and Reserach, WRF, Fortran, MPI, OpenMP, Grid Computing.
 
Posters:
  • S. Masoud Sadjadi, Javier Muñoz, Diego Lopez, Javier Figueroa, Xabriel J. Collazo-Mojica, Alex Orta, Michael McFail, David Villegas, Rosa Badia, Pat Welsh, Raju Rangaswami, Shu Shimizu, and Hector A. Duran Limon. Transparent grid enablement of WRF using a profiling, code inspection, and modeling approach. In the poster presentation session of the 5th Latin American Grid (LA Grid) Summit, The IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, NY, U.S.A., September 2007.
    • Due to the computational requirements of the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) numerical simulation models, a large number of computing nodes are needed to reduce the overall wall-clock time of the simulations, so that timely critical decisions can be made. In this project, we use existing and custom-designed profiling and code inspection tools to understand the runtime behavior of WRF on a Grid computing environment. Our goal is to produce a mathematical model to predict the allocation of computing resources, for example, the optimized number of homogenous nodes required for a hurricane path prediction simulation. We will run a number of profiling experiments with different hardware and software configurations. The data gathered through these experiments will help us formulate and validate the mathematical model. This model will enable future self-configured executions of the WRF code on a Grid computing environment.
    • Keywords: Grid Enablement, Grid Computing, WRF, Profiling, Code Inspection, Modeling.

 
Course Work:


  • INEL 5206 - Digital Systems Design - Fall 2008
    • In this course my team will develop an electronic Chinese abacus!
    • We are currently working on the requirements and project proposal.
  • ICOM 4215 - Computer Architecture - Fall 2007
    • In this course my team developed an emulator for the PDP-8.
    • The first phase was an architecture report describing our design down to concrete RTN. It is here.
    • Because we think LogicWorks is a really ugly and buggy program, we chose not to implement our design with logic gates as this is the only logic design program consistently available in UPRM's labs. Rather, we're going to use Java (hardware emulation) and Eclipse's RCP (GUI & Deployment) for my group's project.
      • Note that because of this decision, the control sequences presented on the first report are not valid. 
    • The second phase - a limited working version of the emulator - has been finished.
    • The final presentation can be seen here (soon!).
  • ICOM 5007 - Introduction to Database Systems - Fall 2007
    • In this course my team developed a complete solution for a fictitious Online Airline Reservation Site. It is based on the MVC pattern using Java 1.5, Servlets and JavaServer Pages. 
    • As per the team decision, the source code will not be made available.
      • But the last report can be seen here. 
  • Research Internship at Florida International University - Summer 2007 - January 2008
    • I had the opportunity of doing research full-time in a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) at FIU. The overarching theme of our research was autonomic computing, mentored by Dr. Masoud Sadjadi. Specifically, I was working on Hurricane Mitigation; doing an effort to grid-enable the WRF project. A few technical reports came out of this; they are in the Technical Reports section.
    • Later work in the Fall 2007 semester resulted in two paper publications which can be seen at the top of this page.
  • ICOM 4998 - Undergraduate Research Course - Spring 2007
  • INEL 4205 - Logic Circuits - Fall 2006
    • On our final project in this course, my team made a rather complex (for our knowledge at that time) semaphore simulation on LogicWorks.
    • The report on this project can be seen here.