Dr. Hayden Porter of Computer Science

One does not usually associate Furman's name with that of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. But thanks to Hayden Porter's research in the Department of Computer Science, Furman is playing a significant role in the development of parallel algorithms and interactive 3D visualizations and animations that will be used to analyze and interpret global weather patterns from NASA's just launched TIMED satellite mission.

The NASA computational models that Dr. Porter works with can take up to a month or more of dedicated time on the fastest of computers and generate tremendous amounts of difficult to interpret data. By chaining together clusters of computers, however, Hayden has helped to reduce model run times from months to a day. And by developing new advanced 3D visualization capabilities, Dr. Porter is helping NASA scientists to conduct virtual real-time explorations of the upper atmosphere from any desired location and vantage point. Dr. Porter was recently invited to collaborate with Dr. Hans Mayr, NASA interdisciplinary team scientist on the TIMED mission, to design and construct two computer clusters with a combined total peak performance in excess of 100 billion floating point operations per second. Porter is also adapting two of NASA's global circulation models to run efficiently in these clusters.

This NASA research does not benefit Porter alone. His undergraduate researchers, funded through the South Carolina Space Grant Program, Furman Advantage and his NASA contracts, have garnered an impressive array of regional, national and international awards. Recently students Jeff Larkin and Winter Liu won first and second prizes for undergraduate research papers at the Association for Computing Machinery's November 2001 regional conference and teamed up to prepare a paper selected for this year's International ACM Undergraduate Student Paper Competition. Michael Elder, another promising mentee, won this prestigious international competition in March 2001.

Dr. Porter's professional activity has brought numerous benefits to Furman. He was instrumental in bringing Furman into the South Carolina Space Grant Consortium, a grouping of eleven South Carolina colleges and universities significantly involved in aerospace research. Porter was the primary author of two successful grant proposals to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which focused on cost effective and innovative uses of technology to support teaching and learning. For the last six years he has directed the resulting Furman/Wofford Mellon Projects I and II, in which over eighty percent of Furman and Wofford faculty have participated. Porter also authored a successful grant proposal to the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation, which subsequently led to the establishment of the Center for Engaged Learning and the Center for Collaborative Learning and Communications at Furman.

Married with two children, Hayden Porter has enjoyed an illustrious career at Furman. Since joining the faculty in 1979, he has won nearly forty external research grants and contracts, authored or co-authored thirty-seven refereed scientific publications (plus an additional six additional publications in the area of computer science education), and authored or co-authored four textbooks. He is active in professional societies and serves frequently as a reviewer for scientific journals as well as a consultant to local businesses. He has supervised nearly fifty student presentations and papers at professional meetings, approximately a third of which have won regional, national, or international awards, and has received Furman's prestigious Meritorious Teacher Award. He has held the Daniel Distinguished Professorship of Computer Science since 1989 and has served as chair of the department.

Thanks to Dr. Porter's work, Furman is playing an integral role in the development of hardware and software approaches that will enhance the speed and efficiency of NASA's atmospheric global circulation models, as well as in development of the interactive 3D visualization and animation capabilities used by researchers to analyze results of the TIMED mission. Through their participation in this innovative and rigorous work, Porter's undergraduate students receive the exceptional educational and research opportunities that will enable them to become future leaders in the computer science community.