THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, August 17, 1996 TAG: 9608170224
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD, staff writer
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 98 lines
For a decade, oceanographer Glen H. Wheless has pushed his science's envelope by using high-speed computers and virtual reality to better understand the world's coastal waters.
Outside his field, hardly anyone noticed. ``I haven't been looking for attention,'' he says flatly.
But the former Navy aviator's tenacity and vision finally brought him some high-profile recognition this week. Largely due to Wheless, Old Dominion University landed a grant from the National Science Foundation that makes ODU one of nation's pioneer developers of what promises to be the next generation Internet computer network.
ODU's 5-year-old Center for Coastal Physical Oceanography, in which Wheless is a research assistant professor, will be the main beneficiary of the $350,000 award.
And Wheless, who wrote the grant application, will get access to powerful new computing tools that he hopes will help him and his colleagues figure out how winds, tides, river runoff and other factors affect the movement of young fish in and out of the Chesapeake Bay.
``I can't predict what the spinoffs will be,'' Wheless said Friday. ``But the implications are going to be profound as to what we can do with this kind of network.''
ODU is one of 13 universities in the United States to win the grants, which will help the science foundation test the mettle of its new super-fast network. Other grant winners included the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California.
Beth Gaston, a foundation spokeswoman, said by year's end the new network being set up for the universities will transport data as fast as 622 megabits per second, about 14 times faster than the top speed of current commercial Internet links. Within five years, she said, the foundation hopes to boost that speed nearly fourfold - and have 100 universities and dozens of federal labs involved.
The main purpose of the new network is to help scientific researchers like Wheless, who have increasingly complained that the growing popularity of the Internet with businesses and recreational users has bogged down the global computer network. Access to the new network will be tightly controlled.
But Gaston said the foundation's effort should have a ``trickle-down effect'' on the regular Internet, turning up ways to make it faster and leading to groundbreaking new applications.
Wheless and another ODU oceanographical researcher, Cathy Lascara, are eagerly awaiting the arrival of a specially designed ``ImmersaDesk'' that they plan to hook into the new network, which the science foundation calls the ``Very-High-Speed Backbone Network Service.''
Modeling data zipped from supercomputers around the country will be converted by the ``ImmersaDesk'' into ``a large-scale, interactive'' bayscape that ODU's researchers will peer at through 3-D glasses. They'll be able to continually change this virtual Bay ecosystem by altering winds, tides and other conditions - even factoring in the wakes of large ships.
An earlier $550,000 grant from the foundation helped pay for the ``ImmersaDesk'' and related equipment.
ODU officials say they are hoping the effect of the university's grants from the foundation will ripple beyond its campus - though they're not exactly sure how.
``The idea to get Hampton Roads on the high-speed Internet highway is very important,'' said Larry Atkinson, director of the oceanography center and chair of the university's oceanography department. ``I think this is bound to have positive effects.''
Wheless was also optimistic about broader effects. He said ODU's high-speed connection could lead to a Hampton Roads supercomputing network that eventually businesses and other private interests could tap into to do research.
But for now, he and others at the university will take their turn.
Besides the oceanographers' projects, at least two others involving ODU's computer-science department are planned.
More than anyone else, however, Wheless can't wait to see the big data pipeline hooked up.
A native of Clearwater, Fla., he first studied oceanography at the Naval Academy in the late '70s, ``but not very diligently,'' he concedes. ``All I wanted to do was fly jets.''
After an injury forced him out of the service, he worked briefly for defense contractors - then committed himself to ocean studies, earning a master's degree and a doctorate in the science from ODU. Along the way, he became fascinated with using numerical models to study oceanographic processes. He was one of the first in his science to use virtual-reality methods.
Atkinson said the science foundation grant is largely a tribute to Wheless. ``He's a hustler. He made it happen.''
But it was also a pat on the back for the center and its 40 students and staff members, who are on the leading edge of research into waves, tides, currents and other physical processes in coastal waters.
``We've really built a unique group here,'' Atkinson said. ``Getting a grant like this is endorsement by the national community that we're succeeding.'' ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
WEB ADDRESS
Full information on the NSF Internet programs can be found on the
Internet at: http://www.cise.nsf.gov/
ncri/connect96.html
KEYWORDS: ODU INTERNET FEDERAL GRANT by CNB