Research Interests
Remote Access to Large-scale Scientific Databases, Usability Requirements in High Performance Computing, System Software and Tools for High-Performance Computers, User Interface Design, and Interactive Web Technology.


Research Description
My research focus is usability engineering, or the study of how we can engineer software to be more usable. The particular target audience I focus on is practicing scientists and engineers.

For ten years, I applied usability engineering techniques to software tools for high-performance computing (HPC). During this time, I worked with IBM, Intel, HP, and other HPC companies to improve their graphical tools so that technical programmers could be more effective in developing large parallel applications. I have also been active in developing national and international standards for HPC software, helping to found such groups as the Parallel Tools Consortium and the High Performance Debugging Forum.

More recently, I have focused on the special problems scientists and engineers have when they access very large databases across the Internet. My research group has pioneered the use of multi-level Web-to-database interfaces, which make it possible to customize access to meet the needs of very different user groups (e.g., middle school children versus professional scientists). We have also developed software infrastructure that allows scientists to construct their own Web interfaces without needed to learn specialized computer science skills.

I currently serve as chair of the Parallel Tools Consortium and Director of the Northwest Alliance for Computational Science and Engineering (NACSE).


Application of Research
Remote monitoring systems, distributed groupware applications simulation programs.