Computer Science Research Spotlight - Dr. Robin Gras

Dr. Robin Gras, Associate Professor and Canadian Research Chair in Probabilistic and Heuristics here in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Windsor has been awarded a research grant earlier this month that will provide him with the dedicated resources required to further his research in ecosystem simulation.

Dr. Gras applied for the grant in the beginning of November from Compute Canada, a national company that coordinates the use of high performance computers in research at universities all across Canada. Dr. Gras is one of approximately 140 researchers that were awarded grants this year, and is the only researcher from the University of Windsor to do so. The grant itself allocates Dr. Gras and his team (5 PhD students and 2 undergraduates) 105 dedicated processors and 105 terabytes of storage space for the entire year of 2011, as a part of the Sharcnet High Performance Computing consortium, which includes 17 academic partners in southern Ontario. While the grant allocates only the dedicated resources needed for research and does not allocate money, Dr. Gras estimates the total worth of the resources received to be around $40,000-$45,000.

His research, which uses a program he developed that virtually simulates the evolution of species in an ecosystem, has previously been quite costly to run due to the limited resources available to actually run the program simulations. The resources provided through the grant will allow Dr. Gras and his team to run more simulations for longer periods of time. The simulations themselves focus on the evolutionary behaviour of predator and prey species and can help other researchers answer some fundamental questions concerning the biology of evolving species and ecosystems, such as the impact of invasive species on foreign ecosystems, as well as how certain species both evolve and how they become extinct.

Congratulations to Dr. Gras and his team on their accomplishments!

Further information on Dr. Gras and his research on ecosystem simulation can be found at his website: http://sites.google.com/site/ecosimgroup/research/ecosystem-simulation