Faculty and Student Teams Program

Project Descriptions

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
Extend temperature and humidity monitoring within the Computer Rooms.

Requesting applications from science or engineering faculty members at institutions serving students underrepresented in science, engineering, mathematics and technology, to work on instrumentation or neutrino source R&D. Fermilab can ONLY host teams with NSF support.

Project Description

The Computing Division provides computing capabilities in support of high energy physics investigations for both experiments and theoretical studies. The Facilities Operations Department of the Computing Division is particularly focused on providing the necessary building environment to allow the investigations to be successfully pursued.

Activities of the Facilities Operations Department include, together with other Computing Division personnel, operating, maintaining and improving the existing computing facilities. In addition, new computing facilities are installed in order to keep up with the requirements of experimentalists and theorists.

This project has as a goal the extension of the temperature and humidity monitoring within the Computer Rooms operated by the Computing Division. The current monitoring for one room provides read-outs of the temperatures at approximately 100 locations within the Computer Rooms. The values are displayed on a map of each Computer Room. A program written in Python runs every 5 minutes, obtains the temperature values, colorizes them red (hot), green (normal), or blue (cold) according to their temperatures and merges the resulting text onto a map of the Computer Room.

There is a need to provide the monitoring for two additional computer rooms planned to be under construction. In addition there is a need for humidity monitoring as well as temperature monitoring.

Project Qualifications

Professor: Physics or Electrical engineering background, willingness to participate in installation of hardware (thermocouples, wiring, etc.), design, implementation and debugging of programs written in Python to process the thermocouple data as well as to process the XML configuration files.

Student: Basic programming capability, willingness to rapidly learn programming in Python and decoding of XML, willingness to learn to work with installation of hardware hand tools (screwdriver, pliers, wiring), and a willingness to learn basic electricity at the low voltage and low current levels.

Applicants Responsibilities and Relationship to Project

Applicants will receive support under the Department of Energy Faculty and Student Team (FaST) Research Program to work collaboratively with the project research team at the Laboratory. The team will work at Fermilab for up to 10 weeks during the year starting during the summer of 2008. At the conclusion of the summer, students will prepare a paper (similar to that listed in references) that describes their project accomplishments. Using the paper as a basis, the students will give a talk to project team members and laboratory staff.

Faculty will be expected to identify students from their campus to participate in FaST program offered by the Department of Energy at Fermilab. Faculty will mentor, advise, and work together with students as they pursue the project tasks. It is expected that the faculty member will become an integral part of the research team and work hands-on with the students and with laboratory staff members on this project. The faculty member and laboratory staff will attend the student talk with the goal of having the students experience a typical project progress review presentation.

Qualifications of an Ideal Candidate

Faculty: Works well in a collaborative environment with students and other researchers. Currently teaches and collaborates with students in his/her field. Willing to work at Fermilab for an extended period during the summer.

Student: Working toward a BS degree in physics, electrical engineering or computer science. Works well in collaboration with faculty, other students, and researchers. Willing to work at Fermilab for an extended period during the summer.

References

Temperature Monitoring in GCC [Grid Computing Center] by Constantine Mukasa of Bethune-Cookman College: http://sist.fnal.gov/sist/archive/2006/Mukasa/Mukasa.doc

Support and Financial Commitments

See Financial Information.