“3DHub: A Geometric Kernel and Infrastructure for
Community-based Rapid Application
Development and Deployment”
Purdue University
PI: Dr. Karthik Ramani Co PIs: Dr. Mark Lundstrom, Dr. George Adams,
Dr. Leah Jamieson, Dr. Wen Jiang
NSF Award #0917959
3 Year Award
Start Date: 1 August 2009
Brief Project Overview:
Questioning & Curiosity:
A 3D Geometric Kernel (3DKernel) supported by an easy to
use Gird Infrastructure (3DHub ) will provide a competitive
advantage for companies to conceive, create, as well as
develop and distribute, products and services
(3DApplications) in new ways. This will transform the way
geometry dependant business models will be conceptualized
and operate in many sectors including proteomics, education,
manufacturing, and surgery. In addition research in geometry
dependant fields will also progress much faster through the
resulting communities.
Program Activities:
1. How to overcome the bottleneck of intelligent
algorithms for shape understanding of the acquired
3D data?
2. How can downstream applications use the acquired
geometric data seamlessly?
3. How to enable small and medium sized businesses
(and even large companies that are not network
software based) to capitalize from the advancements
in grid computing?
Risk Taking:
Completed geometric research projects will
be incorporated into the geometric kernel
Contributing Research (Completed)
 Surface Shape-based Screening of Protein Structure
Databases (NIH, May 2005 – July 2010; $1.5 Million).
The accomplishments include: created a database of
protein binding sites; developed new protein-protein
docking algorithm which will help predict the function of
newly determined proteins produced by structural
genomics projects.
 PCS: Prominent Cross-Sections for Mesh Models
(NSF – IIS). In this work, a new high-level abstraction
from a mesh model- the PCS has been proposed and
demonstrated. This methods enables the detection of
interacting regions and the corresponding skeleton
and also segmentation. The PI published a paper that
won the Best Student Paper Award in Computer-Aided
Design & Application, 2010.
Key Attributes of our
Innovation Ecosystem:
In spite of the promising outcome of this proposal, it is
likely that this model will be too early for industrial
business models to take on; but we can never find out
unless we develop the prototypes and business
scenarios. This also means that the best place to
incubate and educate industry in such areas is the
University incubation model. We are confident that the
PI can raise funds from industry because he has
extensive relationships to fund portions of prototyping
related to their interests.
Openness:
New markets and strategy are enabled by
technological possibilities. These possibilities
are in turn driven by new research
We want the end users to benefit in research and also
we would like to encourage more innovation from the
research community itself around our development.
Hence an open innovation model will be pursued.
Intellectual property as well as open-innovation models
will be integrated into both research-to-realization
pipeline as well as for educational purposes.
Collaboration Across Fields:
Partners:
Top Contributions:
1. Merging advanced geometric computing
capabilities together with the Hub (grid
computing infrastructure in an easy to use
form) ,
2. Forming partnerships with key verticals
in proteomics (NIST/Cryo-EM), design
(Imaginestics), education (VCom3D), and
surgery (Peyton Manning Childrens
Hospital) to help abstract end-user
requirements, and
3. Creating prototypes that will show case
new technological as well as business
model possibilities.
Top Challenges:
Placing Partners in “New
Environments” & “Playgrounds”:
1. Increased interaction between industry and academia
through direct involvement in on-going projects, leading
to symbiotic growth.
2. The 3DHub can give researchers leverage for
industry project prototyping, since they will be
developed and deployed in a short time and at lower
costs.
In our environment, each of the partners can have
extensive cross-community interactions and develop into
communities themselves.
Surprising or Unexpected Results
1. Redevelop and abstract the geometric
operations developed in the past to serve
as a geometric kernel for diverse
applications.
2. Develop the ability to generalize
geometric operations across several
sectors for the current HUB infrastructure.
PFI
The benefits of the 3DHub are embedded in the
nature of our applications formed by partnerships in
diverse sectors. The collaborating faculties are from
two academic departments and further more, we have
formed partnerships with key verticals in biology,
design-manufacturing, education and surgery. Because
of the shared resources, the 3DHub will transform the
businesses fundamentally.
.
Although still at its experimental stage, the use of the
3DHub has been proved very effective for
educational purposes especially in the field of distance
education. The 3DHub was used for design wiki, a
shared knowledge base, which was actively used by
design teams across the global. This fundamentally
changed the way product design is carried out and can
serve as reference for future application in industries.
National Science Foundation Partnerships For Innovation
Grantee’s Meeting April 25-27, 2010
Arlington, VA
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