By Eli Woodard
Principal Investigator Meg Dolman, PhD Student, focuses on creating detailed infrastructure maps crucial for mitigating wildfire risks. Current maps like the National Land Cover Database (NLCD) lack the necessary detail to capture low-density buildings, powerlines, and small roads, which significantly contribute to wildfire spread. Dolman’s project aims to scale up her infrastructure mapping to encompass the entire Snake River Plain, utilizing the Borah high-performance computing system and AI tools like the PyTorch Machine Learning Framework.
Associate Professor John Chaisson is educating the next generation of AI experts in his course, Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) 662. The course delves into deep neural networks, exploring various models and their applications in natural language processing and computer vision. Students gain practical experience, implementing models on datasets like MNIST, EMNIST, and CIFAR, and have access to the NVIDIA DGX H-100 GPU cluster for their projects.
Professor Hans-Peter Marshall of the Cryosphere Geophysics and Remote Sensing (CryoGARS) project in the Department of Geosciences is revolutionizing snow water resource monitoring. His team employs AI and microwave radar techniques to estimate snow mass and volume, crucial for understanding our water resources, especially in the Western U.S. This research, initially supported by NASA’s SnowEx program, continues to evolve with a recent $1.5M grant from the U.S. Department of Defense for advanced climate and natural hazards research in snow-covered environments.
For detailed insights into these groundbreaking projects or to discover how Research Computing at Boise State University can assist your project, contact researchcomputing@boisestate.edu.