Dan M. Davis
Director, JESPP Project
Computational Science Division
Information Sciences Institute
University of Southern California
http:www.isi.edu/~ddavis
Off: (310) 448-8434
Cell: (310) 909-3487
ddavis@isi.edu

Dan Davis focuses his research and community activities on large-scale military simulations and the use of high performance, parallel computers. Currently funded by the U.S. Joint Forces Command, his team has produced products that have been demonstrated to the Director of Defense Research and Engineering, the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Science and Technology, Senator Hillary Clinton, former Speaker Newt Gingrich and other major policy setters. He has published several peer-reviewed articles on this work (see below) and is frequently invited to speak on this and associated topics.

Educational achievements include a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology in 1973 and a Juris Doctors in 1975, both from the University of Colorado in Boulder. While at Boulder, he was a student in the Quantitative Psychology Department and did computational science research on intelligent agents and computer-assisted learning. Later work in the Graduate School of Business Administration at CU focused on Organizational Behavior and the quantification and computer analysis of management topics. His studies in Law School there were capped by a study on the impact of tax policy on social behavior. He has served as a cryptologist and linguist on active duty in the USMC, including two combat-zone tours in Southeast Asia, and recently retired with the rank of Commander, US Naval Reserve, where he served in the Cryptologic Specialty area.

He has taught at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. He is certified to teach Psychology, Business Law, Corporations, Statistics, and Personnel Management by the State of Colorado. He taught primarily Introduction to Psychology and Business Law at Blair College, Colorado Springs, from 1980 to 1985, where he was once selected as Instructor of the Term. In 1986 he also taught a course in Negotiations to Masters candidates in Denver for the University of Phoenix.

After practicing law for 10 years (admitted to Colorado State, Federal and the US Supreme Courts) he was employed by Martin Marietta to act as federal subcontracts manager and counsel on a large DoD classified contract. In 1988 he was transferred to JPL in Pasadena to act as Classification Manager and to advise on contractual issues on a large data fusion project. In 1993, he was appointed as the Assistant Director of the Center for Advanced Computing Research at Caltech, where he participated in research proposals, external relations, administrative and executive duties for a $15M/year supercomputer center. In 1999, he assumed the position of Associate Director for Strategic Development at the Information Sciences Institute, a 350-person research division of the University of Southern California. He left for a brief time (2001 to 2002) to participate in the proposal for, and then function as the Director for Finance and Contracts of, the Maui High Performance Computing Center, University of Hawai'i. Over the last two decades, he has participated in and led proposal efforts up to $200M and he was a section lead on a proposal that just won a $181M contract. He has had extensive experience with government, industry and foundation relations. He currently is the Director of the Joint Experimentation on Scalable Parallel Processors project at the Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California. This project provides scalable code to the U.S. Joint Forces Command allowing more than one million individual vehicle and pedestrian independent agents to be simulated in a global-scale terrain database.

He has been active in design rule checking algorithm research, large-scale distributed simulations for the DoD and in researching supercomputer uses in the K-12 area. He was the Chairman of the Coalition of Academic Supercomputing Centers for 1998 and Chaired the Coalition for Academic Scientific Computation in 1999. He is on several committees at the University of Southern California and various professional conferences.

Selected Recent Papers

Davis, D.& Moore, J., (2007), “FPGA and GPUs as Accelerators for Linux Clusters,” in the Proceedings of the International Test and Evaluation Association M&S Conference, Las Cruces, New Mexico, 2007

Davis, D., Gottschalk, T. & Davis, L., (2007), “High Performance Computing Allows Simulation to Transform Education ,” in the Proceedings of the Winter Simulation Conference,” Washington, DC, 2007

Davis, L.K. & Davis, D.M., (2007), “Implementing New Educational Technology for 21st Century DoD Leadership Development,” in the Proceedings of the Interservice/Industry Simulation, Training and Education Conference,” Orlando, Florida, 2007

Lucas, R.F., Davis, D.M. & Wagenbreth, G., (2007), “Implementing a GPU-Enhanced Cluster for Large-Scale Simulations,” in the Proceedings of the Interservice/Industry Simulation, Training and Education Conference,” Orlando, Florida, 2007

Davis, D.M., Lucas, R.F., Wagenbreth, G., & Tran, J.J., (2008), “Effectively using a Large GPGPU-Enhanced Linux Cluster” in the Proceedings of the High Performance Computing Modernization Program Users' Group Conference, Seattle, WA, 2008

Gottschalk, T. & Davis, D. (2006), “Application of Proven Parallel Programming Algorithmic Design to Aggregation-Deaggregation Problems,” in the Proceedings of the Interservice/Industry Simulation, Training and Education Conference,” Orlando, Florida, 2006

Davis, D. and Davis, L, (2006), “Educational Extensions of Large-Scale Simulations Enabled by High Performance Computing in the Proceedings of the Interservice/Industry Simulation, Training and Education Conference,” Orlando, Florida, 2006

Lucas, R., Davis, D. & Yao, K-T., (2006)," Supercomputing’s Role in Data Problems and Its Contribution to Solutions," The ITEA Journal of Test and Evaluation, Fairfax, Virginia, Sep-Oct, 2006.

Davis, D. (2006), “Large-Scale Simulations and Transcontinental Data Management and Analysis”, 4th Cluster Symposium On the Use of Commodity Clusters for Large-Scale Scientific Applications 2006, Baltimore, Maryland, July 2006

Davis, D. &  Lucas, R., (2006), Joint Experimentation, Data Management and Analysis Enabled by Trans-Continentally Distributed Linux Clusters, HPCMP Users’ Group Conference, Denver, Colorado. June, 2006 

Davis, D. & Baer, G.( 2006),"Providing Scalable Simulations, Environments and Data Structures for Theatre of War Analysis and Training ," International Training and Education Conference, London, UK

Lucas, R., Davis, D. & Yao, K-T., (2006)," High Performance Computing Facilities for Joint Military Simulation Data Management," The ITEA Journal of Test and Evaluation, Fairfax, Virginia, Publication Pending.

Davis, D., & Baer, G., (2005)," High Performance Computing Facilities for Joint Military Simulation Data Management," ITEA Modeling and Simulation Conference, Las Cruces, NM, 2005

Wagenbreth, G., Yao, K-T., Davis, D., Lucas, R., and Gottschalk, T., (2005),"Enabling 1,000,000-Entity Simulations on Distributed Linux Clusters," WSC05-The Winter Simulation Conference, Orlando, Florida,

Davis, D., Lucas, R., Amburn, P. & Gottschalk, T., (2005), "Joint Experimentation on Scalable Parallel Processors," The ITEA Journal of Test and Evaluation, Fairfax, Virginia, 2005

Gottschalk, T., Amburn, P. &Davis, D., (Forthcoming, 2005), "Advanced Message Routing for Scalable Distributed Simulations," The Journal of Defense Modeling and Simulation, San Diego, California, Publication pending

Davis, D., Baer, G., & Gottschalk, T., (2004), "21st Century Simulation: Exploiting High Performance Parallel Computing and Advanced Data Analysis," Proceedings of the Interservice / Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference, Orlando, Florida

Lucas, R., & Davis, D., "Joint Experimentation on Scalable Parallel Processors," (2003), in the Proceedings of the Interservice/Industry Simulation, Training and Education Conference, Orlando, Florida, 2003

Brunett, S., Davis, D., Gottschalk, T., Messina, P., & Kesselman, C., (1998) "Implementing Distributed Synthetic Forces Simulations in Metacomputing Environments," in the Proceedings of the Seventh Heterogeneous Computing Workshop, Orlando, Florida, March 1998

Messina, P., Brunett, S., Davis, D., Gottschalk, T., Curkendall, D., & Seigel, H., (1997) "Distributed Interactive Simulation for Synthetic Forces," in the Proceedings of the 11th International Parallel Processing Symposium, Geneva, Switzerland, April 97

Messina, P., Davis, D. et al., (1997) "Synthetic Forces Express: A New Initiative in Scalable Computing for Military Simulations." Proceedings of the Simulation Interoperability Workshop, Orlando, March 1997

Invited Speaker

Davis, D.M., Gottschalk, T.D., & Lucas, R.F., (2007), “Consistency between Various Abstraction Layers: Approaches to the Aggregation/De-aggregation Problem,” at the DARPA Future of Constructive Simulation Workshop, San Diego, CA, 2007

Lucas, R.F., Gottschalk, T.D., & Davis, D.M., (2007),“Scalable Distributed Systems and Data Management: Advanced Architectures and Individual Entity Parallelization,” at the DARPA Future of Constructive Simulation Workshop, San Diego, CA, 2007

Davis, D.M., “Interactive High Performance Computing: Lessons Learned,”, in the Interactive Computing Birds of a Feather, at the 4th Cluster Symposium On the Use of Commodity Clusters for Large-Scale Scientific Applications 2006, Baltimore, Maryland, July, 2006

Davis, D., "Scoping, Specifying and Satisfying the Need for Large-Scale Distributed Data Management," at the 3rd Cluster Symposium On the Use of Commodity Clusters for Large-Scale Scientific Applications 2005, Arlington, Virginia, July, 2005

Davis, D., "Interactive HPC for Forces Modeling and Simulation: HPCMP's Distributed Center for JFCOM's JESPP Project," at the HPCMP User Group Conference, Nashville, Tennessee, June, 2005

Davis, D., "Joint Experimentation on Scalable Parallel Processors," at the International Test and Evaluation Association (ITEA), Modeling and Simulation Workshop, Las Cruces, New Mexico, December, 2004

Davis, D., "Large-Scale Military Simulations on Linux Clusters: Update, Remote DCs and Interactive Ops," at the 2nd Annual Symposium on the On the Use of Commodity Clusters for Large-Scale Scientific Applications, Arlington, Virginia, July, 2004

Davis, D., "Large-Scale Intelligent Agent Simulations on Linux Clusters: Applications, Implementations, and Implications," at the Symposium on the On the Use of Commodity Clusters for Large-Scale Scientific Applications, Arlington, Virginia, July, 2003