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Dr. Grader works in the mineral engineering department at the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. He is one of seven faculty members who specialize in reservoir engineering and computer modeling. "We do a lot of computer and experimental work, as well as teach at the graduate and undergraduate level," he said. Dr. Grader is currently using PV-WAVE, a visual data analysis software package developed by Visual Numerics, in an advanced reservoir engineering course that studies fluid flow in underground strata. His class relies heavily on solving diffusion partial differential equations describing various reservoir cases. "I am using visualization as a means to describe spatial and temporal piezometric fluid fields, and, together with my students, we do a lot of particle tracking," he explained. "My goal is to have the same computer environment in the classroom that I have in my office. This way I can prepare curricula on my own computer. I can then enter the classroom, hook up to the network and actually demonstrate lesson plans on a large screen. The students love it," he said. Dr. Grader claims that his use of PV-WAVE allows for greater student/teacher interaction. Visual display lets him solicit ideas from his students and simulate and display these in real time. He says it is easier for his students to understand reservoir phenomena when they are illustrated in three dimensions because the events are made "self-explanatory." The product is used as an interface for the thousand of CAT (computer-assisted topography) scan images generated for rock characterization and for studies of fluid flow in porous media. On a limited scale, PV-WAVE is used in classroom teaching. "My department is also using PV-WAVE for synthetic imaging, which are images created directly on the computer. I decided to use PV-WAVE with my teaching because it allows me to display 3D surfaces and volume imaging," Grader said. "It is even helpful to one of my students, who uses PV-WAVE for his classroom homework."
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