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UB acquires MATLAB software
UB has acquired a campus site license for key MATLAB software titles that are used widely in the science and engineering fields.
The MATLAB TAH (Total Academic Headcount) campus license provides on-campus access to MATLAB Standard Configuration software for all faculty, staff, researchers and students, with home or laptop use by faculty, staff and researchers, according to Rick Lesniak, IT communication and policy officer. Student use of the software is restricted to on-campus computing facilities or virtual lab environments, Lesniak added, stressing that installation of the software on student-owned computers is prohibited. A student version of MATLAB may be purchased at UBMicro.
The campus site license, an annual agreement with MathWorks, “eliminates the divide between faculty and students who could afford access to this software, and those needing it to advance their science and scholarship but couldn’t afford individual licenses,” Lesniak says.
Acquisition of the MATLAB software is welcome news for UB faculty and students.
“MATLAB is a great engineering tool and we are very happy that UB will make it available to all of its students and faculty,” says Harvey Stenger, dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
MATLAB is used for mathematical computation, analysis, visualization and algorithm development in science and engineering.
E. Bruce Pitman, associate dean for research and sponsored programs in the College of Arts and Sciences and a professor in the Department of Mathematics, notes that MATLAB was developed as a tool used in linear algebra to manipulate systems of linear equations. “It has evolved over time, so now MATLAB includes modules for solving linear and nonlinear equations, statistical analysis, signal analysis, filtering, differentiation and integration,” he says. “MATLAB also has excellent graphics capabilities.”
With MATLAB, a user can perform these mathematical operations “through relatively simple commands,” Pitman says, calling it a “high-level language” that solves mathematical problems.
He explains that with a language such as Java or C or Fortran, “a user must code every command in detail. MATLAB provides much of this coding through its commands and modules, so the user needs only to supply data and type a few lines,” he says.
MATLAB is valuable in the classroom because students can learn the fundamental underpinnings of sophisticated mathematical techniques like statistical analysis, signal analysis, filtering, differentiation and integration “without getting lost in the details of writing or using low-level languages,” Pitman says.
“For students and faculty researchers, MATLAB allows one to quickly perform a first analysis and see output. After that preliminary analysis, one might decide to write a more robust MATLAB program that addresses the problem in greater detail, or perhaps write a code in a low-level language,” he says.“Fortran or C or Java codes are often faster for very large and computationally intensive problems, but ideas can be tested quickly using MATLAB to decide whether the investment in a Fortran/C/Java code is worth the effort.”
Moreover, MATLAB scripts can be written to be very flexible, “so the same basic code can be re-used on other problems,” he says.
Departments and individuals who would like to obtain MATLAB software for installation in their labs or workstations should contact Dominic Liberta at UBMicro. A $25 fee attached to the software covers UBMicro’s license administration and distribution costs.
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