Move of the mouse? No, it's not the navigation system of the 21st century - it's the "steering wheel" for TerraFly, an interactive virtual "flight" system developed by the High Performance Database Research Center (HPDRC) at FIU.

"NASA wanted this developed as a showcase of a consumer-oriented application of NASA-funded technology," commented Naphtali Rishe, professor of Computer Science and director of the HPDRC. "We want to make it available on CD-ROM to schools and science enthusiasts."

Rishe's offhanded description of TerraFly - a sophisticated system which facilitates the storage, manipulation, analysis and display of spatial and digital data as entertainment for non-scientific folk - is characteristic of his modest, understated demeanor. But considering, perhaps, how far he has come in so relatively short a time - a personal and professional journey that has encompassed several cultures from East to West - the development of an "entertainment device" may not seem like such a big deal.

Although his English is excellent, the briefest of conversations reveals Rishe's roots. He was born in Saint Petersburg - then known as Leningrad - and spent the first 17 years of his life in the former Soviet Union. From a very early age he was "fascinated" with mathematics, and as an adolescent he attended a high school that specialized in math and computer programming.

"There was just one peculiar thing with that school," he recalled. "The school's computer happened to break before my entrance into the school, and they didn't repair it until after I graduated. So I never had any practical experience - we wrote our programs on paper and the teacher visually verified the correctness of the programs."

Snapshot of TerraFly displaying digital aerial photography of Florida International University.

Professionally, Rishe dreamed of becoming a computer programmer. On a personal level, he and his family shared another dream: to leave the Soviet Union. In addition to the general repression of the Soviet regime, as Jews they were subjected to an extra measure of ethnic and religious persecution. Ironically, their ethnicity helped them escape their native land.

"In 1974, there was a window of opportunity to leave," he said, "and many wanted to take advantage of it. In the early '70s there was a relaxation of Russian emigration policies where they allowed Jews to leave for humanitarian reasons. Today it is no problem to emigrate from Russia, but at that time it was one of the few privileges Jews had; ethnic Russians could not leave. It was a risk - because if you were granted emigration, you won the Russian roulette; if you were denied, you became even more of a second-class citizen and whatever meager rights you had before would disappear. It was a risk - but a calculated risk that we took."

It wasn't as simple, however, as filling out an application and buying a plane ticket. The gamble involved the KGB.

"There was this game that one was supposed to play with the KGB. You had to present a case that you were emigrating to reunite your family, which was the only legitimate reason for emigration. We didn't have any close relatives in Israel, but we had a completely manufactured "uncle" who wrote us letters from Israel. `He' wrote us a few letters, sent us an invitation to move, and sent us an affidavit of support saying that if we came to Israel he would support us until we became economically independent.

"This was a game where all the parties knew the real truth. You couldn't conceal it from KGB. KGB was playing along, you needed to present this and that, but I am sure they knew our biography better than ourselves. They kept files on everybody. So we applied for emigration, six months down the road they let us go and we went to Israel in 1974."

Rishe said they were warmly welcomed in Israel, and it soon felt like home. Over the next 10 years, he balanced two major priorities in his life: his duty to his adopted country - which, in Israel, meant military service - and securing his higher education in computer science. From 1979 through 1984, he served in the Israel Defense Forces, serving as a software engineer. He studied for his bachelor's and master's degrees at the renowned Israel Institute of Technology (Technion), and received his doctorate from Tel Aviv University.

During the course of his graduate studies, Rishe began developing his semantic database modeling theory, the subject of two subsequent books (published by Prentice-Hall in 1988 and McGraw Hill in 1992) and the basis of much of the work at the HPDRC. The central notion of semantic models is the concept of object, which is any real world entity that information is stored about in the database. The relational database model has become the state of the art in commercial database management. However, in situations where the structure of information is complex, where greater flexibility is required or where non-conventional data is involved, the semantic approach can be more effective.

"I got interested in semantic models because of their mathematical clarity and elegance," Rishe explained. "When you have simple structures, they're easy to analyze. I started doing some theoretical investigation into the mathematical elements of the databases, but then I concentrated more on the development of data structures and algorithms and methodologies."

After completing his military service and doctorate, Rishe sought a position at a university where he could continue his research. In 1984, The University of California-Santa Barbara beckoned with the offer of a visiting professorship. When his term expired in 1987, he decided he wanted to remain in the U.S. and he accepted an offer from FIU to join its School of Computer Science.

The HPDRC was founded in 1994 to help focus research in the School of Computer Science and attract increased external grants and contracts. The center conducts research on database management systems and various applications, leading to the development of new types of database systems and refinement of existing database systems. Today, the HPDRC's staff is made up of over 100 professionals including seven professors leading research areas, four post-doctoral researchers, 17 full-time research associates and programmers, 70 research assistants, and managerial staff.

The NASA Regional Applications Center at FIU provides satellite imagery of hurricanes which is accessible on the Internet.

The HPDRC's flagship project is a highly parallel database system based on the semantic/object-oriented approach. Its research aims to significantly improve the usability and efficiency of highly parallel database computers and machine clusters (tightly networked groups of machines). They are developing algorithms and a prototype database management system based on the semantic binary database model.

The center's research has been eagerly sought and supported by government agencies and industries, which provide its funding. NASA currently provides the largest amount of funding ($4 million) for the Center, and other major sponsors include the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Information Agency, NATO, Florida Department of Commerce, Florida Department of Education, Ameritech, and GeoNet Limited.

The Center has been developing a semantic database management system for NASA, and in 1996 the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the University established a Regional Applications Center at FIU. The collaborative effort, which has expanded the practical applications of remote sensing data obtained by NASA (primarily from orbiting satellites), is designed to serve public and business needs. Applications include agriculture, weather forecasting and hurricane preparedness. The Center has also designed a database system for Everglades National Park which stores the environmental data being collected throughout the unique ecosystem.

"You wouldn't believe the amount of data that's available," said Patrick Coronado, who helps manage information from satellites at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. "NASA is overseeing 10 research programs designed to make information easier to retrieve. But FIU's stands out. They are the best one. NASA wants to make sure that businesses and local governments - not just scientists - have access to this information."

In addition to storing and analyzing data, much of the Center's research is devoted to developing more effective ways for computers to present data to users - for instance, graphic displays of data, which enables people without extensive technical expertise to use the information. (For a demonstration of the databases developed by the HPDRC, visit their website at hpdrc.cs.fiu.edu.)

The HPDRC also has a strong commitment to training graduate students and preparing them for their future roles as scholars and specialists employed by industry.

"Most of the student employees in the center are here not because we're paying them much, but because they get training which is very valuable for industry careers," Rishe noted. "In fact, it's so valuable that it's hard for us to keep students for long because they get offers from industry. We're exposing them to the most high-tech environment."

Looking toward the future, Rishe looks forward to expanding and enhancing the operations of the HPDRC and to perfecting breakthroughs for improved databases. To his way of thinking, their potential is virtually limitless - and elegance and flexibility can resolve some of the most complex database dilemmas that arise.

"For example, you wouldn't have the Y2K problem (the millennium computer bug) if a database is properly designed," he asserted. "The Y2K problem is just an example of one problem that can occur in a database. Good design and methodology makes a database flexible to changes - and this includes such a trivial thing as the change in millennium."