HPC Happenings
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If you would like to stay on top of the latest computational science news, events and workshops as they relate to education, then please join XSEDE’s Computational Science Education News page on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Computational-Science-Education-News/287621714674516. This page will be updated daily so you will be sure not to miss the latest research news or upcoming events! For questions or to contribute, please contact Ange Mason at the University of California, San Diego at amason@ucsd.edu.
2013 Rice Oil & Gas HPC Workshop
February 28, 2013 – Rice University
2013 Conference and Plenary Speakers
- Dirk Smit, Chief Scientist Geophysics, Shell
- John Kuzan, Manager, Computational Sciences Function, ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company
- Mary Wheeler, Director, Center for Subsurface Modeling, Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin
- William Kramer, Deputy Project Director, Blue Waters Project Office, NCSA
HPC Call for Participation
OGF37: Call for Session Proposals
March 11-13, 2013 0 Charlottesville, Virginia
The OGF37 program committee seeks active participation from the community, and encourages the submission of session proposals that may include (but are not limited to) the following topics:
Federated Identity and Delegation
Data/Storage
Identity Management and Virtual Organizations
Production Infrastructure Interoperability
Software Sustainability for Grids and Clouds
Green IT, Energy Efficiency
Inter-cloud interoperability and SLA management
Networking for Distributed Computing Infrastructures
Performance measurement of Grids and Clouds
Science Clouds at large scales
And much more!
To submit a suggested proposal or session requests, please visit the OGF37 website at http://www.ogf.org/OGF37/.
ROSS 2013 - International Workshop on Runtime and Operating Systems for Supercomputers
June 10, 2013 – Eugene, Oregon
Submission Deadline – March 15, 2013
The complexity of node architectures in supercomputers increases as we cross petaflop milestones on the way towards Exascale. Increasing levels of parallelism in multi- and many-core chips and emerging heterogeneity of computational resources coupled with energy and memory constraints force a reevaluation of our approaches towards operating systems and runtime environments. The ROSS workshop, to be held as a full-day meeting at the ICS 2013 conference in Eugene, Oregon, USA, focuses on principles and techniques to design, implement, optimize, or operate runtime and operating systems for supercomputers and massively parallel machines. For more information and projects of interest, in addition to submission guidelines, please visit http://www.mcs.anl.gov/events/workshops/ross/2013/. .
Alice Symposium 2013 - Call for Papers
July 19, 2013 – Durham, North Carolina
Paper Submission Deadline – February 1, 2013
Poster Submission Deadline – March 15, 2013
Contest Submission Deadline – March 15, 2013
The Third Alice Symposium will be held at Duke University and will be part of a week of Alice activities with two-day workshops before and after the Alice Symposium. There is also an Alice contest! You are invited to submit a paper or poster related to the educational use of the Alice programming language at any level (elementary school, middle school, high school, community college, university). Teachers are invited to submit student Alice worlds for an Alice contest. There will be two-day workshops before and after the Alice Symposium. Topics include Alice 2.3, Alice 3.1 and Alice with Media Computation. For more information on this robust series of events, please visit http://www.cs.duke.edu/csed/aliceSymposium2013. Questions can be addressed to Kathy Menchaca at menchaca@cs.stanford.edu.
Upcoming Conferences and Workshops.
South Carolina Cyberinfrastructure Symposium
February 11-12, 2-13 - Clemson University
Integrating Computational Science into your Undergraduate Curriculum is the symposium theme. The symposium will begin on February 11, with an evening reception and poster session and the following day is filled with speakers and breakout sessions. Confirmed speakers include:
* Steven I. Gordon (Ohio State)
* Angela Shiflet (Wofford College)
* Sushil Prasad (Georgia State)
* Steve Stuart (Clemson)
Registration details available soon. Travel awards will be available!! For more information, please contact Jill Gemmill at gemmill@clemson.edu.
2013 AAAS Annual Meeting
February 14-18, 2013 - Boston Massachusetts
The Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the most important general science venue for a growing segment of scientists and engineers who are interested in the latest advances as well as multidisciplinary topics and the influence of science and technology on how we live today. Thousands of leading scientists, engineers, educators, and policy-makers interact with one another and with hundreds of members from national and international media. In fact, the growing number of international attendees attests to the growing international nature of this gathering. More than 150 sessions spread across about a dozen tracks are usually presented at the Annual Meeting. For mire information, please visit http://aaas.confex.com/aaas/2013/cfp.cgi
Emerging Researchers National Conference in STEM
February 28- March 2, 2013 – Washington, DC
The Emerging Researchers National (ERN) Conference in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) is hosted by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Education and Human Resources Programs (EHR) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Human Resource Development (HRD), within the Directorate for Education and Human Resources (EHR). The conference is aimed at college and university undergraduate and graduate students who participate in programs funded by the NSF HRD Unit, including underrepresented minorities and persons with disabilities. The objectives of the conference are to help undergraduate and graduate students to enhance their science communication skills and to better understand how to prepare for science careers in a global workforce For more information, please visit http://www.emerging-researchers.org/.
Research Features From Across the Country and Around the World
Duke University Scientists Develop Device for Image Compression
New York Times
Duke University researchers are using a new class of artificial materials, called metamaterials, to design a sensor that compresses images much more efficiently than existing technologies. Metamaterials have qualities that bend light, X-rays, and radio waves in unusual ways. The researchers say the scanning sensor captures both still and video images while simplifying compression by integrating it directly into the sensor array. The technology permits image compression to be performed directly by the sensor hardware, instead of by the specialized hardware and software in use today. Although metamaterials might offer high compression ratios, the real advantage is in the potential for reductions in size, says Duke's John Hunt. To read further, please visit http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/18/technology/duke-researchers-develop-a-new-way-to-compress-images.html?_r=0.
To Thwart Hackers, Firms Salting Their Servers With Fake Data
Washington Post
Some companies are increasingly making use of controversial cybersecurity tactics involving the use of fake data on servers and Web sites meant to ensnare hackers. Sometimes referred to as honey pots, deceptive data can take any number of forms and are generally made to look valuable and used to track the activity of hackers who take the bait. For example, Columbia University professor Salvatore Stolfo worked with a major U.S. bank two years ago to create a fake bank account whose login information he then exposed to a widely used piece of malware. By monitoring the fake account, the bank was able to track numerous attempts to shift the money in the account into a real account, the owner of which the bank was able to identify. To read further, please visit http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/to-thwart-hackers-firms-salting-their-servers-with-fake-data/2013/01/02/3ce00712-4afa-11e2-9a42-d1ce6d0ed278_story.html.
Obama Administration Outlines National Information Sharing Strategy
eWeek
The White House recently released the National Strategy for Information Sharing and Safeguarding, which aims to help government agencies develop polices, processes, and standards to promote the secure exchange of information between other agencies and authorized individuals. The document outlines five overall goals, including improving discovery and access through common standards and encouraging collective action collaboration and accountability. Federal agencies can take several steps to accomplish these and other goals, the document says. For example, the document points out that improving identity and authentication controls and encouraging data-level tagging to ensure the secure sharing of data can help improve discovery and access through standards. To read further, please visit http://www.eweek.com/security/obama-administration-outlines-national-information-sharing-strategy/.
Purdue University is Building the Third Pillar of Science:
HPC at Purdue has two complementary roles. Advanced science and engineering is based, to a growing degree, on the "third pillar of science". That is, computational simulation complements research and development that is driven by theoretical studies and real experiments. Through computer simulation, theories can be explored and experiments can be conducted that were unthinkable just a few years ago. HPC research develops the technology that realizes such simulations - climate change predictions, molecular simulations for drug design, exploration of new theories of physics particles in search of the building blocks of matter, to name just a few. To read further, please visit http://www.purdue.edu/discoverypark/cri/.
NEES uses Open Science Grid to Help Reduce Earthquake damage
Hands-on research into earthquake-resistant buildings is expensive and time-consuming. It takes considerable resources and large spaces to build a two-story wall and push it around with the magnitude of forces that earthquakes can produce. Plus, physical models can only test a couple walls and a few variations. Robust computer simulations help by verifying that a new system behaves as expected and with less damage. Simulations can also look at a broader range of walls and earthquake ground motion records. In particular, the NEES team uses OpenSees (the Open System for Earthquake Engineering Simulation) software on the OSG for predicting the seismic response of structural and geotechnical systems. To read further, please visit https://www.opensciencegrid.org/bin/view/Management/ResearchHighlight33.
Educator Curriculum and Information
C# Named Top Programming Language of 2012
eWeek
Microsoft's C# programming language was ranked as the number one programming language of 2012, according to the PYPL PopularitY of Programming Language index. C# had the biggest growth in 2012, rising more than 2.3 percent and surpassing Java, PHP, and C++, according to the PYPL index. However, "over a five-year period, Python is the language whose popularity is growing the fastest; it is already the second most popular in the U.S," according to the index. The PYPL index is based on data from Google Trends, which measures search volume, and the results are based on the relative number of searches for programming tutorials in the given language. Although the popularity of Java and JavaScript have remained stable over the past year, the growth of C# has come at the expense of C and Basic, while Python's growth has come at Perl's expense. To read further, please visit http://www.eweek.com/developer/c-named-top-programming-language-of-2012/.
Best Tech Colleges Are Harder Than Ever to Get In
Network World
Early admission statistics indicate that 2013 will be another difficult year for high school seniors to get accepted into the leading undergraduate computer science and engineering programs. The U.S.'s most highly ranked tech colleges reported a sharp rise in early applications, prompting them to be more selective in choosing prospective freshmen. For example, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology received 6,541 early applications, an increase of 9 percent over 2011, and accepted 650 students for an acceptance rate of 10 percent. Stanford University received 6,103 early applications and accepted 725 students for an acceptance rate of 12 percent. The California Institute of Technology received 1,713 early applications, a 17 percent increase over 2011, and accepted 250 students for an acceptance rate of 15 percent. Harvard University received 4,856 early applications, an increase of 14 percent over 2011, and accepted 895 students for an acceptance rate of 18 percent. To read further, please visit http://www.networkworld.com/news/2013/010313-tech-colleges-265471.html.
Student Engagement and Information
Computational Science Postdoctoral Fellow
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - Req # 75275
The Scientific Computing Group in the Computational Research Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has an immediate postdoctoral fellow opening in the area of development and applications of computational algorithms enabling discovery and characterization of functional electronic materials. For more information and to apply, please visit
https://lbl.taleo.net/careersection/2/jobdetail.ftl?lang=en&job=75275.
Computational Science Postdoctoral Fellows
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - Req # 75276
The Applied Numerical Algorithms Group in the Computational Research Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) has immediate postdoctoral fellow openings in the area of development of computational algorithms and their application to scientific areas that are of interest to DOE and LBNL. For more information and to apply, please visit
https://lbl.taleo.net/careersection/2/jobdetail.ftl?lang=en&job=75276.
Computational Science Postdoctoral Fellow (Computational Chemistry & Materials Science)
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - Req # 75368
The Scientific Computing Group in the Computational Research Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) has a postdoctoral fellow opening in the area of Computational Chemistry and Materials Science.
The successful candidates will participate in research activities related to computational mathematics for chemistry and materials science that are relevant to DOE and LBNL missions. Of particular interest are the development of numerical algorithms for constructing adaptive local basis functions suitable for discretizing the Kohn-Sham problem, the development of efficient dimension reduction algorithms for coupled-cluster calculations, and other numerical linear algebra problems that arise in the solution of the quantum many-body problem. The research activities will include the analysis of the performance profile and algorithmic complexity of existing computational approaches; the improvement of the efficiency and reliability of existing algorithms; and the development of novel computational algorithms on high performance computers for quantum chemistry and materials science. For more information and to apply, please visit
https://lbl.taleo.net/ca.
Career Opportunities
Systems Administrator at Berkeley Center for Structural Biology
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - Req # 75194
The Systems Administrator will be responsible for system administration for the Berkeley Center for Structural Biology (BCSB) research group. Beyond the system administration duties, the incumbent will also be involved in installation and maintenance of a variety of lab electronic and mechanical systems. Specifically, configuration and development of Delta Tau motion controllers and Wago IO systems. For more information and to apply, please visit https://lbl.taleo.net/careersection/2/jobdetail.ftl?lang=en&job=75194.
Web/UI Designer
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - Req # 75003
Be a part of addressing the next generation of science research problems. High quality user interfaces are now critical to all areas of scientific investigation. We are looking for a few people with strong web development skills interested in working on exciting science research projects.
This position will involve work in a results-driven research environment on a wide array of user-facing software development problems including: the planning, coding, and deployment of web applications, web interfaces for browsing scientific datasets, development and testing of REST service interfaces, and continuous testing and integration. For more information and to apply, please visit
https://lbl.taleo.net/careersection/2/jobdetail.ftl?lang=en&job=75003.
Talented Software Developers
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is building a next-generation computational resource for biological investigation, the Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase). This integrated software system aims to become the "go-to" online community for biological research. KBase is a collaborative effort designed to accelerate our understanding of microbes, microbial communities, and plants. It will be a community-driven, extensible and scalable open-source software framework and application system. Collaborations with other Department of Energy (DOE) projects, including biofuel research, bioremediation, and the Earth's carbon cycle will provide exciting opportunities for advancing fundamental and applied biological science. By providing tools for systems biology experimental design and data analysis and creating a platform to enable predictive modeling and hypothesis generation and testing, KBase will change the way biological research is done. For more information and to apply, please visit http://www.linkedin.com/jobs?viewJob=&jobId=4500648&trk=eml-anet_dig-b_premjb-ttl-cn&ut=00-qUAtoL1BlA1.
Last But Not Least – Computational News of Interest
Now, 'Smart Closet' to Help You Dress Up
The Times of India
Researchers at the National University of Singapore and the Chinese Academy of Science are developing Magic Closet, a smart closet system that uses artificial intelligence to suggest occasion-based and color-appropriate outfits. “The Magic Closet can be used as a mobile personalized clothes management app,” according to National University of Singapore researchers Si Liu and Shuicheng Yan. “It can also be used as a plug-in system in online shops to help customers choose suitable clothes.” The Magic Closet software makes outfit suggestions for 10 different occasions, including weddings, funerals, work, and dates. The software also matches clothing to an item the user already owns, taking suggestions from the user’s wardrobe and from online shops. The researchers trained the program with more than 24,000 photos of outfits from online shopping sites and photo-sharing communities. They searched for photos that were highly rated to catch fashionable combinations. The researchers also asked people on Amazon's Mechanical Turk Web site to match their photos with occasions and keywords and then developed a program to analyze the tagged photos, looking for rules they could incorporate into the recommendation system. To read further, please visit http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-12-28/science/36035663_1_photos-outfits-suggestions.
Computers May Someday Beat Chefs at Creating Flavors We Crave
NPR Online
IBM researchers are developing a computer that can understand how people come up with new ideas, including new food recipes. “The goal in computational creativity is to come up with new things that have never been seen before,” says IBM's Lav Varshney. The researchers are developing a program that can invent new recipes that taste good and are part of a healthy diet. The researchers first give the computer access to a database of recipes that have already proven to be successful. “Then we remix them, substitute things, do all kinds of other modifications, and generate millions of new ideas for recipes,” Varshney says. The researchers then attempt to predict which recipes people will like, based on basic principles of chemistry and psychology. They say the program could be used to make school lunches more appealing to students or to help combat obesity by finding dishes that satisfy people’s food cravings without as many calories. To read further, please visit http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/12/25/167725602/computers-may-someday-beat-chefs-at-creating-flavors-we-crave.
