HPC In the News

 

Intel ‘Haswell’ Xeon E5s Aimed Squarely at HPC

The HPC market is a key one for Intel's Xeon E5 family of processors, and that is perfectly evident as the chip maker rolls out the "Haswell" Xeon E5-2600 v3 processors for servers and workstations at its Intel Developer Forum today in San Francisco. Many of the new features in the Haswell Xeon E5s are designed to boost the performance and efficiency of calculations that are commonly done in modeling and simulation applications. This is not a surprise, since HPC is now a big deal. To read further, please visit http://www.hpcwire.com/2014/09/08/intel-haswell-xeon-e5s-aimed-squarely-hpc/.

Next-Generation Cray Supercomputers to Include Intel Xeon Processor E5-2600 v3 Product Family

Global supercomputer leader Cray Inc. today announced that its next generation Cray XC supercomputers and Cray CS cluster supercomputers will feature the new Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 v3 product family, formerly code named “Haswell.” With a higher core count per processor, improved memory latency and bandwidth, and faster performance, the new Intel Xeon processors will be available in the complete line of Cray XC and Cray CS products, including both air and liquid-cooled models. “Cray is focused on designing and building supercomputing systems that deliver sustained and scalable performance improvements on real-world codes and applications, and incorporating the new Intel Xeon processors will strengthen our Cray XC and CS offerings,” said Barry Bolding, Cray’s vice president of marketing and business development. “Advanced processing technology is a key component of our high-end supercomputers and cluster solutions, and our next generation systems will provide our customers a compelling combination of advanced Intel processors and powerful Cray supercomputers.” To read further, please visit http://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/next-generation-cray-supercomputers-include-intel-xeon-processor-e5-2600-v3-product-family/.

William Kramer Brings Expertise in High Performance Computing and Closer Ties to NCSA

William Kramer joins the CS Department at Illinois as a research professor this year. Since 2008, he has been with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) on the University of Illinois campus, where he is the director and principal investigator of the Blue Waters petascale supercomputer project. Prior to joining the University of Illinois, Kramer was the general manager of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). Before that he worked at the NASA Ames Research Center, where he was responsible for all aspects of operations and customer service for NASA’s Numerical Aerodynamic Simulator (NAS) supercomputer center and other large computational projects as well as starting a major Air Traffic Control Program. To read further, please visit http://cs.illinois.edu/news/kramer-brings-expertise-high-performance-computing-and-closer-ties-ncsa.

Mayo Clinic and IBM Task Watson to Improve Clinical Trial Research
CNNMoney

Mayo Clinic and IBM today announced plans to pilot Watson, the IBM cognitive computer, to match patients more quickly with appropriate clinical trials. A proof-of-concept phase is currently underway, with the intent to introduce it into clinical use in early 2015. “In an area like cancer —where time is of the essence — the speed and accuracy that Watson offers will allow us to develop an individualized treatment plan more efficiently so we can deliver exactly the care that the patient needs,” says Steven Alberts, M.D., chair of medical oncology at Mayo Clinic. Researchers hope the increased speed also will speed new discoveries. To read further, please visit http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/prnewswire/NY06268.htm.

University of Arkansas Receives $300,000 NSF Grant

The National Science Foundation has awarded the University of Arkansas at Little Rock a $291,908 grant for the purchase of a high-performance data storage system that will be a first at this scale for higher education and research in Arkansas. The three-year grant will help UALR’s Computational Research Center (CRC) acquire a petascale data storage system to expand on the supercomputers already available there. “To put this in perspective, the new system will be 10 times larger than the latest system we currently own,” according to Dr. Kenji Yoshigoe, principal investigator and director of the CRC. Supercomputers are capable of performing as much as multi-quadrillions operations per second. They can be used for simulation, data mining, and visualization to solve various scientific problems not possible by theoretical and experimental approaches, Yoshigoe said. To read further, please visit http://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/university-arkansas-receives-nsf-grant/.

Indiana University’s Server Management Efforts Garner VMware Innovation Award

Indiana University has won a 2014 VMware Innovation Award for its efforts to thwart cybercriminals through better server management and security. VMware, a global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, announced on August 27 that IU received the VMware User Group (VMUG) Impact award for the IU Intelligent Infrastructure (IUII) program. IUII is a suite of services provided by the Enterprise Infrastructure division of University Information Technology Services (UITS). The program offers IU departments remote access to the same high-performance and high-availability hardware and security devices UITS uses to deliver mission-critical applications and services, such as student information and financial systems. To read further, please visit http://itnews.iu.edu/articles/2014/ius-server-management-efforts-garner-vmware-innovation-award--.php.

ORNL Welcomes First Liane Russell Fellows

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Aug. 29 – Renowned mammalian geneticist Liane Russell returned Thursday to the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory to congratulate the first recipients of a new fellowship named in her honor. ORNL created the Liane Russell Distinguished Early Career Fellowship to attract a diverse and promising work force of early career scientists and engineers whose interests align with DOE missions. “It is gratifying to see these opportunities being made available to a diverse group of talented young people because, sadly, in the scientific fields this has not always been the case,” Russell said. “For this reason I am particularly honored to have my name attached to the fellowships.” To read further, please visit http://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/ornl-welcomes-first-liane-russell-fellows/.

NSF Awards Research Grant to University of Central Oklahoma Professor

The National Science Foundation awarded a $304,745 research grant to University of Central Oklahoma professor of engineering and physics Evan Lemley, Ph.D., and the university’s Center for Research and Education in Interdisciplinary Computation (CREIC). The grant will fund a cluster supercomputer to be named “Buddy,” a nod to the university’s mascot, Buddy Broncho. A cluster supercomputer allows multiple users to work on problems much larger than any one computer or user could handle alone. “Buddy” will support research and education for students, faculty and staff at the university, as well as researchers across the state. “This grant is pivotal in transforming the research computing infrastructure at UCO and meeting the growing needs for high performance computing resources for student-centered research and education at UCO and other institutions in Oklahoma,” said Lemley, who is the director of CREIC and will serve as the lead researcher on the project. To read further, please visit http://broncho2.uco.edu/press/prdetail.asp?NewsID=17931.

Supercomputing 102: The Toolbox of a Successful Computational Scientist (video)
InsideHPC

In this video from the 2014 DOE Computational Science Graduate Fellowship Review, Judith Hill from ORNL presents: Supercomputing 102: The Toolbox of a Successful Computational Scientist. “Successful computational scientists are experts in both a scientific field, such as chemistry, physics, or astrophysics, knowledgeable about both mathematical representations and algorithmic implementations, and also specialize in developing and optimizing scientific application codes to run on computers, both large and small. A truly successful computational science investigation requires the “three A’s”: a compelling Application, the appropriate Algorithm, and the underlying Architecture. Building on the architectural concepts previously introduced, we will survey several HPC applications and discuss the choice of algorithmic implementations in the context of current and anticipated architectural trends. Our goal is to provide an overview of the general terminology the cross-cuts many computational science domains and provide an introduction to a computational approaches that might be employed.” To view, please visit http://insidehpc.com/2014/08/supercomputing-102-toolbox-successful-computational-scientist/.

 

SC14 News

 

Dot Harris of DOE’s Office of Economic Impact and Diversity to Address SC14 BE Workshop Attendees
Sunday, Nov. 16, 2014 – New Orleans, Louisiana

3:30pm, rooms 288-289 of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center

LaDoris “Dot” Harris, director of the Department of Energy’s Office of Economic Impact and Diversity, will address participants and guests of the SC14 Broader Engagement (BE) program. Harris’ talk is open to all SC14 attendees who have registered to attend workshops at the conference. She will speak as part of the BE workshop. The BE Program’s goal is to increase the participation of individuals who have been traditionally under-represented in HPC. The program offers special activities to introduce, engage and support a diverse community in the conference and in the HPC community.    With nearly 30 years of experience as an entrepreneur and energy-sector leader, Harris has a wealth of knowledge to share with SC14-BE scholars. At DOE, Harris leads efforts to ensure minorities and historically underrepresented communities are afforded an opportunity to engage with U.S. energy programs. She oversees workforce development, a corporate funding strategy for minority institutions, DOE contracting opportunities for small businesses. To read further, please visit http://sc14.supercomputing.org/blog/dot-harris-doe%E2%80%99s-office-economic-impact-and-diversity-address-sc14-be-workshop-attendees.

Video: Gearing Up for the SC14 Student Cluster Competition

In this video, a team of students from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville prepare for the SC14 Student Cluster Competition.In related news, SC14 has announced the roster for this year’s competition:

• The University of Texas – Austin
• Illinois Institute of Technology
• iVEC – Australia
• Friedrich-Alexander-Universität – Germany
• National Tsing Hua University – Taiwan
• University of Tennessee – Knoxville
• Purdue University /EAFIT – Colombia
• The University of Oklahoma
• The University of Science and Technology – China
• National University of Singapore
• Huazhong University of Science and Technology – China
• Massachusetts Green Tea

To view, please visit http://insidehpc.com/2014/08/video-gearing-sc14-student-cluster-competition/.

 

HPC Call for Participation

 

The 21st Annual IEEE International Conference on High Performance Computing (HiPC 2014) – Call for Papers
December 17-20, 2014 - Goa, India
Author Registration Deadline – September 30, 2014
Sponsored by IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Parallel Processing (TCPP)

This conference will serve as a forum for researchers from around the world to present their current research efforts and findings, and will act as a venue for stimulating discussions and highlighting high performance computing (HPC) related activities in Asia. The conference has a history of attracting participation from reputed researchers from all over the world. For complete information, please visit http://www.hipc.org/hipc2014/index.php.

9th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON LANGUAGE AND AUTOMATA THEORY AND APPLICATIONS (LATA 2015) – Call for Papers
March 2-6, 2015 - Nice, France
Paper Submission Deadline – October 10, 2014

LATA is a conference series on theoretical computer science and its applications. Following the tradition of the diverse PhD training events in the field developed at Rovira i Virgili University in Tarragona since 2002, LATA 2015 will reserve significant room for young scholars at the beginning of their career. It will aim at attracting contributions from classical theory fields as well as application areas. LATA 2015 will consist of: invited talks, invited tutorials, peer-reviewed contributions For more information, please visit http://grammars.grlmc.com/lata2015/.

2015 Rice OG HPC Workshop - Call for Abstracts
March 4-5, 2015 – Houston, Texas
Abstract Submission Deadline – November 14, 2014
Student Poster Submission Deadline – January 23, 2015

The Oil and Gas High Performance Computing (HPC) Workshop, hosted annually at Rice University, is the premier meeting place for discussion of challenges and opportunities around high performance computing, information technology, and computational science and engineering. The Program Committee is pleased to invite you to participate in the 8th annual workshop.  We encourage you to submit a technical abstract(s) to be considered for the workshop program. The workshop offers ample opportunities to attend talks, engage in networking and technical conversation, and talk with students about research and employment opportunities. To read further, please visit http://rice2015.og-hpc.org/call-for-abstracts/.

COMPUTATION TOOLS 2015, The Sixth International Conference on
Computational Logics, Algebras, Programming, Tools, and Benchmarking – Call for Papers, Panels, Tutorials
March 22 - 27, 2015 - Nice, France
Submission Deadline - October 28, 2014

The advent of advanced computing embracing various forms of computational intelligence, large-scale strategies, and technology-oriented approaches relays on fundamental achievements in systems and feature specification, domain-oriented programming and deployment platforms and benchmarking. COMPUTING TOOLS 2015 continues an event under the umbrella of ComputationWorld 2015 dealing with logics, algebras, advanced computation techniques, specialized programming languages, and tools for distributed computation. Mainly, the event targets those aspects supporting context-oriented systems, adaptive systems, service computing, patterns and content-oriented features, temporal and ubiquitous aspects, and many facets of computational benchmarking. For complete information, please visit http://www.iaria.org/conferences2015/COMPUTATIONTOOLS15.html.

 

Upcoming Workshops, Conferences and Webinars

 

4th International Workshop on Climate Informatics
September 25-26, 2014 - Boulder, Colorado

The amount of observational and model-simulated data within the climate sciences has grown at an accelerating rate since the early 1980s. The increasing amount of available data creates many opportunities for researchers in machine learning and statistics to partner with climate scientists in the development of new methods for interdisciplinary knowledge discovery. Climate informatics broadly refers to any research combining climate science with approaches from statistics, machine learning and data mining. The Climate Informatics workshop series, now in its third year, seeks to bring together researchers from all of these areas. We aim to stimulate the discussion of new ideas, foster new collaborations, grow the climate informatics community, and thus accelerate discovery across disciplinary boundaries. The format of the workshop seeks to overcome cross-disciplinary language barriers and to emphasize communication between participants by featuring tutorials, invited talks, panel discussions, posters and break-out sessions. For more information,  please visit https://www2.image.ucar.edu/event/ci2014.

Workflows for Data Science Center of Excellence (WorDS) Scalable Bioinformatics Boot Camp
October 2-3, 2014 -  San Diego Supercomputer Center, La Jolla, California

In the Big Data era, this boot camp will explain how you can turn your bioinformatics applications into scalable workflows by analyzing available options, techniques and tools.  Learn about distributed platforms and systems, Cloud and Big Data, scalable workflow tools, making your science reproducible and gain hands-on- experience with bioKepler tools to build scalable bioinformatics workflows. Who should attend? Graduate students and researchers who are responsible for building bioinformatics and computational biology workflows, evaluating workflow systems as a means to conduct reproducible research, and curious to learn more about what workflows help with are welcome to attend. For registration and details, please visit  http://words.sdsc.edu/events.

SDSC PACE Data Mining Bootcamp 1 

September 17-18, 2014 – La Jolla, California 


Registration ​is ​limited ​and ​offered ​on ​a ​first ​come ​basis. ​Graduate ​students, ​postdoctoral ​ fellows, ​faculty ​and ​university ​staff ​will ​be ​extended ​an ​ educational ​rate ​of ​$695.00. ​ ​To ​qualify ​for ​the ​educational ​ discount ​code ​“EDU” ​use ​your ​academic ​organization, ​title ​and ​ email ​when ​registering. ​ For more information and to register, please visit https://www.regonline.com/Register/Checkin.aspx?EventID=1312504.

SDSC
PACE Data Mining Bootcamp 2

October 15-16, , 2014 – La Jolla, California

Registration ​is ​limited ​and ​offered ​on ​a ​first ​come ​basis. ​Graduate ​students, ​postdoctoral ​ fellows, ​faculty ​and ​university ​staff ​will ​be ​extended ​an ​ educational ​rate ​of ​$695.00. ​ ​To ​qualify ​for ​the ​educational ​ discount ​code ​“EDU” ​use ​your ​academic ​organization, ​title ​and ​ email ​when ​registering. ​For more information and to register, please visit https://www.regonline.com/Register/Checkin.aspx?EventID=1312505.

IEEE BigData 2014
October 27-30, 2014 - Washington DC

In recent years, The Program Committees of the 2014 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (IEEE BigData 2014) invite proposals for Workshops. Selected workshops will hold a central position within the larger conference, which will bring together top academic and industrial researchers from all over the world to exchange cutting edge research ideas in Big Data research, development and practice. Within these fields, workshops at BigData form crucial focal points for emerging communities and forums for the examination of new ideas. The IEEE Big Data conference is emerging as the premier venues for publications on "big data" in all its various aspects. In IEEE Big Data 2013 (http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/bigdata/bigdata2013/index.htm), it received 259 paper submissions for the main conference and 32 paper submissions for the industry and government program. Of those, 44 regular papers and 53 short papers were accepted, which translates into a selectivity that is on-par with top tier conferences. Also, there were 14 workshops associated with IEEE Big Data 2013 covering various important topics related to various aspects of Big Data research, development and applications. For more information, please visit http://cci.drexel.edu/bigdata/bigdata2014/callforworkshop.htm.

SC'14
November 16 – 21, 2014 - New Orleans, Louisiana

HPC is helping to solve our hardest problems in the world. For more than two decades, the SC Conference has been the place to build and share the innovations that are making life-changing discoveries possible. Register and join the community in November to share our collective accomplishments and to engage in these important conversations. Register by October 15, 2014 at http://sc14.supercomputing.org/register. To read further, please visit http://sc14.supercomputing.org/ .

 

Research News From Around the World
 

Hummingbird Hovers for Supercomputer: NSF XSEDE Lonestar Supercomputer Powers 3D Simulation

Hummingbirds can hover so well they seem to float in mid-air. With the help of a supercomputer, Vanderbilt University mechanical engineer Haoxiang Luo has fleshed out some of the secrets of how hummingbirds hover, flight that's more similar to that of an insect than the typical bird. Luo and his colleagues published their results June 2014 in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface. They hope this research can be used to help develop both micro and unmanned aerial vehicles. Luo performed computer simulations of the three-dimensional flow patterns that swirl around a hummingbird's wings using the Lonestar supercomputer of the Texas Advanced Computing Center. The Lonestar system is part of the National Science Foundation's Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), a single virtual system that scientists use to interactively share computing resources, data and expertise. To read further, please visit https://www.tacc.utexas.edu/news/feature-stories/2014/hummingbird-hovers-for-supercomputer.

NSF Expanding the Breadth and Impact of Cybersecurity and Privacy Research

The National Science Foundation's Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace program has announced two new center-scale Frontier awards that will support large, multi-institution projects addressing grand challenges in cyber security and computer science. Frontier awards already support some 225 projects in 39 states with more than $74 million in funding. These projects include education and training initiatives, and both basic and practical computer science research. The first of the new awards will go towards the establishment of the Center for Encrypted Functionalities (CEF), a collaboration between the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Stanford University, Columbia University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Johns Hopkins University. CEF is led by UCLA's Amid Sahai and based on research by his team that discovered the first mathematically sound approach to encrypting functionalities, with the specific goal of achieving program obfuscation. The second award will establish the Modular Approach to Cloud Security project, which seeks to build a modular, multi-layered cloud security system. For more information, please visit http://nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=132197.

University of Delaware’s Carterette Receives Prestigious National Award for Research on Search Engines

University of Delaware professor Ben Carterette has been awarded a Faculty Early Career Development Award from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) to support his work researching ways to make search engines that are better able to understand and correctly respond to human queries. "We use search engines for a wide range of tasks today, from planning a vacation to finding a good day care center," says Carterette. "Some of those tasks, like getting directions and or looking for a weather forecast, are relatively simple, while others, such as finding accurate medical information, are far more complex." The NSF grant will provide $550,000 over five years to support Carterette's research, which seeks to simulate the way in which users query search engines, with the goal of decreasing the number of steps a user must take to find whatever it is they are seeking. To read further, please visit http://www.udel.edu/udaily/2015/jul/carterette-nsf-career-072914.html.

 

Educator News and Opportunities

 

Alternative STEM Programs Offer Early Career Prep for Students
U.S. News & World Report

The Alaska Native Science & Engineering Program's (ANSEP) Summer Bridge program included more than 20 high school students that took college-level math courses and interned with science, technology, engineering, or mathematics-oriented agencies or companies. "[The program] provides students right out of high school an opportunity to put their feet on the ground, roll up their sleeves and go right into their career path," says ANSEP founder Herb Schroeder. For example, Havan Shaginoff, who will be attending the University of Alaska-Anchorage in the fall, spent June and July working in a microbiology lab alongside wildlife biologists to examine genetic samples of a regional bird at the U.S. Geological Survey's Alaska Science Center. Participating in the Summer Bridge program helps students familiarize themselves with college life and a professional environment, according to Schroeder. "It helped me see how college is going to be," says ANSEP Summer Bridge participant Randall Friendly, who spent several weeks working with the Fish and Wildlife Service in the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge, studying brown bears. "It helps you get used to that kind of workplace and that environment." Schroeder believes the sooner students acquire in-the-field experience in the career industries they wish to pursue, the better. To read further, please visit http://www.usnews.com/news/stem-solutions/articles/2014/08/04/alternative-stem-programs-offer-early-career-preparation-for-students.

Perspective: Computer Programming Is a Trade; Let's Act Like It
The Wall Street Journal

One million programming jobs in the United States could go unfilled by 2020 due to the enormous mismatch between the supply and demand for computer programmers, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Fortunately, a computer science degree is not necessary to get a job in programming. University courses in computer science favor theory rather than making websites, services, and apps that companies care about, writes Christopher Mims. Code-school founders say committed programming students are finding jobs whether or not they have a college degree. Computer programming is now a trade that someone can develop a basic proficiency in within weeks or months, secure a first job, and get onto the same path to upward mobility offered to in-demand, highly-paid peers, Mims says. He contends we have entered an age in which demanding that every programmer has a degree is like asking every bricklayer to have a background in architectural engineering. Anecdotal evidence also indicates that coding schools are more inclusive of women and people of color. To read further, please visit http://online.wsj.com/articles/computer-programming-is-a-trade-lets-act-like-it-1407109947.

Back to School – Exploring Computer Science: from the Classrooms of L.A. Schools to a Nationwide Effort

The following is a guest blog post from Gera Jochum, Communications Specialist for the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Directorate at the National Science Foundation (NSF).

A new video produced by the National Science Foundation showcases an innovative computer science curriculum that’s been a huge success in Los Angeles public schools and is now spreading across the nation. The video highlights the work of Jane Margolis, an educator and researcher at UCLA, who has dedicated her career to democratizing computer science education and addressing under-representation in the field. Her work inspires students from diverse backgrounds to study computer science and use their knowledge to help society. With support from the National Science Foundation, Margolis and her team investigated why so few girls and under-represented minorities are learning computer science. After studying the problem, they launched a new computer science curriculum in 2009 called “Exploring Computer Science” or ECS, to reverse the trend. To read further, please visit http://www.cccblog.org/2014/09/02/back-to-school-exploring-computer-science-from-the-classrooms-of-l-a-schools-to-a-nationwide-effort/.

National Fellowship Program for Distinguished STEM Educators

The Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellowship (AEF) Program provides a unique opportunity for accomplished K-12 educators in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) to serve in the national education arena. Fellows spend 11 months working in a Federal agency or U.S. Congressional office, bringing their extensive classroom knowledge and experience to STEM education program and/or education policy efforts. Program applications are due November 20, 2014, and must be submitted through an online application system. Information about the Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellowship Program, including eligibility requirements, program benefits, application requirements, and access to the online application system can be found at http://science.energy.gov/wdts/einstein/. 

UC Davis C-STEM Center Awarded Program Status

Professor Harry Cheng, Director of the UC Davis Center for Integrated Computing and STEM Education (C-STEM), today announced the C-STEM Center has been granted UC A-G Program Status.  This means that schools can easily add C-STEM A-G approved courses to their own school's “A-G” course lists without submitting a complete course content description and going through the traditional approval process with UCOP. In 2014-2015 academic year period, C-STEM plans to fully support the following courses: IIn May 2014, C-STEM became a UC Approved Educational Preparation Program for Undergraduate Admission. As a UC approved Educational Preparation Program, participation in the C-STEM program, C-STEM student and team awards, and C-STEM extracurricular activities are now also recognized in the UC admissions process for all UC campuses as achievements that have explicitly prepared students for college and career. As a UC approved Educational Preparation Program with UC A-G program status, C-STEM is in a very unique position to influence the future direction of K-14 computing and STEM education and will have significant impact on the talent pipeline development for the state and nation.  For more information about C-STEM curriculum contact Heidi Espindola, C-STEM Center Program Manager, by phone at: (530) 752-9082 or by email: hespindola@ucdavis.edu.

 

Student Engagement and Opportunities
 

Alston S. Householder Fellowship: Mathematics and Scientific Computing
Oak Ridge National Laboratory - Oak Ridge, Tennessee

The Computer Science and Mathematics (CSM) Division at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) invites outstanding candidates to apply for the Alston S. Householder Fellowship in mathematics and scientific computing.  This prestigious Fellowship offers an excellent opportunity to conduct exceptional and innovative research in mathematics, statistics and scientific computing, for applications of national priority, utilizing the world’s most powerful extreme scale computing platforms, including TITAN (http://www.olcf.ornl.gov/titan/).    The Fellowship honors Dr. Alston S. Householder, founding director of the Mathematics Division (now CSM Division) at ORNL and recognizes his seminal research contributions to the fields of numerical analysis and scientific computing. Funding for the Householder Fellowship comes from the Computational & Applied Mathematics Group (CAM), which is supported by the Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) of the U.S. Department of Energy (http://www.science.doe.gov/ascr).  To view more information, please visit https://www.linkedin.com/jobs2/view/18921939.

Working towards a Healthy Pipeline: Encouraging CS Undergraduates from U.S. Institutions to Consider Graduate School and Careers in Research
CCC Blog

The CRA Education Committee’s (CRA-E) mission is to address society’s need for a continuous supply of talented and well-educated computing researchers.  The committee’s efforts include both research on the state of the “domestic student pipeline” and developing resources to maintain its health. The fraction of Ph.D. students who are domestic (U.S. citizens or Permanent Residents) has been in decline over the last several decades from around 70% in the mid-1980’s to under 50% in recent years.  A 2013 CRA-E report shows that a small number of departments have accounted for most of the production of domestic undergraduates going on to Ph.D. programs:  From 2000 to 2010, approximately 50% of Ph.D.’s awarded to domestic students come from 54 institutions of baccalaureate origin and the other 50% come from over 747 institutions. To read further, please visit http://www.cccblog.org/2014/08/26/working-towards-a-healthy-pipeline-encouraging-cs-undergraduates-from-u-s-institutions-to-consider-graduate-school-and-careers-in-research/.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security-STEM Summer Internship Program
Applications Available Later This Year

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sponsors a 10-week summer internship program for students majoring in homeland security related science, technology, engineering and mathematics (HS-STEM) Disciplines. The program provides students with quality research experiences at federal research facilities located across the country and allows students the opportunity to establish connections with DHS professionals. It is open to undergraduate students in a broad spectrum of HS-STEM Disciplines and DHS mission-relevant Research Areas. The ultimate goal of the program is to engage a diverse, educated and skilled pool of scientists and engineers in HS-STEM areas and to promote long-term relationships between students, researchers, DHS and research facilities to enhance the HS-STEM workforce. The DHS Education Program is managed by ORAU through the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) under an agreement between DHS and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). ORAU manages the application and review process, notification and implementation of the program. For more information, please visit  http://www.orau.gov/dhseducation/internships/.

These 12 Tech Companies Have (Relatively) High Numbers of Women
Bloomberg News

When Facebook disclosed data on its workforce diversity last month, it was both good news and bad news regarding female employees. The good: Women hold 47% of non-technology jobs, such as in sales, marketing and finance. The bad: Just 15% of its engineers and computer scientists are women Many tech companies know they have a lot of work to do when it comes to diversity in their workforce, especially in technical positions. But some companies seem to be having an easier time hiring female techies than others. ntelo, a startup that analyzes social data to help corporate recruiters spot promising candidates, put together a list of tech companies with some of the highest percentages of female technologists Of course, only the companies know precisely their gender breakdown, and just a few have publicized their numbers. Last month, Google revealed that 17% of its technology employees are female, roughly the same number that Entelo had previously estimated. To read further, please visit http://mashable.com/2014/07/10/women-tech-workforce/.

Other Computational News of Interest

10 Technologies That Will Transform PCs in 2015 and Beyond
InfoWorld

There is much to get excited about computers when you consider all the things that go into PCs to make them faster, lighter, more powerful, and more convenient to use. Intel's next chipset, codenamed Broadwell, may strike a better balance for 2-in-1 PCs, as it will allow for 12.5-inch tablets that weigh less than 1.5 pounds and are thinner than an iPad Air. Over the next six years, AMD expects its processors to become 25 times more power-efficient, outpacing Moore's law by shifting some of the workload to the graphics processor. Meanwhile, a push by Intel for "wire-free" PCs by 2016 could enable wireless charging and low-latency screen sharing to gain some traction. The USB Implementers Forum will follow up Apple's Lightning cable with a standard cable that will be 3.1 times faster and offer fewer headaches. To read further, please visit http://www.infoworld.com/slideshow/160809/10-technologies-will-transform-pcs-in-2015-and-beyond-247531.

Beyond GPS: Five Next-Generation Technologies
KurzweilAI.net

U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) director Arati Prabhakar says his agency is currently running five programs that seek to improve civilian and military GPS navigation technology through development of new methods for obtaining positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) data. The first is the Adaptable Navigation System project, which seeks to bring together data points from non-navigational sources such as electromagnetic signals from satellites and radio broadcasts with data from new sensors using techniques such as cold-atom interferometry. The Microtechnology for Positioning, Navigation, and Timing project leverages DARPA's micro-electromechanical systems technology to make extremely small sensors, such as chip-scale gyroscopes, clocks, and integrated timing and inertial measurement devices. The Quantum-Assisted Sensing and Readout project aims to miniaturize and make portable the technology behind the world's most accurate atomic clocks, which could have applications in new detection and ranging technologies. To read further, please visit http://www.kurzweilai.net/beyond-gps-five-next-generation-technologies?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter.