HPC in the News
NSF CISE Posts Big Data Regional Innovation Hubs Program to Spur the Development of New Big Data Partnerships Among Government, University, and Industry
CCCBlog
Last Friday, the National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) announced the Big Data Regional Innovation Hubs program to ignite new partnerships among government, university, and industry around Big Data. The program continues NSF’s leadership in the National Big Data Research and Development Initiative, launched in 2012 to solve some of the Nation’s most pressing R&D challenges related to extracting knowledge and insights from large, complex collections of digital data. To read further, please visit http://www.cccblog.org/2015/04/02/nsf-cise-posts-big-data-regional-innovation-hubs-program-to-spur-the-development-of-new-big-data-partnerships-among-government-university-and-industry/.
First White House Data Chief Discusses His Top Priorities
Scientific American
Data science is not entirely new to Washington, D.C.—nor is DJ Patil, who was recently named as the U.S.’s first chief data scientist. Pres. Barack Obama’s administration launched Data.gov nearly six years ago and required all agencies to publish at least three “high-value” data sets to the publicly accessible Web site. Now it is Patil’s job, at least in part, to ensure that the government continues to release data in a variety of areas while ensuring that the information is not misused.
Patil’s top priority on returning to Washington after several years as a data specialist at several tech companies and the venture capital firm Greylock Partners is the White House’s Precision Medicine Initiative. Obama launched the public health program in January with a $215 million investment in his 2016 budget to help prevent and treat diseases based on information that takes into account differences in individual patient’s genes, environment and lifestyle. To read further, please visit http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/first-white-house-data-chief-discusses-his-top-priorities/.
Micron Reveals HPC Ambitions with Convey Purcha
If you’re looking to establish yourself as an HPC player, you can either develop the technology yourself or purchase an established HPC company. Today, advanced memory maker Micron went with the latter course of action by acquiring Convey Computer Corp, widely known for its deep HPC roots and track record delivering hybrid-core computing. The financial terms of the transaction are confidential, but Convey’s co-founder and CEO Bruce Toal filled in some of the high-level details on this breaking story in a conversation with HPCwire earlier today. Toal paints a picture of a relationship formed on mutual interest in driving application performance with new memory capabilities and shared customers. Convey began working with Micron and common customers over a year ago designing accelerators that employ Micron’s Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC). Although this product hasn’t been formerly launched, Convey and Micron previewed it at SC14, so it seems likely that an announcement will be forthcoming. To read further, please visit http://www.hpcwire.com/2015/04/01/micron-reveals-hpc-intentions-with-convey-purchase/.
New Models for Research, Part III – Embracing the Big Data Stack
Open Big Data Architectures (OBDA) can act as a foundational component for a university’s big data research platform. OBDA methodologies to which many research colleagues in the private and public sectors are only pensively adopting offer equal amounts of puzzlement and prosperity. Combined with a slow response in curriculum we find the public space outpaced by the private. This is nothing new and not the sounding of alarm, however the opportunity for the public research community to embrace ‘open big data’ bridges that gap. Continued expansion of Internet2 connectivity addresses deficiencies in available bandwidth supporting thoughtful cooperation and collaboration for inter-intra university research sciences. With continued support and emphasis on personalized, precision medicine producing renewed funding streams and of course access to diverse data types and cohorts, the opportunities in this new paradigm will continue to emerge. Hadoop and the MapReduce programming paradigm have a substantial base in the bioinformatics community. The field of next-generation sequencing analysis has added substantially to this adoption. The cost-effectiveness of Hadoop-based analysis on commodity Linux clusters (still X86), and cloud integration points thanks to public cloud vendors offering Hadoop with easy-to-consume-and-use MapReduce methodology in parallelization for many popular data analysis algorithms has been a good advocate. To read further, please visit http://www.hpcwire.com/2015/03/30/new-models-for-research-part-iii/.
BCS Network to Figure Out Why Initiatives to Attract Females to IT Are Not Working
ComputerWeekly.com
Liz Bacon, the outgoing president of BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, says a key piece of her legacy at BCS will be a network of women in the science, technology, engineering, and math fields she established at the Institute to encourage more women to pursue careers in those fields. Bacon says despite numerous efforts to boost women's participation in information technology (IT), their representation in the field continues to slip. "The challenge is that we have lots of computing initiatives but the number of women is declining. What we're doing is obviously not working, so we need to look at why," Bacon says. "The aim of the network is to share best practices, gather data, find role models and find out how we can help." To read further, please visit http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240241162/BCS-network-to-figure-out-why-initiatives-to-attract-females-to-IT-are-not-working.
XSEDE Partners and Friends
TACC’s Stampede, Blue Waters Supercomputers Provide First Look at One of Nature's strongest Biomolecular Interactions.
One of life's strongest bonds has been discovered by a science team researching biofuels with the help of supercomputers. Their find could boost efforts to develop catalysts for biofuel production from non-food waste plants. Renowned computational biologist Klaus Schulten of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign led the analysis and modeling of the bond, which behaves like a Chinese Finger Trap puzzle. "What's new is that we looked at the system very specifically, with the tools of single molecule force spectroscopy and molecular dynamics, computing it for the first time," Schulten said. To read further, please visit https://www.tacc.utexas.edu/-/supercomputers-help-solve-puzzle-like-bond-for-biofuels.
XSEDE Monthly Newsletter Changes Name, Service
XSEDE's e-newsletter, now called IMPACT, is distributed monthly to update subscribers on the activities and enabled discoveries of the XSEDE project. We encourage you to share the subscription link with colleagues and members of the HPC community. Important note: subscribers will be given the option of unsubscribing at anytime. To learn more and to subscribe, please visit https://illinois.edu/gm/subscribe/22179.
HPC Call for Participation
XSEDE15 – Call for Papers
July 26-30, 2015 – St. Louis, Missouri
Submission Deadline – April 6, 2015
XSEDE15, the 4th annual conference, will showcase the discoveries, innovations, challenges and achievements of those who utilize and support XSEDE resources and services, as well as other digital resources and services throughout the world. This year's theme is "Scientific advancements enabled by enhanced cyberinfrastructure." Papers will be published in the ACM Digital Library, with some papers published in various journals. XSEDE15 has various opportunities for students to participate, including travel grants that may more easily help students get to St. Louis. Additionally, potential sponsors can reach a diverse, important group of individuals by participating at XSEDE15. For more information, please visit https://www.xsede.org/web/conference/xsede15.
Call for Papers: Workshop on Modeling & Simulation of Systems and Applications
August 12-14, 2015 - University of Washington, Seattle, Washington
Submission Deadline – June 1, 2015
Notification – July 1, 2015
Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy
Submitted abstracts must address the area of integrated modeling and Simulation of performance, power, and reliability of systems and Applications. To be considered for a paper or poster, novel techniques, Ideas, and tools described in the abstract must address unified modeling Of at least, two aspects of the performance/power/reliability triad. For workshop information, please visit http://hpc.pnl.gov/modsim/2015/. For abstract submission information, please visit https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=modsim20150.
CALL FOR PAPERS, TUTORIALS, and PANELS: INNOV 2015, The Fourth International Conference on Communications, Computation, Networks and Technologies
November 15 - 20, 2015 - Barcelona, Spain
Submission deadline - June 16, 2015
The topics suggested by the conference can be discussed in term of concepts, state of the art, research, standards, implementations, running experiments, applications, and industrial case studies. Authors are invited to submit complete unpublished papers, which are not under review in any other conference or journal in the following, but not limited to, topic areas. Before submission, please check and conform with the Editorial rules: http://www.iaria.org/editorialrules.html. To read the call for papers, please visit http://www.iaria.org/conferences2015/CfPINNOV15.html. To submit a paper, please visit http://www.iaria.org/conferences2015/SubmitINNOV15.html.
Upcoming Conferences, Webinars, and Seminars
12th Annual 2015 HPC – Cloud Technology
April 6, 2015 – New York City, New York
Big Data, Cloud Technology, Low Latency, Networks, Data Centers, APIs, Scalability, cost savings for the global financial markets. Wall Street IT professionals, code writers and programmers will assemble at this 2015 HPC – Cloud Technology, April 6. Leading Wall Street IT directors and vendor technology experts will speak on the program. Speakers will cover 2015 HPC, Cloud technology, and the latest programs to increase speed, put-through, and reduce costs. Wall Street is increasing their technology and data center budgets by 7% in 2015. Leading companies will be showing their newest systems live online at this efficient one-day networking opportunity. Full conference program includes industry luncheon, general sessions, drill down sessions, exhibits, post show receptions. For more information, please visit http://www.flaggmgmt.com/linux/index.html.
Datacloud South East Asia 2015
April 8-9, 2015 - Johor, Malaysia
Enterprises and third party operators across South East Asian markets are transforming to cloud datacenters, fast becoming the indispensable infrastructure for computing, storage and management of big data. Enterprises require simple and scalable ways to create interoperability among many siloed data and endpoints, which offer highly available, multi-tenant and elastic integration cloud to support high density computing. Datacloud South East Asia will assess the energy, scalability, security, architecture and software challenges confronting datacenters, and how enterprises can successfully manage the transition to cloud. Many challenges confront companies who are adapting to a cloud environment: adjusting datacenter environments to cope with the new demands Cloud brings, and drive greater energy efficiency; security of Cloud and managing increased workforce use of smartphones and tablets; moving applications to the cloud to meet security requirements for service availability, manageability and connectivity – data security methods must solve multiple challenges; how IT departments manage the transformation to cloud brokerages and look to outsourcing as part of the solution. For more information, please visit http://www.datacloudasia.com/#.
The IT Summit Denver 2015
April 22 – Denver, Colorado
The IT Summit welcomes IT-professionals who are involved in the evaluation, recommendation, and final decision of technology acquisitions for their organizations. Complimentary admission is granted for guests who hold IT-professional titles, for example (CIO, CTO, CISO, VP of IT, etc.) There is an associated cost for guests who hold non IT titles, for example (CEO, Account Manager, Director of Marketing, Business Development Manager, Owner, etc.) For more information, please visit http://www.theitsummit.com/registration/?id=2890.
Cloud World Forum
June 24-25, 2015 - London, England
Cloud World Forum continues to go from strength to strength, and we’re looking forward to 2015 being the best year yet! Co-located with Enterprise Apps World, part of the renowned Apps World Series, we are EMEA’s largest Cloud & DevOps expo! Join CEOs, CIOs, CDOs, CMOs, HR, and Finance Directors along with their IT Operations and Development teams to bring the digital enterprise to life through cloud technology. The Cloud World Forum 2015 Overview: 16 content theatres, 300 speakers, leading ecosystem partners and past supporters include Google, Salesforce, AWS, IBM, Micrsoft, EMC, Dell, HP & more, 200+ leading solution providers demonstrating their new solutions, dedicated Start-up/SME exhibition & content zone, critical Cyber & Cloud Security & Data Governance Zone, VIP Networking club lounge (The Village), shaped by 100+ research calls with C-Level IT purchasers, and technology pioneers, powered by the leading research and analyst house, Ovum and partner of Business Cloud News, we only showcase what the IT and tech industry wants to see! For more information, please visit http://cloudwf.com/about-cloud-world-forum-2015/.
2015 NCSI/XSEDE Summer workshops Open for Registration!
Introduction to Computational Thinking
June 15-18, 2015 - Utah Valley University, Orem Utah
An interdisciplinary exploration of modeling and simulation tools and curriculum, with a hands-on and minds-on approach to introductory science,math, and engineering across the physical, life, and computer sciences. For more information, please visit http://www.computationalscience.orgor http://www.shodor.org/ncsi.
LittleFe Curriculum Module Buildout
July 7-10, 2015 - Shodor, Durham, North Carolina
If you've come to a LittleFe buildout in recent years, you may remember the focus was on the hardware. Now spend several days with your colleagues working on exploring and expanding the on-line curriculum to support the use of LittleFe in the classroom for parallel, distributed, and cluster computing. For more information, please visit http://www.computationalscience.org or http://www.shodor.org/ncsi
Computing MATTERS: Inquiry-Based Science and Mathematics Enhanced by
Computational Thinking http://www.computationalscience.org
July 13-15, 2015 - University of Nebraska, Lincoln Nebraska
This workshop will focus on how computational thinking can provide a rich environment for dynamic, visual, interactive learning, supporting new models of blended education. As with other Shodor/NCSI workshops, modeling and simulation tools and curriculum will be explored in a hands-on, minds-on approach. Instructors will also be available on the 16th for additional consultation and work on your specific models and classroom examples. For more information, please visit http://www.computationalscience.org. or http://www.shodor.org/ncsi.
Research News From Around the World
Purdue Researchers Use Blue Waters Supercomputer to Design the Building Blocks of Future Nano-Computing Technologies
A relentless global effort to shrink transistors has made computers continually faster, cheaper and smaller over the last 40 years. This effort has enabled chipmakers to double the number of transistors on a chip roughly every 18 months--a trend referred to as Moore's Law. In the process, the U.S. semiconductor industry has become one of the nation's largest export industries, valued at more than $65 billion a year. The foundation of this industry's success has been the development of progressively more capable chips. However, according to the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS), which identifies technological challenges and needs for the semiconductor industry over the next 15 years, signs point to a disruption in these long-running trends. TO READ FURTHER, PLEASE VISIT http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=134313&WT.mc_id=USNSF_1.
Cornell Plays Key Role Surfing for Gravitational Waves
A full century after Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity proclaimed that gravitational waves cause ripples in space-time, humanity may finally have the tools to detect these waves. The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded $14.5 million to the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) consortium over five years to create and operate a Physics Frontiers Center (PFC). James Cordes, Cornell professor of astronomy, is a co-principal investigator on the project and he will lead Cornell’s team in the 11-institution effort. The NANOGrav PFC seeks to detect low-frequency gravitational waves, which are elusive swells in the fabric of spacetime that arise from cosmic events involving extremely large masses. In Einstein’s Theory of Gravity, these events produce distortions that can be measured with radio telescopes. To read further, please visit http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/03/cornell-plays-key-role-surfing-gravitational-waves.
TACC Supports UT's Center for Transportation Research to Solve Austin’s Traffic Woes
Ask any Austinite what they enjoy least about the city, and many will mention the escalating traffic issues. According to Forbes, Austin is one of the fastest growing cities in the U.S., and without a transportation infrastructure equipped to handle the explosion of new transplants, it also ranks as one of the cities with the worst traffic congestion. The Network Modeling Center (NMC), a group of researchers within the Center for Transportation Research (CTR) at The University of Texas at Austin, is using advanced transportation models to help transportation agencies understand, compare, and evaluate alternative solutions and development strategies. However, the complex impact of alternative solutions on everyday traffic is not easy to predict. To read further, please visit https://www.tacc.utexas.edu/-/as-austin-grows-so-do-its-traffic-woes.
Forecasting Future Flooding
The Pacific Northwest is dotted by small, low-lying, coastal cities where populations tend to cluster. These communities can be isolated and are susceptible to devastation from major storms that bring substantial wind, waves and storm surge. With climate change, it is anticipated that storms will only become more frequent and intense, signifying a need to understand how the areas will be affected. David Hill, a researcher at Oregon State University, is focused on the hydrology and hydrodynamics in coastal areas, which represent the boundary between terrestrial and marine environments. His research on future levels of flooding in Tillamook Bay was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research in January 2015. "This particular project is a blending of our interests in estuarine and coastal hydrodynamics and our interests in climate change," Hill said. "We're interested in getting a good quantitative understanding of the extreme water levels we can expect from coastal flooding." To read further, please visit https://www.tacc.utexas.edu/-/forecasting-future-flooding.
USC Team’s DNA Research is Shaping Up
Remo Rohs is looking for some deep connections: He’s integrating genomics and structural biology to uncover some significant insights into how proteins recognize DNA. While genomics deciphers DNA by studying the sequences of base pairs that encode genetic information, structural biology explores the impact of the actual 3-D structure of DNA. Rohs, however, aims to unite the two fields into something new — and hopefully more useful. “Structural biology and genomics are big fields, but there is little interaction between these two worlds,” said Rohs, assistant professor of biological sciences, chemistry and physics at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. “Genomics thinks of entire genomes in terms of sequence, and structural biology thinks of 3-D structures at high resolution but limited size.” In a March 9 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team led by Rohs, which included researchers from Duke and Columbia universities, used a large data set of proteins to show that combining information on DNA shape and sequence resulted in a better understanding of protein-DNA recognition. To read further, please visit http://news.usc.edu//79273/usc-teams-dna-research-is-shaping-up/.
NSF CISE Posts Big Data Regional Innovation Hubs Program to Spur the Development of New Big Data Partnerships Among Government, University, and Industry
Last Friday, the National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) announced the Big Data Regional Innovation Hubs program to ignite new partnerships among government, university, and industry around Big Data. The program continues NSF’s leadership in the National Big Data Research and Development Initiative, launched in 2012 to solve some of the Nation’s most pressing R&D challenges related to extracting knowledge and insights from large, complex collections of digital data. To read further, please visit http://www.cccblog.org/2015/04/02/nsf-cise-posts-big-data-regional-innovation-hubs-program-to-spur-the-development-of-new-big-data-partnerships-among-government-university-and-industry/.
Irish Researchers in Bid to Develop World's Fastest Supercomputers
Software developed by researchers at Queen's University Belfast could be used to build some of the world's fastest computers. The exascale computing software will enable supercomputers to process large amounts of data at higher speeds than ever before. Researchers in the School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering, and Computer Science are collaborating with other specialists from the University of Manchester and the STFC Daresbury Laboratory on the Scalable, Energy-Efficient, Resilient, and Transparent Software Adaptation (SERT) project. "This project sheds valuable insight on how to use many core-based systems effectively, proving major benefits for a wide range of scientific endeavors that depend on large-scale simulations," says Jack Dongarra, an honorary visiting professor at the University of Manchester. To read further, please visit http://www.qub.ac.uk/home/ceao/News/Title,492889,en.html.
University of Wisconsin Researches Ways to Draw Women Toward Science Majors
Female leaders at the University of Wisconsin (UW) are looking for ways to address the inequalities that remain for women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Organizations such as the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) support undergraduate women in their professional endeavors on campus and after graduation. "I think women are doing a lot better in schools now because we have these organizations, so I think our generation is more inclusive, but I think there are still areas in the workplace that need to be worked on for inclusion," says SWE member Catherine Groh. Experts say early introduction to STEM fields is important in order to encourage female students to pursue careers in STEM fields in the future. To read further, please visit https://badgerherald.com/news/2015/02/23/uw-researches-ways-to-draw-women-toward-science-majors/#.VOyMRi40MvJ.
Educator News, Conferences, and Opportunities
Carnegie Melon Webinar- The Science of Learning, Technology, Big Data, and Transformation in Education
April 9, 2015 – 11:00 AM ET
This webinar is on the Science of Learning, Technology, Big Data, and Transformation in Education, presented by Candace Thille. Dr. Thille is the founding director of the Open Learning Initiative (OLI) at Carnegie Mellon University and Stanford University. The abstract is: Using intelligent tutoring systems, virtual laboratories, simulations, and frequent opportunities for assessment and feedback, The Open Learning Initiative (OLI) has been creating and evaluating open web-based learning environments for over twelve years. The OLI environments also serve as a laboratory for fundamental research on human learning. In this talk I will discuss how we make use of expertise from the learning sciences to produce high-quality learning environments and how studies of student use inform both the next iteration of the environment and the underlying learning theory. I will present examples from OLI courses, discuss results from several research studies, and describe the second phase of OLI at Stanford University. For more information, please visit http://www.cccblog.org/2015/04/01/cyberlearning-webinar-the-science-of-learning-technology-big-data-and-transformation-in-education/.
NASA “Hubble Space Telescope 25th Celebration” Education Webinar
April 8, 2015 – 4:00 and 7:00 PM EDT
NASA Educator Professional Development is celebrating 25 years of the Hubble Space Telescope with a series of free webinars open to all educators. Join NASA education specialists to learn about the Hubble Space Telescope mission, and discover activities, lesson plans, educator guides and resources that bring the Hubble Space Telescope and science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, into your classroom. For more information and to register, please visit https://www.etouches.com/ehome/index.php?eventid=121324&.
Center for Astronomy Education Teaching Excellence Workshops: Spring/Summer 2015
April 10, 2015 – Lansing, Michigan
May 2, 2015 – Oceanside, California
June 13-14, 2015 – Orangeburg, South Carolina
June 22-25, 2015 - College Park, Maryland
August 4-6, 2015 - Honolulu, Hawaii
NASA’s Center for Astronomy Education, or CAE, announces a series of educator workshops for astronomy and space science educators. These workshops provide participants with experiences needed to create effective and productive active-learning classroom environments. Workshop leaders model best practices in implementing many different classroom-tested instructional strategies. But more importantly, workshop participants will gain first-hand experience implementing these proven strategies. During many microteaching events, you will have the opportunity to role-play the parts of student and instructor. You will assess and critique each other’s implementation in real time as part of a supportive learning community. You will have the opportunity to use unfamiliar teaching techniques in collaboration with mentors before using them with your students. CAE is funded through NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Exoplanet Exploration Program. For more information, please visit http://astronomy101.jpl.nasa.gov/workshops/index.cfm.
CRMSE Colloquium: Fred Goldberg Discusses NGSS
April 10, 2015 – San Diego, California
Fred Goldberg, CRMSE member and SDSU Professor of Physics, will speak about "Following Student Thinking in a Physics Course for Prospective Elementary Teachers that Aligns with the Next Generation Science Standards". For more information, please visit https://newscenter.sdsu.edu/education/crmse/files/04359-Fred_Goldberg_colloq_flyer.pdf.
Student Engagement and Opportunities
Changing the World One Hackathon at a Time
Sixty-six teens are taking part in the My Brother's Keeper Hackathon, a group coding competition spearheaded by Qeyno Labs CEO Kalimah Priforce. Priforce notes this hackathon is different because it caters to African-American teens, rather than mostly white and Asian men. He says hackathons can collapse the walls that have isolated high-potential kids with too few opportunities. "Why not put Dr. King, Amelia Earhart, and Steve Jobs in one room and see what is it they can do," Priforce says. "But hackathons right now are comprised of Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and maybe one Asian guy. That's a problem." Priforce is planning 10 more hackathons this year, including events in St. Louis and New York City. To read further, please visit http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/02/23/my-brothers-keeper-hackathon-oakland-kalimah-priforce-qeyno-labs/23881719/.
Engineers in Training
June 15-19, 2015 - Durham, North Carolina
Shodor's 15-hour intensive workshop will introduce rising 6th- 8th grade students to the primary elements of a computer-aided engineering design process through the exploration and development of small scale systems. Students will be provided with a set of design criteria and allowed to actively pursue their own engineered solutions through exploration and modeling. Participants will develop techniques in the measurement and collection of experimental data, the use of computational models to process data and aid design, and the construction of an engineered system. The small-scale design systems are drawn primarily from a collection of disciplines including structural engineering (trusses, span bridges), 'aeronautical' engineering (projectile motion), electrical engineering (circuits and passive electronics), chemical engineering (computer modeling), and biomedical engineering (including discussions on nano-technology). For more information, please visit http://www.shodor.org/succeed/curriculum/workshops/Engineers/.
Math Explorations
June 15-19, 2015 - Durham, North Carolina
Why do so many people like math? It's true! Many people actually enjoy the beauty of mathematics (besides using it every day in their work and life). Maybe it is because they see some "inner secrets," or perhaps they understand that math is so much more than just rearranging symbols on a piece of paper. This summer, we want to open your eyes to the "secret knowledge" of higher math. We plan problem solving, discussions, brainstorms, and independent and group investigations. We have picked a variety of the most intriguing and fun topics that mathematics can offer. The math that you already know is enough to start understanding these topics. As participants of Math Explorations, you can expect to enjoy new experiences, to become familiar with concepts of higher mathematics, and to see the connections between these concepts and their relations to other areas of life and science and the world around us. Participants will work both in teams and individually in a supervised, highly interactive, hands-on learning environment. When appropriate for the topic, participants use laptop computers with a high-speed internet connection. For more information, please visit http://www.shodor.org/succeed/curriculum/workshops/MathExplorations/.
Programming Concepts
July 13-17, 2015 - Durham, North Carolina
Every day, most of us interact with technology that runs a computer program in some aspect. This workshop is designed to introduce students to the concepts of computer programming. In this hands-on, interactive workshop students will learn a wide variety of computer programming concepts such as conditional statements, data structures, procedures and functions. Students will learn how to program in both visual and textual programming environments to create highly interactive end-user applications. For more information, please visit http://www.shodor.org/succeed/curriculum/workshops/ProgConcepts/.
Open Science Grid User School
July 27-31, 2015 - University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin
Application Period - April 1 - May 1, 2015
If you could access thousands, maybe millions of hours of computing, how would it transform your research? What discoveries might you make? We are looking for students to apply for and attend this valuable training, where they will learn to use high throughput computing (HTC) to harness vast amounts of computing power for research. Using lectures, discussions, roleplays, and lots of hands-on work with OSG experts in HTC, students will learn how HTC systems work, how to run and manage many jobs and huge datasets to implement a full scientific computing workflow, and where to turn for help and more info. Ideal candidates are science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) graduate students whose research demands large-scale computing. Also, we will consider applications from post-doctoral students, faculty, staff, and advanced undergraduates, so make a good case for you!
Web: http://www.opensciencegrid.org/UserSchool
Email: user-school@opensciencegrid.org
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OSGUserSchool
Twitter: https://twitter.com/OSGUserSchool
Stanford University Announces Programming Competition for High School Students Registration Deadline – May 1, 2015
Stanford’s ProCo is a computer programming contest for high school students in the style of the college-level ACM-ICPC (Association for Computing Machinery - International Collegiate Programming Contest). The ACM ICPC is considered as the "Olympics of Programming Competitions." It is the oldest, largest, and most prestigious programming contest in the world. Stanford ProCo provides high school students in the San Francisco Bay Area with a fun and engaging opportunity to explore their passion in computer science. Students interested in computer science or programming organize into teams of up to three people to compete in a 2-hour, 8-problem speed round followed by a 2-hour special round. Registration information for ProCo 2015 can be found at http://proco.stanford.edu/.
Oracle Academy Big Data Boot Camp for Students and Teachers (Live Webinar)
April 8, 2015 – 9:00- 10:00am PT
Oracle Academy has developed a series of free webcasts and videos to allow students and teachers to learn more about the subject and directly engage with Oracle Big Data experts. Participants will learn about Big Data and the knowledge and skills necessary for modern careers. Data-driven business is quickly becoming the standard in almost every industry, creating unprecedented demand for data-oriented professionals. “Big Data” is a broad term for data sets so large or complex that traditional data processing applications are inadequate. Challenges include analysis, capture, curation, search, sharing, storage, transfer, visualization, and information privacy. Follow this link to register your attendance: https://academy.oracle.com/oa-ask-the-experts.html.
'Coding for All'
Harvard Magazine
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) researcher Jane Margolis has helped write a high school curriculum, "Exploring Computer Science (ECS)," which aims to expose students to a wide range of topics, including HTML website design, data analysis, robotics, and programming through Scratch. The new curriculum will be paired with a professional development course for teachers, who will learn inquiry-based teaching methods along with the content itself. ECS has received the backing of Code.org, and has been adopted by districts in Los Angeles, Spokane, Chicago, and New York City, among others. Margolis is now working with University of Pennsylvania researcher Yasmin Kafai to create an electronic textiles unit for ECS. To read further, please visit https://harvardmagazine.com/2015/03/coding-for-all.
Computational Science News of Interest
India Green Lights $730 Million Supercomputing Grid
HPCwire
The Indian government has approved a seven-year supercomputing program worth $730 million (Rs. 4,500-crore) intended to restore the nation’s status as a world-class computing power. The prime mandate of the National Supercomputing Mission, first revealed last October, is the construction of a vast supercomputing grid connecting academic and R&D institutions and select departments and ministries. The National Supercomputing grid will be comprised of more than 70 geographically-distributed high-performance computing centers linked over a high-speed network, the National Knowledge Network (NKN). According to an official press statement from India’s Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, the mission involves both capacity and capability machines. Earlier reports stated that the first order of business would be raising India’s supercomputing ranking by standing up three petascale supercomputers, some 40-times faster than the country’s current fastest. To read further, please visit http://www.hpcwire.com/2015/03/26/india-greenlights-730-million-supercomputing-grid/.
Why is it Called Windows 10 and Not Windows 9?
ExtremeTech
Now that Windows 10 development is in full swing, with the new Spartan browser and new Technical Preview builds appearing on a regular basis, let’s take a step back for a moment and address one of the most confusing things about the next version of Windows. When Microsoft announced its newest operating system, the surprise was not that it was coming, but that Windows would be skipping 9 and heading straight to 10. When asked about Windows 10’s name, Microsoft never gave a clear answer. So why, exactly, is Windows 10 getting the nod instead of 9? You may remember that between Windows 3 and Windows 7, versions of Windows were designated by a name rather than a number: 95, 98, NT, Me, 2000, Vista, and so on. When Microsoft announced Windows 7, there was actually a similar amount of disbelief; after a series of named versions of Windows, it seemed odd to jump back to numbers. To read further, please visit http://www.extremetech.com/computing/191279-why-is-it-called-windows-10-not-windows-9.
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Facebook AI Director Yann LeCun on His Quest to Unleash Deep Learning and Make Machines Smarter
In an interview, Yann LeCun, New York University professor and head of Facebook's Artificial Intelligence (AI) lab, discusses his work as an AI researcher, how AI is portrayed and perceived by the public, and what he sees as the future of the field. LeCun's work focuses on deep learning, which he struggles to provide a concise definition for, except to say direct comparisons to the human brain are often overly simplistic. LeCun says deep-learning networks are in some ways inspired by the structure and function of the human brain, but tend to be quite different in many fundamental ways. LeCun is especially wary of researchers and businesses that portray their AI as being like the brain, suspecting that such claims are more about attracting attention than being accurate. LeCun takes a very measured approach to predicting the future of AI. To read further, please visit http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intelligence/facebook-ai-director-yann-lecun-on-deep-learning/.
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