HPC Happenings
Hobbyists Recreate Lost Cray Supercomputer
HPCwire
early four decades ago, the pioneering computer architect Seymour Cray created one of the most successful and iconic supercomputers ever made, the Cray-1. This 5.5-ton C-shaped tower was a popular sight in laboratories since its release in 1976 throughout the 1980s, but eventually advances in supercomputing gave way to more powerful number crunchers. While all of these historic Crays have long since been retired, hobbyists Chris Fenton and Andras Tantos are determined to preserve this slice of computing history. The duo are endeavoring to reconstruct a working model of the renowned Cray-1 supercomputer at desktop scale, as Gigaom’s Signe Brewster reports. To read further, please visit http://www.hpcwire.com/2014/01/17/hobbyists-seek-recreate-lost-cray-supercomputer/.
Ten Year US Exascale Roadmap Crystalizes
HPCwire
t the tail end of 2013, Congress passed a law directing the Department of Energy to develop exascale computing capability within the next decade in order to meet the objectives of the nuclear stockpile stewardship program. The directive is part of the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act, which President Obama signed into law on December 26, 2013. “The Administrator for Nuclear Security shall develop and carry out a plan to develop exascale computing and incorporate such computing into the stockpile stewardship program under section 4201 of the Atomic Energy Defense Act (50 U.S.C. 2521) during the 10-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act,” notes the relevant text from the law (H.R. 3304). To read further, please visit http://www.hpcwire.com/2014/01/17/ten-year-us-exascale-roadmap-crystalizes/.
President Obama Honors Outstanding Early-Career Scientists
President Obama named 102 researchers as recipients of the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers. The National Science Foundation (NSF) supports 19 of the award recipients. The Presidential Early Career Awards embody the high priority the Obama administration places on producing outstanding scientists and engineers to advance the Nation's goals, tackle grand challenges, and contribute to the American economy. The recipients are employed or funded by the following departments and agencies: Department of Agriculture, Department of Commerce, Department of Defense, Department of Education, Department of Energy, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of the Interior, Department of Veterans Affairs, Environmental Protection Agency, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NSF, the Smithsonian Institution and the Intelligence Community. To read further, please visit http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=129983&WT.mc_id=USNSF_186&WT.mc_ev=click.
2014 UC San Diego Series of PACE Data Mining Boot Camps
February 26-27, 2014 – La Jolla, California
Each day, our society creates 2.5 quintillion bytes of data (that’s 2.5 followed by 18 zeros). Conventional statistical analysis and business intelligence software are not designed to capture, curate, manage and process large quantities of data generated by most enterprises. The PACE Boot Camps provide the Big Data community with conceptual and hands-on training. Learn the critical predictive data analytics techniques and tools that contribute to accurate, actionable and agile insights. For more information, bootcamp topics and to register, please visit http://pace.sdsc.edu/boot-camps.
Applications Being Accepted for Blue Waters Graduate Fellowships
Application Deadline – February 3, 2014
The Blue Waters Graduate Fellowship Program is a new and unique program funded by the National Science Foundation. This prestigious program will select graduate students from across the country to immerse themselves in a year of focused high-performance computing (HPC) research. The fellowships will empower these talented graduate students to advance their HPC knowledge while also providing them with time and support to accelerate their research. The fellowship is designed to support PhD students who are engaged in a program of study and research that is directly relevant to the use of the Blue Waters supercomputer. Preference will be given to candidates engaged in a multidisciplinary research project that combines disciplines such as computer science, applied mathematics and computational science applications. For more information and application guidelines, please visit https://bluewaters.ncsa.illinois.edu/fellowships. Questions? Contact bwgf@ncsa.illinois.edu.
TACC’s Stampede Celebrates First Birthday
Stampede, one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world for open science research, celebrated its first birthday on January 7, 2014, by completing more than 75,000 years of scientific computations – not bad for a one-year-old. Here are some facts, figures & science highlights that capture the comprehensive impact of the system. Stampede and its academic partners will continue to enable promising computational research in 2014 and beyond. To read further, please visit https://www.tacc.utexas.edu/stampede-infographic
Microsoft Advances C# With the M# Language
eWeek
Microsoft researchers have developed a high-level systems programming language known as M# that is an extension of C#. M# aims to deliver a language that provides developers with type safety and productivity as well as performance. "With respect to M#, I think we should keep in mind that there has been an age-old struggle in computer science to deliver highly productive development models that are also efficient and high-performance," says IDC analyst Al Hilwa. "As automation becomes more sophisticated and we head towards driverless cars, for example, it stands to reason that automated code generation should improve." However, before Microsoft can open-source the M# language, the team needs to resolve a few aspects of the language and move to the company's Roslyn compiler as a service codebase so the C# relationship is more elegant, says Microsoft developer Joe Duffy. "That a new operating system needs to be accompanied by a new programming model through a new language or a framework is common in the industry, but it is also risky," Hilwa notes. To read further, please visit http://www.eweek.com/developer/microsoft-advances-c-with-the-m-language.html.
HPC Conference Calls for Participation
NASA Call for Abstracts: The 65th International Astronautical Congres
September 29-October 3, 2014 - Toronto, Canada
Submission Deadline to the IAC Website – February 21, 2014
Submission Deadline to the NASA Website – February 24, 2014
NASA announces its intent to participate in the 65th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) and requests that full-time graduate students attending U.S. universities or colleges respond to this “Call for Abstracts.” The IAC – which is organized by the International Astronautical Federation (IAF), the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA), and the International Institute of Space Law (IISL) – is the largest space-related conference world-wide and selects an average of 1000 scientific papers every year. NASA’s participation in this event is an on-going effort to continue to bridge NASA with the astronautical and space international community. This “Call for Abstracts” is a precursor to a subsequent submission of a final paper, which may be presented at the 63nd IAC. Student authors are invited to submit an abstract regarding an original, unpublished paper that has not been submitted in any other forum. A NASA technical review panel of scientist and/or officials will select abstracts. Many students and professors are involved in NASA related research. Persons submitting abstracts are strongly encouraged to seek advice from their research advisors, professors who are conducting NASA research, and/or from NASA scientists and engineers. The full text of the abstract must be submitted electronically in the prescribed format to the IAC website at www.iafastro.org no later than February 24, 2014 and to NASA at http://iac.nasaprs.com by February 21, 2014. For more information, please visit http://www.iafastro.com/index.php/events/iac/iac-2014.
Call for Papers, Tutorials, Panels - The Fifth International Conference on
Computational Logics, Algebras, Programming, Tools, and Benchmarking (COMPUTATION TOOLS 2014)
May 25 - 29, 2014 - Venice, Italy
Submission Deadline – January 27, 2914
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. All tracks are open to both research and industry contributions, in terms of Regular papers, Posters, Work in progress, Technical/marketing/business presentations, Demos, Tutorials, and Panels. Before submission, please check and conform with the Editorial rules: http://www.iaria.org/editorialrules.html. For complete conference information, please visit http://www.iaria.org/conferences2014/COMPUTATIONTOOLS14.html.
SC14 Call for Workshops Proposals
November 16-21, 3014 – New Orleans, Louisiana
Submission Deadline – February 7, 2014
SC14 will include nearly 30 full-day and half-day workshops that complement the overall Technical Program events, expand the knowledge base of its subject area, and extend its impact by providing greater depth of focus. These workshops are geared toward providing interaction and in-depth discussion of stimulating topics of interest to the HPC community. Following the example of last year, in SC14, workshop submissions and acceptance dates are early in the year to accommodate the expanded focus on peer review. SC’s continuing goal is to provide an informative, high-quality technical program that meets the highest academic standards. Workshop submissions will be reviewed in a rigorous academic and competitive review process. Submitters should ensure to provide convincing arguments for the value of the workshop to the academic community. For more information and submission guidelines, please visit http://sc14.supercomputing.org/program/workshops?goback=.gde_1775643_member_5826707576301047810#!.
Call for Participation – IEEE Cluster 2014
September 22-26, 2014 – Madrid, Spain
Abstracts Submission Deadline – April 24, 2014
Full Paper Deadline – May 2, 2014
Clusters have become the workhorse for computational science and engineering research, powering innovation and discovery that advance science and society. They are the base for building today's rapidly evolving cloud and HPC infrastructures, and are used to solve some of the most complex problems. Cluster 2014 welcomes paper submissions on innovative work from researchers and practitioners in academia, government, and industry that describe original research and development efforts in cluster computing. For more information, including topics of interest and submission guidelines, please visit http://www.cluster2014.org/?goback=.gde_4178444_member_5819103751662755843#!.
Upcoming Conferences, Workshops and Webinars
Rice University 2014 Oil & Gas HPC Workshop
March 6, 2014 – Houston, Texas
The Oil and Gas HPC Workshop, hosted annually at Rice University, is a premier meeting place for engaging in discussion focused on high performance computing and computational science and engineering for the oil and gas industry. The program committee is pleased to invite you to participate in the 7th annual workshop and encourages you to submit abstract(s) for consideration for the technical program. For more information, please visit http://rice2014.og-hpc.org/?utm_source=Oil+%26+Gas+HPC+Workshop+Community&utm_campaign=6928632946-Rice_2013_OG_HPC_Call4Abstracts&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_59170dce43-6928632946-31504533
ACM HPDC 2014
June 23-27, 2014 - Vancouver, Canada
The ACM International Symposium on High-Performance Parallel and Distributed Computing (HPDC) is the premier annual conference for presenting the latest research on the design, implementation, evaluation, and the use of parallel and distributed systems for high-end computing. For more information, please visit http://www.hpdc.org/2014/.
2014 Federated Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems (FedCSIS)
September 7-10, 2014 - Warsaw, Poland
The FedCSIS Multiconference consists of Events (conferences, symposia, workshops, special sessions). Each Event may run over any span of time within the conference dates (from half-day to three days). The FedCSIS Events provide a platform for bringing together researchers, practitioners, and academia to present and discuss ideas, challenges and potential solutions on established or emerging topics related to research and practice in computer science and information systems. Since 2012, Proceedings of the FedCSIS conference are indexed in the Thomson Reuters Web of Science. For more information including submission guidelines, please visit https://fedcsis.org/.
Research Features From Across the Country and Around the World
PSC Projects Make Top Supercomputing Discovery List
Two public health projects at Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center have made HPCwire’s list of “The Top Supercomputing-Led Discoveries of 2013.” The HERMES project is analyzing vaccine supply chains in lower-income countries to identify and repair under-appreciated choke points. The VecNet Cyberinfrastructure project has created a prototype computational system to support a global malaria eradication effort. HPCwire, the major trade publication of the high-performance computing industry, named the two PSC projects among 30 supercomputing discoveries chosen from their news archives. According to the publication, these discoveries are “set to change the world in 2014 and beyond …” The full article can be read at http://www.hpcwire.com/2014/01/02/top-supercomputing-discoveries-2013/ .
TACC to Deploy Maverick for Interactive, Remote Visualization and Data Analysis
The Texas Advanced Computer Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin, along with technology partners HP and NVIDIA, today announced that they will deploy Maverick in January 2014, a unique, powerful, high performance visualization and data analytics resource for the open science and engineering community. "Maverick will be deployed for open science research and is designed primarily for interactive, remote visualization and analytics," said Kelly Gaither, the principal investigator on the project and TACC's director of Visualization. "This system will help researchers analyze large scale scientific data, and complement systems like Stampede, by providing a rich, interactive data exploration environment." Today, in addition to modeling and simulation, scientific discovery now also depends on statistics and probabilities to infer meanings from patterns in data. The explosive amount of digital data being generated, collected and captured has created an even greater need for parallel processing and interactive exploration capabilities, according to Gaither. Not all people think in terms of statistics and probabilities, but almost everyone thinks visually in varying degrees, she said. To read further, please read https://www.tacc.utexas.edu/news/press-releases/2013/tacc-to-deploy-maverick.
Education News and Opportunities
2014 CSTA Annual Conference
July 14-15, 2014 - St. Charles, Illinois
Registration Deadline - June 26, 2014
The CSTA annual conference is a professional development opportunity for computer science and information technology teachers who need practical, classroom-focused information to help them prepare their students for the future. Session topics include:
· Advanced Placement Computer Science
· Computational Thinking
· Increasing Enrollment in Computer Science
· Programming
· Robotics
For more information and to register, please visit www.cstaconference.org.
New York City Schools STEM Tide of Future Unemployment With Science, Math Focus
New York Daily News
Aiming to position itself as a global leader in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, New York City has launched dozens of programs to teach students the skills that will prepare them for STEM jobs. For example, the Bronx Academy for Software Engineering (BASE) is teaching computer programming to high school students, which is expected to lead to jobs or college after graduation. Mentors from local tech companies help BASE students, sometimes resulting in internships. BASE shows female students various STEM career possibilities, and last month took a group of students to visit the headquarters of online fashion retailer Gilt in Manhattan. "The best part was seeing women working in tech at a very high level,” says 14-year-old BASE student Josephine Larbi. STEM-related fields in the United States are growing at almost twice the rate of other fields, and offer about 25 percent higher pay, according to the Department of Commerce. To read further, please visit http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/nyc-schools-stem-tide-unemployment-science-math-article-1.1542791.
Spelman College Charts a New Path by Encouraging Women in STEM Studies
PBS NewsHour
In an interview, Spelman College president Beverly Daniel Tatum discussed the move by the historically black women's liberal arts college to shift its focus towards science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Tatum recently won the Carnegie Corporation's annual Academic Leadership Award for her efforts to encourage women to pursue STEM careers and for her decision to replace intercollegiate sports with wellness activities. "A third of our students are STEM majors," Tatum says. "And we want to [ensure] that they can move into fields where they are underrepresented and make a difference to our economy and to our nation." Although Spelman remains a traditional liberal arts college, a third of the school's incoming students want to pursue science. "They may be thinking about health careers initially. But once they start to explore biology, chemistry, physics, computer science, engineering, they see a wider range of options," Tatum says. To read further, please visit http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/education/july-dec13/spelman_12-09.html.
Computer Science Education Week Starts
Programmer
Computer Science Education Week, which takes place Dec. 9-13 (and of which ACM is a founding partner), is expected to reach more than 4.5 million students around the world, with more than 37,000 events planned in 167 countries. The level of participation and the number of activities this year far exceeds previous years. The dramatic increase in participation can be attributed to the Hour of Code initiative from Code.org, which aims to ensure that every student has the opportunity to learn to code. Code.org has contributed a set of 20 puzzles designed to teach the basics of computer science. The puzzles are based on Blocky, a visual programming language that has blocks users drag and drop to write programs and characters from popular games. CSEdWeek.org says more than 1.3 million people already have learned an hour of code. Meanwhile, Microsoft Research has developed TouchDevelop, a tutorial for creating flying monsters and crazy drawings on smartphones and other touch-enabled devices. Microsoft Research's Kodu Game Lab also offers Hour of Code Kodu Touch Primer, which consists of five one-hour experiences--one for each day of the week. To read further, please visit http://www.i-programmer.info/news/150-training-a-education/6692-computer-science-education-week-starts-tomorrow-.html.
Confirming the MOOC Myth
Inside Higher Ed
Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are neither transforming education nor yielding large profits, but more time is needed to experiment with various applications, said participants at a conference hosted by the University of Texas at Arlington. Preliminary results from the MOOC Research Initiative, a grant program founded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and administered by Athabasca University, were presented at the conference. The University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education presented research that analyzed the study habits of 1 million students in 16 Coursera courses between June of 2012 and 2013. "Emerging data...show that [MOOCs] have relatively few active users, that user 'engagement' falls off dramatically especially after the first one to two weeks of a course, and that few users persist to the course end," the study says. Speakers noted that MOOCs can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop, which has created a problematic scenario in which some institutions develop MOOCs while others buy them. To read further, please visit http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/12/06/mooc-research-conference-confirms-commonly-held-beliefs-about-medium.
Coding Kids
New York Magazine (11/29/13) Jeff Wise
As the importance of programming as a life skill grows, parents are beginning to seek coding education for their children. Some parents are hiring tutors to teach their children programming, both as a strategically valuable skill and as an intellectual exercise. "Coding is absolutely a question of literacy," says Georgia Institute of Technology professor Mark Guzdial. "Those who don’t have access to this kind of education are going to be missing a core skill." Concerns about economic inequality are rising as more affluent families pay for coding opportunities that lower-income families cannot afford. "I think this is the most important issue domestically. It's frightening. Parents who have money are pushing their kids to learn coding," says Girls Who Code founder Reshma Saujani. "Kids whose parents don't have money are being left behind." Even as the tech industry forecasts a shortfall of 1 million workers by 2020, 90 percent of U.S. high schools do not offer computer programming. To read further, please visit http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/coding-kids-2013-12/.
Technovation: Inspire Your Students to Be Technology Entrepreneurs
Program Starts February 3, 2014
Final Registration Deadline- March 1, 2014
App Submissions Due – April 26, 2014
Technovation is the global technology entrepreneurship program for girls, with over 1,300 alumnae from 19 countries. Middle school, high school, and university students research, design, build, and launch a mobile app prototype over 3 months, with guidance from dedicated teachers and female mentors who are professionals in STEM and business careers. No prior app development experience is necessary. The time commitment is approximately 60 hours over 12 weeks. There is no charge for the program. Sign up to get started at http://technovationchallenge.org. Questions? Please call Samantha Quist at samantha@iridescentlearning.org. To view the Technovation video for 2013, please visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISeOIchChpY&noredirect=1.
Penn State World Campus Offers Master of Education in Earth Science
School systems across the nation are implementing Higher Teacher Quality Improvement programs to recruit and retrain highly qualified science teachers. As a teacher with a master’s degree in Earth sciences, you can benefit from these incentive programs by earning a higher salary, having more job security, and gaining a competitive edge in the job market. To help you qualify for these benefits, Penn State World Campus offers a completely online Master of Education in Earth Sciences for secondary science teachers. To read further, please visit http://www.worldcampus.psu.edu/degrees-and-certificates/earth-sciences-masters/overview?cm_mmc=EARTH-SCIENCES+13-14-_-NSTA-_-Online%3ABanner%3AOther-_-200x300+E-Newsletter+Ad+%28ONLNBO16364%29.
Student Engagement and Opportunities
The DuPont Challenge Essay
Submission Deadline - January 31, 2014
The deadline for submissions for the 2014 DuPont Challenge is fast approaching. Middle and high school students (grades 7-12) from the from the United States, Canada, and U.S. territories are encouraged to submit a 700-1,000-word essay that provides innovative ideas on the world's most pressing challenges, or demonstrates the application of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to our daily lives. This year, the Challenge encourages students to consider how science and innovation can be used to meet the needs of the 21st century for food, energy, and protection. Students should address one of the four following categories in their essay:
- Together, we can feed the world.
- Together, we can build a secure energy future.
- Together, we can protect people and the environment.
- Together, we can be innovative anywhere.
Students and sponsoring teacher prizes include savings bonds, teaching grants, exciting trips, and much more. For more information, including official rules, entry forms, and details on awards, please visit http://www.thechallenge.dupont.com/.
Call for High School Applicants - Students interested in Greenland Ice Sheet Field Study
Application Deadline – January 31, 2014
The Joint Science Education Project (JSEP) announces a call for applications from U.S. high school students interested in participating in field research in Greenland. Five high school students from the United States will join peers from Denmark and Greenland to spend three weeks during summer 2014 doing field science in and around Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, and visiting Summit Station, a research base on the Greenland ice sheet. Students and teachers will work alongside scientists on research projects in a wide variety of fields including biology, geology, climatology, chemistry, and engineering. Students chosen for the U.S. team must be in 10th or 11th grade at the time of application, and they must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents. The program is sponsored by NSF's Division of Polar Programs in collaboration with the Joint Committee. More information, including the application, is available at http://www.arcus.org/jsep.
Research Experience for Undergrads: Software Safety: Methodology, Practice and Research
University of Texas, Dallas
Application Deadline - March 15, 2014
The Computer Science Department at the University of Texas at Dallas will conduct a ten-week summer research program funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) for ten undergraduates from Fri May 23 to Thu July 31 2014. The focus is on "software safety," however, the technology and skills learned by the students have general applicability to research and practice in their future studies. In addition to work on assigned research projects at UTD, field trips to Raytheon, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company, and EDS/HP will be arranged to help the students better understand how software safety is adopted in practice for real-life applications. For more information, including eligibility requirements, please visit http://paris.utdallas.edu/REU/.
Summer Research Experience for Undergrads: Computational Science
University of Tennessee
Applications Deadline – February 15, 2014
The Computational Science for Undergraduate Research Experiences (CSURE) REU site project will direct a group of undergraduate students to explore the emergent computational science models and techniques proven to work in a number of data and compute intensive applications using the supercomputers at the National Institute for Computational Sciences (NICS) located at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The CSURE program will give students a synergetic set of knowledge and skills they need to begin using computational methods, as well as provide each student an intensive research experience with a faculty or laboratory mentor. For more information, eligibility and submission guidelines, please visit http://www.jics.utk.edu/csure-reu/.
Summer Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU)
Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh LearnLab
Applications Deadline – February 17, 2014
Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh have an exciting opportunity for a summer research experience available for undergraduates. This REU program is sponsored by LearnLab, a Science of Learning Center funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Applications are encouraged from students who would like to conduct research in the fields of psychology, education, computer science, human-computer interfaces and language technologies. LearnLab's REU program allows talented undergraduates to spend 8 weeks during the summer in a research laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh, or one of our research partners. The REU program supports LearnLab's commitment to training a diverse set of science, technology, education, and psychology leaders. The application for this program can be found at http://www.learnlab.org/opportunities/LearnLab_Summer_REU.php.
On the Lighter Side – Computational Science News on the Edge
University of Iowa’s Love Connection
Iowa Now
University of Iowa researchers have developed an algorithm for dating sites that uses a person's contact history to recommend more compatible partners. The researchers examined data from 475,000 initial contacts involving 47,000 users in two U.S. cities over a 196-day span. Of the users, 28,000 were men and 19,000 were women, and men made 80 percent of the initial contacts. The data suggests only about 25 percent of those initial contacts were actually reciprocated, according to University of Iowa professor Kang Zhao. To improve that rate, the researchers developed a model that combines a client's tastes, determined by the types of people the client has contacted, with the user's attractiveness determined by how many of those contacts are returned and how many are not. Zhao says the combinations of taste and attractiveness do a better job of predicting successful connections than relying on information that clients enter into their profile, because what people put in their profile may not always be what they are really interested in. To read further, please visit http://now.uiowa.edu/2013/11/love-connection.
Google's C Alternative Gets an Update
InfoWorld
Google this week released version 1.2 of its Go open source programming language, which the company initially released four years ago as an alternative to C. Go was designed to improve on certain aspects of languages similar to C by leveraging multicore processors and offering modern language features such as dynamic typing. Furthermore, Go compiles rapidly with high performance. Google notes that "no major systems language has emerged in over a decade, but over that time the computing landscape has changed tremendously." Despite Go's reported benefits, its potential popularity among developers remains uncertain. Since Go's initial release in 2009, the language has not caught on significantly outside of Google enclaves. To read further, please visit http://www.infoworld.com/t/application-development/googles-c-alternative-gets-update-will-developers-bite-231840.
