HPC Happenings

SC13 Workshop Proposals Due January 31, 2013 November 17-22, 2013 – Denver, Colorado Exhibition Dates – November 18-21, 2013 SC13 has changed the deadline for workshop proposals. Submissions are due on January 31, 2013. We welcome proposals for independently planned full–, half–, or multi–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. This year, we have moved the submission deadline ahead in order to ensure that successful proposers have ample time to prepare for their event. Proposals for workshops will be reviewed with an eye toward providing interaction and in–depth discussion of stimulating topics of interest to the HPC community. Workshop proposals due: January 31, 2013. For more information on workshops, please visit http://sc13.supercomputing.org/content/workshops.

 

Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center Symposium Launches “Sherlock”
Will Discover Relationships in Complex Masses of Data

On February 1, the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) will host an event and symposium to launch its newest supercomputer, Sherlock. A uRiKA graph-analytics appliance from YarcData, Sherlock is designed to discover unknown relationships or patterns hidden in extremely large and complex bodies of information. “Sherlock gives PSC the first system available to researchers that is optimized for a particularly difficult family of questions regarding, for example, security, medicine, public health, and social dynamics,” says Nick Nystrom, Director of Strategic Applications, PSC. “These problems cost individuals and society in time, money, and human suffering. Sherlock also helps keep Pittsburgh — and Pennsylvania — at the forefront of high performance computing.” Attendees may register for the event at: https://www.psc.edu/index.php/events/sherlocklaunch.

SDSC Visualization Training: Preparing/Translating Data for Use With VisIt Application
- Webinar
February 11, 2013 - 9:00am- 10:30am (PST)
This tutorial is being offered In-person and as a Webcast 

One of the biggest hurdles in visualization is translating the data into a format that is supported by visualization application. This tutorial focuses on getting users acquainted with the data formats supported by VisIt and how to write a simple custom data reader and a very brief introduction to the in-situ capabilities of VisIt. 

Local attendees are encouraged to attend in person while webcast may be more suitable for others. This tutorial is offered at no charge. More information is available at the tutorial webpage. Please visit http://www.sdsc.edu/Events/data2visit2013/ .

HPC Call for Participation

University of Tennessee Announces Beacon Project - Call for Participation
Submission Deadline – February 7m 2013

The National Institute for Computational Sciences (NICS) at the University of Tennessee is pleased to announce an open call for participation in the Beacon Project, an ongoing research project partially funded by the National Science Foundation that explores the impact of emerging computer architectures on computational science and engineering. Project teams associated with the Beacon Project are currently exploring the impact of the Intel® Xeon Phi™ coprocessor on scientific codes and libraries such as H3D, PSC, OMEN, ENZO, MADNESS, NWChem, Amber, MILC, and MAGMA through porting and optimization work on a small, experimental cluster equipped with pre-production coprocessors. To expand this effort and to facilitate research into energy-efficient supercomputing, NICS is replacing the experimental cluster with Beacon, a Cray Xtreme-X Supercomputer that ranks #1 on the November 2012 Green500 list.  For more information on topics and submission guidelines, please visit http://www.jics.tennessee.edu/aace/beacon/open-call,

ROSS 2013  - International Workshop on Runtime and Operating Systems for Supercomputers
June 10, 2013 – Eugene, Oregon
Submission Deadline – March 15, 2013

The complexity of node architectures in supercomputers increases as we cross petaflop milestones on the way towards Exascale.  Increasing levels of parallelism in multi- and many-core chips and emergingmheterogeneity of computational resources coupled with energy and memory constraints force a reevaluation of our approaches towards operating systems and runtime environments. The ROSS workshop, to be held as a full-day meeting at the ICS 2013 conference in Eugene, Oregon, USA, focuses on principles and techniques to design, implement, optimize, or operate runtime and operating systems for supercomputers and massively parallel machines. For more information and projects of interest, in addition to submission guidelines, please visit http://www.mcs.anl.gov/events/workshops/ross/2013/. .

Upcoming Conferences and Workshops.

South Carolina Cyberinfrastructure Symposium
February 11-12, 2-13 - Clemson University

Integrating Computational Science into your Undergraduate

Curriculum is the symposium theme. The symposium will begin on February 11, with an evening reception and poster session and the following day is filled with speakers and breakout sessions.  Confirmed speakers include:

* Steven I. Gordon (Ohio State)
* Angela Shiflet (Wofford College)
* Sushil Prasad (Georgia State)
* Steve Stuart (Clemson)

Registration details available soon. Travel awards will be available!! For more information, please contact Jill Gemmill at gemmill@clemson.edu.

2013 AAAS Annual Meetin
Februay 14-18, 2013 - Boston, Massachusetts

The Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the most important general science venue for a growing segment of scientists and engineers who are interested in the latest advances as well as multidisciplinary topics and the influence of science and technology on how we live today. Thousands of leading scientists, engineers, educators, and policy-makers interact with one another and with hundreds of members from national and international media. In fact, the growing number of international attendees attests to the growing international nature of this gathering. More than 150 sessions spread across about a dozen tracks are usually presented at the Annual Meeting. For mire information, please visit http://aaas.confex.com/aaas/2013/cfp.cgi.

Emerging Researchers National Conference in STEM
February 28- March 2, 2013 – Washington, DC

The Emerging Researchers National (ERN) Conference in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) is hosted by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Education and Human Resources Programs (EHR) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Human Resource Development (HRD), within the Directorate for Education and Human Resources (EHR). The conference is aimed at college and university undergraduate and graduate students who participate in programs funded by the NSF HRD Unit, including underrepresented minorities and persons with disabilities. The objectives of the conference are to help undergraduate and graduate students to enhance their science communication skills and to better understand how to prepare for science careers in a global workforce For more information, please visit http://www.emerging-researchers.org/.

Research Features From Across the Country and Around the  World

The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center Presents Sherlock, a YarcData uRiKa System for Unlocking the Secrets of Big Data

The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) and YarcData, a Cray (Nasdaq: Cray) company, today announced the deployment of “Sherlock,” a uRiKA graph-analytics appliance from YarcData for efficiently discovering unknown relationships or patterns “hidden” in extremely large and complex bodies of information. Funded through the Strategic Technologies for Cyberinfrastructure (STCI) program of the National Science Foundation, Sherlock features innovative hardware and software, as well as PSC-specific enhancements, designed to extend the range of applicability to scales not otherwise feasible. These techniques have been long used by the government and are coming into wider commercial use.  Sherlock will focus on extending the domain of applicability of these techniques to a wide range of scientific research projects. “Sherlock,” says Nick Nystrom, PSC director of strategic applications, “provides a unique capability for discovering new patterns and relationships in data. It will help to discover how genes work, probe the dynamics of social networks, and detect the sources of breaches in Internet security.” To read further, please visit http://www.psc.edu/index.php/newscenter/71-2012press/766-psc-presents-sherlock-a-yarcdata-urika-system-for-big-data-analytics.

SDSC’s CAIDA Internet Research Group Awarded Cybersecurity Contract

The Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA), based at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego, has been awarded a contract for cybersecurity research and development by the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate (DHS S&T). The award to CAIDA is one of 34 contracts recently announced by the DHS S&T to 29 academic and research organizations for research and development of solutions to the nation’s cybersecurity challenges. The contracts were awarded by the department’s Cyber Security Division (CSD) under Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) 11-02, which solicited proposals covering 14 technical topic areas aimed at improving security in federal networks and across the Internet, while developing new and enhanced technologies for detecting, preventing, and responding to attacks on the nation’s critical information infrastructure. A full list of awardees can be found here. For more information, please visit http://www.sdsc.edu/News%20Items/PR120712_caida.html.

Purdue University Tech Talks to Cover Virtual and Augmented Reality, Modeling and Animation, Simulated Environments

A series of one-hour tech talks covering such topics as virtual and augmented reality, modeling and animation, and real-time simulated environments will begin Feb. 12 at ITaP’s Envision Center for Data Perceptualization. The talks are open to faculty, students and staff. To register, email Eric Palmer at ewpalmer@purdue.edu. Space is limited and registration is first-come, first-serve. All of the sessions will take place from 2-3 p.m. in the Envision Center, Stewart Center, Room B001, which is located off the tunnel between the Stewart Center and the Purdue Memorial Union. Each session will be preceded by a tour of the Envision Center at 1 p.m. Faculty, students, staff, visitors and alumni are welcome to attend the tour without attending the tech talk. When registering, please indicate whether you will be attending the tour, the tech talk, or both. For more information, please visit http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/news/detail.cfm?newsId=569.

Duke University Scientists Develop Device for Image Compression
New York Times

Duke University researchers are using a new class of artificial materials, called metamaterials, to design a sensor that compresses images much more efficiently than existing technologies. Metamaterials have qualities that bend light, X-rays, and radio waves in unusual ways. The researchers say the scanning sensor captures both still and video images while simplifying compression by integrating it directly into the sensor array. The technology permits image compression to be performed directly by the sensor hardware, instead of by the specialized hardware and software in use today. Although metamaterials might offer high compression ratios, the real advantage is in the potential for reductions in size, says Duke's John Hunt. For example, the most advanced planes and boats use a mechanically steered dish antenna for radar, which requires setting aside a large space to swivel the dish. To read further, please visit http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/18/technology/duke-researchers-develop-a-new-way-to-compress-images.html?_r=0.

Web Hunt for DNA Sequences Leaves Privacy Compromised
New York Times

Online genetic data is raising privacy concerns after Whitehead Institute human genetics researcher Yaniv Erlich used the Internet to quickly pinpoint not only specific individuals who submitted DNA to the 1000 Genomes Project but also their family members who are not participating in the study. Using only strings of DNA, an age, and the participant's state, all of which were available through the project, Erlich was able to match participants to relatives who submitted DNA to public genealogy databases that offered surnames, and then to uncover entire family trees using Google. Study participants agreed to terms that did not guarantee their privacy, but Baylor College of Medicine lawyer Amy L. McGuire says no one anticipated that individuals would be identified. “To have the illusion you can fully protect privacy or make data anonymous is no longer a sustainable position," McGuire says. To read further, please visit http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/18/health/search-of-dna-sequences-reveals-full-identities.html.

Stanford University Researchers Mine Electronic Records for Revealing Health Data
New York Times

Electronic medical records could significantly advance medical science by enabling researchers to mine huge volumes of data at a low cost, circumventing clinical trials in some instances. "Medical discoveries have always been based on hunches," says Stanford University bioengineering and genetics professor Russ B. Altman. "This infrastructure makes it possible to follow up on those hunches." In 2011 Altman co-published a study linking the drug combination of antidepressant Paxil with the cholesterol drug Pravastatin to a spike in blood sugar. To find patients who fit his criteria, Altman used electronic medical records from Stanford University Medical Center, Harvard, and Vanderbilt. Obstacles to this type of research include the fact that all identifiable information must be removed from electronic records used for research due to patient privacy concerns. However, researchers must know whether they are looking at records for the same person, because a patient could be duplicated in multiple databases. To read further, please visit http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/15/health/mining-electronic-records-for-revealing-health-data.html.

Educator News and Opportunities

Alice Symposium 2013 - Call for Papers
July 19, 2013 – Durham, North Carolina
Paper Submission Deadline – February 1, 2013
Poster Submission Deadline – March 15, 2013
Contest Submission Deadline – March 15, 2013

The Third Alice Symposium will be held at Duke University and will be part of a week of Alice activities with two-day workshops before and after the Alice Symposium. There is also an Alice contest! You are invited to submit a paper or poster related to the educational use of the Alice programming language at any level (elementary school,  middle school, high school, community college, university).  Teachers are invited to submit student Alice worlds for an Alice contest. There will be two-day workshops before and after the Alice Symposium. Topics include Alice 2.3, Alice 3.1 and Alice with Media Computation. For more information on this robust series of events, please visit http://www.cs.duke.edu/csed/aliceSymposium2013. Questions can be addressed to Kathy Menchaca at menchaca@cs.stanford.edu.

New CSTA Member Discussion Forum

The Computer Science Teachers Association is pleased to announce the launch of a new member benefit -  a listserv to foster communication about all issues related to computing education. They recognize that other electronic communities for computing educators exist, but theirs strives to be different.  Instead of focusing on one particular topic (AP, Scratch, Alice, App Inventor,etc.), CSTA wishes to create the first place you visit to ask the overarching questions that transcend one particular tool, language, or course.  Consider this a place for our 13,000+ members to ask questions and share ideas about recruiting techniques, project-based learning, best practices for inspiring students in computing courses, best practices for teaching college-level work in the high school, textbooks, languages, etc. To join the conversation, visit http://listserv.acm.org/scripts/wa-ACMLPX.exe?SUBED1=csta-members&A=1.

CS Standards Linked to Common Core and Others

With the increasing focus on assessment and various national standards, computer science teachers have come under increasing pressure to demonstrate the extend to which computer science courses addressed other standards. To help teachers, administrators, and policy makers see how computer science addresses a wide variety of standards, the CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards have now been correlated with the Common Core State Standards, the STEM Cluster Topics, and the Partnership for 21st Century Essential Skills. The downloadable documents that match the CSTA standards to the above national standards (as well as the complete CSTA Standards) are available on the Curriculum webpage of the CSTA website at http://csta.acm.org/Curriculum/sub/K12Standards.html.

Student Engagement and Information

RDAV internships for Undergraduates: Summer 2013
Submission Deadline – February 11, 2013

Many research problems in science and engineering rely on both interdisciplinary knowledge and sophisticated computing. The Remote Data Analysis and Visualization (RDAV) Center seeks motivated undergraduate students who are eager to take on these challenges by using high performance computing to attack research problems in the biological, physical, social, computing, or engineering sciences. We have opportunities for the summer of 2013 at all stages of the data analysis process: From preparing raw data, to using and developing data analysis and visualization processes and tools, to deploying web-based interfaces for interacting with the results. Their center works with researchers who are tackling a wide range of problems including extracting meaning through text mining, understanding biodiversity, making sense of the universe, and developing visualization tools. We seek students with a passion for real-world problems, an understanding of science or engineering, and the computer science skills to make it happen. Ideal students will be majoring in a science or engineering discipline with a strong background in computer science; students in all majors and from all backgrounds will be considered. ROAV highly encourage applications from students from under-represented groups. For more information and to apply, please visit https://rdav.nics.tennessee.edu/2013/01/rdav-internships-for-undergraduates-summer-2013/.

Disparity Among First- and Second-Generation Immigrants in STEM Degrees
National Journal

Latino and Asian immigrants and their U.S.-born children are studying science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects at different rates. About 25 percent of first- and second-generation Asian-Americans received degrees in STEM fields, compared to 14 percent of Latinos, according to a recent National Center for Education Statistics report. The two groups also differed from one another on socioeconomic characteristics, including age, low-income status, parents' education levels, and whether English was the primary language spoken at home, the study found. In addition, 25 percent of first- and second-generation Latinos major in humanities, social sciences, and general studies, compared to 21 percent of Asian-Americans. Finally, 46 percent of second-generation Asian-Americans took calculus in high school, compared to 21.5 percent of Latinos. To read further, please visit http://www.nationaljournal.com/thenextamerica/education/disparity-among-first-and-second-generation-immigrants-in-stem-degrees-20130115?page=1.

Exploring the Baccalaureate Origin of Domestic Ph.D. Students in Computing Fields
Computing Research News

The Computing Research Association Education Committee's Pipeline Project conducted a study of the baccalaureate origins of domestic U.S. students matriculating to computer science Ph.D. programs for the purpose of recruiting as well as improving the quality of the domestic pipeline. The research determined that about half of Ph.D. students come from 54 institutions of baccalaureate origin while the other half come from more than 747 institutions. Possibly the most significant finding of the research is that a small number of research universities and very selective colleges are the undergraduate institutions of origin for a large segment of domestic Ph.D. students and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship recipients. Yet many institutions send between one and five students to graduate school each year and their effect on the domestic pipeline is substantial. Master's institutions appear to be an underused source of prospective graduate students. Efforts to encourage graduate school applications from students in these schools benefit the pipeline. The research also found that many very successful schools are smaller and/or less well known, and disseminating some of these institutions' features could benefit the domestic Ph.D. pipeline. To read further, please visit http://cra.org/resources/crn-online-view/exploring_the_baccalaureate_origin_of_domestic_ph.d._students_in_compu/.

Career Opportunities

HPC Administrators
Gulfstream Aerospace  - Savannah, GA

Gulfstream Aerospace HAS two outstanding career opportunities for two (2) High Performance Computing Administrators to support Computational Fluid Dynamics, Simulation, and modeling at Gulfstream Aerospace, Savannah, GA 31408. Please Apply or send resume or contact me: maureen.west@gd-ais.com
JOB OPPORTUNITIES: HPC Cluster Administrators II & III Location: Savannah, Georgia 31408 You would be administering the HPC Clusters supporting: Computational Fluid Dynamics, Simulation, and modeling engineering Useful Skills: Computer Engineering/Electrical Engineering background; Management of Linux-based HPC clusters; Installation, configuration and maintenance of Redhat Package Manager (RPM)-b.. For more information, please visit https://www.jobmagic.com/job/HPC-Administrators-II-26173-III-26001-Job-United-States-9659078.html?isd_source=linkedin&isd_pub=224323&goback=.gde_4178444_member_208010163

Computer Systems Engineer in Computer and Data Sciences)
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - Req # 75177

The Future Technologies Group (FTG) has an immediate opening for a Computer Systems Engineer to develop operating systems, runtime systems, compilers, and communication libraries for high performance computing (HPC) systems.
This position involves research and development of HPC programming models and language runtime efforts in FTG as part of the Berkeley UPC team. The UPC team performs basic research and development related to parallel global address space (PGAS) languages, specifically in fast communication libraries, parallel runtime systems, compiler optimizations, and programming languages. The team's current research, part of DOE's DEGAS effort, focuses on (1) extending PGAS models with support for hierarchical synchronization and data structures, (2) compiler analysis of communication-avoiding algorithms, (3) dynamic runtimes for PGAS languages, (4) finding ways to incorporate resilience and fault tolerance into the PGAS model and PGAS programs. For more information, please visit https://lbl.taleo.net/careersection/2/jobdetail.ftl?lang=en&job=75177.

FPGA Software Simulation Engineer
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - Req # 75530

As FPGA Software Simulation Engineer (CSE2) in the Computer Architecture Lab, you will contribute to development of an FPGA-based hardware architectural simulation platform to study computer architectures for energy efficient HPC. You will also assist project members in a codesign process in evaluating existing and emerging HPC systems by analyzing the performance characteristics of leading-edge DOE Office of Science application codes to understand the energy efficiency and performance implications of algorithmic and hardware architecture trade-offs. The successful applicant will require knowledge of hardware design, FPGA toolchains, an knowledge of HPC applications and algorithms. For more information, please visit https://lbl.taleo.net/careersection/2/jobdetail.ftl?lang=en&job=75530.

FPGA Computer Systems Engineer
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - Req # 75529

As FPGA Computer Systems Engineer (CSE2) of the Computer Architecture Lab, you will contribute to development of an FPGA-based hardware architectural simulation platform to study computer architectures for energy efficient HPC. You will also assist project members in a codesign process in evaluating existing and emerging HPC systems by analyzing the performance characteristics of leading-edge DOE Office of Science application codes to understand the energy efficiency and performance implications of algorithmic and hardware architecture trade-offs. The successful applicant will require knowledge of hardware design, FPGA toolchains, and knowledge of HPC applications and algorithms. For more information, please visit
https://lbl.taleo.net/careersection/2/jobdetail.ftl?lang=en&job=75529.

On the Lighter Side of Computational News

Facebook Shatters the Computer Server Into Tiny Pieces
Wired News

Facebook hardware guru Frank Frankovsky is developing a blueprint for a new type of computer server that enables the user to add or remove the processor. "By modularizing the design, you can rip and place the bits that need to be upgraded, but you can leave the stuff that’s still good," Frankovsky says. The server design is part of the Open Compute Project, which aims to significantly reduce the cost and the hassle of maintaining and upgrading computer servers. "[The Open Compute Project] is about empowering the user to take control of infrastructure design," Frankovsky says. The modular processor specification is an extension of earlier hardware design open sourced by Facebook. The common slot used by Intel and AMD processor sockets is based on the PCIe connector used in existing servers. "We want to better match how the software is going to exercise the hardware," Frankovsky says. To read further, please visit http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/01/facebook-server-pieces/.

Bad Grammar Make Good Password, Researchers Say
New Scientist

Computer users should not use good grammar for passwords, according to Ashwini Rao and colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University. The team has developed an algorithm that can crack long passwords that make grammatical sense as a whole phrase, even when interspersed with numbers and symbols. The algorithm is designed to make guesses by combining words and phrases from password-cracking databases into grammatically correct phrases. Ten percent of the long passwords that were tested were cracked exclusively using their grammar-sensitive methods. Other types of familiar structures such as postal addresses, email addresses, and URLs also are less secure passwords, even if they are long. The declining cost of processing power has made it more difficult for computer users to choose passwords that are easy to remember and secure. The team will present its research in February at the Conference on Data and Application Security and Privacy in San Antonio. To read further, please visit http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2013/01/bad-grammar-make-good-password.html.

Google Glass Hackathons Unveiled to Further Develop the Technology
eWeek

Google is planning two hackathon events to be held in San Francisco and New York City to showcase the Google Glass technology and gain input from developers who want to improve the system and make it more usable. "These hackathons are just for developers in the Explorer program, and we're calling them the Glass Foundry," Google says. "It's the first opportunity for a group of developers to get together and develop for Glass." The two-day events will provide a detailed look at the Google Mirror API, which is how Google Glass will interact with the user and exchange data. Google Glass consists of eyeglass-mounted computers with a side-mounted touchpad for controlling its various functions. The glasses will be able to display a wide range of views that can be catered to the user's interests. To read further, please visit http://www.eweek.com/developer/google-glass-hackathons-unveiled-to-further-develop-the-technology/.