HPC in the News
Campus Teams to Accelerate Research With Blue Waters
Next Proposal Deadline – September 15, 015
Seventeen U of I research teams from a wide range of disciplines have been awarded computational and data resources on the sustained-petascale Blue Waters supercomputer at NCSA. Blue Waters is one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, capable of performing quadrillions of calculations every second and working with quadrillions of bytes of data. Its massive scale and balanced architecture enable scientists and engineers to tackle research challenges that could not be addressed with other computing systems.
About 2 percent of the capacity of Blue Waters is allocated each year to projects at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign through a campus wide peer-review process. For details, please visit bluewaters.ncsa.illinois.edu/illinois-allocations.
Seymour Cray, Sidney Fern Bach and Ken Kennedy Awards Nominations Due by July 1,
Nomination Deadlines - July 1, 2015
Each year, SC showcases not only the best and brightest stars of high performance computing, but also its rising stars and those who have made a lasting impression. Some of the most prestigious awards given at SC are the Seymour Cray, Sidney Fernbach, and Ken Kennedy Awards that honor the memory of three greats in high performance computing. Each award winner will give a presentation on their work.
• IEEE Computer Society Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award
A crystal memento, illuminated certificate, and $10,000 honorarium are awarded to recognize innovative contributions to high performance computing systems that best exemplify the creative spirit demonstrated by Seymour Cray. Click here for more information on the Seymour Cray Computer Engineering award.
• IEEE Computer Society Sidney Fernbach Award
A certificate and $2,000 are awarded for outstanding contributions in the application of high performance computers using innovative approaches. Click here for more information on the Sidney Fernbach Award
• ACM/IEEE-CS Ken Kennedy Award
A certificate and $5,000 honorarium are awarded jointly by the ACM and the IEEE Computer Society for outstanding contributions to programmability or productivity in high-performance computing together with significant community service or mentoring contributions. Click here for more information on the Ken Kennedy Award
Nomination submission can be submitted to http://awards.computer.org/.
SC15 News
SC15 Selects 9 Teams for Student Cluster Competition
It’s that time of year again; teams from across the world are preparing to compete in the St udent Cluster Competition (SCC) at SC15. This year the SCC is proud to host 9 teams that will battle it out to showcase their hardware and computing might to battle zombie invasions, hurricanes, exotic particles, gene reconstruction and MORE!
The selected teams are from the following organizations/countries:
- Arizona Tri-University Team — US
- Illinois Institute of Technology — US
- National Tsing Hua University — Taiwan
- Northeastern University (OpenCompute New England) — US
- Pawsey Supercomputing Centre — Australia
- Technische Universität München — Germany
- Tsinghua University — China
- Universidad EAFIT — Colombia
- University of Oklahoma — US
For more information on this competition, please visit http://www.sc15.supercomputing.org/conference-program/student-programs/sc15-student-cluster-competition.
Submissions Now Being Accepted for HPC Impact Showcase at SC15
Bovember15-20, 2015 – Austin, Texas
Submission Deadline - August 1, 2015
The HPC Impact Showcase committee is now accepting submissions. We invite conference attendees from within the industry to share their stories of how HPC has transformed their endeavors and given them a competitive advantage. The Showcase will emphasize the tangible benefit of HPC in delivering innovations, which enable companies to succeed within their particular market-space. The HPC Impact Showcase highlights real-world applications of high performance computing (HPC) at companies who are currently employing HPC to advance their competitiveness and innovation in the global marketplace. The Showcase is designed to introduce attendees to the many ways that HPC matters in our world, through testimonials from companies large and small. Rather than a technical deep dive of how they are using or managing their HPC environments, their stories are meant to tell how their companies are adopting and embracing HPC as well as how it is improving their businesses. To submit an entry, please visit https://submissions.supercomputing.org. For questions, please email HPC-Showcase@info.supercomputing.org.
XSEDE News From Partners and Friends
2015 Blue Waters Symposium Highlights Successes, Looks to the Future of Supercomputing
The 2015 Blue Waters Symposium, held May 10-13 at Oregon's beautiful Sunriver Resort, brought together leaders in petascale computational science and engineering to share successes and methods. Around 130 attendees, many of whom were Blue Waters users and the NCSA staff who support their work, enjoyed presentations on computational advances in a range of research areas—including sub-atomic physics, weather, biology, astronomy, and many others—as well as keynotes from innovative thinkers and leaders in high-performance computing. Over the three days of the symposium, 58 science teams from across the country presented on their work on Blue Waters. To read further, please visit http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/news/story/2015_blue_waters_symposium_highlights_successes_looks_to_the_future_of_supe.
NCSA Upgrading Research Networking Capacity
As part of the Blue Waters project, NCSA is substantially upgrading its networking capacity, giving researchers across the country the ability to move data more quickly than ever before. The center will have four 100-gigabit research connections when the work is completed in summer 2015. “We believe this will make NCSA the most connected supercomputing center in the world,” said Tim Boerner, leader of NCSA’s networking team. “Researchers who previously were constrained by data transfer difficulties can now think big—they can move their data, and move it quickly, in order to advance and accelerate their research.” NCSA is upgrading the full path from the Blue Waters system to the wide area network, which will enable single flow data rates greater than 10Gb/sec. To read further, please visit http://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/ncsa-upgrading-research-networking-capacity/.
Call for Papers and Participation
2015 IEEE TCSC Award for Excellence for Early Career Researchers -- Call for Nominations
Nomination Deadline - July 01, 2015
Results Notification - August 31, 2015
The IEEE TCSC annual young achievers in scalable computing award recognizes up to 3 individuals who have made outstanding, influential, and potentially long-lasting contributions in the field of scalable computing within 5 years of receiving their PhD degree as of January 01 of the year of the award. Nominations: A candidate may be nominated by members of the community. An individual may nominate at most one candidate for this award. Nomination must be submitted via email to tcsc-awards@rutgers.edu. For more information, please also send email to tcsc-awards@rutgers.edu.
New ACM Journal Announcement and Call for Papers: ACM Transactions on Cyber-Physical Systems
Editor-in-Chief: Tie-Wei Kuo, National Taiwan University and Academia Sinica, Taiwan
Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) has emerged as a unifying name for systems where the cyber parts (i.e., the computing and communication parts) and the physical parts are tightly integrated, both at the design time and during operation. Such systems use computations and communication deeply embedded in and interacting with physical processes to add new capabilities to physical systems. These cyber-physical systems range from miniscule (pace makers) to large-scale (a national power-grid). There is an emerging consensus that new methodologies and tools need to be developed to support cyber-physical systems. ACM Transactions on Cyber-Physical Systems (TCPS) is the premier journal for the publication of high-quality original research papers and survey papers that have scientific and technological understanding of the interactions of information processing, networking and physical processes. For further information and to submit your manuscript, please visit tcps.acm.org.
Upcoming Conferences, Webinars, and Seminars
Explore ORNL Conference
July 14-15, 2014 – Oak Ridge, Tennessee
The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory will open its doorss for its “Explore ORNL” conference designed to introduce the region’s business community to the lab’s world-class R&D facilities and expertise. “Explore ORNL is an outreach event that provides companies both large and small with a unique opportunity to learn about collaboration possibilities,” said Tom Rogers, ORNL’s director of Industrial Partnerships and Economic Development. Representatives from companies such as Boeing, Cummins, Local Motors, Ten-Tec, Dresser-Rand, and Eagle Bend Manufacturing will speak about their experiences in working with ORNL experts to overcome technical challenges and develop new products. ORNL researchers will join their private sector counterparts to deliver briefings on topics including transportation technologies, material characterization and neutron imaging, sensors, high-performance computing, 3-D printing, and composites manufacturing. For more information please visit https://public.ornl.gov/conferences/exploreornl2015/.
Rangle.io Angular U Conference to Introduces Initiative for Women in Tech
July 21-23, 2015 – San Francisco, California
Rangle.io has announced an initiative to ensure that talented women who code are represented at the upcoming Angular U conference.. With a range of stats suggesting women represent only 25% of employees in tech, with an even smaller percentage of women who code, Rangle.io has committed to actively working against the gender imbalance one initiative at a time.CEO Nick Van Weerdenburg says, “In building Rangle.io as a diverse company in one of the world’s most diverse cities, I always imagined we would do fine in hiring and building a strong female core. However when we stopped and looked at the facts once we hit 50 people, we realized we needed to be more proactive to reach our goals- not just as a company but as an industry.” Web developers who identify as women are encouraged to enter the contest. Prize package includes a return flight from your destination; 2-day ticket for Angular U conference; and hotel booking with an estimated prize package value of $3000.00 USD. Entry is done simply by answering a few questions about your interest in the conference at http://go.rangle.io/women.
Research News From Around the World
NCSA Team Creates Solar Superstores
On a beautiful, cloudless summer day, the shining sun seems placid and benevolent. But the center of our solar system is really an enormous fusion reactor, a roiling mass of super-heated plasma, rising and falling energy currents, and violent explosions. Soon millions of people will be able to experience this tumultuous sun in fulldome theaters at museums, planetariums, and science centers across the country. The members of NCSA's Advanced Visualization Laboratory and their collaborators are creating “Solar Superstorms,” an ultra-high-resolution digital film that presents the latest digitally enabled research on solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and other aspects of space weather.
To read further, please visit http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/news/story/solar_superstorms.
South African Scientists Create Cheap Computer
University of Witwatersrand researchers are leading a project to create inexpensive computers or tablets to potentially be used by every student in South Africa in the near future. "We are creating this human capacity to solve complicated problems in software, hardware, electronics, computing, and all that," says Witwatersrand professor Bruce Mellado. The goal of the project is to equip the entire educational system of South Africa with low-cost computers or tablets, a mission that would be made easier with locally designed and manufactured devices. "We got a grant from the Technology Innovation Agency to start working with schools and produce the first devices here in South Africa," Mellado says. The researchers are studying the interaction between children and technology so the new devices will help students engage in learning, especially in improving their mathematical skills. To read further, please visit http://mybroadband.co.za/news/hardware/126946-south-african-scientists-create-cheap-computer.html. .
Stanford Engineers Develop Computer That Operates on Water Droplets
Computers and water typically don't mix, but in Manu Prakash's lab, the two are one and the same. Prakash, an assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford, and his students have built a synchronous computer that operates using the unique physics of moving water droplets. The computer is nearly a decade in the making, incubated from an idea that struck Prakash when he was a graduate student The work combines his expertise in manipulating droplet fluid dynamics with a fundamental element of computer science -- an operating clock.
"In this work, we finally demonstrate a synchronous, universal droplet logic and control," Prakash said. To read further, please visit http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/06/150609093023.htm.
University of Houston RESEARCH Offer Hope for Less-Invasive Surgeries
University of Houston researchers have proposed using tiny robots driven by magnetic potential energy from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners to advance minimally invasive medical treatments. The new approach is based on sending tiny maneuverable robotic components to a desired location and triggering the conversion of magnetic potential energy into a suitable amount of kinetic energy to penetrate tissue. "Our noninvasive approach would eventually require simply a hypodermic needle or lumbar puncture to introduce the components into the spinal canal, and the components could be steered out of the body afterwards," says University of Houston professor Aaron T. Becker. The researchers hacked the MRI scanner to harness the machine's own magnetic fields to push the small robots along a pre-mapped routes. TO READ FURTHER, PLEASE VISIT http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-05/uoh-mmo052715.php.
UC SAN DIEGO Software 'Reads' Kids' Expressions to Measure Pain Levels
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine have developed a new method of measuring the pain experienced by pediatric patients using facial pattern recognition software. Pain is traditionally gauged via self-reporting, with patients rating their pain on a scale of 1 to 10; however, it can be difficult for medical professionals to accurately gauge the pain that pediatric patients are experiencing because children, especially young ones, are often unable to accurately gauge their own pain. The method described by the UCSD researchers is based on the Facial Action Coding System, which measures facial expressions using 46 anatomically-based component movements and which has proven to be useful in identifying pain-related facial movements. The researchers used the software to analyze video of 50 youths who had undergone laparoscopic appendectomies. They then compared the pain ratings generated by the software with the patient's self-reported pain levels and those provided by parents and nurses. To read further, please visit https://health.ucsd.edu/news/releases/Pages/2015-05-31-2015-softward-used-for-pediatric-pain-assessment.aspx.
Educator News, Conferences, and Opportunities
How Kids Are Learning to Code While Playing Minecraft
Teachers are already capitalizing on their students’ fascination with the computer game Minecraft to teach everything from math to history. Now, a new add-on teaches kids to code their own modifications to the game. In his Wired article, Klint Finley explains how the creators of the add-on called LearnToMod hope their tool could be a gateway for students to discover a love of computer programming. For more, please visit http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/08/22/how-kids-are-learning-to-code-while-playing-minecraft//
9 Programming Languages and the Women Who Created Them
Computerworld
Despite software development's reputation as a male-dominated field, women have made many important and lasting contributions to the field, including the development of programming languages. One of the first was the ARC assembly language created by Kathleen Booth for the ARC (Automatic Relay Calculator) computer in 1950. In 1955, Soviet physicist and mathematician Kateryna Yushchenko developed the Address programming language, which was widely used in the Soviet Union for more than 20 years. A few years later, the U.S. Navy's Grace Hopper was one of the technical advisers for the committee that created COBOL. In 1962, IBM's Jean Sammet developed the FORMAC programming language, which was widely used for symbolic mathematical computation. Later that decade, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Cynthia Solomon helped develop Logo, which would go on to influence educational programming languages such as Scratch. In 1974, Barbara Liskov, the first woman awarded a computer science Ph.D. in the U.S., led the team that developed CLU, which would influence later languages such as Java and Python. Xerox PARC researcher Adele Goldberg was part of the team that developed the Smalltalk programming language released in 1980. To read further, please visit http://www.computerworld.com/article/2920542/app-development/9-programming-languages-and-the-women-who-created-them.html?phint=newt%3Dcomputerworld_dailynews&phint=idg_eid%3D72aca524ac2045ddab625df5487363f7#slide1.
Student Engagement and Opportunities
Tesla GPUs Power Winning Team in Student Supercomputing Competition
THE Tesla Accelerated Computing Platform has again powered the winning team in a major international student supercomputing competition. And, GPU technology helped another team set a student record in the supercomputing industry’s top performance benchmark. For the third year in a row GPU technologies have helped a team nab the top spot in the Asia Student Supercomputer Challenge, the world’s largest supercomputer competition. This year, 152 teams from around the world took part. Sixteen from around the globe made the cut to compete in the finals, which are held in Asia every year. To read more, please visit http://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/tesla-gpus-power-winning-team-in-student-supercomputing-competition/.
Rutgers Students Win with App for Diabetes Management
Team "Copernicus Health" won the Nicholson Foundation's Rutgers Healthcare Delivery Challenge for its smartphone app that engages and motivates underserved populations to better manage their type 2 diabetes. The Rutgers Healthcare Delivery Challenge encouraged teams to develop ready-to-implement service delivery or technology innovations that can improve the quality and contain the costs of healthcare for underserved populations. The Copernicus Health app uses gamification techniques to enable patients to receive points for taking their medicine, self-educating about their disease through the apps' embedded learning tools, and monitoring important clinical metrics at the doctor's office. After users receive a predetermined number of points, they receive rewards in the form of direct cash deposits to their reloadable Copernicus debit cards or discounts to use at healthy lifestyle businesses. The Rutgers teams' "innovative ideas, tenacious problem-solving skills, and commitment to reaching at-risk populations will help change the future of healthcare and the lives of patients in New Jersey," says the Nicholson Foundation's Joan Randell. To read further, please visit http://www.mycentraljersey.com/story/news/local/new-jersey/2015/05/20/rutgers-students-create-smartphone-application/27657311/.
14 Illinois Researchers Selected for NCSA Fellowships
Fourteen faculty members at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have been selected to receive one-year fellowships that will enable their research teams to pursue collaborative projects with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. NCSA's fellowship program aims to catalyze and develop long-term collaborations between the center and campus researchers, particularly in the center's six thematic areas of research: Bioinformatics and Health Sciences, Computing and Data Sciences, Culture and Society, Earth and Environment, Materials and Manufacturing, and Physics and Astronomy. For a list of Faculty Fellows, please visit http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/news/story/14_illinois_researchers_selected_for_ncsa_faculty_fellowships.
Computational Science News of Interest
Gadgets Powered Wirelessly at Home With a Simple Wi-Fi Router
New Scientist
A multi-university team of researchers has developed a system that can power electrical devices with just a wireless router's signal, even while it provides wireless Internet access to an area. Using a traditional Wi-Fi signal, devices can be powered when the Internet is being used; however, when not browsing, the signal goes quiet. The new software broadcasts meaningless data across several Wi-Fi channels when the Internet is not being used, and small devices could use this signal as part of an Internet of Things, according to University of Reading researcher Ben Potter. The researchers tested the system in six households in which modified electrical devices were put in the homes along with a Wi-Fi router. Over 24 hours, the devices were powered only by the router's signal converted to electricity via a rectifier, while also continuing to provide wireless Internet to the home. To read further, please visit http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27633-gadgets-powered-wirelessly-at-home-with-a-simple-wifi-router.html#.VXtPLqZqaLp.
Social Media
How Social Media Is Helping Nepal Rebuild After Two Big Earthquakes
NextGov.com
Several groups both in and out of Nepal have turned to crisis-mapping technology--a method of using crowdsourced information to create maps showing where aid is needed in the wake of a disaster--following a pair of massive earthquakes that have rocked the small Himalayan nation in recent weeks. Before the earthquakes, Kathmandu Living Labs, a non-profit tech company based in the Nepali capital of Kathmandu, used open data and tools such as OpenStreetMap to track development issues in the country. Following the quakes, its team began collecting Facebook posts and tweets to generate a single organized quake map that it shared with several relief groups and the Nepal Army. Another group called Sankalpa also has been creating maps, which it based on information gathered from mobile messaging service Sparrow SMS. Sankalpa's maps help to show where and what kinds of aid are being requested. They also help to cut down on inaccurate reporting. To read further, please visit http://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2015/05/how-social-media-helping-nepal-rebuild-after-two-big-earthquakes/113200/.
