HPC Happenings
Applications for Broader Engagement Program Due by June 19, 2013
The SC13 Broader Engagement Program is designed to diversify the pool of talent in supercomputing by introducing, engaging and supporting students and professionals belonging to underrepresented groups. Competitive grants are made available to support the travel to, and participation in, the technical program. For more information, please visit http://sc13.supercomputing.org/content/broader-engagement-1?goback=.gde_1775643_member_249526221.
Registration Opens For NASA Night Rover Energy Challenge
January 20, 2014 - March 24, 2014 – Palo Alto, California
Registration Deadline - October 25, 2013
Registration is now open for teams wishing to compete in the $1.5 million energy storage competition known as the Night Rover Challenge, sponsored by NASA and managed by Cleantech Open. "The goal of the Night Rover Challenge is to stimulate innovations in energy storage technologies of value in extreme space environments, such as the surface of the moon, or for electric vehicles and renewable energy systems here on Earth," said Michael Gazarik, NASA's associate administrator for Space Technology at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "NASA wants this challenge to generate new ideas that will allow planetary rovers the ability to take on a night shift, and possibly create neenergy storage technologies for applications of benefit here on our home planet." For information about the Night Rover Challenge, Challenge rules, requirements, and how to register, please visit http://nspires.nasaprs.com/external/solicitations/summary.do?method=init&solId={22395A3D-DA0E-BB95-4C82-2C50ECD97E08}&path=open
SDSC Hosts ECSITE’13: EarthCube Summer Institute for Technology Exploration 2013
August 12-16, 2-13 – La Jolla, California
Registration Deadline – July 2, 2013
Funded by the National Science Foundation’s Geoinformatics program and the EarthCube program, ECSITE’13 builds upon eight years of the Cyberinfrastructure Summer Institute for Geoscientists, from 2004-2011 (see Previous Summer Institutes). ECSITE’13 will provide an introduction to data science concepts and topics, while also covering topics in computational science. For a list of topics to be covered and to register, please visit http://www.geongrid.org/index.php/education/summer_institute/.
HPC Conference Call for Participation
Call for Proposals: NSF/TCPP CDER Center Early Adopter Awards for Fall 2013
Proposal Submission Deadline - June 30, 2013
The penetration of parallel and distributed computer (PDC) technology into the daily lives of users via their wireless networks, smartphones, social networking sites and more, has made it imperative to impart a broad-based skill set in PDC technology at various levels in the educational fabric. However, the rapid advances in computing technology and services challenges educators’ abilities to know what to teach in any given semester. Other stakeholders in the push to cope with fast-changing PDC technology, including employers, face similar challenges in identifying basic expertise. The curricular guidelines developed by the NSF/TCPP working group seek to address this challenge in a manner that is flexible and broad, with allowance for variations in emphasis in response to different institutions and different curricular cultures. For more information, please visit http://www.cs.gsu.edu/~tcpp/curriculum/?q=home.
Upcoming Conferences and Workshops
Virtual School Offers Two Summer Computational Science Coursses
Graduate students, post-docs and professionals from academia, government, and industry are invited to sign up now for two summer school courses offered by the Virtual School of Computational Science and Engineering. These Virtual School courses will be delivered to sites nationwide using high-definition videoconferencing technologies, allowing students to participate at a number of convenient locations where they will be able to work with a cohort of fellow computational scientists, have access to local experts, and interact in real time with course instructors. Registration fees for each course are $100, with some sites waiving the fees. To register, first visit the user portal for the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE): https://portal.xsede.org/. If this is your first use of the XSEDE portal, follow the guidelines to create a free portal account. Once you have an XSEDE portal account, you may sign up for the Virtual School courses through the XSEDE course calendar: https://portal.xsede.org/course-calendar. For more information about the Virtual School, go to http://www.vscse.org/. Questions about the summer school can be sent to info@vscse.org.
SSTIC 2013
July 22-26, 2013 - Tarragona, Spain
SSTiC 2013 will be an open forum for the convergence of top class well recognized computer scientists and people at the beginning of their research career (typically PhD students) as well as consolidated researchers. SSTiC 2013 will cover the whole spectrum of computer science by means of 67 six-hour courses dealing with hot topics at the frontiers of the field. By actively participating, lecturers and attendees will share the idea of scientific excellence as the main motto of their research work. For more information and to register, please visit http://grammars.grlmc.com/SSTiC2013/.
SDSC 2013 Summer Institute: Discover Big Data
August 5-9, 2013 – La Jolla, California
Discover Big Data is the theme of SDSC’s Summer Institute in 2013, reflecting the pressing need for high performance solutions for exploring and analyzing the large volumes of data that science and business applications are now able to generate with ease. The 5-day summer institute will cover topics in HPC and big data including, data management, data analytics and visualization, and parallel programming models, via discussion of specific use cases and hands-on exercises. Attendees will be introduced to SDSC’s NSF-funded Gordon data-intensive supercomputer as well as other computational resources at SDSC. They will also receive an overview of the NSF XSEDE program a national-scale cyberinfrastructure for high performance computing. SDSC’s Gordon is a unique resource in XSEDE, given Gordon’s pioneering architecture, which is in concert with SDSC’s vision for supporting data-intensive and big data applications. Further information and registration: http://www.sdsc.edu/Events/summerinstitute/index.html.
2013 SACNAS National Conference
October 3–6, 2013 - San Antonio, Texas
SACNAS is a way for you to expose your students to incredible resources and the validating and inspiring environment of SACNAS where they have the unique opportunity to engage with science, culture, and community. The SACNAS National Conference also provides an important place for you to recharge as a professional, as you connect with peers, build your own networks, and recruit new students. For complete conference information, please visit http://sacnas.org/events/national-conf?.
SC13
November 17 - 22, 2013 - Denver, Colorado
SC13, the premier annual international conference on high-performance computing, networking, and storage, will be held in Denver, Colorado. The Technical Papers Program at SC is the leading venue for presenting the highest-quality original research, from the foundations of HPC to its emerging frontiers. The conference committee solicits submissions of excellent scientific merit that introduce new ideas to the field and stimulate future trends on topics such as applications, systems, parallel algorithms, and performance modeling. For more information, please visit http://sc13.supercomputing.org/content/papers.
Research Features From Across the Country and Around the World
NICS is Experiencing Some Turbulence
To convey the essence of the ubiquitous influence of turbulence, researcher Antonino Ferrante of the William E. Boeing Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics of the University of Washington, Seattle, quotes Greek philosopher Heraclitus: “’Everything flows and nothing abides; everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.” “As I sit and look around me, I notice several examples of turbulent flows: the air moving in and out of my lungs, the air moving around me in my office, the smoke flowing out of a chimney, the wind moving between the leaves and branches of trees, massive clouds moving in the atmosphere, the air surrounding a flying bird and an airplane,” Ferrante says. “No matter how big or small, or how close or far you look, you will see fluids in motion. To read further, please visit http://www.nics.tennessee.edu/ferrante-4-2013.
NCSA’s Meson Mission
Using supercomputing resources provided by the National Science Foundation’s Blue Waters and XSEDE projects and the Department of Energy’s INCITE program, a team of researchers has performed the most precise calculation to date of a key quantity in high-energy physics, a field that asks fundamental questions about the nature of matter and our universe. This work on the ratio of the leptonic decay constants of the K and pi mesons was recently published in Physical Review Letters. To read further, please visit http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/News/Stories/MesonMission/.
SDSC’s Gordon: A Non-Conventional Supercomputer Fosters Non-Traditional Research Projects
When the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of San Diego, California, debuted Gordon early last year, the system’s architects envisioned that its innovative features – such as the first large-scale deployment of flash storage (300 terabytes) in a high-performance computer – would open the door to new areas of research. “Gordon's extraordinary speed makes it possible for researchers to tackle questions they couldn't address before, simply because they didn’t have a system that was uniquely tailored to handle the challenges of data intensive computing,” said SDSC Michael Norman just prior to Gordon’s launch. “I view Gordon as a new kind of vessel, a ship that will take us on new voyages to makes new discoveries in new areas of science.” To read further, please visit http://www.sdsc.edu/News%20Items/PR060613_gordon_highlights.html.
Intel Carves Mainstream Highway for Lustre
HPCwire
It’s been just a tick under a year since Intel’s acquisition of Whamcloud and its Lustre braintrust. While it was a rather quiet transition, the chipmaker made some noteworthy strides toward pushing Lustre further into the mainstream--without ignoring its roots in HPC. The company kicked two announcements about Lustre into the arena with high hopes of appealing to the enterprise crowd. Both news items are meant to strike a chord with the big business crowd--a market that’s increasingly interested in (you guessed it) “big data” and Hadoop, as well as general usability for ever-mounting scalability troubles. To read further, http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/2013-06-12/intel_builds_mainstream_highways_for_lustre.html?featured=top&goback=.gde_4178444_member_249244949.
Educator Opportunities and Information
The Future of Science Is In Our Hands: News from California STEM Learning Network
Produced in collaboration with The Education Trust-West and Children Now, the brief explains the importance of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) to improving STEM education in California and encourages education, business, parent and community leaders to become informed and speak out in support of the new standards. For more information, please visit http://cslnet.org/;
SuperQuest Summer Workshop Offered in Oregon
June 19-21 - Portland State University - http://www.techstart.org/superquest-psu/
July 10–12 – Columbia Gorge Community College -http://www.techstart.org/superquest-gorge/
July 24–26 – Rogue Community College - http://www.techstart.org/superquest-rogue-cc/
TechStart's flagship program, SuperQuest, is a highly collaborative technology training series designed specifically for K–12 teachers. After school enrichment volunteers, such as OGPC, FLL, and FTC Coaches are also encouraged to attend! Our goal is to empower educators with the skills and classroom tools to build hands-on technology learning directly into their classrooms or after school activities. Our SuperQuest Summer format makes it affordable and available for educators around the state. Our goal is continue to expand the locations of SuperQuest to encourage and facilitate greater access so more teachers in Oregon have the professional development necessary to offer technology education to more students. Registration is $50 per workshop and includes breakfast and lunch for each of the three days.
SIGGRAPH Offering Free Educator Workshops
July 21. 2013 – Anaheim, California
The ACM SIGGRAPH Education Committee is offering free workshops to computer science educators to occur in conjunction with the SIGGRAPH 2013 conference. To make expenses of travel worthwhile and to introduce the conference experience to those who have never attended, SIGGRAPH is offering participants who teach middle school and high school computing a complimentary conference registration. The two workshops, Processing as an Introduction to Java and Drawing Machines, are based on successful pilot programs created and taught to high school students at Trinity Valley School in Fort Worth, TX. More information and registration available at http://www.buildingsteam.org..
Student Engagement and Information .
Video: Brent Gorda on the Origins of the Student Cluster Challenge at SC
In this video, Dan Olds from Gabriel Consulting discusses the origins of the Student Cluster Competition with Brent Gorda, who helped found the contest back at SC07. To view the video, please visit http://insidehpc.com/2013/06/11/video-brent-gorda-on-the-origins-of-the-student-cluster-challenge/?goback=.gde_4178444_member_248818551.
Robotics Summer of Learning Teaches Students STEM Skills
June 17, 2013 – Online Instruction Begins
Students and teachers will have the opportunity to develop programming skills, design virtual game levels, animate stories, earn badges that lead to certifications, and win prizes for free this summer through the Robotics Summer of Learning. The initiative will focus on providing step-by-step lessons to make programming easy and prepare students for a STEM future. The program is sponsored by Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Academy and hosted online at the Computer Science Student Network. For more information, please visit http://www.cs2n.org/summer-of-learning,
Career Opportunities
Science and Technology Writer/Editor
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - Req #76066
The Berkeley Lab Computing Sciences Directorate is seeking a full-time communications specialist to develop and carry out a range of communications projects for various audiences. The Computing Sciences organization is a world leader in high-performance computing and networking in support of science, providing the infrastructure and expertise to tackle some of the most challenging problems in energy, the environment and basic science. The Computing Sciences communications team works to increase the visibility of scientific accomplishments, staff contributions and other news through web articles, news releases, annual reports and strategic documents. We are looking for someone with experience and expertise in a broad range of communications, who has excellent proofreading skills and who knows how to tell a good story. For more information and to apply, please visit
https://lbl.taleo.net/careersection/2/jobdetail.ftl?lang=en&job=76066.
