HPC in the News
XSEDE14 Hotel and Registration Rates Extended
Extended Deadline – June 27, 2014
XSEDE14 kicks off in Atlanta on July 13 and will include high-quality presentations in four technical tracks, tutorials, a visualization showcase, birds-of-a-feather talks, posters, lightning talks, various sponsor activities, a day-long workshop on reproducibility, a job fair and a variety of opportunities for student involvement. Among the various plenary speakers are Dr. Farnam Jahanian, the Assistant Director for the National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), and Dr. Irene Qualters, the Division Director for the Division of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (CISE/ACI). XSEDE14 registration, hotel and Atlanta-area updates, sponsorship information and more can all be found at xsede.org/xsede14.
PRACEdays14 Concludes With 3 Awards
More than 200 participants from academia and industry attended the recent Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) Scientific and Industrial Conference 2014 (PRACEdays14) in Barcelona, Spain. Highlights of the conference included keynote speeches by well-known academic scientists and industrial researchers from the United States and Europe, and by high-level representatives from the European Commission and industry. Satellite events included an open session of the PRACE User Forum and a Workshop on Exascale and PRACE Prototypes. The final panel brought together the keynote speakers for a discussion of the economic and scientific impact of collaboration between science and industry. To read further, please visit http://www.prace-ri.eu/PRACEdays14-Results-PR.
Call for Paper and Panel Proposals: EduHPC: Workshop on Education for High-Performance Computing
EduHPC: Workshop on Education for High-Performance Computing
Nov ember17, 2014 – New Orleans, Louisiana
Abstract Due - August 20, 2014
Paper submission deadline – August 27, 2014
In conjunction with SC-14: The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis
The EduHPC Workshop is devoted to the development and assessment of educational resources for undergraduate education in Parallel and Distributed Computing (PDC) and High Performance Computing (HPC). Both PDC and HPC now permeate the world of computing to a degree that makes it imperative for even entry-level computer professionals to incorporate these computing modalities into their computing toolkits, no matter what aspect of computing they work on. This workshop focuses on the state of the art in HPC and PDC education, by means of both contributed and invited papers from academia, industry, and other educational and research institutions. Topics of interest include all topics pertaining to the teaching of PDC and HPC within Computer Science and Engineering, Computational Science, and Domain Science and Engineering curricula. The emphasis of the workshop is undergraduate education, but fundamental issues related to graduate education are also welcome. The workshop is coordinated by the CDER Center for PDC Education and highlights the NSF/TCPP curriculum initiative on PDC (http://www.cs.gsu.edu/~tcpp/curriculum). For more information, please visit http://cs.gsu.edu/~tcpp/curriculum/?q=edupdhpc. .
NSF Offers ADVANCE Program Webinar
July 8, 2014 – 2:00pm and 3:30pm EDT
NSF’s ADVANCE: Increasing the Participation and Advancement of Women in Academic Science and Engineering Careers (ADVANCE) program will be conducting a Webinar focused on its new solicitation. The solicitation is available online at http://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?WT.z_pims_id=5383&ods_key=nsf14573. The goals of the ADVANCE program are (1) to develop systemic approaches to increase the representation and advancement of women in academic STEM careers; (2) to develop innovative and sustainable ways to promote gender equity in the STEM academic workforce; and (3) to contribute to the development of a more diverse science and engineering workforce. More information can be found at http://www.nsf.gov/events/event_summ.jsp?cntn_id=131676&WT.mc_id=USNSF_13&WT.mc_ev=click.
HPC Call for Participation
3rd INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF NATURAL COMPUTING (TPNC 2014)
December 9-11, 2014 - Granada, Spain
Paper Submission Deadline - July 17, 2014
TPNC is a conference series intending to cover the wide spectrum of computational principles, models and techniques inspired by information processing in nature. TPNC 2014 will reserve significant room for young scholars at the beginning of their career. It aims at attracting contributions to nature-inspired models of computation, synthesizing nature by means of computation, nature-inspired materials, and information processing in nature. For more information, please visit http://grammars.grlmc.com/tpnc2014/.
Call for Papers, Tutorials, Panels - FUTURE COMPUTING 2015, The Seventh International Conference on Future
Computational Technologies and Applications
March 22 - 27, 2015 - Nice, France
Submission Deadline – October 28, 2014
Please consider to contribute to and/or forward to the appropriate groups the following opportunity to submit and publish original scientific results to FUTURE COMPUTING 2015. For complete submission guidelines and information, please visit http://www.iaria.org/conferences2015/CfPFUTURECOMPUTING15.html.
Upcoming Conferences, Workshops and Webinars
Virtual School of Computational Science and Engineering (VSCSE) Summer School
Big Data Summer School, June 30 - July 2, 2014 - U Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma
Harness the Power of GPUs: Introduction to GPGPU Programming, June 16-20, 2014
The Virtual School of Computational Science and Engineering is looking forward to another successful summer school program providing undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs, faculty and professionals the skills they need to use advanced computational resources to further their research. These are being offered through one of a kind high-definition videoconferencing delivered simultaneously nationwide to specific sites. For complete information, including summer school site locations and to register, please visit https://portal.xsede.org/course-calendar.
SDSC Virtual Data Intensive Summer School
June 30 – July 2, 2014 -- La Jolla, California
The San Diego Supercomputer Center will be one of 21 sites across the country hosting the Virtual Data Intensive Summer School. It is intended for participants who are local to San Diego or one of the other 20 sites that will be linked using videoconferencing technology. The Data Intensive Summer School focuses on the skills needed to manage, process and gain insight from large amounts of data. It is targeted at researchers from the physical, biological, economic and social sciences that are beginning to drown in data. We will cover the nuts and bolts of data intensive computing, common tools and software, predictive analytics algorithms, data management and non-relational database models. Given the short duration of the summer school, the emphasis will be on providing a solid foundation that the attendees can use as a starting point for advanced topics of particular relevance to their work.
Summer School details: http://www.vscse.org/summerschool/2014/index.html
SDSC Summer Institute 2014: HPC Meets Big Data
August 4 – 8, 2014 – La Jolla, California
HPC Meets Big Data is the theme of SDSC’s Summer Institute in 2014. SDSC Summer Institute will deploy a flexible format designed to help attendees get the most out of their week. The first half will consist of plenary sessions covering the skills that are considered essential for anyone who works with big data. Topics include data management, running jobs on SDSC resources, reproducibility, database systems, characteristics of big data, techniques for turning data into knowledge, software version control and making effective use of hardware. Followed by a series of parallel sessions that allow attendees to dive deeper into specialized material that is relevant to their research projects, with the exact choice of topics will be based on feedback collected during registration. The Summer Institute is targeted to individuals interested in data science and computational science—especially current and potential users of SDSC's data-intensive resources. To apply, please visit http://www.sdsc.edu/Events/summerinstitute/.
Research Features From Across the Country and Around the World
Multidimensional Image Processing and Analysis in R
Talita Perciano, with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Computational Research Division's Visualization Group, says she is updating the R Image Processing Analysis (RIPA) tool to operate on massively parallel clusters at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing facility and execute advanced image-processing tasks. Perciano says the latest RIPA iteration enables users to perform some essential image processing in parallel, but the next version will conduct more complex image-processing chores. It will feature new algorithms for pattern recognition and feature extraction, and it will accommodate three-dimensional images. Perciano created RIPA as a contribution to a community effort to create R, an esoteric, open source statistical analysis language, and says it was originally designed for satellite image analysis. She notes the update dovetails with Berkeley Lab's need to manage larger and more complex experimental and simulated scientific datasets. To read further, please visit http://crd.lbl.gov/news-and-publications/news/2014/multidimensional-image-processing-and-analysis-in-r/.
Digital Actors Go Beyond the Uncanny Valley
IEEE Spectrum
Graphics specialists are close to developing interactive and photo-realistically lifelike digital humans that will transform acting, entertainment, and computer games. Experts say over the next decade computer-game characters will become indistinguishable from filmed humans, and a convergence of movies and games will result in new forms of entertainment. The entertainment industry hopes to seamlessly blend real and virtual worlds so that if people can imagine something, they will be able to actually see it. Filmmakers already use computer-generated humans, but doing so currently requires enormous amounts of computing resources. Five minutes of film requires 7,200 frames, based on the standard rate of 24 frames per second, making realistic digital doubles currently unfeasible for video-game creators. To read further, please visit http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/digital-actors-go-beyond-the-uncanny-valley.
Stanford Opens State-of-the-Art Facility for Collaborative Scientific Visualization
Stanford Report
Stanford University has opened a new facility at the Huang Engineering Center called the HANA Immersive Visualization Environment (HIVE), which uses cutting-edge technology to enable unprecedented visualizations of scientific data. "Researchers are creating tremendous amounts of data through computations, simulations, measurements, sensor readings, and so forth," says Stanford professor and Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering director Margot Gerritsen. "A laptop screen doesn't do that justice. We have to have a way to visualize such data in ways that allow us to see the big picture and also zoom in on the detail." To read further, please visit http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/june/hive-open-house-060514.html.
Microsoft's '3D Audio' Gives Virtual Objects a Voice
Technology Review
Microsoft researchers have developed a way for headphones to imbue virtual objects with sounds that appear to come from specific points in space, thus enhancing virtual or augmented reality interaction. The system uses software to construct a three-dimensional (3D) model of the user's head and shoulders, and then employs the model to calculate a personalized filter capable of deceiving the user's auditory senses. Microsoft researcher Ivan Tashev says once this filter has been recorded, it could be utilized by various devices or software. When Tashev scans a person's head, the software produces an approximation of that person's head related transfer function (HRTF) that seems adequate to generate unusually precise spatial audio. "Essentially we can predict how you will hear from the way you look," Tashev says. To read further, please visit http://www.technologyreview.com/news/527826/microsofts-3-d-audio-gives-virtual-objects-a-voice/.
NSF Dear Colleague Letter--Cybersecurity Education EAGERs
CCC Blog
The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate for Education and Human Resources and Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering have released a Dear Colleague Letter announcing interest in using Early Concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGERs) to foster collaboration between the cybersecurity research and computing education research communities. EAGERs aim to advance cybersecurity education, an area supported by the NSF's Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace and CyberCorps: Scholarship for Service programs. EAGERs fund exploratory work on untested research ideas or approaches with the potential for breakthroughs. To read further, please visit http://www.cccblog.org/2014/06/02/nsf-dear-colleague-letter-cybersecurity-education-eagers/.
UC San Diego Researchers Develop App Paired With Sensor That Measures Stress and Delivers Advice to Cope in Real Time
UCSD News
University of California, San Diego (UCSD) researchers have developed ParentGuardian, a smartphone-based system that combines a mobile application and sensor to detect stress in parents and provides research-based strategies to help decrease that stress during emotionally charged interactions with their children. The interventions are based on Parenting Behavioral Therapy, which has been shown to help in addressing the needs of children with ADHD and their parents. "Instead of focusing on an individual in need we are looking at how to build and design technology for the family as a whole and what’s beneficial for them," says UCSD Ph.D. computer science student Laura Pina. ParentGuardian combines a stress sensor, a phone, a backend server, and tablet to remind parents of effective interventions. To read further, please visit http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/news/news_releases/release.sfe?id=1526.
Pixar to Give Away 'Toy Story' 3D RenderMan Software|
BBC News
Pixar plans to make a non-commercial version of RenderMan freely available to students, institutions, researchers, developers, and for personal use. The firm, owned by Disney, says it will release the three-dimensional (3D) rendering software "without any functional limitations, watermarking, or time restrictions." The software has been used to render images for films such as "Toy Story," "Monsters Inc.," and "Harry Potter." RenderMan has been around for more than 25 years and is "very important at the higher end of the entertainment, animation, and visual effects industries," says 3D World editor Ian Dean. RenderMan is facing increasing competition from rival animation rendering programs such as VRay and Arnold, and Dean says Pixar's move could be construed as a response to this trend. To read further, please visit http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27677712.
Educator News and Opportunities
2014 Lunar Workshop for Educators
July 14-18, 2014 - NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, mission is sponsoring a workshop for educators of students in grades 6-9. This workshop will focus on lunar science, exploration and how our understanding of the moon is evolving with the new data from current and recent lunar missions. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has allowed scientists to measure the coldest known place in the solar system, map the surface of the moon in unprecedented detail and accuracy, find evidence of recent lunar geologic activity, characterize the radiation environment around the moon and its potential effects on future lunar explorers and much, much more! Workshop participants will learn about these and other recent discoveries, reinforce their understanding of lunar science concepts, gain tools to help address common student misconceptions about the moon, interact with lunar scientists and engineers, work with LRO data and learn how to bring these data and information to their students using hands-on activities aligned with grades 6-9 National Science Education Standards and Benchmarks. For more information and to register for the workshop, visit http://lunar.gsfc.nasa.gov/lwe/index.html.
ESRI Pledges Free GIS Software for Schools
President Barack Obama recently announced ESRI has pledged $1-billion of mapping software available free to US K12 schools. Since 1969, Esri, headquartered in Redlands, California, has built geographic information system (GIS) software to enable organizations to create responsible and sustainable solutions to problems at local and global scales. Understanding how to use effectively use GIS will open the doors to many careers. Students love maps, especially when they can tweak them. GIS mapping software engages their instinct for visual understanding with the capacity to explore and investigate questions. Esri software is used across the globe, in nearly every industry, to make maps and analyze data. From farming to defense to modeling climate to routing school buses, users on workstations and laptops collaborate with others on tablets and smartphones, building data, designing maps, and making decisions. Visit http://connected.esri.com/ for more information about this free program and for examples of how high school students are using GIS to solve problems. For more information and to request a free ArcGIS online organization account, please visit https://esri.app.box.com/connectedrequest.
Online Adobe Education Trainer Program
Course Begins – June 29, 2014
Adobe has announced it is offering a free eight-week online "Train the Trainer" course; the first class begins on the Adobe Education Exchange at the end of this month. Participants who successfully complete the course requirements will earn a digital credential and have access to an exclusive training toolkit, just for Adobe Education Trainers. Adobe Education Trainers are an elite community of trainers with the skills and expertise to train K12 educators on teaching digital media with Adobe tools. To earn an Adobe Education Trainer credential, individuals complete a "Train the Trainer" course and participate in an online professional learning community. This community provides access to an exclusive toolkit of training resources as well as a peer support network for Adobe Education Trainers worldwide. Through engaging with the program, Adobe Education Trainers build their own capacity and the capacity of their colleagues and institutions to unleash creativity. If you are interested in building your capacity and the ability of other teachers in your district or school site you can take advantage of this free program by registering for the online "Train the Trainer" course by visiting http://edex.adobe.com/pd/course/t4t2014.
Adobe Announces Educator Webinar Series
Thursday, June 26, 2014 - New Services Update: Creative Cloud for Enterprise
Tuesday, July 15, 2014 - Acrobat & The New Workforce
Thursday, July 17, 2014 - Deploying New Creative Cloud for Enterprise Services
Tuesday, July 22, 2014 - Connecting Content Management Systems to Adobe DPS
Thursday, July 24, 2014 - Spotlight on New Creative Cloud for Enterprise Features
Thursday, July 31, 2014 - Acrobat & Document Security
Adobe has announce it is offering a series of complimentary webinars designed to show you how to work smarter and more effectively with Adobe Digital Media Solutions, including Adobe Acrobat, Creative Cloud, Digital Publishing Suite, and EchoSign. Teachers who use the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite for student projects may want to participate in the webinars to better understand how to get the most out of the Adobe products they use. Each webinar last for one hour and begin at 10:00 a.m. To register, please visit http://gov.adobeeventsonline.com/Webinars/2014/index.php?source=119.
NSF Supports Learning through Making
In the Tinkering Studio at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, a group of young people is making tiaras--light-up tiaras. Using copper wire, a soldering iron, batteries and LED lights, they use trial and error to build the kind of design they want. In the process, they start to figure something out. If you want all your lights to glow, you have to create a parallel circuit. A series circuit will not provide enough voltage. The National Science Foundation (NSF) has long supported making as a pathway to STEM learning outside of school. In 2005, NSF funded the Playful Invention and Exploration (PIE) Institute to increase the capacity of museum educators and exhibitors to design and implement technology-integrated inquiry activities for the public. To read further, please visit http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=131761&WT.mc_id=USNSF_51&WT.mc_ev=click.
Student Engagement and Opportunities
Google Launches Made with Code to Help Girls Learn to Build Technology
In a post on Google's official blog, YouTube Chief Executive Susan Wojcicki shared a common concern for many women in tech: that there are "far too few young girls" pursuing similar careers. Less than 1% of high school girls, she said, express interest in majoring in computer science. Google wants to tackle that problem. Made with Code, launched Thursday, wants to inspire girls to code and includes introductory coding projects and a commitment of $50 million over three years to support programs that can help get more women into computer science. Made with Code launched with partners Chelsea Clinton, Mindy Kaling, MIT Media Lab and the National Center for Women & Information Technology, among others. It will include collaborations with organizations such as the Girl Scouts of the USA and Girls Inc. to introduce Made with Code to girls in their networks. Girls and their parents will have a resource directory they can use to find more information about local events, camps, classes and clubs. The program will also reward teachers who support girls who take computer science courses on Codecademy or Khan Academy. For more information, please visit https://www.madewithcode.com/.
Send Your Name to the Asteroid Bennu!
Submission Deadline – September 30, 2014
NASA is inviting people around the world to submit their names to be etched on a microchip aboard a spacecraft headed to the asteroid Bennu in 2016. The "Messages to Bennu!" microchip will travel to the asteroid aboard the Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer, or OSIRIS-REx, spacecraft. The robotic mission will spend more than two years at the asteroid, which has a width of approximately 1,760 feet (500 meters). The spacecraft will collect a sample of Bennu's surface and return it to Earth in a sample return capsule. For more information and to submit your name, visit http://planetary.org/bennu. Participants who "follow" or "like" the mission on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/OSIRISREx) will receive updates on the location of their names in space from launch time until the asteroid samples return to Earth in 2023. Facebook fans also will receive mission progress and late-breaking news through regular status updates.
Concept Paper Solicitation: ISS Post-Grad Innovation Awards in Space Life and Physical Science Research
Submission Deadline – July 10, 2014
NASA's Space Life and Physical Sciences Office and the International Space Station Program Office are seeking hypothesis-driven research concept papers that use the International Space Station as a microgravity platform in the space life and physical sciences disciplines. Concept papers should describe ground-based research that can be enhanced by flying in a microgravity environment on the space station. Concept papers selected will have the opportunity to submit a full flight proposal based on the merit of the research presented. NASA anticipates selecting 10 submissions to receive monetary awards. Selected awardees will be invited to submit full proposals on their research, which may result in one flight opportunity for student researchers. Graduate students and post-doctoral fellows from all categories of U.S. institutions who have never conducted or been involved in space research are eligible to submit papers. Student research and scientists from EPSCoR (Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research) jurisdiction institutions are specifically encouraged to participate. For more information, visit https://nspires.nasaprs.com/external/solicitations/summary.do?method=init&solId={3C132DBD-9B4F-C54F-8C0C-2D63E4693E43}&path=open.
Inductee to Tijuana Walk of Fame Encourages Girls to Follow Her Path to Career in Engineering
One of the first initiatives Olivia Graeve put in place when she arrived on the UC San Diego campus last year was an academic summer program for female high school students from Tijuana and San Ysidro. The girls lived on campus and conducted research in engineering and biology labs. The program is close to Graeve’s heart. She was once a Tijuana high school student and attended Southwestern Community College for two years before transferring to UC San Diego, where she earned a bachelor’s in structural engineering in 1995. Today, as a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering who specializes in materials science, she hopes to inspire more female students to follow her path. To read further, please visit http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/feature/inductee_to_tijuana_walk_of_fame_encourages_girls_to_follow_her_path_to_car?utm_campaign=thisweek&utm_medium=email&utm_source=tw-2014-06-19.
Faculty Opportunities and Information
Call for Proposals: NSF/TCPP CDER Center Early Adopter Awards for Fall-14
NSF/IEEE-TCPP Curriculum Initiative on Parallel and Distributed Computing – Core Topics for Undergraduates
Abstract Deadlines - June 23, 2014
Proposal Deadlines - June 30, 2014
Notification - July 30, 2014
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. Since the release of the preliminary version in 2010 and version I in 2012, we have selected over 100 early adopter institutions from the U.S. and from around the world in order to evaluate the guidelines and to obtain templates on how these topics can be adopted in various courses across the curriculum. For complete information, please visit http://www.cs.gsu.edu/~tcpp/curriculum/?q=Fall2014_CFP.
The Lighter Side – Computational News and Innovations
Bake Your Own Robot
MIT News
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers recently introduced the concept of "bakable robots." In two papers, the researchers describe printable robotic components that fold into predetermined three-dimensional (3D) configurations when heat is applied. One paper centers on creating two-dimensional patterns for self-folding plastic to follow to create 3D shapes based on a digital specification such as a computer-aided design file. The second paper discusses the development of electrical components, such as resistors and actuators, using self-folding laser-cut materials. The work expands on previous MIT research into adapting origami to create reconfigurable robots. Critical to the new work is a method for precisely controlling the angles at which a heated sheet folds, says MIT postdoctoral research associate Shuhei Miyashita. To read further, please visit http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/bake-your-own-robot-0530.
