HPC Happenings
Writing a Successful XSEDE Allocation Proposal
June 12, 2013 – 2:00pm-3:00pm ET
This short webinar will introduce users to the process of writing an XSEDE allocation proposal, and cover the elements that make a proposal successful. This webinar is recommended for users making the jump from a startup allocation to a research allocation, and is highly recommended for new campus champions. Registration: "https://www.xsede.org/web/xup/course-calendar":https://www.xsede.org/web/xup/course-calendar. Please submit any questions you may have via the Consulting section of the XSEDE User Portal at https://portal.xsede.org/help-desk.
SC13 HPC Education Program LittleFe Buildout Activity
SC13 continues the tradition of offering a high-quality education program, providing interested attendees with the opportunity to learn from and interact with internationally recognized experts who teach undergraduate and early career students in all areas of computational science and engineering, computer science and engineering, high performance computing, networking and storage. HPC Educators Programsessions are focused on teaching these topics to undergraduate students with emphasis on curriculum development and pedagogy and on best teaching practices of interest to undergraduate HPC educators and general SC attendees. At SC12, the LittleFe Buildout was integrated into the HPC Educators program as a one-day activity. The plan for SC13 is to conduct the LittleFe Buildout as a multiple-day activity.
Virtual School Offers Two Summer Computational Science Courses
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.
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/.
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..
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
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.
The First international FedICI'2013 Workshop:
Federative and interoperable Cloud U\Infrastructures
August 26, 2013 - Aachen, Germany
This workshop will provide a dedicated forum for sharing the latest results, exchanging ideas and experiences, presenting new research, development and management of interoperable, federated IaaS cloud systems. The aim of the workshop is to help the community with defining the current state, determining further goals and presenting architectures and service frameworks to achieve highly interoperable federated cloud infrastructures. Priority will be given to submissions that focus on presenting solutions to interoperability and efficient management challenges faced by current and future infrastructure clouds. Selection will prioritize papers that document and present measured comparisons or practical information on realistic, real-world solutions. For more information, please visit http://www.dps.uibk.ac.at/~gabor/FedICI13/.
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.
HiPC 2013 - 20th IEEE International Conference on High Performance Computing
December 18-21, 2013 - Hyderabad, India
HiPC is an international meeting on high performance computing. It serves as a forum to present current work by researchers from around the world as well as highlight activities in Asia in the high performance computing area. The meeting focuses on all aspects of high performance computing systems and their scientific, engineering, and commercial applications. http://www.hipc.org/hipc2013/index.php. For more information, please visit
Research Features From Across the Country and Around the World
TACC to Upgrade to Internet2's Fastest Network Connection: 100 Gbps
This summer, the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin will leap from 10 gigabits per second (Gbps) to 100 Gbps in Internet connectivity with the help of Internet2®, operator of the nation’s fastest research and education network. The upgrade will enable scientists to reach TACC using Internet2’s new 100 Gigabit-Ethernet and 8.8-terabit-per-second optical network, platform, services and technologies. To read further, please visit http://www.tacc.utexas.edu/news/press-releases/2013/100-gbps.
Google’s Vint Cerf Explains How to Make SDN as Successful as the Internet
GigaOm.com
Google chief Internet evangelist and ACM president Vint Cerf believes that software defined networking (SDN) could benefit from some of the Internet's design flaws and lessons learned in creating the Internet. For example, open standards should be implemented, with differentiation stemming from branded versions of standard protocols rather than from patented protocols. Interoperability is essential for stable networks, and that requires standards, notes Cerf. As companies create SDNs, they also should take into account the successful design features of the Internet, including the loose pairing of underlying equipment instead of a heavily integrated solution, the modular approach, and open source technologies. To read further, please visit http://gigaom.com/2013/04/16/googles-vint-cerf-explains-how-to-make-sdn-as-successful-as-the-internet/.
Super-Powered Battery Breakthrough Claimed by UIUC Researchers
BBC News
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign say they have developed a battery that could revolutionize the way consumer electronics and vehicles are powered. The researchers used three-dimensional electrodes to build "microbatteries" that are either much smaller than commercially available options or the same size but much more powerful. The batteries also can be recharged 1,000 times faster than conventional technology. The breakthrough involved finding a new way to integrate the anode and cathode of the battery at the microscale. "Because we've reduced the flowing distance of the ions and electrons we can get the energy out much faster," says University of Illinois professor William King. To read further, please visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22191650.
UC Berkeley’s 'Drone Lab' Reimagines Drones' Possibilities
UC Berkeley
School of Information students at the University of California, Berkeley are experimenting with drones’ capabilities and possible future applications. The students, who refer to their team as the “Drone Lab," are writing open source software for the drones, which they are testing around campus. “Drones have a pretty bad reputation,” says Drone Lab member Dave Lester. “We're interested in the technical capabilities of drones, but also thinking through the socially good things that we can use drones for.” The students are working with the Parrot AR.Drone 2.0, a commercially-available quadcopter that comes with both forward- and downward-facing cameras, an accelerometer, a gyroscope, a magnetometer, two ultrasound altimeters, a rechargeable battery, and a Linux-based processor. A smartphone app can control the AR.Drone, and users also can install their own software to enable the drone to fly autonomously. To read further, please visit http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/newsandevents/news/20130416dronelab.
Free Web-Based Photo Enhancement Tool Developed by UT Austin Scientists
University of Texas at Austin
Research into animal and human visual systems serves as the basis for a free image-processing website from the Center for Perceptual Systems at the University of Texas at Austin. The site enables users to enlarge everyday photos, and tools to de-noise images, such as removing imperfections resulting from low-light conditions, will enable them to do so without losing picture quality. The approach, called image processing with natural scene statistics, is based on the analysis of thousands of images. Center director Wilson Geisler and colleagues measured the statistical properties of the images and created an algorithm that determines what is or is not noise in any given photo. To read further, please visit http://www.utexas.edu/news/2013/04/15/free-web-based-photo-enhancement-tool-developed-by-ut-austin-scientists/,
Educator Opportunities and Information
SuperQuest Summer Workshops 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.
Housing Deadline Closes on June 10 for the 2013 CSTA Annual Conference
July 15-16, 2013 - Quincy, Massachusetts
Registration Deadline – June 16, 2013
The 2013 CSTA Annual Conference (formerly known as the Computer Science & Information Technology (CS&IT) Conference) provides professional development opportunities for K-12 computer science and computer applications teachers who need practical, relevant information to help them prepare their students for the future. For more information, please visit http://csta.acm.org/ProfessionalDevelopment/sub/CSTAConference.html.
In Her Own Words - On the Pleasures of Teaching Computer Science Students
Communications of the ACM
Yesterday was the most important day of my work calendar. We awarded degrees to 50 computer science students, thus fulfilling one of our main purposes as academics. I had the pleasure of telling some of the top students their marks in person. I've been doing this job for a good few years now, but I still can't quite get used to the buzz I get when students hear that they have succeeded. Their faces are pictures of incredulity, joy, but mostly relief that they made it. I am proud to have played a small part in their learning journeys. To read further, please visit http://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/164619-on-the-pleasures-of-teaching-computer-science-students/fulltext?otl=bXTvOhzg#.Ua5Ju41pm5E.email.
Alice Symposium
June 19, 2013 - Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
It is a week of Alice activities! Papers, posters, contest, and workshops! The Third Alice Symposium will be held on Wednesday, June 19, 2013 at Duke University in Durham, NC. There will be two-day Alice workshops (Alice 2.3 and Alice 3.1) and related workshops both before and after the Symposium on June 17-18 and June 20-21, 2013. The Third Alice Symposium will have several paper tracks including using Alice in middle school, using Alice in high school, and using Alice in Community College and University. New this time will be a poster session and teachers will be able to enter student worlds in an Alice contest. For more information, please visit http://www.cs.duke.edu/csed/aliceSymposium2013/index.php.
Student Engagement and Information .
The Third SESAME-LinkSCEEM Summer School
September 8-10, 2013 - Jordan
Registration Deadline – July 14, 2013
The LinkSCEEM-2 FP7 project is organizing a 3-day school on High Performance Computing (HPC) and its application on the Synchrotron Radiation fields, during SESAME (http://www.sesame.org.jo/sesame/). The HPC School is part of the LinkSCEEM-2 project training activities aiming to motivate the scientists in the Middle-East region with topics related to Synchrotron Radiation (SR) and High Performance Computing (HPC) and the applications of these topics in their respective field of research. During the first day of the school the participants will receive general introduction about HPC and its applications on the Synchrotron Radiation field. For more information, please visit http://www.sesame.org.jo/sesame/training-and-scholarships/304-third-sesame-linksceem-summer-school.html.
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,
MIT and Haiti Sign Agreement to Promote Kreyol-Language STEM Education
MIT News
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Haiti have entered into an agreement to push Kreyol-language education in the science, technology, engineering, and math fields in an effort to help educate Haitians in the tongue they are most familiar with. The project will involve the translation of MIT-developed and technology-based open education resources into Kreyol, one of Haiti’s two official languages (in addition to French), followed by the materials' dissemination in Haiti and the assessment of their effectiveness. MIT linguistics professor Michel DeGraff cites the marginalization of Kreyol in Haitian schools, and he says its perception as a hybrid language, in comparison to French or English, is unfair. DeGraff says the MIT-Haiti initiative does not intend to supplant French, but rather to help Kreyol-speaking students “build a solid foundation in their own language.” To read further, please visit http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/mit-haiti-initiative-0417.html.
Career Opportunities
Visualization Postdoctoral Researcher
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - Req # 75950
The Visualization Group (http://vis.lbl.gov) has an immediate opening for a postdoctoral researcher to conduct applied research in the area of image processing and analysis, statistical analysis, machine learning, and pattern/feature detection, tracking, and analysis. The overall objectives for this work are to develop new software tools that enable scientific knowledge discovery using high performance computational platforms and advance the state-of-the-art in data-intensive analysis. For more information and to apply, please visit
https://lbl.taleo.net/careersection/2/jobdetail.ftl?lang=en&job=75950.
Visualization, UX, and Information Designer/Developer
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - Req # 75940
LBNL is looking for a talented designer/developer (Computer Systems Engineer) with experience in data visualization, user experience and information design. In this role, the successful candidate will create rich data visualizations that provide insight into ESnet’s network and the global science impact of that network, refine our visual design and information architecture and improve our user experience. The successful candidate will be part of a small, agile team of three to five people that is developing the data and analytics platform which is used by ESnet to manage and understand our nationwide, high capacity science network. Visualizing data networks such as ESnet provides many challenges not commonly seen in other data sets and will require creativity to develop new visualizations that will provide deeper insights into these data sets. For more information and to apply, please visit https://lbl.taleo.net/careersection/2/jobdetail.ftl?lang=en&job=75940.
Scientific Data Management Research Scientist
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - Req # 75988
The Scientific Data Management Research Group has an immediate opening for a research scientist to analyze time-series data from network traffic measurements and related computer science problems. The research includes statistical and mathematical algorithms and models for large measurement data as well as large real-time streaming data with techniques in data mining, machine learning, data reduction and sampling, statistical analysis and modeling. For more information and to apply, please visit https://lbl.taleo.net/careersection/2/jobdetail.ftl?lang=en&job=75988.
On the Lighter Side - Computational News of Interest
Survival of the Fittest' Now Applies to Computers
Stony Brook News
Researchers at Stony Brook University and Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) have shown that the evolutionary theory of "survival of the fittest" also applies to technological systems. The researchers compared the frequency with which components "survive" in bacterial genomes and operating systems on Linux computers. The researchers examined the frequency of occurrence of genes in genomes of 500 bacterial species and found significant similarity with the frequency of installation of 200,000 Linux packages on more than 2 million computers. The most frequently used components in both the biological and computer systems are those that allow for the most descendants, meaning that the more a component is relied upon by others, the more likely it is to be required for full functionality of a system. To read further, please visit http://commcgi.cc.stonybrook.edu/am2/publish/General_University_News_2/Survival_of_the_Fittest_Now_Applies_to_Computers.shtml.
Virtual Traveler: Beam a Live, 3D You Into the World
New Scientist
Bauhaus University researchers have developed a virtual reality system that combines 3D glasses and a hack of Microsoft's Kinect to enable the life-sized images of up to six people to be beamed to distant locations and recreated in a virtual space. The users must wear 3D glasses and stand in front of a large screen, onto which 3D images are projected. The system accounts for every user's position relative to the display. Sensors on the glasses track each individual's location, movement, and tilt of the head. In a demonstration of the system, the participants inspect a full-size projection of Michelangelo's David, and each person only sees the perspective that is appropriate to their location. The participants also can see each other and interact with the display together. To read further, please visit http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23354-virtual-traveller-beam-a-live-3d-you-into-the-world.html.
