HPC in the News
NCSA’S Merle Giles Co-Edits Book on Industrial Impact of HPC
Merle E. Giles, director of Private Sector Programs and Economic Impact at NCSA, and Anwar Osseyran, director of the Dutch HPC and e-cience center SURFsara, are co-editors of a new book on the impact high-performance computing in industry. The book, Industrial Applications of High-Performance Computing: Best Global Practices, provides a global overview of high-performance computing (HPC) for industrial applications, along with a discussion of software challenges, business models, access models (e.g. cloud computing), public-private partnerships, simulation and modeling, visualization, big data analysis, and governmental and industrial influence. To read further, please visit http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/news/story/ncsas_merle_giles_co_edits_book_on_industrial_impact_of_hpc.
XSEDE15 Student Program – Call for Participation
High School and College Students are Encouraged to Participate in the XSEDE15 Student Program XSEDE15, the fourth conference of XSEDE, the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment, will be held July 26-30, 2015, at the Marriott Renaissance Grand Hotel in downtown St. Louis, Missouri. XSEDE15 will showcase the discoveries, innovations, challenges and achievements of those who utilize and support XSEDE resources and services, as well as other digital resources and services, throughout the world. If you are a high school, undergraduate, or graduate student and are interested or engaged in computational research, we encourage you to participate in the XSEDE15 Student Program. For details on the Student Program, see the Call for Participation:
https://conferences.xsede.org/technical-program/student-programTo apply for travel funding, see the XSEDE15 Student Travel Grant Application:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/XSEDE15TravelGrantApp To submit your poster or paper, see the XSEDE15 website:
https://www.xsede.org/xsede15 Please contact Jenett Tillotson, XSEDE15 Student and EOT Program Chair at jtillots@iu.edu if you have questions.
Spread the Word: Blue Waters Internship Program
Application Deadline - March 20, 2015
As part of the Blue Waters efforts to motivate and train the next generation of supercomputing researchers, the program is sponsoring 20 undergraduate research interns each year. The goal is to engage undergraduate students in petascale computing research and development projects. The program provides each student a stipend totaling $5000 and a two-week intensive high-performance computing workshop. Select students will travel to The Blue Waters Symposium. This program includes support for undergraduate internship activities at any accredited degree granting institution in the United States. The internships awarded through this program may be for students working with a faculty mentor on their home campus, or at another campus. Interested faculty can work with a particular student that they identify, or may select a qualified student with Blue Waters support through our program. For complete information, please visit https://bluewaters.ncsa.illinois.edu/internships.
Meet the Fifty Most Inspiring Women in European Tech
The Inspiring Fifty: Europe initiative follows the tremendous success of the prior year’s Inspiring Fifty: Netherlands, a search to identify and showcase that country’s fifty most inspiring women in technology and business. Throughout 2014, Inspiring Fifty asked its extended network of professionals, journalists, and social media followers to nominate those women serving as role models and standing as an inspiration to others. What came back was an amazing list of women from across the technology spectrum, including entrepreneurs, business leaders, academicians, and policy makers. To read further, please visit http://www.inspiringfifty.com/50-inspiring-women-list-2015-eu/.
FCC Sets Net Neutrality Rules
The New York Times
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Thursday released the details of the new broadband Internet regulations it approved last month. The rules were presented in a 313-page document that includes the rules, their legal justifications, and comments from the commissioners. Immediately upon the document's release, net neutrality advocates and broadband providers began examining it for insight. The new rules do many things beyond reclassifying broadband Internet as a telecommunications service. For example, the rules bar the creation of so-called fast lanes, but also exempt Internet service providers from the sort of price controls typically applied to other public utilities. To read further, please visit http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/13/technology/fcc-releases-net-neutrality-rules.html?_r=0.
XSEDE News from Partners and Friends
Indiana University’s GlobalNOC Awarded $4.8M Grant From the NSF
The Indiana University Global Research Network Operations Center (GlobalNOC) today announced the award of a major new five-year, $4.8 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The new funding will enable continued planning, operation, engineering support and management of TransPAC, the high-speed network that connects researchers in the US with their counterparts in Asia. Known as TransPAC4, it is the fourth-consecutive grant of its kind to be awarded to IU. Jennifer Schopf, Ph.D., IU director of international networks, led the development of the international proposal and will serve as the project’s principal investigator. To read further, please visit http://itnews.iu.edu/articles/2015/USE-iu-globalnoc-wins-4.8-million-asia-pacific-networking-grant.php.
Live Talk at Rice University: The Top 10 Mistakes: The Unwritten Rules of Interviewing for Industrial and Academic Jobs
March 26, 2015 Thursday, 4:00 PM Central Time McMurtry Auditorium
Abstract: In my years of hiring various administrative positions I have noticed that many students, but in particular women and minorities, seemed to make the same mistakes when interviewing. Moreover, they seemed not to be aware that their behavior and what they said are being evaluated in such a critical manner. In this webinar I will give you some mistakes of basics do’s and don’ts on both an academic or industrial job.
Call for Papers and Participation
22nd IEEE International Conference on High Performance Computing HiPC 2015
December 16-19, 2015 - Bengaluru (Bangalore), India
Paper Submission Deadline - March 31, 2015
Complementing the main technical program, HiPC workshops serve to broaden the technical scope of the conference in emerging areas of high performance computing and communication, and their applications. The HiPC workshops serve as an extended forum to present and discuss work-in-progress as well as mature research among researchers from around the world and also highlight research activities in India. For complete information, please visit http://www.hipc.org/hipc2015/index.php.
Call for Participation: The International Summer School in HPC
June 21- 26, 2015 – Toronto, Canada
Application Deadline - March 11, 2015
Graduate students and postdoctoral scholars from institutions in Canada, Europe, Japan and the United States are invited to apply for the sixth International Summer School on HPC Challenges in Computational Sciences. The expense-paid program will benefit advanced scholars from Canadian, European, Japanese and U.S. institutions who use HPC to conduct research. Meals, housing, and travel will be covered for the selected participants. For complete information, please visit https://ihpcss2015.computecanada.ca/wp/.
2015 8th International Congress on Image and Signal Processing (CISP 2015)
2015 8th International Conference on BioMedical Engineering and Informatics (BMEI 2015)
October 14-16 , 2015 - Shenyang, China
Paper Submission Deadline – May 10, 2015
CISP-BMEI 2015 is a premier international forum for scientists and researchers to present the state of the art of multimedia, signal processing, biomedical engineering and informatics.. To promote international participation of researchers from outside the country/region where the conference is held (i.e., China’s mainland), researchers outside of China’s mainland are encouraged to propose invited sessions. Each invited session proposal should include: (1) the name, bio, and contact information of each organizer of the invited session; (2) the title and a short synopsis of the invited session. For more information, please visit http://cisp-bmei.lntu.edu.cn. If you have any questions after visiting the conference web page, please email the secretariat at cisp_bmei_2015@126.com.
Upcoming Conferences, Workshops and Webinars
Supercomputing Frontiers 2015|
March 17 – 20, 2015 - Biopolis’ Matrix Building, Singapore.
Supercomputing Frontiers 2015 is Singapore’s inaugural conference on trends and innovations in the world of high performance computing. It will be held on March 17 – 20, 2015 at Biopolis’ Matrix Building in Singapore. Organized by A*STAR Computational Resource Centre, Supercomputing Frontiers 2015 will explore global trends and innovations in high performance computing. For more information, please visit http://supercomputingfrontiers2015.com.
Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility Announces 2015 GPU Hackathons
April 20-24, 2015 – Urbana-Champaign, Illinois
The Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) is joining forces with National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) to produce three GPU hackathon events in 2015. The goal of each hackathon is for current or prospective user groups of large hybrid CPU-GPU systems to send teams of 3-6 developers along with either (1) a (potentially) scalable application that needs to be ported to GPU accelerators, or (2) an application running on accelerators which needs optimization. For complete information, including goals and eligibility, please visit https://www.olcf.ornl.gov/training-event/2015-gpu-hackathons/.
A Hands-on Introduction to HPC
May 25-26, 2015 - Dublin, Ireland
In collaboration with the PRACE Advanced Training Centres (PATC), the UK National Supercomputing Facility, ARCHER, and the PRACE Scientific and Industrial Conference 2015 (PRACEDays15), Women in HPC will be running a 1.5-day ‘Hands on Introduction to HPC’ training session. This course provides a general introduction to High Performance Computing (HPC) using the UK national HPC service, ARCHER, as the platform for exercises. Familiarity with desktop computers is presumed but no programming or HPC experience is required. Programmers can, however, gain extra benefit from the course as source code for all the practicals will be provided. This event is open to everyone interested in using HPC, but all our training staff will be women and Women in HPC hopes that this provides an opportunity for women to network and build collaborations as well as learning new skills for a challenging and rewarding career in HPC. For more information and to register, please visit http://www.womeninhpc.org.uk/training-hands-introduction-hpc.
Women in HPC Workshop
July 14, 2015 – Frankfurt, Germany
Call for Abstracts Opens – April 1, 2015
In collaboration with the ISC15 Conference
Women in HPC are delighted to announce that we will be running a half-day workshop at ISC15. Following the success of our workshop at Supercomputing 2014, they will once again be inviting submissions from early career women who would like to present their work in the field of HPC. For more details on workshop please visit http://www.womeninhpc.org.uk/events/women-hpc-isc-2015.
Research News From Around the World
ORNL Captures Real-Time Images of Structures That Degrade Lithium-Ion Batteries
Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have captured the first real-time nanoscale images of lithium dendrite structures known to degrade lithium-ion batteries. The ORNL team’s electron microscopy could help researchers address long-standing issues related to battery performance and safety. Dendrites form when metallic lithium takes root on a battery’s anode and begins growing haphazardly. If the dendrites grow too large, they can puncture the divider between the electrodes and short-circuit the cell, resulting in catastrophic battery failure. To read further, please visit http://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/ornl-captures-real-time-images-of-structures-that-degrade-lithium-ion-batteries/.
HP Data Scientists Help Akshara Foundation Transform Education For Indian Students
HP has announced an innovative collaboration with Akshara Foundation [http://www.akshara.org.in ] that aims to improve the education experience for more than one million school children across the Indian state of KarnaAkshara Foundation is a leading Indian NGO that delivers innovative solutions in its pursuit to provide equitable educational access to young school children, with a mission to have every child in school and learning well. The Foundation needed to identify the resources and facilities needed in schools to improve the reading and math skills of students in government primary schools in India. However, the vast amounts of data from multiple, disparate government and corporate sources made it difficult to gain meaningful insight. To read further, please visit http://hpc-asia.com/hp-data-scientists-help-akshara-foundation-transform-education-for-indian-students/.
Security Risks and Privacy Issues Are Too Great for Moving the Ballot Box to the Internet
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Thirty-three U.S. states currently allow or have experimented with some type of online voting, says Lawrence Livermore Center for Applied Scientific Computing researcher David Jefferson. With email voting, the voter's ballot, identification, and legal affirmation are transmitted as attachments to an email message. Jefferson says all email voting systems are vulnerable to attack, and can be secretly manipulated in transit by any information technology person who controls relays, routers, or servers through which the email travels. Newer Internet voting architectures are Web-based systems somewhat like e-commerce transactions, but can still be vulnerable to malicious activity, including client-side malware and denial-of-service (DOS) attacks. To read further, please visit https://www.llnl.gov/news/security-risks-and-privacy-issues-are-too-great-moving-ballot-box-internet.
Educator News and Opportunities
AP Computer Science Principles Draw Arts Students Into Computational Thinking in Alabama
National Science Foundation
Alabama in 2013 began to allow Computer Science Principles (CSP) and Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science to count as a math credit for students' graduation requirements. Previously, computer science had been viewed as an elective that did not contribute to graduation requirements, as is the case in about half of the school districts in the U.S. Now the computer science classes are filled with arts students, who focus on creative, writing, dance, music, theater, and visual arts. "The old, mathematically-based, computing problems are not very exciting to students who use a smartphone and the Internet every day," says Alabama School of Fine Arts computer science teacher Carol Yarbrough. To read further, please visit http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=134321&WT.mc_id=USNSF_1.
AAAS Project 2061 is developing assessment items to measure late elementary, middle, and high school students’ understanding of ideas about energy. We are recruiting elementary, middle, and high school science teachers willing to field test our multiple-choice test items with their students in March, April, or May of 2015 school year. Students must be in 4th through 12th grade, but it is not necessary that they have had formal instruction on the topic of energy. The test may be administered online or in paper format. Students will be asked to choose one correct answer per test item. The assessment should take no longer than 45 minutes to complete. As an incentive, each participating teacher will receive a $25 gift card from Amazon.com. More information and participation guidelines can be found at http://www.aaas.org/news/teachers-needed-science-assessment-field-tests-0.
STEM Success for Women Telesummit
April 13t-16, 2015
The National Science Foundation is sponsoring a free online telesummit, "STEM Success for Women: Empower Educators to Recruit and Retain More Women in STEM," This telesummit brings together some of the country's leading experts and practitioners on the successful recruitment and retention of women in STEM. Over the course of 4 days and more than 10 sessions, you will learn of many studies and strategies about increasing diversity in STEM. Including:
- The recruitment strategies that increased female enrollment in introductory computer programming courses by 62%
- How a computer networking IT department improved female enrollment by more than 46% and increased retention of female students by 23% (and male students by 7%)
For complete information, please visit http://www.iwitts.org/stem-telesummit.
Innovative MOOCs Take Learning in New Directions
Campus Technology
A pair of new massive open online course (MOOC) projects at the University of Michigan and Harvard University are exploring new applications for MOOCs at educational institutions. The University of Michigan, through its ties to Coursera, has begun producing MOOCs in Mandarin for the China market, starting with "Model of Thinking." James DeVaney, assistant vice provost of digital education and innovation at the university, says the Chinese-language MOOCs are unlikely to perform any differently out of the gate than their English-language counterparts, but he says their true value will manifest in several years' time in the data they generate. DeVaney says the data will help the university craft more effective MOOCs and inform faculty's in-person educational efforts. Meanwhile, the Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) has been experimenting with offering MOOCs to alumni as a way to keep them engaged with the university. To read further, please visit http://campustechnology.com/articles/2015/03/11/innovative-moocs-take-learning-in-new-directions.aspx.
Student Engagement and Opportunities
Stream the Solving the Equation Launch Live! (webinar)
March 26, 2015 - 11 a.m.–12:30 p.m Pacific/2–3:30 p.m. Eastern
No cost
Sponsored by the American Association of University Women
From the research team who brought you Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics comes a deeper dive into engineering and computing, fields that offer 80 percent of STEM jobs but still boast dismal numbers of women students and work Watch the launch event for Solving the Equation: The Variables for Women’s Success in Engineering and Computing live from Samsung’s Mountain View Campus to find out why women aren’t in these fields — and what we as employers, educators, and parents can do about it. Send in your questions or comments for the panel and follow along with the discussion using the hashtag #addwomen on Twitter. For registration information, please visit http://www.aauw.org/event/2015/03/stream-the-solving-the-equation-launch-live/?utm_source=Solving+the+Equation+Online+Event&utm_campaign=AAUW+Research+Launch&utm_medium=email.
XSEDE Scholars Program – Applications Being Accepted
Application Deadline - March 31, 2015 at 11:59 p.m. (CST)
Notification of Award-April 10, 2015 at 5:00 p.m. (CST)
XSEDE, the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment, is the most advanced, powerful, and robust collection of integrated digital resources and services in the world. Are you interested in learning more about high performance computing (HPC) and the exciting and valuable digital resources available to research scientists for free? If so, the XSEDE Scholars Program (XSP) is now accepting applications for its selective year-long program for students from underrepresented groups in the sciences and engineering to learn more about high performance computing and XSEDE resources. The focus is on the following underrepresented groups: African Americans, Hispanic/Latinos, Native Americans, and women. To apply, please visit http://bit.ly/2015-XSEDE-Scholar-Application.
Team Submissions Being Accepted for Student Cluster Competition
Team Submissions Deadline – April 17, 2015
Notifications of Team Acceptance - May 11, 2015
SC15 is excited to hold another nail-biting Student Cluster Competition, or SCC, now in its 9th year, as an opportunity to showcase student expertise in a friendly yet spirited competition. Held as part of SC15 Student Programs, the Student Cluster Competition is designed to introduce the next generation of students to the high-performance computing community. Over the years, the competition has drawn teams from around the United States and around the world. For complete information and to register, please visit http://sc15.supercomputing.org/conference-program/student-programs/sc15-student-cluster-competition/scc-competition-rules.
Faculty Opportunities
NASA’s Office of Education MUREP solicits proposals from Minority Serving Community Colleges (MSCCs)
Letter of Intent Deadline -April 14, 2015, at 11:59 pm ET
Proposals Deadline -June 11, 2015 by 11:59 pm in NSPIRES
NASA’s Office of Education Minority University Research and Education Project (MUREP) solicits proposals from Minority Serving Community Colleges (MSCCs), as identified by the US Department of Education and that align with the four White House Executive Orders for Minority Institutions, to strengthen curriculum and curricular pathways in STEM, and attract, retain, and support the success of underrepresented students in STEM degree programs. The MC3I proposals will contain plans for and be guided by curriculum improvements, and address one of the following as a primary focus: (1) improving curriculum in STEM vocational certificate programs, Associate of Arts/Science degree programs, and/or transfer programs; (2) strengthening and diversifying the STEM pipeline through high school partnerships; or (3) expanding opportunities in engineering. Proposers are required to partner with a NASA center or facility, and are highly encouraged to partner with other institutions, such as K-12 school districts and 4-year colleges/universities. Successful proposals will be funded as multi-year cooperative agreements. All information needed to respond to this announcement is contained in this Appendix, the EONS announcement, NASA Grant and Cooperative Agreement Manual, and the Guidebook for Proposers Responding to a NASA Research Announcement (NRA) or Cooperative Agreement Notice (CAN) January 2015 Edition (hereafter referred to as the Guidebook for Proposers or NASA Guidebook for Proposers).
Computational Science News of Interest
The 2015 Smart Cities Ranking
The CIMI (Cities In Motion Index) , is a composite index that assesses the level of development of 148 cities worldwide using 66 indicators which cover 10 distinct dimensions: human capital, social cohesion, economy, public management, governance, environment, mobility and transport, urban planning, international outreach and, finally, technology. According to, CIMI 2015 Report, London again became the undisputed leader in the rankings of the smartest cities in the world. It is followed by New York, which grabbed second place, and Seoul, in third. Rounding out the top 10, we see five other European cities — Paris, Amsterdam, Vienna, Geneva and Munich — and four Asian ones — Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong and Singapore, the latter of which advanced 11 positions over the course of just two years. Of the top-25 list, 15 are European, five are North American, four are Asian and one is Oceanian. You can download the complete report at http://www.iese.edu/research/pdfs/ST-0366-E.pdf.
Social Media and HPC
Keep Up with Women in HPC on Facebook
In September 2013 the idea for the Women in HPC group was born. Our first step was to quantify the current situation, understand how many women are working HPC and if they aren’t, why not. They are still in the earliest stages of setting up this group. They are hoping to track progress over time to help understand how initiatives such as this may impact the community. To Like the page, pleas visit https://www.facebook.com/womeninhpc. For more information on Women in HPC, please visit http://www.womeninhpc.org.uk/.
Googlers' Epic Hack Exploits How Memory Leaks Electricity
Wired News
The increasing density of transistors in memory chips has raised concerns that electromagnetic leakage within the chips could cause unpredictable behavior. Now, a team of Google researchers has demonstrated a method of inducing such leakage to purposefully corrupt portions of the dynamic random access memory (DRAM) of certain laptops and bypass security protections. In a post on Google's Project Zero blog, the researchers describe using what is known as the "Rowhammer" technique to create security exploits. Rowhammering involves running a program designed to target a certain row of transistors in a computer's memory with the goal of inducing electromagnetic leakage that will cause the bits in the next row of memory to be flipped. To read further, please visit http://www.wired.com/2015/03/google-hack-dram-memory-electric-leaks/.
