HPC Happenings
New HPC University Site Debuts
The HPC University (HPCU) is a virtual organization whose primary goal is to provide a cohesive, persistent, and sustainable on-line environment to share educational and training materials for a continuum of high performance computing environments that span desktop computing capabilities to the highest-end of computing facilities offered by HPC centers. HPC University's resources will guide researchers, educators and students to 1) choose successful paths for HPC learning and workforce development, and 2) contribute high-quality and pedagogically effective materials that allow individuals at all levels and in all fields of study to advance scientific discovery. Visit the new site and find out what all the buzz is about at http://hpcuniversity.org/about/.
The Eighth Workshop of the INRIA-ANL-Illinois Joint Laboratory on Petascale Computing
November 19-21, 2012 - Argonne National Laboratory
The workshop will take place at the MCS Building of the Argonne National Laboratory, IL. The eighth workshop of the INRIA-Illinois Joint Laboratory on Petascale Computing will gather top researchers in HPC from INRIA, ANL and the University of Illinois to explore research problems related to post-petascale supercomputers and present results of their joint work obtained since the previous workshop (6 months ago). The workshop will feature technical sessions on five main topics: Petascale Applications, Parallel Programming (Hybrid, Hierarchical, Heterogeneous), Resilience, Numerical Algorithms and Libraries and I/O. Other potential topics of collaboration will be presented and discussed. A key objective of the workshop is to identify new research collaborations and establish a roadmap for their implementation. The workshop is open to ANL, Illinois and INRIA faculties, researchers, engineers and students who want to learn more about sustained Petascale computing and Exascale. For more information and to register, please visit http://jointlab.ncsa.illinois.edu/events/workshop8/.
XSEDE13 Announces Call for Participation
July 22-25, 2013 – San Diego, California
XSEDE13: Gateway to Discovery is coming to San Diego! The conference will support and enhance the world of advanced digital resources and services and highlight scientific discovery facilitated through Science Gateways. Scientists, engineers, social scientists, and humanities experts at colleges, universities, and research centers around the world use these gateways, resources, and services to make our lives healthier, safer, and better. XSEDE, the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment, is the largest collection of distributed cyberinfrastructure for open scientific research in the United States. As the second annual conference of XSEDE, XSEDE13 is a forum for the presentation of high-quality technical papers, posters, tutorials, and Birds of a Feather sessions that will facilitate greater communication among scientists and students who use XSEDE and other cyberinfrastructure resources. For more information, please visit https://www.xsede.org/web/xsede13/call-for-participation.
John Towns Named to Compute Canada Board of Directors
John Towns, project director for XSEDE, joins leaders in industry, academia, and computational research as a newly elected member of the board of directors for Compute Canada. This inaugural board is a part of a new governance model the group launched in October to develop and support the shared use of advanced computing to enable research and innovation in Canada. The board's first meeting is scheduled for Nov. 19, 2012. For more information, please visit https://computecanada.ca/index.php/en/about-us/news/general-news/12-news-english/245-compute-canada-calcul-canada-inaugural-board-of-directors-will-advance-canada-s-research-and-innovation-agenda.
SuperData Summit
November 15, 2012 – San Diego, California
Everyone knows that data is growing exponentially. What’s not so clear is how to unlock the value it holds. In this digital world every transaction, every phone call, every change in the weather is a new data point. This will only increase as new devices create new data points. Supercomputers, parallel processing, new devices and "the Cloud" are taking analytics and data mining to the next level. Every day "Big Data" Analytics reveal new fresh insights in energy needs, medical, finance and social media. The results are more accurate medical diagnoses, real-time fraud detection, and custom-targeted advertising. For more information and to register, please visit www.superdatasummit.com.
Now on the Web: XSEDE-related Presentations and Events at SC12
The XSEDE project and its staff members are well represented in the technical program and on the exhibit floor at SC12. The link below includes the schedule for all known speakers, presenters, events and booths related to XSEDE. Please submit any additional XSEDE-related information for this page to Susan McKenna, mckennas@ncsa.illinois.edu. To view the XSEDE-related presentations and events, please visit https://www.xsede.org/xsede-sc.
HPC Call for Participation for Upcoming Workshops
Rice University 2012 Oil and Gas HPC Workshop – Call for Abstracts
February 28, 2013 – Houston, Texas
Submission Deadline – November 23, 2012
3rd IHPCES Call for Papers
June 5-7, 2013 - Barcelona, Spain
Submission Deadline – January 15, 2013
The 3rd International Workshop on Advances in High-Performance Computational Earth Sciences: Applications and Frameworks (IHPCES) has opened the call for papers, with a deadline of Jan. 15, 2013. IHPCES is co-chaired by Yifeng Cui, research scientist at SDSC and member of XSEDE ECSS. The workshop facilitates communication between earth scientists, applied mathematicians, and computational and computer scientists. It also presents a unique opportunity for participants to exchange advanced knowledge, insights and science discoveries. Co-chair Cui encourages XSEDE researchers and users to participate by submitting a paper reflecting current research in the area of computational science. IHPCES 2013 is held in conjunction with the 13th International Conference on Computational Science (ICCS2013. For more information, please visit http://hpgeoc.sdsc.edu/IHPCES2013/index.html.
Upcoming Conferences and Workshops
SC12
November 10-16, 2012 - Salt Lake City, Utah
Exhibition - November 12-15, 2012
For 24 years, SC has been at the forefront in gathering the best and brightest minds in supercomputing together, with our unparalleled technical papers, tutorials, posters and speakers. SC12 will take a major step forward not only in supercomputing, but in super-conferencing, with everything designed to make the 2012 conference the most ‘you' friendly conference in the world. We're streamlining conference information and moving to a virtually real-time method of determining technical program thrusts. No more pre-determined technical themes picked far in advance. Through social media, data mining, and active polling, we'll see which technical interests and issues emerge throughout the year, and focus on the ones that interest you the most. For more information, please visit http://sc12.supercomputing.org/content/exhibitor-prospectus.
2013 Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference – Call for Participation
February 7-9, 2013 – Washington, DC
Application Deadline – November 25, 2012
The 2013 Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference has issued a call for participation, inviting submissions for panel discussions, student research posters, birds-of-a-feather sessions and workshops. Additionally, applications are now being accepted for the Doctoral Consortium and student scholarships to attend the conference. Confirmed speakers include Vint Cerf (Google VP and ACM President), Armando Fox (UC Berkeley), Anita Jones (University of Virginia), Jeanine Cook (New Mexico State University), Annie Anton (Georgia Tech), and Hakim Weatherspoon, (Cornell University), among others. For more information, please visit the http://tapiaconference.org/2013/.
XSEDE Training at a Glance.
Sneak Preview: The Stampede Supercomputer and the Intel Xeon Phi Coprocessor
November 12, 2012 – 8:00am- 11:00am EST – TACC
For more information, please visit https://www.xsede.org/web/xup/course-calendar/-/training/class/74.
Stampede Early User Training - webinar
December 6, 2012 – 9:00am- 4:00pm CST
For more information, please visit https://www.xsede.org/web/xup/course-calendar/-/training/class/76.
Parallel Computing at TACC: Ranger to Stampede Transition
December 11, 2012- 9:00am- 5:00pm EST – Cornell University
For more information, please visit https://www.xsede.org/web/xup/course-calendar/-/training/class/73.
Writing a Successful XSEDE Allocation Proposal - webinar
December 12, 2012 – 2:00pm- 3:00pm EST
For more information, please visit https://www.xsede.org/web/xup/course-calendar/-/training/class/75.
For a complete list of past and future XSEDE training opportunities, please visit https://www.xsede.org/web/xup/course-calendar.
Research Features from Across XSEDE and Campus Champion Partners
TACC Collaborates with Dell and Intel to
Build Stampede
Over the summer and into the fall, TACC, Dell and Intel have built Stampede from the ground up. Stampede will provide unprecedented computing power to thousands of scientists across the United States, with a peak performance of nearly 10 petaflops (1 petaflop = 1 quadrillion operations per second). Massive increases in computing power directly increase a researcher's ability to model and predict complex physical phenomenon in medicine, energy exploration, weather and across all fields of science. To read further, please visit http://www.tacc.utexas.edu/newsletter/1211/stampede.
Texas State University Professor Develops Eye Tracking Technology
Texas State University researchers have developed ocular biometric software that can be used in the medical field to identify eye movements associated with concussions and traumatic brain injury patients. The software also can be applied to human-computer interaction research because it can calibrate where a user's eyes are looking on a computer screen. The researchers tested the software using a game. During the game, users must first allow the software to record and calculate their eye movements as they watch a computer screen. The software recognizes where the user's line of sight is directed and signals an input command so the game can be played using only the eyes. To read further, please visit http://star.txstate.edu/node/6292.
Arizona State University w Software Helps Reveal Patterns in Space and Time
Researchers at Arizona State University's GeoDa Center for Geographical Analysis & Computation say they have made significant enhancements to their OpenGeoDa software. OpenGeoDa is an open source program that offers a user-friendly interface to implement techniques for exploratory spatial data analysis and spatial modeling. Version 1.2.0 facilitates space-time analysis, with maps and charts that enable users to track changes in spatial patterns over time. "For example, a series of maps could plot variations in educational achievement by school district, for a series of years," says Arizona State professor Luc Anselin. "An individual map would show clusters of high and low achievement; but adding the dimension of time makes it possible to assess the effect of a policy intervention, by comparing both achievement levels and spatial clusters, before and after the intervention." To read further, please visit https://asunews.asu.edu/20120911_opengeoda.
Rethinking Computers and Security
The New York Times article, “Killing the Computer to Save It,” takes a closer look at how Dr. Peter G. Neumann, a computer scientist who specializes in computer security, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are rethinking how to make computers and networks more secure. Earlier this month, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta voiced concerns about “an epidemic of computer malware and rising concerns about cyberwarfare as a threat to global security.” Neumann, who is now 80 years old, and Robert N. Watson, a computer security researcher at Cambridge University’s Computer Laboratory, are currently leading a research program funded by DARPA to address these concerns. To read further, please visit http://www.cccblog.org/2012/11/02/rethinking-computers-and-security/.
Educator News and Curriculum
Open Source Education Software Unveiled by Google
Google has released Course Builder, open source software for creating online education courses. Google says Course Builder does not require high-level programming skills and should be accessible to anyone with the ability to build and maintain their own Web site. "The Course Builder open source project is an experimental early step for us in the world of online education," says Google research director Peter Norvig. "It is a snapshot of an approach we found useful and an indication of our future direction." A support site has been launched, and the free software download has already received its first update. Google also is offering the Course Builder Checklist as a primer on how to get started and what to expect. "We hope to continue development along these lines, but we wanted to make this limited code base available now, to see what early adopters will do with it, and to explore the future of learning technology," Norvig says. To read further, please visit http://www.itproportal.com/2012/09/13/open-source-education-software-unveiled-by-google/.
STEM Pathways
Many universities are reaching out to community colleges to set up programs that encourage science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. For example, the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) announced that it will spend three years building and piloting a national model for increasing the number of community college students who earn bachelor's degrees in STEM fields. UMBC is working with various institutions to develop a pathway from a community college to a bachelor's degree in a STEM field. Meanwhile, the City Colleges of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) recently announced a partnership, along with a $100,000 grant for the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities' Minority Male STEM Initiative, to support male minority STEM students at the community college system in transferring to and graduating from UIC. To read further, please visit http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/11/01/new-focus-helping-community-college-students-stem-fields-four-year-degree.
Student Engagement Opportunities and Information
Research Internship Opportunities for Students with Disabilities
Research internships present opportunities for undergraduates to gain an exposure to research and consider whether they are interested in research careers and graduate school. There are several programs that allow computing undergraduates with disabilities to become involved in research.
• The REU for Increasing Diversity (www.pratt.duke.edu/reu/absher) at Duke University offers research internships in engineering fields, including computer engineering, with an emphasis on including groups that are underrepresented, including students with disabilities.
• Distributed Research Experiences for Undergraduates (parasol.tamu.edu/dreu/) matches women and students from underrepresented groups, including students with disabilities, with a computer science or engineering faculty mentor for summer research experiences at the mentor’s home institution.
• There are many National Science Foundation sponsored sites for research experiences for undergraduates. Search for a site at http://www.nsf.gov/crssprgm/reu/reu_search.cfm/.
• Subject to funding availability, AccessComputing funds research internships for students with disabilities. To learn more, contact Brianna Blaser, at 206-685-3648 (V/TTY) or blaser@uw.
University of Washington Summer 213 Academy for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students
June 21- August 24, 2013
The 2013 Summer Academy is an academically challenging program designed for deaf and hard of hearing students with skills in math and/or science who may be considering computing as a career. UW is searching for ten of the top deaf and hard of hearing students in the United States. Admission is extremely competitive, based on an assessment of ability in computing, and enthusiasm to participate in an intensive experience in all things computing. For more information, visit http://www.washington.edu/accesscomputing/dhh/academy/.
Simons Postdoctoral Fellowship
Berkeley Laboratory - Req # 75265
For consideration, applications are due January 15, 2013 for Fall 2013.
The Computing Sciences Area at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory invite applications for the Simons fellowship in the “Theory of Computing for Science.” The fellowship allows recent graduates with a Ph.D. (or equivalent) to acquire further scientific training in an exciting new collaboration between Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Simons Institute housed nearby at the University of California at Berkeley. The postdoctoral fellows will be part of a research project in the Computational Research Division, the National Energy Research Scientific Computing (NERSC) Division, or the Scientific Networking Division (home of ESnet), which include state-of-the-are computing and networking facilities in addition to basic research in Computer Science, Applied Mathematics, and Computational Science. Fellows will also spend one semester as Fellows in the Simons Institute program in the “Theoretical Foundations of Massive Data Analysis” during the fall of 2013. For more information, please visit https://lbl.taleo.net/careersection/2/jobdetail.ftl?lang=en&job=75265.
Career Opportunities
HPC User Support Services Consultant
The Arctic Region Supercomputing Center
This position primarily provides user support for ARSC's high performance computation, storage, and networks. It includes all aspects of research and supercomputing user support, from help desk coverage to application performance tuning, account management to system testing, and developing the tools or procedures to carry out those tasks. User support staff provide training and support to users by phone, email and in person, as needed. They represent users in ARSC planning and development activities. Also, they provide information about ARSC activities to current and potential users. For more information and to apply for this position, please visit http://www.uakjobs.com/applicants/Central?quickFind=78994.
Infrastructure and Middleware Support Group Lead
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - Req #75270
LBNL has an immediate opening for an Infrastructure and Middleware Support Group Lead within our IT Division. You’d be responsible for the strategy, architecture, standards, design, implementation, availability and reliability of critical middleware applications and infrastructure systems supporting Berkeley Lab’s Business Systems and Collaboration Services. Other responsibilities include the supervision and leadership of a group of 10-15 IT professionals responsible for the implementation, maintenance and operations of a range of information technology systems; tracking emerging technologies; researching new products; and planning for future systems. For more information, please visit
https://lbl.taleo.net/careersection/2/jobdetail.ftl?lang=en&job=75270.
Computational Science Postdoctoral Fellowship
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - Req #75275
The successful candidate will participate in research activities focused on development and applications of novel algorithms, approaches and software in the area of material informatics. Of particular interest is the development of capabilities 1) enabling enumeration, generation and characterization of defects in crystals, as well as 2) enabling automatic structure analysis and structural descriptor generation for efficient materials screening as well as data mining. The successful candidate will help to integrate the developed software into the Materials Project (http://www.materialsproject.org/), enabling users worldwide to efficiently discover and characterize diverse electronic materials. For more information, please visit https://lbl.taleo.net/careersection/2/jobdetail.ftl?lang=en&job=75275.
Last But Not Least – Computational News of Interest
UCSD Researchers Discover That Facebook Drove Voters to the Polls
University of California, San Diego (UCSD) researchers have found that Facebook messages that encourage other users to vote led an additional 340,000 people to the polls in 2010. "There were one-third of a million people who actually showed up at the polls who wouldn't otherwise have if the message hadn't been shown," says UCSD's James Fowler. The researchers ran an experiment on all of the 61 million voting-age Americans who logged onto Facebook on Nov. 2, 2010. The 61 million people were divided into three categories. The first group, which had about 60 million people, got a message that said "Today is Election Day," which included an icon that said vote, an offer to help find a local polling place, the faces of up to six Facebook friends, and a note that those friends had voted. The second group, with 600,000 people, got the same message, but with no information from friends. The third group had 600,000 people who received no message. To read further, please visit http://www.technologyreview.com/news/429169/how-facebook-drove-voters-to-the-polls/. .
Supercomputing for a Superproblem: A Computational Journey Into Pure Mathematics
Mathematician Yuri Matiyasevich is focusing on finding a solution to the challenging mathematical problem of the Riemann Zeta Function (RZF) hypothesis, and he has published a research report through the University of Leicester that regards the zeros of the function. The paper details how supercomputers have helped mathematicians explore the hypothesis. "The goal of this paper is to present numerical evidence for a new method for revealing all divisors of all natural numbers from the zeroes of the RZF," says Leicester professor Alexander Gorban. "This approach required supercomputing power." Gorban notes previous evidence exists of prestigious mathematical functions utilizing massive computations. To read further, please visit http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/press/press-releases/2012/november/supercomputing-for-a-superproblem-a-computational-journey-into-pure-mathematics-1.
Smart as a Bird: Flying Rescue Robot Will Autonomously Avoid Obstacles
Cornell University researchers have developed an autonomous flying robot that can maneuver around obstacles. The researchers say the robot could be used in search-and-rescue operations. The prototype is based on a commercially available flying machine with four helicopter rotors. Cornell professor Ashutosh Saxena is building on techniques he developed earlier to turn a flat video camera image into a three-dimensional (3D) model of the environment using such cues as converging straight lines, the apparent size of familiar objects, and what objects are in front of or behind each other. The researchers trained the robot with 3D pictures of obstacles such as tree branches, poles, fences, and buildings, and the robot's software then "learns" the characteristics that the images have in common, such as color, shape, texture, and context. To read further, please visit http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Oct12/RescueRobot.html
