XSEDE Happenings.

XSEDE13, "Gateway to Discovery," Scheduled for July in San Diego

Planning for XSEDE13 is already under way, and next year's conference is expected to build on the success of this year's inaugural event. XSEDE13 will be held at the Marriott Marquis and Marina, San Diego. Mark your calendars for Monday-Thursday, July 22-25, 2013. Details to come.

NSF Research Data Planning Meeting
October 2-3. 2012 – Arlington, Virginia

The National Science Foundation (NSF) encourages participation in its upcoming Research Data Alliance Planning Meeting. As part of the Research Data Alliance (RDA) initiative, attendees will share information and discuss possible solutions for integrating data on disparate systems. A white paper on the DataWeb Forum (part of the RDA) is available to help facilitate discussion, and all participants are urged to review it prior to the meeting. For more information, including registration, please visit http://d2i.indiana.edu/data2012/DataWebForum. Questions can be addressed to Dane Skow at dskow@nsf.gov. To view the White Paper, please visit

XSEDE Names First Cohort of Campus Champions Fellows

XSEDE recently selected the first four Campus Champions Fellows, pairing each Champion with a member of XSEDE's Extended Collaborative Support Services (ECSS) staff to work on science and engineering projects for about one year. Campus Champions are volunteers at their respective campuses who advise researchers on the use of high-end computing resources. The fellows program helps Champions increase their expertise while working in partnership with ECSS staff.

The four fellows selected to participate in the first round are:

• Dirk Colbry, a research specialist at the Institute for Cyber-Enabled Research at Michigan State University;
• Nasseer Idrisi, an assistant professor at the University of the Virgin Islands' Center for Marine and Environmental Studies;
• Liwen Shih, professor and computer engineering chair at the University of Houston-Clear Lake;
• Jack Smith, a research staff member with Marshall University and cyberinfrastructure coordinator at the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission.

For more information, please visit https://www.xsede.org/ccfellows-july2012.

Upcoming Conferences and Workshops

Oklahoma Supercomputing Symposium – October 2-3, 2012

The Oklahoma Supercomputing Symposium 2012 will be held October 3, 2012 from 8:00am- 5:00pm on the University of Oklahoma Norman campus, with a reception and poster session Tuesday, October 2, 2012 from  5:30-7:00pm. The keynote speaker will be Thom Dunning, Director, National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Additional speakers can be found at http://symposium2012.oscer.ou.edu/speakers.html.  This is a great way to learn what's happening on the Advanced Computing side of your research and teaching areas. The symposium is offered free of charge. For more information, please visit http://symposium2012.oscer.ou.edu/.

36th Open Grid Forum
October 8-10, 2012 – Chicago, Illinois

The Open Grid Forum (OGF36) events allow participants to communicate ideas, share work, foster collaborations, and facilitate consolidation of best practices into standards. The OGF36 is being held in conjunction with eScience and Global Lambda Grid events and will be at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. For more information and to register, please visit http://www.ogf.org/OGF36/. Please enter When registering, please enter the code "OGF36" to receive a $100 discount.

SACNAS
October 11-14, 2012 - Seattle, Washington
Registration Deadline – September 12, 2012

The 2012 SACNAS National Conference "Science, Technology, and Diversity for a Healthy World" will take place in Seattle, Washington. Join over 3,500 attendees for four days of scientific research presentations, professional development, networking, exhibits, culture, and community. One of the largest annual gatherings of minority scientists in the country, the interdisciplinary, inclusive, and interactive SACNAS National Conference motivates and inspires. For more information and to register, please visit https://sacnas.org/civicrm/event/info?reset=1&id=42.

EDUCAUSE
November 6-9, 2012 - Denver, Colorado

The EDUCAUSE Annual Conference is the premiere gathering for higher education IT professionals. It provides content and exploration of today's toughest technology issues facing campuses around the world, and convenes some of the brightest minds in the community. When colleagues from around the world converge with some of the most innovative corporate solution providers, you have an event that creates invaluable networking opportunities and professional development. For more information, please visit http://www.educause.edu/annual-conference.

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 and to register, please visit http://sc12.supercomputing.org/content/exhibitor-prospectus.

Third LinkSCEEM Cross-Sectional HPC Workshop
November 11-15, 2012 - Cairo University, Egypt

The LinkSCEEM-2 FP7 project in collaboration with the American University of Cairo (AUC) and the Faculty of Computers and Information - Cairo University (FCI-CU) are jointly organizing a five-day 2-workshop training event between November 11-15, 2012. Lectures on November 11-12, 2012 will be held at Cairo University and will include introductory courses and hands-on training on parallel computing. On November 13-15, 2012, the LinkSCEEM 3-day Cross Sectional HPC Workshop will be held at the American University in Cairo. Lectures will include four parallel training sessions in selected scientific fields targeted towards participants’ interests.  For more information, please visit http://www.linksceem.eu/ls2/news-and-activities/events/events/event/19-third-linksceem-cross-sectional-hpc-workshop.html.

XSEDE Training at a Glance. .

Writing a Successful XSEDE Allocation Proposal
October 3, 2012 – 2:00pm-3:30pm EDT, webcast
For more information and to register, please visit https://www.xsede.org/web/xup/course-calendar/-/training/class/66,

Extending High-Performance Computing Beyond its Traditional User Communities
October 8-9, 2012 – Chicago, Illinois
For more information, please visit http://psc.edu/index.php/component/jevents/icalrepeat.detail/2012/10/08/20/53|55/extending-high-performance-computing-beyond-its-traditional-user-communities-.

XSEDE Training: HPC Python Tutorial
October 15, 2012 – 9:00am- 4:00pm CDT, webcast
For more information, please visit https://www.xsede.org/web/xup/course-calendar/-/training/class/67.

OpenACC GPU Programming Workshop – Onsite at 10 University Locations
October 16-17, 2012 – 11:00am-5:00pm EDT
For more information and to view the various locations, please visit https://www.xsede.org/web/xup/course-calendar. .

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

UC San Diego Team Aims to Broaden Researcher Access to Protein Simulation

University of California, San Diego researchers have developed graphics-processing unit (GPU)-accelerated software and demonstrated an approach that can sample biological events that occur on the millisecond timescale. The researchers combined an algorithm, an off-the-shelf GPU, and the Assisted Model Building with Energy Refinement software to run a biological simulation on the Anton supercomputer. "This work shows that using conventional, off-the-shelf GPU hardware combined with an enhanced sampling algorithm, events taking place on the millisecond time scale can be effectively sampled with dynamics simulations orders of magnitude shorter than those timescales," the researchers say. The enhanced sampling algorithm refers to accelerated molecular dynamics (aMD), which improves the conformational space sampling of proteins when compared with conventional molecular dynamics simulations (cMD). http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressreleases/uc_san_diego_team_aims_to_broaden_researcher_access_to_protein_simulation#.UCUC36PLvKs.

Georgia Tech Animation Research Could Offer Unparalleled Control of Characters Without Skeletons

Georgia Tech researchers have developed a way to simulate and control the movement of skeleton-free computer-generated characters. The researchers say their modeling technique could enable amateur animators to control digital creatures with simple point-and-click movements. The computer models, known as soft body ABCs, were created using muscle fibers to control a volume-preserving finite element mesh. The researchers also developed algorithms that allowed high-level goals, such as walking from one point to another or jumping and then regaining balance. "We’ve built a framework where the user or the animator can just click on a point of the soft body and direct the type of movement he or she wants," says Georgia Tech professor Karen Liu. To read further, please visit http://www.gatech.edu/newsroom/release.html?nid=143791.

LBNL Begins a Big Data Revolution in Astrophysics

As more powerful telescopes are developed, more is learned about the wild happenings in space, including black holes, binary star systems, the movement of galaxies, and even the detection of the Cosmic Microwave Background, which may hint at the beginnings of the universe. However, all of these discoveries were made relatively slowly, relying on the relaying of information to other stations whose observatories may not be active for several hours or even days—a process that carries a painful amount of time between image and retrieval and potential discovery recognition. Solving these problems would be huge for astrophysics. According to Peter Nugent, Senior Staff Scientist of Berkeley’s National Laboratory, big data is on its way to doing just that. Nugent has been the expert voice on this issue following his experiences with an ambitious project known as the Palomar Transient Factory. To read further, please visit http://www.datanami.com/datanami/2012-08-06/a_big_data_revolution_in_astrophysics.html.

Educator News and Curriculum

Most STEM Degrees to Latinos Granted by Schools in Six States

A recent Excelencia in Education report featured an analysis of institutions awarding certificates or degrees to Latino students in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) fields. The report found that of the top higher education institutions that have granted the most STEM degrees to Latino graduates in the 2009-2010 school year, more than half are found in six states: Arizona, California, Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada, and Texas. The schools were analyzed based on the number of degrees of certificates granted, then ranked by academic level. Overall, Latinos earning STEM degrees made up just eight percent of the total, and just 40 percent of those students came from the top 25 institutions listed in the report. "Given the relative youth of the Latino population relative to the aging of the U.S. population overall, supporting the increased growth of Latinos with postsecondary credentials in STEM is critical to meeting the projected workforce needs of the nation by 2020," the report says. To read further, please visit http://www.nationaljournal.com/thenextamerica/education/most-stem-degrees-to-latinos-granted-by-schools-in-six-states-20120808.

CS4HS: A Computer Science High School Educator Workshop
October 27-28, 2012 – Durham, North Carolina

National Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) members are invited to the CS4HS workshop at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Among the topics at the workshop are Exploring Computer Science, Computer Science Principles, App Inventor, Scratch and Alice. Although preference will be given to local teachers it is anticipated that out of state participants will also be able to participate. The great list of speakers includes Gail Chapman and Baker Franke for ECS: Exploring Computer Science, Brook Osborne and Owen Astrachan for Computer Science Principles, Ralph Morelli on App Inventor, and Michelle Chung and Ricarose Roque from MIT on Scratch. A $250 stipend will be given to those completing the workshop. For more information, please visit http://sites.duke.edu/cs4hsduke/. Questions can be addressed to R Brook Osborne at rbo@cs.duke.edu.

University of Wisconsin-Madison Researchers Scour Twitter in Service of Bullying Research

University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers are developing a computational method for searching through social media posts to find mentions of bullying events. "What we found, very importantly, was that quite often the victim and the bully and even bystanders talk about a real-world bullying incident on social media," says Madison professor Jerry Zhu. The computer analyzed about 250 million publicly visible messages posted on Twitter and found more than 15,000 bullying-related tweets per day. "We taught [the machine-learning algorithm] ways to identify bullies, victims, accusers, and defenders," says Madison professor Amy Bellmore. To read further, please visit http://www.news.wisc.edu/20931.

Student Engagement Opportunities and Information

Graduate Information Days at Clemson University School of Computing, November 4-5, 2012 – Clemson, South Carolina
Application Deadline – October 1, 2012

The Brilliant Orange Graduate Information Days is an opportunity for high-achieving undergraduate juniors, seniors, and masters students everywhere to investigate the benefits of graduate education at Clemson University in one of the four graduate programs in the School of Computing. They offer Doctoral degrees in both Computer Science and Human-Centered Computing, a Master of Fine Arts in Digital Production Arts, and a Master of Science in Computer Science. During the event, students will have opportunities to meet professors, researchers, and graduate students in all four programs. Accepted students are expected to participate in all event activities. Please apply at http://www.cs.clemson.edu/IamBrilliant.html. A faculty reference is required with all applications. If you have questions, please send email to Dr. Mark Smotherman (mark@clemson.edu).

Call for Fellowship Applications for Third LinkSCEEM Cross-Sectional HPC Workshop
November 11-15, 2012 - Cairo University, Egypt
Application Deadline – October 9, 2012

The LinkSCEEM-2 FP7 project would like to announce fellowship opportunities for advanced High Performance Computing (HPC) training during the Third LinkSCEEM Cross Sectional HPC Workshop from November 13-15 , 2012 at the American University in Cairo. The workshop targets young researchers from the region and will address programming training needs of current and prospective HPC users from various computational scientific fields. Access to LinkSCEEM HPC infrastructure will be provided for training purposes. Hands-on guidance in preparing projects for HPC usage will be given during the workshop. Applicants should visit http://cyprusinstitute.limequery.org/56753/lang-en to express their interest in attending the Third LinkSCEEM Cross Sectional Workshop. For more information on the workshop, please visit http://www.linksceem.eu/ls2/news-and-activities/events/events/event/19-third-linksceem-cross-sectional-hpc-workshop.html

The Gerald A. Soffen Memorial Fund 2012 Travel Grant Applications Now Available
Application Deadline – October 15, 2012

This opportunity is for undergraduate and graduate students pursuing studies in fields of space science and engineering. 
 
 The Travel Grants, in the amount of $500, enable student recipients to attend professional meetings to present their research.   Jerry Soffen, a biologist by training, led a distinguished career in NASA, including serving as the Project Scientist for Viking and as an architect for the NASA Astrobiology Institute. The Travel Grant continues Jerry’s dedication to educating and involving future generations in space science and engineering pursuits.  The electronic application materials and instructions are located on the Soffen Fund website: 
 
http://SoffenFund.org. 
Questions regarding the application or application process may be sent to
info@SoffenFund.org.

Indiana University InCNTRE Summer of Network Internship Program
May 20 - July 16, 2013 – Bloomington, Indiana
Application Deadline – November 30, 2012

There are two essential elements to starting a successful career in data networking: real-world experience and hands-on training. InCNTRE's Summer of Networking internship program at IU Bloomington provides both in abundance. Each day of the Summer of Networking includes participation in a real-world project (during the morning) and classroom instruction (during the afternoon) from IU's acclaimed network engineering and research staff. In addition to participation in projects and classroom instruction, students will collaboratively build and operate their own dorm room network. For more information, including project areas, eligibility and stipend awards, please visit http://incntre.iu.edu/summer. Questions can be addressed to summer@incntre.iu.edu

Career Opportunities

West Virginia University is Seeking a Cluster Systems Administrator
Posted September 26, 2012

West Virginia University has position opening for a Cluster Systems Administrator in its HPC and scientific computing program.  This will be somewhat of a hybrid position with substantial responsibilities for the support and maintenance of HPC and scientific computing hardware and software.  This position will also be involved in supporting research faculty and their research teams in using HPC and scientific computing systems.  To learn more about this position and how to apply, please visit https://www6.ultirecruit.com/WES1016/JobBoard./JobDetails.aspx?__ID=*184DEA4A9A0D0F93.

Open Position for Computational Scientist at Rice University – REQ: 1307
Posted – September 27, 2012

Rice University has a new position open for a Computational Scientist in our Research Computing Support Group. The successful candidate will work with Rice research faculty and staff and their collaborators to maintain, develop, and advance our efforts in high performance computing. The position is particularly focused on supporting complex research applications needs running on scalable high performance computing resources at Rice. The incumbent will engage with world leading researchers on the innovative use of high performance computing and interact with faculty from across Rice engaged in computationally enabled research. The successful candidate in this position will be involved in analysis, design, development, porting, optimization and testing of advanced research software-codes and algorithms. The person is expected to engage and support a variety of research projects and may in some cases be asked to act as a team lead for code development activities with faculty and research staff. The Computational Scientist will have primary responsibility in supporting the computational research needs of the Center for Theoretical Biological Physics, but will support activities throughout the sciences and engineering. For more information and to apply, please visit https://jobs.rice.edu/applicants/jsp/shared/position/JobDetails_css.jsp?postingId=159826.

News at 11:00: HPC Leaders in the News

UC Awards Nine Technology Innovations Awards to its Campuses

The University of California (UC) honored nine UC teams with the 2012 Larry L. Sautter Award during the recent UC Computing Services Conference. Teams were honored for developing easy-to-use information technology tools that improve operations and efficiency at campuses. Winning projects for the Golden Awards for Innovation in Information Technology included UC Davis Health System's Research Volunteer Registry, which keeps detailed information about research volunteers in a central database, eliminating the need for multiple registries or filing systems in different departments. The Office of the President's DMPTool helps researchers create data management plans, which now are required by most major federal funding programs. And UC San Diego's Delivering an Amazing Web Experience on Every Device: Responsive Design enables campus Web pages to display and function well on multiple electronic devices such as laptops and mobile devices. "A number of these tools will be of interest throughout higher education," says UC system chief information officer David J. Ernst. "I
To read further, please visit http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/28143.

Last But Not Least – Computational News of Interest

Toward a R&D Roadmap for Privacy

The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation recently released a report calling for a research and development (R&D) roadmap for privacy, as well as a companion Web site to enable researchers to collaborate on creating a privacy research agenda. "Effectively addressing privacy concerns ... will require a mix of new technologies and policies to ensure data is properly safeguarded and consumers are protected," and a roadmap will "help address consumer privacy concerns, better align R&D investments with strategic objectives, and enable more innovation," the report says. The report warns that "if privacy concerns are not adequately addressed, they may stall or disrupt the deployment of new technologies that offer many potential economic and quality-of-life benefits to consumers." In addition, the report notes that "advances in privacy research and technology could strengthen consumer trust and better protect consumer privacy while enabling continued innovation." To read further, http://www.cccblog.org/2012/08/06/toward-a-rd-roadmap-for-privacy/. .

Lawrence Landweber Helped Build Today’s Internet, Now He’s Advising Its Future

When Lawrence Landweber helped develop an early version of the Internet, known as the Computer Science Network (CSNET), an intentionally open computer network, he predicted that it would one day be used for banking, travel, and commerce. However, Landweber did not foresee a system in which hackers could take down Web sites or extract private information. Landweber also helped build email, directory, and file-sharing software to run on CSNET. "I realized very early that CSNET was going to be international, so starting in 1982 I got together with people all over the world to help them coordinate their networks," Landweber says. Today, Landweber is involved with the Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) project, which aims to create faster and more secure networks. He says there is a battle between hackers who steal information, bot computers that create spam, government forces trying to counter attacks, and researchers trying to close security gaps. “The current Internet has serious flaws,” Landweber says. “The Internet was never designed to be secure, and in the formative days, privacy wasn’t that much of an issue.” GENI project researchers are developing software-defined networks in an attempt send data more securely. To read further, please visit http://www.wired.com/business/2012/08/lawrence-landweber/.

Need an Expert? Try the Crowd

University of Vermont researchers recently completed a study that aimed to discover if volunteers who visited two different Web sites could pose, refine, and answer questions of each other that could effectively predict the volunteer's body weight and home electricity use. The researchers found that the self-directed questions and answers led to computer models that accurately predict a user's monthly electricity usage and body mass index. "It’s proof of concept that a crowd actually can come up with good questions that lead to good hypotheses," says Vermont professor Josh Bongard. However, the researchers acknowledge that the variables revealed by the questions and answers on the Web sites are correlated outcomes and not actual causes. "We’re not arguing that this study is actually predictive of the causes, but improvements to this method may lead in that direction," says Vermont professor Paul Hines. The researchers see the new method as a way to help accelerate the process of scientific discovery. To read further, please visit http://www.uvm.edu/~uvmpr/?Page=news&storyID=14100