HPC Happenings

ScalA@SC'13
November 18, 2013 - Denver, Colorado
Final Submission Deadline - September 5, 2013

The Workshop on Latest Advances in Scalable Algorithms for Large-Scale Systems (ScalA) is held in conjunction with SC13: The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis in cooperation with ACM SIGHPC. For more information and submission guidelines, please visit http://www.csm.ornl.gov/srt/conferences/Scala/2013/.

HPC Wales Creates Distributed Supercomputing Network
HPCwire

Businesses, schools, and other organizations in Wales now have access to HPC resources as a result of a new distributed supercomputing network unveiled by HPC Wales in May 2012. The group says the network is the first of its kind in the UK, and will not only be a boon to Welsh researchers but will help with education too. HPC Wales’ new supercomputing network is composed of a series of clusters located in Welsh universities, business, and research centers that are connected by high-speed links. The network is managed in part by Fujitsu, HPC Wales’ technology provider. To read further, please visit http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/2013-08-29/hpc_wales_creates_distributed_supercomputing_network.html?featured=top.

New UK/USA Agreement Will Use HPC to Boost Economic Competitiveness

The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s High Performance Computing Innovation Center (HPCIC) in the USA will collaborate to expand industry’s use of supercomputing to boost economic competitiveness in the two countries. The Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) and the U.S. Department of Energy jointly announced the collaborative agreement Thursday, August 29 in California, USA. Chief Executive, John Womersley, of STFC and Lawrence Livermore (LLNL) Director, Parney Albright, signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) at a ceremony in Livermore’s high performance computing (HPC) center that provides a vehicle for technical and business development exchanges between the HPCIC and the STFC’s Hartree Centre, which is dedicated to making HPC more accessible to British industry and academia. To read further, please visit http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/2013-08-30/new_ukusa_agreement_will_use_hpc_to_boost_economic_competitiveness.html.

In the News

UCSD Programmer Named 2013 Presidential Innovation Fellow


Justin Grevich, a web developer and systems administrator in bioengineering and the Institute of Engineering in Medicine, has been named a 2013 Presidential Innovation Fellow and will be working on the MyUSA project at the General Services Administration. He is tasked with eradicating paper forms from government. To view the latest list of awardees, please visit http://www.whitehouse.gov/innovationfellows/round-2-fellows.

SDSC GeoComputing Lab Named Winner of HPC Innovation Excellence Award by IDC

The High Performance GeoComputing Laboratory (HPGeoC) at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), an organized research unit at the University of California, San Diego, was named a winner of the HPC Innovation Excellence Award by the International Data Corporation (IDC) for developing a highly-scalable computer code that promises to dramatically cut both research times and energy costs in simulating seismic hazards throughout California and elsewhere. We are grateful to IDC for this award which recognizes our efforts to speed regional earthquake simulations for use in earthquake engineering and disaster management as part of a larger computational effort coordinated by the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC),” said Yifeng Cui, a computational scientist at SDSC and the leader of the HPGeoC lab, jointly funded by SCEC. To read further, please visit http://www.sdsc.edu/News%20Items/PR062413_hpc_award.html.

UC San Diego Researcher Receives Prestigious Computer Science Award

William G. Griswold, a computer scientist at the University of California, San Diego, along with a team of colleagues, has been awarded the 2013 Impact Paper Award from ACM’s Special Interest Group on Software Engineering. Griswold shares the award with colleagues Michael D. Ernst and David Notkin, of the University of Washington, and Jake Cockrell of AOL, for the paper they co-authored, “Dynamically Discovering Likely Program Invariants to Support Program Evolution,” published in the proceedings of ICSE ‘99— the 21st International Conference on Software Engineering (Los Angeles, Calif., May 16 to 22, 1999). To read further, please visit http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/news/news_releases/release.sfe?id=1390.

HPC Conference Call for Participation

Sustaining Digital Resources Training Course
January 16-18, 2014 - New York, NY - Learn sustainability planning fundamentals
February – May 2014 - Attend online webinars, conduct research, and refine your sustainability plan, with feedback from instructor and peers at defined checkpoints
June 5-6, 2014 - New York, NY - Share your plan and receive practical feedback from experts as well as course participants
Application Deadline: September 30, 2013

Ithaka S+R research and consulting is offering a new Sustaining Digital Resources Training Course for digital project leaders working in higher education, library, and cultural heritage organizations. Course fees are being waived though travel is not covered to 2 onsite events in New York City. Only 20 applicants will be accepted.mmore about this exciting opportunity at http://www.sr.ithaka.org/content/sustaining-digital-resources%E2%80%94training-course.

Upcoming Conferences, Workshops and Webinars

XSEDE HPC Workshop Series: MPI (On Stampede)
September 4-5, 2013 – Austin, Texas plus satellite locations

These workshops are very hands-on, and use the foremost available platforms for their subject matter.  They are a continuation of the previously oversubscribed XSEDE remote workshops and an effort to reduce the backlog of demand while maintaining the quality. The updated schedule for the remainder of the series will be sent around soon. Address any questions regarding course content to John Urbanic (urbanic@psc.edu) and questions regarding registration to Tom Maiden (tmaiden@psc.edu).

XSEDE Training: Linux/Unix Basics
September 6, 2013 - 1 pm - 4 pm (CT)

This foundational class provides beginners and intermediate users with basic Linux/Unix command line environment experience. The interactive lecture will emphasize common strategies used for interacting with clusters and HPC resources. There will be hands-on exercises.   No prerequisite. Registration: 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.

NASA Solicitation and Proposal Integrated Review and Evaluation System Overview for External Users
September 12, 2013 - 3:00 PM EST (webinar)

NASA’s Office of Education, Minority University Research and Education Project (MUREP) along with NASA Research and Education Support Services (NRESS) will conduct an overview of the NSPIRES application submission process.  MUREP engages underrepresented populations through a wide variety of opportunities.  Multiyear grants are awarded to assist Minority Serving Institution (MSI) faculty and students in research pertinent to NASA missions. The project focuses on recruiting underrepresented and underserved students in STEM disciplines through completion of undergraduate or graduate degrees to enable their entry into the scientific and technical workforce. Submitting a proposal in NSPIRES is not a difficult process, however a tutorial of the process will assist with successful submission of your proposal. If you are interested in participating in the webinar, please register by sending your name, email address and phone number to NSPIRESWebexRSVP@nasaprs.com..

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.

Research Features From Across the Country and Around the World

President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology Discusses Big Data as it Relates to Smart Cities
CCC Blog

Big data was on the agenda of last month’s meeting of the U.S. President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). The conversation focused on big data as it relates to smart cities, and PCAST's United Kingdom counterpart, the Council for Science and Technology, participated in the discussion. Steven Koonin, founding director of New York University's Center for Urban Science and Progress, described an effort at the university to use New York City as both a laboratory and classroom. He discussed the emerging field of urban informatics and provided suggestions for a national program. Koonin also called for encouraging data sharing across government functions and with the private sector, defining data standards, furthering privacy research and regulation, and funding. For more information, please visit http://www.cccblog.org/2013/07/25/presidents-council-of-advisors-on-science-and-technology-discusses-big-data-as-it-relates-to-smart-cities/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+cccblog%2FwDnv+%28CCC+Blog%29.

CFL Software, PSC Collaborate on Next Generation of Information Searching

Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) is collaborating with CFL as a strategic partner in developing CFL Discover, making the software available to researchers on Sherlock, a modified version of YarcData’s Urika^TM, a real-time data discovery appliance at the center. “This is a new venture both in terms of scale and speed in searching for information,” says David Woolls, CEO of CFL Software, which specializes in linguistic document forensics. “In essence, we take over where search engines stop.” While many users may not be aware of it, search engines don’t completely search all the text in the entire Web — that would take far too long. Instead, they search indexes, keywords, categories and other “metadata” that have been added to those documents. In the case of keywords and categories, that addition has to be made by humans, and so is time-intensive and incomplete. Today’s engines obviously revolutionized our ability to find information, but they are inexact. To read further, please visit http://www.psc.edu/index.php/newscenter/2013/853-cfl-software-psc-collaborate-on-next-generation-search-technology.

Harvard University is Perfecting Digital Imaging
Harvard University

Harvard University researchers say they are developing computer graphics tools that narrow the gap between "virtual" and "real." One project tries to find better ways to mimic the appearance of a translucent object. The project examines how humans perceive and recognize real objects and how software can exploit the details of that process to make the most realistic computer-rendered images possible. The project's approach focuses on translucent materials’ phase function, part of a mathematical description of how light refracts or reflects inside an object, which determines how people see it. The researchers first rendered thousands of computer-generated images of one object with different computer-simulated phase functions. A program then compared each image’s pixel colors and brightness to another image in the space and determined how different the two images were. "This study, aiming to understand the appearance space of phase functions, is the tip of the iceberg for building computer-vision systems that can recognize materials," says Harvard researcher Todd Zickler. To read further, please visit http://www.seas.harvard.edu/news/2013/07/perfecting-digital-imaging.

Galaxyplatform for Data Intensive Biomedical Research

This is useful information for anyone engaged in bioinformatics and biomedical research. Galaxy is an open, web-based platform for data intensive biomedical research. To learn more, please visit http://pegasus.isi.edu/si2pimeeting/slides/Taylor-Galaxy.pdf for more information and a PowerPoint about Galaxy.

New High-Speed San Diego Backcountry Fire Station Broadband Network Unveiled

UCSD officials said they have activated the Area Situational Awareness for Public Safety Network (ASAPnet), bringing high-speed, wireless digital communications and new emergency response capabilities to 60 backcountry fire stations as the region nears the peak of its fire season. The system uses as its backbone UC San Diego’s High Performance Wireless Research and Education Network, or HPWREN, a network that is best known for its series of 360-degree mountaintop, high-definition cameras that operate 24 hours a day. ASAPnet is being developed as part of a larger, multi-purpose and multi-agency enabling network infrastructure that features numerous sensors, including cameras, microweather stations and earthquake monitors, all growing more capable thanks to new and improved Internet applications. To read further, please visit http://www.calit2.net/newsroom/release.php?id=2210.

Educator Opportunities and Information

Exciting New Study Results on Computer Science Teacher Capacity

The University of Chicago’s Center for Elementary Mathematics and Science Education (CEMSE) and Urban Education Institute (UEI) have completed a survey of the current high school computer science teacher population. The goal of the Teacher Capacity Study was to understand the experience, background, and contexts of the current high school computer science teaching community—painting as comprehensive a picture as possible of the CS teacher population.  The results of the survey are part of a larger research project, Building and Operating System for Computer Science Education, which will conclude this fall. To find out more about the study and the results, please visit  Baker Franke's blog piece at http://blog.acm.org/csta/. For more information on Building and Operating System for Computer Science Education, please visit http://cemse.uchicago.edu/computerscience/OS4CS/teacher-capacity/reactions_from_the_field/.

Shodor’s Interactivate Now Available for the Tablet

The goals of this site are the creation, collection, evaluation, and dissemination of java-based courseware for middle school mathematics explorations. Educator Lessons can be found at http://www.shodor.org/interactivate/lessons/, while student activities can be found at http://www.shodor.org/interactivate/activities/. Also available are tools, discussions, assessments, standards and much more. Plus, there is a convenient Browse option by subject, audient, topic and resource type. Visit this great resource today!

Iowa Task Force to Review Next Generation Science Standards

Last week, Iowa Department of Education Interim Director D.T. Magee announced the 28 Iowans who will serve on a state task force to review the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Members of the Next Generation Science Standards Task Force will make a recommendation to the State Board of Education about whether the science standards should be adopted as part of the Iowa Core, the statewide academic standards in math, science, English/language arts, and social studies. Twenty-six states, including Iowa, worked to develop the NGSS during a two-year collaborative state-led process that was managed by Achieve, a nonprofit education organization. About 70 Iowans were involved, including K–12 educators, science consultants, higher education faculty, and Iowa Department of Education staff members. To read the press release, please visit http://educateiowa.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2928:new-state-task-force-to-review-science-standards&catid=242:news-releases.

Bugs in the System: Computer Science Teacher Certification in the U.S.

CSTA has released a new report called Bugs in the System: Computer Science Teacher Certification in the U.S. This report (developed with support from Google) is a comprehensive study of all 50 states and the District of Columbia revealing that each state (and in some states each school district) has its own process, its own definition of Computer Science, and its own idea of where Computer Science fits in the academic program and who is qualified to teach it. CSTA believes this report will be invaluable moving forward and help take certification to the next step. It is available as a PDF, so feel free to share the link (http://csta.acm.org/ComputerScienceTeacherCertification/sub/CertificationResources.html). . Please read Erik Robelen review at Education Week by visiting http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2013/08/computer_science_teacher_certi.html

Student Engagement and Information

Tapia Conference Travel Scholarships Deadline Approaching
Submission Deadline – September 12, 2013
Scholarship Decisions Announced - October 11, 2013

The Tapia Conference provides scholarships for students (undergraduate/graduate), post-docs and a limited number for faculty. Scholarships include conference registration, meals during the conference, hotel accommodations, and a reimbursable travel stipend. Tapia scholarships are generously funded by government and industry organizations. For more information and to apply, please visit http://tapiaconference.org/participate/scholarships/.

NSF/NOAA SEES Fellows Program
Proposal Deadline – November 13, 2013

The purpose of this Dear Colleague Letter is to alert social, behavioral, and economic scientists of an opportunity to broaden their core expertise through residence at a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) facility.  This Fellowship provides a unique opportunity for interdisciplinary research collaboration between Social, Behavioral and Economic (SBE) scientists and NOAA scientists and decision makers. NOAA has indicated it would welcome SBE scientists to be based in any of their program offices, centers and laboratories through the NSF Program on Science, Engineering, and Education for Sustainability Fellows (SEES Fellows: http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=504673). This solicitation requires that applicants develop a plan for a research partnership. NSF and NOAA believe that NOAA program offices, centers, and laboratories, which are based throughout the country, provide an opportunity for such partnerships between SBE scientists and NOAA staff.  Although there is no set-aside, as proposals to reside at NOAA facilities must compete with all the other proposals, the willingness of NOAA administrators to work with SBE scientists should enable SBE scholars to develop strong proposals. This opportunity is open to early-career scholars. Awards provide salary support, research expenses and travel support for a maximum of 3 years. For more information, please visit http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2013/nsf13123/nsf13123.jsp?WT.mc_ev=click&WT.mc_id=USNSF_25&utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery. 

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)
Application Deadlines –
November 4, 2013 - Engineering; Computer and Information Science and Engineering; Materials Research
November 5, 2013 - Mathematical Sciences; Chemistry; Physics and Astronomy
November 7, 2013 - Social Sciences; Psychology; STEM Education and Learning
November 8, 2013 - Life Sciences; Geosciences

The purpose of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) is to help ensure the vitality and diversity of the scientific and engineering workforce of the United States. The program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students who are pursuing research-based master's and doctoral degrees in fields within NSF's mission. The GRFP provides three years of support for the graduate education of individuals who have demonstrated their potential for significant achievements in science and engineering research. For more information, please visit http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2013/nsf13584/nsf13584.htm?WT.mc_id=USNSF_25&WT.mc_ev=click.

A Summer of Data Hacking Social Problems for University of Chicago’s Graduate Student Fellows
New York Times

Rayid Ghani, chief scientist for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign, recently created the Data Science for Social Good fellowship program at the University of Chicago to give young data scientists an opportunity to address real-world social problems. The program was financed by the Schmidt Family Foundation, an educational charity led by Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt and his wife, Wendy. "This is a small way to help that might have a bigger impact than we think," says Schmidt, who notes that urban social problems are a fresh challenge for sophisticated data tools. "Almost all of the interesting jobs will be related to big data in the future," he says. Ghani says the 36 summer fellows, chosen from 550 applicants, are working on complex urban and social problems. One project is helping the Cook County Land Bank develop a Netflix-style recommendation engine to identify the most promising properties for redevelopment, mostly in blighted neighborhoods on Chicago's South and West Sides. Another project involves developing quantitative tools for measuring the national effectiveness of the Nurse-Family Partnership, a community health program that is currently active in 42 states. To read further, please visit http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/25/a-summer-of-data-hacking-social-problems/?_r=0.

Career Opportunities

HPC User Support Engineer
Ohio Supercomputer Center

The Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) provides high-performance computing (HPC) services to its academic and commercial partners. The OSC User Services Group invites applications for a Support Engineer to contribute to the overall mission of the Center with a focus on application support. The individual in this position will support users with compiling, profiling and debugging codes on OSC clusters, including MPI, OpenMP, OpenACC or CUDA, while ensuring that OSC’s user environment is compliant with the XSEDE Production Baseline; creates and conducts workshops for OSC partners; performs application software builds and creates user-facing documentation and responds to a variety of user support issues. The candidate must have strong interpersonal skills, the ability to communicate effectively and a desire to lead training workshops. The ideal candidate is a highly motivated professional. For more information, please visit https://www.jobsatosu.com/postings/50116.

Systems Administrator (HPC System Administrator)
The Pennsylvania State University
ITS Research Computing and Cyberinfrastructure

Research Computing and Cyberinfrastructure (RCC), a unit of Information Technology Services at Penn State, is seeking a talented and goal-oriented individual to join our team as an HPC System Administrator in support of advanced computing and visualization systems and services for Penn State faculty and their students. RCC provides comprehensive system services and applications consulting for computational research and teaching conducted across the university. For more information, please visit http://www.psu.jobs/Search/Opportunities.html.

On the Lighter Side - Computational News of Interest

Six Months of Computing Time Generates Detailed Portrait of Cloth Behavior for Video Games: Carnegie Mellow, UC Berkeley Study Finds
Carnegie Mellon News

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and the University of California, Berkeley have developed a data-driven technique that could improve real-time animation of complex phenomena. The researchers say they simulated almost every important way a piece of cloth might shift, fold, and drape over a moving human figure, after six months of computation. Taking advantage of the computing power of the cloud, the team used 4,554 central processing unit hours to generate 33 gigabytes of data. The researchers developed an iterative technique that continuously samples the cloth motions, automatically detecting areas where data was lacking or where errors occurred. CMU professor Adrien Treuille says their approach is a new paradigm for computer graphics. "The criticism of data-driven techniques has always been that you can't pre-compute everything," Treuille says. To read further, please visit http://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2013/july/july23_clothsimulation.html.

Twitter Can Tell Whether Your Community Is Happy or Not
Atlantic Cities

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Michigan State University recently released a study on whether a community's sense of happiness could be determined from communications on Twitter. The study examined 82 million tweets from about 1,300 U.S. counties between June 2009 and March 2010, with a minimum of 30,000 words geotagged to each county. The study demonstrates that Twitter reveals the level of well being at the community as well as the individual level. The study used a model of language created by tweets that were indicative of community-level well being, measured against more traditional survey results. By combining socioeconomic data with their Twitter language model, the researchers say they developed a highly effective tool for predicting well being, without using formal surveys. Tweets about exercise and the outdoors correlated positively with happiness, possibly due to exercise lowering depression risk, the researchers say. To read further, please visit http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2013/07/how-twitter-can-predict-your-communitys-wellbeing/6270/