XSEDE User Opportunities
View an Online Introduction to the XSEDE User Portal
We have placed slides, as well as the recording of a recent new user tutorial focused on the XSEDE User Portal, which was presented by Maytal Dahan, To view the recorded session, please visit http://connectpro34095443.adobeconnect.com/p7n3t8u4wmy/
News at 1100: XSEDE Staff in the News
XSEDE's Phil Blood Featured in Podcast
In this recent podcast from the Research Computing and Engineering (RCE) blog, Phil Blood, senior scientific specialist at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC), talks about HPC, the transition from TeraGrid to XSEDE, and what XSEDE offers to researchers. To listen to the podcast, please visit http://www.rce-cast.com/Podcast/rce-63-xsede-extreme-science-and-engineering-discovery-environment.html.
Student Engagement
ACM-W Scholarships for Attendance at Research Conferences
ACM-W, with funding from Wipro Technologies, provides support for women undergraduate and graduate students in Computer Science and related programs who wish to attend research conferences. Exposure to the CS research world can be an important factor in encouraging a student to continue on to the next level (Undergraduate to Graduate, Masters to Ph.D., Ph.D. to an industry or academic position). The student does not have to present a paper at the conference she attends. As of 2011, twenty ACM-W/Wipro scholarships will be funded annually: ten scholarships of up to $600 will be awarded for intra-continental conference travel, and ten scholarships of up to $1200 will be awarded for intercontinental conference travel. For more information, please visit http://women.acm.org/participate/scholarship/.
Third Annual Dare 2B Digital Conference for Middle and High School Girls
February 12, 2012 – San Jose, California
This conference, taking place at the eBay campus in San Jose, offers hands-on learning experience for girls, ages 13-16, in middle and high school, plus their parents and mentors. Inspirational keynote sessions, workshops, demonstrations and discussion panels with computing experts are presented by Invent Your Future Enterprises in partnership with eBay, Oracle, Brocade Communications, Cisco, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Mozilla, SAP Labs, Symantec, Cadence, NetApp, Techbridge, the Computer Science Teachers Association and the National Center for Women & Information Technology. For more information on speakers, the plan for the day and to register, please visit http://www.dare2bdigitalconference.com/.
CCC Launches Undergraduates Summer Research Listing Site
The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is offering a new website for listing undergraduate summer research positions. Researchers will be able to post their summer research opportunities on the listing site for free. The site will enable students to find summer research programs, and will enable the CCC to promote a pipeline of young talent for careers in computing research. The CCC's relatively new Computer Science Research Opportunities & Graduate School (CSGS) site will offer a link to the listings. The CSGS site provides information on summer research opportunities, a Q&A on "why do research," and links to summer programs from the U.S. National Science Foundation, Research Experiences for Undergraduates, the CRA Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research, and Canadian Collaborative Research Experiences for Undergraduates, among others. To read further, please visit http://www.cccblog.org/2012/01/06/ccc-launches-undergraduate-summer-research-listing-site/.
NASA Opportunity for Female High School Juniors
Application Deadline – February 15, 2012
Dream. Engineer. WISH. Women In STEM High School Aerospace Scholars
Engineer your dream job! Your adventure begins in 2012 with an online community and culminates with a summer experience at NASA Johnson Space Center in Summer 2012. Collaborate with girls from across the country and female NASA engineers and interns. Get ready to start your dream! For specific project information, please visit http://wish.aerospacescholars.org.
I3 Undergraduate Research Opportunity
Application Deadline Extension - March 2, 2012
The i3 admissions committee has extended its application deadline to early March 2012.
The iSchool Inclusion Institute (i3) is a leadership development program that prepares undergraduate students from underrepresented populations for graduate study in the information sciences.*/ i3 is held at the University of Pittsburgh in June of each year. Students admitted to the program are immersed in special-topics workshops, professional development seminars, and network-building opportunities. Students receive practical guidance from faculty, career counselors, and various industry professionals. i3 serves as a fantastic opportunity to learn about graduate school, explore other fields of study, and develop your career-path. Students are still encouraged to submit their applications sooner rather than later, as the admissions committee will be prioritizing early applications. If you are interested in a summer internship and gaining research experience, please consider submitting an application. For more information, including application guidelines, please visit http://www.ischool-inclusion.org/about-i3/what-is-i3.html.
Research Features for this Week
Argonne and LBL Researchers Push Limits of Cloud Computing
Excerpt from InformationWeek
Researchers at Argonne National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory recently completed the Magellan project, which determined that although cloud computing offers many advantages for scientific researchers, there are several hurdles to overcome, including a steep learning curve, performance and scalability shortcomings, and missing pieces in the cloud software stack. The report also found that commercial cloud services could be several times more expensive than the high-performance computing (HPC) environments they currently operate. In general, "the cloud is seven to 13 times more expensive," according to the report. However, the report also provides insights into some of the ways cloud computing could be used for leading-edge research. Magellan researchers concluded that the cloud model is well suited to certain types of scientific applications, specifically those with minimal communications, but it cannot outperform HPC systems for most national lab requirements. To read further, please visit http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/cloud-saas/232500025.
Map Making, Made Easy
Harvard University researchers have developed WorldMap, a cloud-based open source Web map-making platform that facilitates the use of large, detailed datasets and supports a number of formats. The researchers say WorldMap will make it easier for scholars to share maps and other geospatial data, and increase the amount of high-quality spatial data in the public sphere. Scholars will be able to integrate data from various sources by overlaying data in their own computers with materials on the Web, as well as incorporate paper maps, perform online digitizing, and link locations to other media. WorldMap is a collaborative tool, and all participants in groups will have editorial rights to interactive publications for large audiences, and users will be able to keep information private before making it available to larger groups for refinement and releasing it to the public. To read further, please visit http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/01/map-making-made-easy/.
Microsoft to Launch Real-Time Threat Intelligence Feed
Microsoft announced plans to launch a real-time threat intelligence feed at the recent International Conference on Cyber Security. The project’s goal is to stream the company's security information on dangerous and high profile threats to organizations running the gamut from business partners and private corporations to domestic and foreign governments. If the beta test is successful, Microsoft may make the feed publicly available. Microsoft's T.J. Campana says the feed will serve as a Hadoop-based cluster merged with Windows Server, streaming information from a database that now contains data on the Kelihos botnet Microsoft first reported on in September. "I don't see a decrease in threats, but I do see this [feed] limiting the possible damage from a given threat as the community will be able to respond faster," says Lumension analyst Paul Henry. Microsoft will need to allay the concerns of privacy skeptics, particularly since the feed will circulate Internet Protocol addresses of systems that are discovered to be elements in large botnets. However, Henry says that security threat information can be exchanged without causing privacy infringement, noting that the Microsoft feed will bear a similarity to practices at the SANS Internet Storm Center. To read further, please visit http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/011212-microsoft-intelligence-254846.html. (The article will appear after the car advertisement disappears.)
