HPC Happenings
2014 Open Science Grid All Hands Meeting
April 7-11, 2914 - SLAC National Accelerator Lab, Menlo Park, California
The schedule will follow the successful format from previous years:
* US ATLAS and US CMS distributed facility Tier-2 and Tier-3 and the next Campus Infrastructure Community (CIC) meetings on the Monday and Tuesday.
* Plenary talks from scientists, researchers and OSG leaders on the Wednesday.
* "Ask the Experts" and other workshops on Thursday.
* And the OSG Council face-to-face open to Consortium members at the end of the week.
For more information, please visit http://www.slac.stanford.edu/.
XSEDE Announces New Campus Bridging Services and Tools
XSEDE is releasing a set of software that enables researchers and campus-based IT managers to build a “basic XSEDE-compatible computing cluster” from scratch, conveniently. This capability is provided by a bundle of software called a “ROCKS Roll.” ROCKS (http://www.rocksclusters.org/) is a tool that automates the process of building a cluster from a pre-defined set of software. XSEDE has assembled a set of open source software that, when assembled into a computing cluster, is compatible with the tools and capabilities of a supercomputer available through XSEDE. This XSEDE-compatible cluster software set also includes tools to make it easier for researchers to move data from campus storage systems to XSEDE for analysis on XSEDE supercomputers A video about the XSEDE Campus Bridging cluster software project is online at http://youtu.be/E96mlWruATM. For more technical information on the XSEDE-compatible cluster ROCKS Roll, go to https://www.xsede.org/web/xup/knowledge-base/-/kb/document/bdpe. To aid researchers in integrating campus and XSEDE resources, XSEDE now has telephone and email consulting on campus bridging. For further inquiries, call 812-318-2872 9 am to 5 pm eastern time, or send email to campusbridging@xsede.org
University of Utah's Christopher Johnson Will Receive IEEE-CS Sidney Fernbach Award
Christopher Johnson, founding director of the University of Utah's Scientific Computing and Imaging (SCI) Institute, has been named the recipient of the 2013 IEEE Computer Society Sidney Fernbach Award for his work in scientific visualization and computing. Johnson is a Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at the University of Utah, and also holds faculty appointments in the departments of physics and bioengineering. In 1992, he founded the SCI research group, which has since evolved into the 200-person SCI Institute. To read further, please visit http://www.computer.org/portal/web/pressroom/Christopher-Johnson-Will-Receive-IEEE-CS-Sidney-Fernbach-Award?goback=.gde_1775643_member_277578154#!.
HPC Conference Call for Participation
The 20th Annual IEEE High Performance Computing (HiPC 2013)
December 18-21, 2013 – Bangalore, India
Advance Registration Deadline – November 14, 2013.
The 20th International Conference on High Performance Computing (HiPC 2013 will serve as a forum for presenting current work by researchers from around the world and highlight activities in Asia, in the area of high performance computing. For more information, please visit http://hipc.org/hipc2013/registration.php.
HASTAC 2014 Annual Conference - Call for Proposals/Papers
April 24-27, 2014 - Ministerio de Cultura, Lima, Peru
Submissions Deadline: November 15, 2013
The challenges facing the Western hemisphere are multidimensional and complex. Urban agglomeration, economic development, ecological crisis, military conflict, digital privacy, impediments to advanced learning, negotiations of multiple cultural and historical perspectives—these are problems with scientific and human factors that must be considered together. HASTAC 2014 challenges participants to consider the interplay of science, technology, the social sciences, the humanities, and the arts in the context of addressing the urgent contingencies facing the evolving hemisphere. For more information including submission guidelines, please visit http://hastac2014.org/.
Upcoming Conferences, Workshops and Webinars
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.
International Symposium on Network Analysis and Mining for Health
Informatics, Biomedicine and Bioinformatics Net-HI-BI-BI 2013
December 18-21, 2013, Shanghai, China
In conjunction with BIBM 2013
The advancement in technology and computational science influenced a wide range of fields, including research in clinical leading to health
informatics as emerging vital research area, which is attracting more attention in academia and industry. Health informatics combines computational science and the clinical world for better treatment of patients. The target of this research track is to bring together professionals, researchers and practitioners in the area of health informatics to present, discuss, share the latest finding in the field, and exchange ideas that address real-world problems with real-world solutions. For more information, please visit http://health-informatics.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/.
Research Features From Across the Country and Around the World
SDSC Receives NSF Grant to Deploy Comet, a New XSEDE-Allocated Resource
The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego, has been awarded a $12-million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to deploy Comet, a new petascale supercomputer designed to transform advanced scientific computing by expanding access and capacity among traditional as well as non-traditional research domains. Comet will join SDSC’s Gordon supercomputer as a key resource within XSEDE. It is expected that Comet will help meet the pent-up demand for computing on up to 1,024 cores, which accounts for 98% of current jobs among XSEDE users. While Comet will be able to support much larger jobs, its scheduling policies will be designed to provide fast turnaround for large numbers of smaller jobs. This new system is also scheduled for production in the early part of 2015. To read further, please visit http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressrelease/nsf_awards_12_million_to_sdsc_to_deploy_comet_supercomputer.
TACC Receives NSF Grant to Deploy Wrangler, a New XSEDE-Allocated Resource
The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin and its partners have announced that they will design, build and deploy Wrangler, a groundbreaking data analysis and management system for the national open science community. Supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), which includes $6M for deployment plus additional funding for operations, the new system is scheduled for production in January 2015. Immediately upon deployment, Wrangler will be a part of the broader XSEDE ecosystem. Wrangler's performance and storage capabilities for Big Data applications will be enhanced through tight integration to TACC's Stampede supercomputer and other XSEDE-allocated resources around the country. Integration with Globus Online, the official data transfer mechanism for XSEDE, will provide for rapid, reliable and secure data exchange with other elements of the national cyberinfrastructure. To read further, please visit http://www.tacc.utexas.edu/news/press-releases/2013/wrangler-nsf-grant.
U.S. Agencies Revamp Standards for Cybersecurity Program
Chronicle of Higher Education
The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are releasing new curriculum standards for the joint National Centers of Academic Excellence cybersecurity program. The designation currently covers 181 cyber-security programs at colleges and universities, and the overhaul will require institutions to reapply for the program. "Every cybersecurity professional that comes out of college and takes a job is a win for the government, whether they work for John Deere, Boeing, or Target," says DHS cybersecurity-education awareness branch chief Robin Williams, noting that global cybercrime costs $388 billion annually. "We are losing intellectual property. We are losing our nation's work and our nation's vision and our nation's ingenuity because we are not able to protect it." The Centers of Academic Excellence label carries prestige for colleges and universities, helping attract students and federal scholarships and grants. To read further, please visit http://chronicle.com/article/Federal-Agencies-Revamp/141953/.
University of Missouri Professor Develops 'Brain' for Robots
Missouri S&T News
Missouri University of Science and Technology researchers have developed a feedback system to remotely control mobile robots, enabling them to operate with minimal supervision and potentially leading to a robot that can learn or become autonomous. The researchers, led by Missouri S&T professor Jagannathan Sarangapani, use current formation moving robots and a fault-tolerant control design to improve the probability of completing a set task. Sarangapani says the feedback system will enable a "follower" robot to take over as the "leader" robot if the original leader has a system or mechanical failure. When a problem occurs and roles need to change to continue, the fault-tolerant control system uses reinforcement learning and active critique to help the new, unmanned robot to estimate a new course. "In the event that the lead one suffers a mechanical problem, this hardware allows the work to continue," Sarangapani says. To read further, please visit http://news.mst.edu/2013/09/6213/.
Educator Opportunities and Information
The Hour of Code is Coming During Computer Science Ed Week
December 9-15, 2013
Registration Deadline – November 1,2013
To celebrate Computer Science Education Week (Dec. 9-15), Code.org and dozens of supporting partners are organizing the largest initiative of its kind: a campaign to get 10 million students of all ages to try computer science for one hour. I’m writing to ask your help. What is the Hour of Code? No experience needed It’s a one-hour intro to CS -- on a browser, smartphone, or unplugged. We expect teachers from all disciplines to host it in classrooms, and we’ll provide tutorials that require no prior experience. We’ll announce an amazing list of partners over the coming weeks, but we need your help. Recruit your entire school to participate. Start planning now and help make a difference. For more information and to register, please visit http://csedweek.org/.
Free Online MIT Courses Are an Education Revolution"
New Scientist
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor Anant Agarwal is the president of edX, a massive open online course (MOOC) provider founded last year by MIT and Harvard University to offer free online classes from top-tier universities. "The MOOC movement is democratizing education," says Agarwal in an interview. "In the past, top universities had this funnel and admitted only the top few percent of applicants. From the get-go, a lot of students without the right economic or language background were not able to get in. We're flipping the funnel. We're saying everybody can try. If you can cut it, we'll give you a certificate of mastery." He says that in addition to making education more accessible, online learning will improve traditional education by enabling ideas that have not been widely applied, such as self-paced learning, to be put into practice on a large scale. Agarwal says the best model blends online and classroom components. "When our blended circuits and electronics course was taught at San Jose State University in California, outcomes were staggeringly good," he says. "Traditionally, about 40 percent of the students fail the class; this time, the failure rate fell to 9 percent." For more information, please visit http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21929250.300-free-online-mit-courses-are-an-education-revolution.html#.Ul2OWiREvDk.
Sebastian Thrun on the Future of Learning
Technology Review (07/19/13) Rachel Metz
In an interview, Udacity CEO and Stanford University professor Sebastian Thrun says massive open online courses (MOOCs) are still in the early phases, but are making continuous improvements that will enable them to fit the needs of today's students. Even as Udacity partner San Jose State University recently suspended their joint effort until next spring due to low student passing rates, Thrun says the online education startup is improving the support and value that it provides to students. He notes that recent pilot tests have shown completion rates of 85 percent, as opposed to the 4 percent or 5 percent that is common for MOOCs. Udacity has begun offering college credits and degrees to motivate students to persevere in courses, and has increased student support services through help lines and mentors. In the future, Thrun says artificial intelligence will play a larger role in online education, but human involvement will still be necessary. For example, artificial intelligence can be applied to student profiling to identify at-risk students and pinpoint the areas in which a student requires help. Computer programs also can assist with grading work that has distinct right and wrong answers, but people should provide the http://www.technologyreview.com/news/517181/sebastian-thrun-on-the-future-of-learning/.
Preparing for the 2014 STEM Forum & Expo
May 14-17, 2014 - New Orleans, Louisiana
Make plans now to attend NSTA's 2014 STEM Forum & Expo - Integration for Innovation! The event will present new strategies for implementing STEM-related lessons and activities in your school or district. A webinar took place last week in which members of the STEM Forum & Expo Steering Committee described the six strands associated with the event and shared details about some of the highlights, including a STEM Iron Chef Competition.To read more and top view an archive of the web seminars, please visit http://learningcenter.nsta.org/products/symposia_seminars/NSTA/webseminar26.aspx.
Arizona State University Masters of Natural Science Degree in Physics for High School Teachers
Registration Deadline – November 1, 2013
In-State Tuition for California
MNS is a participating program of Western Regional Graduate Program (WRGP), which is open to all residents of 15 participating states (Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming). WRGP allows qualifying students to request the WRGP tuition rate when applying for admission directly to the graduate program. Applicants must meet all admission requirements and apply within University deadlines. Identify yourself as a "WICHE WRGP" applicant to be considered for the discounted tuition rate. Programs give a limited number of WRGP reduced tuition seats each year. Interested applicants wanting to be considered for the WRGP must have their application in no later than November 1st for summer admittance into the MNS program. The WICHE-WRGP application can be found at http://physics.asu.edu/sites/default/files/WICHE-WRGP_Application.pdf. For more information, please visit http://physics.asu.edu/graduate/mns/financial. Questions? jane.jackson@asu.edu .
Summer Computing Camp Workshop: Learn How to Start =Your Own
November 2, 2013 – La Jolla, California
The Expanding Computing Education Pathways (ECEP) alliance is offering a free workshop for teachers and university staff to learn how to start and run financially self-sustaining computing summer camps. Applications for up to $4999.99 in "seed" funds to buy equipment will be available to those who participate in the workshop. Barbara Ericson from Georgia Tech will lead this workshop. The Institute for Computing Education (ICE) at Georgia Tech has been running non-residential computing summer camps since 2004. The camps are financially self-sustaining and get statistically significant changes in students' attitudes towards computing and in knowledge of computing concepts. Participants will learn how to start and run a computing summer camp, see the equipment and tools that can be used in camps, learn how to administer the camp, including advertising, running, and evaluating the camp. Additionally, participants will learn how to apply for the seed money and how those applications are evaluated. The workshop is free and there are limited funds to reimburse up to $50 in expenses for travel to the workshop for people who live more than 30 miles away. Whether you participate in San Diego, or remotely, you will need to register here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HTRASCCalif. For more information, contact Julie Flapan at jflapan@uci.edu
Student Engagement and Information
Preview of Student Cluster Competition Begins: Students Face Off Against HPC Industry Professionals
November 18, 2013 – Denver, Colorado
The countdown is on. Twelve university teams are preparing for another epic battle at the student cluster-wrestling match, the SC13 Student Cluster Competition (SCC). The event will take place during the 2013 Supercomputing Conference in Denver, Colorado, beginning November 18, 2013. The teams will compete on the SC13 exhibition hall to see whose supercomputer is the fastest on a variety of HPC benchmarks and workloads. There are two competition tracks this year: Big Iron and Commodity Iron. But first, here’s some breaking cluster news: For the first time ever, there will be a special “Celebrity Pro-Am Cluster Challenge” pitting HPC industry professionals against the student competitors to see who can reign supreme on a surprise application. More details on this as they become available. For more details, please visit http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/11/student_cluster_wars_reboot/?goback=.gde_1775643_member_5795528543148457987#!.
Visit XSEDE in Booth 422 at SC13`
At SC13, XSEDE will be located in Booth 422, just a row over from a main aisle and XSEDE partner, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). XSEDE will promote XSEDE14 and all partners, especially those also on the exhibit floor. We encourage XSEDE partners in attendance at SC13 to also help promote the project. For those of you who attended XSEDE13 in San Diego, this is also a time to hear about XSEDE14 in Atlanta taking place July 13-18 of next year. For more information, please visit http://sc13.supercomputing.org/.
Career Opportunities
Staff Scientist
Research Computing Department , University of South Florida:
This position requires significant experience with computational science and/or engineering, particularly with High Performance Computing (HPC) environments, methods and software. This Assistant In position requires the ability to assist researchers from any field to make use of the advanced computing resources available at USF. This contact requires demonstrated human relations and communication skills and is distinguished by the requirement to be able to take the initiative in creating relationships with the research community. In addition, this position is responsible to pursue grant activity as a PI and co-PI. For more information and to apply, please visit http://www.usf.edu/about-usf/work-at-usf.aspx.
Computational Systems Biology Software Developer
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory! REQ # 76427
In this position, you will be responsible for working with a team on the creation, elaboration and maintenance of innovative software systems to aid in bio-manufacturing through iterative design, build and test cycles. The project seeks to apply statistical modeling, mechanistic modeling and machine learning to large data sets for the improvement of metabolic engineering of hosts and pathways. The Incumbent will have to work as part of a team comprised of wet lab experimentalists and computational biologist, and will also have to show independence in research and development. The team will be composed of scientists at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), the Joint Genome Institute (JGI), the DOE Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase) and LBNL Computational Research Division (CRD). The incumbent shall also be expected to present work, keep a record of activities and aid in publication of papers and writing grants. For more information, please visit https://lbl.taleo.net/careersection/2/jobdetail.ftl?lang=en&job=76427.
On the Lighter Side - Computational News of Interest
Which World Governments Are Most Likely to Snoop on Your Facebook?
Atlantic Cities
The United States, Italy, the United Kingdom, India, and Australia have the highest rates of government surveillance of Facebook accounts, according to a map of Facebook security created by New Zealand-based digital media lecturer and a 2013 Code for America fellow Anselm Bradford for this month's EU Hackathon. To create the map, Bradford used information from Facebook's transparency report for the first six months of 2013, combined with other statistics. Each country's ranking is weighted by population, number of Facebook users, and frequency of official data demands. Bradford then estimated the amount of time that would pass before each nation's users have more than a 1-percent chance of their data being accessed by an intelligence or judicial agency. The U.S. government led with 11,000 to 12,000 government requests for data, while Barbados, Japan, Russia, Uganda, Mongolia, Montenegro, and Botswana had very low rates of government snooping. To read further, please visit http://www.theatlanticcities.com/technology/2013/09/what-governments-are-most-likely-snoop-your-facebook/7039/.
University of Missouri Professor Develops 'Brain' for Robots
Missouri S&T News
Missouri University of Science and Technology researchers have developed a feedback system to remotely control mobile robots, enabling them to operate with minimal supervision and potentially leading to a robot that can learn or become autonomous. The researchers, led by Missouri S&T professor Jagannathan Sarangapani, use current formation moving robots and a fault-tolerant control design to improve the probability of completing a set task. Sarangapani says the feedback system will enable a "follower" robot to take over as the "leader" robot if the original leader has a system or mechanical failure. When a problem occurs and roles need to change to continue, the fault-tolerant control system uses reinforcement learning and active critique to help the new, unmanned robot to estimate a new course. "In the event that the lead one suffers a mechanical problem, this hardware allows the work to continue," Sarangapani says. To read further, please visit http://news.mst.edu/2013/09/6213/.
Computer Smart as a 4-Year-Old
UIC News Center
University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) researchers have IQ-tested the ConceptNet4, considered one of the best available artificial intelligence systems, and found that it is about as smart as the average four-year-old. The researchers tested the ConceptNet4 system on verbal portions of the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence Test, a standard IQ assessment for young children. They found that ConceptNet4 has the average IQ of a young child, although its scores were very uneven across different portions of the test, which is unlike most children. "If a child had scores that varied this much, it might be a symptom that something was wrong," says UIC professor Robert Sloan. The researchers found that ConceptNet4 did very well on the vocabulary and similarities portions of the test, but very poorly on the comprehension portion. Sloan says one of the hardest problems in building an artificial intelligence is devising a computer program that can make sound and prudent judgments based on a simple perception of the situation or facts, which he notes is the dictionary definition of common sense.
http://news.uic.edu/a-computer-as-smart-as-a-four-year-old
