Monthly Archives: March 2012

U-M Workshop on Data Mining – Register Now

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Registration is now open for the Third University of Michigan Workshop on Data Mining, to be held on April 18 at Stamps Auditorium. The last two years of workshops have been a big success drawing researchers from all over campus, as well as the state of Michigan and beyond. Indeed, we had such high interest in the past that this year we have obtained a much larger venue so that many more can come.  We hope this year’s event will be as exciting as past years’.

Date: Wednesday, April 18
Time: 8:30am to 5:00pm
Location: Stamps Auditorium on North Campus
Register: http://eecs.umich.edu/dm12/

Registration is free and includes lunch on the day of the workshop, thanks to the generous sponsorship of Yahoo! and the Office of Research Cyberinfrastructure (ORCI).

Researchers and students from Michigan, other universities, and industry are all welcome. However, space is limited, so please be sure to register as soon as you can.  We will close registration on April 11.

We will have technical presentations from researchers using data mining techniques in engineering, natural sciences, and social sciences.  We will also have a tutorial on how to use Michigan’s popular Flux system.

The final lecture of the day will be held in conjunction with Computer Science and Engineering’s Distinguished Lecture Series.  The speaker will be Professor Michael Jordan of U.C. Berkeley.

U-M Institute for the Humanities Seminar: How New Technologies Enhance the Humanities and How They Don’t

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2012 Spring Seminar

“Log On to the Humanities: How New Technologies Enhance the Humanities and How They Don’t”

Friday & Saturday May 4 & 5

$200 before April 20, $225 after. Public welcome.

Register online at http://www.lsa.umich.edu/humanities/LogOnToTheHumanities

Each spring the University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities gathers together friends and alumni to explore a topic through a humanities-and-arts lens. This year, “Log On to the Humanities: How New Technologies Expand the Humanities and How They Don’t” takes its lead from the institute’s just-completed Year of Digital Humanities. We explored profound shifts in scholarly practice, book publication, partnership across vast distances, changes in the global flow of knowledge, and relations between the humanities and the arts that have been emerging courtesy of the technological revolution. These changes expand the possible horizons of the humanities for a young generation and are here to stay. But they also bring the danger of flash over focus, tweet over narration, attention deficit over close scrutiny, and the aesthetics of absorption.

During this seminar we will:

  • Consider how the humanities are being recast to include new technologies for research, new modes of partnership, and new prose forms of the blog and the website while also gaining critical purchase on new events by returning to core values
  • Learn how new visual and algorithmic methods have opened up entirely new digital art forms which intersect the humanities with digital artist and 2011 Kidder Resident in the Arts Paul Kaiser
  • Tour the current vanguard of “human-machine” writing and place it in the context of the previous centuries of humanistic inquiry with Finn Brunton of U-M’s School of Information
  • Examine the history of the book and its current reincarnation as a digital object with Phil Pochoda, former director of University of Michigan Press
  • Write, including hands-on writing of blog, tweet, and then more traditional prose, to get into the spirit, and limitations, of new writing
  • Explore the U-M Digital Media Commons, one of the finest technical spaces in the country.

Open Letter from NSF and Farnam Jahanian

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Thursday, March 29, 2012

Dear Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Community,

This afternoon at a White House event, the Administration unveiled a Big Data Research and Development Initiative, which creates enormous opportunities for extracting knowledge and insights from large and complex collections of digital data. The CISE community is well poised to become an active participant in this new initiative.

NSF Director, Dr. Subra Suresh, joined other federal science agency leaders to discuss cross-agency plans and announce new research efforts to address big data. NSF will direct its current efforts to develop new methods to derive knowledge from data; construct new infrastructure to manage, curate and serve data to communities; and forge new approaches for associated education and training.

The cornerstone of the announcements includes a joint NSF-NIH solicitation on foundational research for big data. The “Core Techniques and Technologies for Advancing Big Data Science & Engineering,” or “Big Data” program aims to advance the core scientific and technological means of managing, analyzing, visualizing and extracting information from large, diverse, distributed, and heterogeneous data sets in order to accelerate progress in science and engineering research. Specifically, it will fund research to develop and evaluate new algorithms, technologies, and tools for improved data management, data analytics, and e-science collaboration environments.

Other announcements included anticipated cross-disciplinary efforts such as an Ideas Lab to explore ways to use big data to enhance teaching and learning effectiveness, and the use of NSF’s Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship, or IGERT, mechanism to educate and train researchers in data enabled science and engineering.

For more information, please see the NSF press release, and the OSTP press release. We look forward to your participation.

Best,
Farnam

—
Farnam Jahanian
Assistant Director for CISE
National Science Foundation

XSEDE Student Engagement Program – Applications Due April 2

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The XSEDE Student Engagement Program is seeking undergraduate and graduate students for a 10 week project experience for this summer.

Working with XSEDE researchers and staff, students will make meaningful contributions to research, development and systems projects that benefit the national scientific and computational community.

In exchange, students will be provided with travel support for project orientation and to attend the XSEDE ’12 conference in Chicago, IL in July, and a small stipend.

Projects for 2012 address a wide variety of computational needs.

Most of the projects allow students to work remotely (from their home or home institution), although some require the student to be onsite at their supervisor’s institution.

All projects will have well-defined work plans, established collaboratively at the orientation meeting.

Students are also expected to participate in surveys and other evaluation activities, to help XSEDE track the effectiveness and impact of the program.

Available projects are listed at xsede.org/student-engagement-projects.

To apply, complete this form online and email your current resume and current academic transcripts to outreach-stueng@xsede.org

Your application will not be considered until all material has been received.

IMPORTANT DATES:
Application Deadline: April 2, 2012
Interviews: April 9-16 (via conference calls)
Student Notification: April 23
Orientation: May 29-June 1 — location(s) to be determined
XSEDE’12: July 16-20 (Chicago, IL)

Questions can be sent to outreach-stueng@xsede.org

Be a Host Site for CSE Virtual School This Summer

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The Virtual School of Computational Science and Engineering (VSCSE) is recruiting host sites for our 2012 Summer School program. By participating as a host site, your site will join the course by interactive video conference and provide a local audience of 20-35 people with the opportunity to learn the latest techniques in the computational sciences and engineering.

Our courses for 2012 are:

  • Programming Heterogeneous Parallel Computing Systems (July 10 – 13, 2012)
  • Science Cloud Summer School (July 30 – August 3, 2012)
  • Proven Algorithmic Techniques for Many-core Processors (August 13 – 17, 2012)

More information about site requirements, responsibilities, and support can be found at vscse.org/callforsites.

If you would like to be considered for participation as a host site in one or more of the 2012 courses, please email info@vscse.org the following information:

  • Name of institution
  • Site coordinator name and email address
  • Anticipated site capacity and confirmation of video conferencing capabilities
  • A rough estimate of how many people from your local community are likely to participate
  • A rank ordering of which course(s) you are interested in hosting

Please distribute this call to your colleagues who might be interested, and please contact Erik Hofer or info@vscse.org if you have any questions.

XSEDE New User Training April 19

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Training for users who are new to XSEDE will be provided on Thursday, April 19, 2012, from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. ET (2 p.m. to 4 p.m. CT).

The XSEDE new user training is a 90-minute webinar providing general overview and reference information for first-time users of XSEDE resources at any of XSEDE’s service providers. This session is particularly targeted at users who have just received their first allocation on XSEDE. It is not intended to teach programming, numerical methods, or computational science, but rather to provide a quick tour of what XSEDE has to offer.

Topics covered will include:
* Overview of XSEDE resources and services
* How to sign on to / access XSEDE systems and the Common User Environment
* Moving data in and out of XSEDE
* Basics of running jobs
* The XSEDE User Portal
* Training and documentation resources
* How to get help
* Extended and Collaborative support
* Software availability
* Allocations

Significant time will be allotted for Q&A. This webcast is free, and open to all users or prospective users of XSEDE resources.

Please register at xsede.org/web/xup/course-calendar Registration will close at 1:00 p.m. ET (noon CT) on April 18. Participants will receive instructions via email on how to access the webcast.

NSF’s Blue Waters Supercomputer Adds New Users

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All-atom structure of an HIV virus capsid in its tubular form.

Six research teams have started to use the first phase of the Blue Waters sustained-petascale supercomputer to study some vexing problems in science and engineering from climate change to the HIV infection. It’s the first use of Blue Waters, which is on its way to becoming one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world.

Read more at nsf.gov.

Slides From EarthCube Session Now Available

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Eva Zanzerkia virtually joins Sharon Geva and Peter van Keken to take questions regarding EarthCube.

On March 20, Dr. Eva Zanzerkia, NSF’s co-chair of the EarthCube executive group and Geophysics Program Director, joined more than 20 U-M faculty and staff via Google Hangout to provide an overview of the EarthCube initiative. Dr. Peter van Keken, Associate Chair for Earth and Environmental Sciences, then shared his experience with attending the EarthCube Charrette (design meeting) last November. Dr. Zanzerkia’s slides and notes on the EarthCube vision are available here, and an mp4 audiofile is available upon request.

 

H.V. Jagadish leans in to listen as Ricky Rood poses a question.

In its formative stages, the EarthCube initiative is exploring the feasibility of connecting data from broad geosciences coalitions. The next community event for those interested in contributing to this effort is June 12-14, 2012, in Arlington. For more information on the next event, see this video made by Cliff Jacobs from NSF, who is a member of the EarthCube team.

 

Zankeria uses Google Hangout's shared document capability to display her slides while she gives her presentation from Arlington.

DoE Announces Federal Funding Opportunity

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Scientific grand challenges in the next decade in areas such as combustion modeling, climate science, energy generation, bio-remediation processes, and material structure aging will usher in the era of extreme-scale science. Increasingly these challenges may only be solved by multi- disciplinary teams working with unique scientific instruments, exascale class computers, and/or handling extreme amounts of data. To meet these challenges these teams will need a distributed science environment that promotes scientific collaboration and resource sharing.

The Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) of the Office of Science (SC), U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), hereby invites applications for research and development that represents transformative approaches to understanding and/or enabling scientific collaborations at a scale not possible with today’s knowledge or using current Internet-based services and tools.

More specific information is included here. A companion Program Announcement to DOE National Laboratories, LAB 12-695, will be posted on the SC Grants and Contracts web site at www.science.doe.gov/grants.

 

 

Videoconferencing Information Fair – April 5

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The Office of the Vice Provost for International Affairs, LSA Instructional Support Services, and LSA Language Resource Center are pleased to announce a special grant opportunity, an information fair, and a faculty seminar to encourage new endeavors in teaching using videoconferencing.

Grants and Faculty Seminar

Faculty grants of $2,500 per project are available specifically to develop and support international courses taught via videoconferencing in cooperation with an overseas institution. Grant recipients will meet for a Faculty Seminar on May 14, 16, and 17. Experienced faculty and instructional technology staff will assist you in planning your video course. The program will include a structured format of workshops and discussions, hands-on training in the technologies, and one-on-one consultations. More information will be available at the Videoconferencing Fair.

Videoconferencing Information Fair

Come learn from your colleagues about using videoconferencing as a teaching tool. We’ll have experienced faculty, as well as skilled technical and administrative staff on hand to answer your questions. A morning panel session, afternoon technology exchange, demonstrations, and one-on-one opportunities for learning will be on the program. Refreshments will be served throughout the day, with lunch provided at the noon hour.

• Thursday, April 5, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m., 2435 North Quad
• Please RSVP: tinyurl.com/vconfinfofair
• More info: sites.google.com/umglobalteaching

Questions may be directed to global.teaching@umich.edu