Monthly Archives: May 2012

XSEDE12 Coming to Chicago July 16-19

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XSEDE12 is the inaugural conference for science, education, outreach, software, and technology related to the National Science Foundation’s eXtreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment. This event will take place on July 16 to 19 at the InterContinental (Magnificent Mile) in Chicago.

For details and to register, visit xsede.org/web/xsede12/welcome.

For more information, contact Susan McKenna, XSEDE media communications coordinator.
Phone: 217-265-5167
Email: mckennas@ncsa.illinois.edu

This conference will feature a diverse slate of international speakers, ranging from some of the best computational scientists in the world to some of the most innovative leaders working to bring about profound societal change through technological leadership.

Gayatri Buragohain is an electronics engineer by education, an expert on information and communication technologies for non-profits, and a passionate advocate of equal participation of women in technology. She is the founder of the non-profit Feminist Approach to Technology (FAT), based in New Delhi, India, which focuses on advocating the equal participation of women not just in using technology but also in the making of and decision-making around technology. For her dedication in promoting women in technology, she was awarded the Change Agent Award by the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology in 2010. Buragohain also runs the company Joint Leap Technologies, which provides tech services to non-profits.

Thomas Eickermann has been with the Juelich Supercomputing Centre since completing his PhD in physics at the University of Düsseldorf in 1994. His activities cover system administration, grid computing, and networking. In 2002, he became head of the communication systems division of JSC. His plenary talk will describe “PRACE – The European HPC Research Infrastructure.” Since its creation in 2010, PRACE has grown to 24 member states. It provides access to a set of high-end Tier-0 HPC systems for the European research communities and offers supporting services such as application enabling and training.

James L. Kinter III is director of the Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA) where he manages all aspects of basic and applied climate research conducted by the center. His research includes studies of climate predictability on seasonal and longer time scales. Kinter has been using supercomputers since 1982, beginning with the Texas Instruments ASC and the Control Data Corporation Cyber 205, and has served as principal investigator on computational projects awarded over 200 million CPU-hours over that period for cutting-edge climate simulations and numerical experiments. He has served on several national review and advisory panels for both scientific research programs and supercomputing programs for computational climate modeling. His plenary talk will address the benefits and challenges of high spatial resolution in climate modeling.

John Towns is the principal investigator for the XSEDE project and leads other cyberinfrastructure projects at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. He comes from a background in computational astrophysics with a focus on application performance analysis.

The conference also will feature a keynote address from distinguished mathematician, professor, and diversity advocate Richard Tapia.

 

 

Genomics Experts Speak on Open Source Innovation – June 6

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Come and hear the experiences of Eric Schadt, a renowned pioneer in driving new models of innovation, co-founder of Sage Bionetworks, Director of the Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology, and Chair of the Dept. of Genetics and Genomics Sciences at Mt. Sinai Medical School.

This presentation will be followed by a provocative conversation between Dr. Schadt and Dr. Brian Athey, and moderated by Connie Chang, Director of U-M Medical School Business Development.

Presented by BioArbor Life Science Forum and the University of Michigan Medical School

Date:
June 6, 2012

Time:
5:00 – 6:00 pm Networking
6:00 – 7:00 pm Program

Location:
UM NCRC Bldg 18
2800 Plymouth Rd.
Ann Arbor MI 48109

Cost: FREE

More info: bioarbor.com/nextmeeting/

The promise of genomics gives humankind the hope of unprecedented future biomedical innovations. But the pace of biomedical innovation has slowed down dramatically, even as our understanding of fundamental disease biology and ability to capture data at the molecular/genomic level has increased exponentially.

There has been an increasing call to action to move to novel partnerships and open source models of innovation, where multiple parties in both the private and public sectors collaborate, early stage discoveries benefit from shared knowledge and datasets, and innovations can incubate in a pre-competitive space. The idea of sharing risks and rewards to better the welfare of humankind is certainly inviting, but is it really possible to navigate across various stakeholder interests and collaborate effectively? And when the next “big idea” comes are the benefits shared?

NOTE: Event was originally scheduled on May 9.

New Modular Data Center in the Record Update and Michigan Daily

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The Record Update and The Michigan Daily, campus newspapers at the University of Michigan, both recently covered the construction of the new Modular Data Center in their online editions.

Read the Record Update article here, published May 21.
Read The Michigan Daily article here, published May 17.

Anyone who is interested in getting a first-hand look at the MDC is welcome to attend a one-time only open house on Thursday, June 14, from 11 am  - 2 pm.

For more information about the MDC and to see construction photos, visit itcom.itd.umich.edu/datacenters/modular.php

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Summer Workshops on Computational Resources for the Classroom

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Summer computational workshops offered to educators through National Computational Science Institute and XSEDE.

Several workshops are being held around the country this summer, aimed at educators who want to introduce or expand the use of computational resources in their classrooms. Faculty who are teaching at the college level, especially from Minority-Serving Institutions, are encouraged to apply. Applications from secondary school teachers in appropriate disciplines will be accepted on a space-available basis.

A limited number of travel scholarships are available to interested faculty. The scholarships will provide partial or full reimbursement of travel costs to and from the workshops and/or local housing costs. Preference will be given to faculty from institutions that are formally engaged with the education program of XSEDE — Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment — and those institutions that can provide some matching travel funds. Recipients are expected to be present for the full workshop.

Those interested in a travel scholarship should register for the desired workshop, and then create an account and complete the scholarship application.

As part of its education program, XSEDE is co-sponsoring these workshops with the National Computational Science Institute to provide professional development for faculty interested in integrating computational science education into their classes and curriculum. XSEDE also is working with institutions interested in creating formal undergraduate and graduate degree, certificate, and concentration programs in computational science.

Workshop list, including details and application links:
computationalscience.org/workshops2012

ABOUT NCSI:
The National Computational Science Institute provides workshops covering a wide range of subjects relating to computational science. These workshops are for educators at all levels, giving them ideas and resources to use in their classrooms.
NCSI: computationalscience.org

ABOUT XSEDE:
XSEDE, the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment, is the most advanced, powerful, and robust collection of integrated digital resources and services in the world. It is a single virtual system that scientists and researchers can use to interactively share computing resources, data, and expertise. XSEDE integrates the resources and services, makes them easier to use, and helps more people use them. The five-year, $121 million project is supported by the National Science Foundation, and it replaces and expands on the NSF TeraGrid project.

Post-docs Sought by Oak Ridge

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The Climate Change Science Institute at Oak Ridge National
Laboratory is soliciting postdoc applications on large-scale data analysis.

The ideal candidate should have a strong background in parallel computing and large data processing.

The work will be related to parallel algorithms and workflow design to enable climate/environmental data analysis of TB range netCDF datasets at least 100 times faster than state-of-the-practice methods, and software development to enable communication between the backend processing on high-end computers and the frontend, which is a GIS on desktop.

For more information, contact envdataanalysis@gmail.com.

 

GPU Technology Conference – Watch Keynote Videos

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The NVIDIA GTC conference took place May 14-17, in San Jose, CA.The keynotes are available here. Anyone interested in GPU computing should watch them.

GTC advances awareness of high performance computing, and connects the scientists, engineers, researchers, and developers who use GPUs to tackle enormous computational challenges.

Tuesday, May 15 Opening Keynote

Jen-Hsun Huang (Co-Founder, President and CEO, NVIDIA)

Hear about what’s next in computing and graphics, and preview disruptive technologies and exciting demonstrations from across industries. Jen-Hsun co-founded NVIDIA in 1993 and has served since its inception as president, chief executive officer and a member of the board of directors.

Wednesday, May 16 Keynote:  From Democratic Consensus to Cannibalistic Hordes: GPU Computing Reveals the Principles of Collective Behavior

Iain Couzin (Professor, Princeton University Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology )

Prof. Iain D. Couzin will demonstrate how GPU computing has been pivotal in the study of collective behavior, helping reveal how collective action emerges in a wide range of groups from plague locusts to human crowds, and the critical role that uninformed, or weakly-opinionated, individuals play in democratic consensus decision-making.

Thursday, May 17 Keynote:  Not Your Grandfather’s Moon Landing

Robert Boehme (CEO & Team Lead, Part-Time Scientists)
Wes Faler (Head of Software Development, Part-Time Scientists)

Boehme and Faler are part of a team of international scientists and engineers who want to send a rover to the moon before the end of the year 2013. In this presentation, they will discuss their goals, recent accomplishments and milestones, and how GPUs have help in unexpected ways.

Interested In a Perl Dump?

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Terry Gliedt from Biostatistics and Xueling Sim have offered to give a Perl Dump. If you are interested in participating, please respond to this Doodle poll to help identify the best time for everyone during the later part of June. Terry is the instructor, and Xueling is helping to organize the event.

WHAT IS A PERL DUMP?  It’s called a ‘dump’ because it’s an effort to dump everything you might need to know about Perl into your head in 3 x 2 hour sessions. There is no book, just some handouts. There is no homework, but just a fast paced exposure of the sometimes difficult things that make Perl so useful for preparing and managing data.

While not easy for most grad students, almost everyone eventually finds Perl to be a very useful tool in preparing data for their analysis or  for managing the data created.  This is **not** a class in how to program. If one has a modicum of experience in any programming language (C or C++ are common), then the person probably knows enough to get something from a Perl Dump.  The class can handle almost any number of people – the more the merrier. If you’ve already had a Perl Dump, but think you need a refresher,  please come. If needed, Terry will give another Perl Dump sometime later in the semester.

Please feel free to forward this offer around. It is not restricted to BioStat  students. Most folks in the Bio* fields have found Perl a useful tool to know.

Attend a Demo of Axiope eCAT Electronic Notebook

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Here’s an opportunity for faculty and research staff to evaluate an electronic Lab Information Management System (LIMS). One of the developers of eCAT from Axiope will be coming to the University of Michigan on May 21 to provide an interactive demonstration of their flagship product.

Location: Room 2813 – Med Sci II

Time 9:00am-11:00am or 1:30pm – 3:30pm

Please RSVP and indicate which session you will attend.

Agenda:

1. Introduction of Rory McNeil, Axiope Software
2. Overview of Electronic Notebook efforts on Campus
3. Interactive Demonstration of the next generation of eCAT
4. Question and Answer session

Azure Educator Grants Now Available

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Faculty have long been requesting a way to teach with the Windows Azure platform. Meanwhile, technical students have been flocking to Windows Azure events to get their first exposure and incorporating Windows Azure platform into their Imagine Cup solutions at record numbers. To secure the next generation on this platform, Windows Azure Educator Grants are now broadly available.

Through the Windows Azure Educator Grants, faculty can request five-month Windows Azure Passes for themselves and their students. Faculty can apply for these grants through the Educators Page on WindowsAzure.com/Education. For details on the resources provided please visit the Windows Azure Educator’s page.

If faculty members have requirements which are not met by the resources above, they can contact AzureU@microsoft.com for necessary adjustments. This includes the ability for faculty to request time extensions on their specific accounts (prior to account expiration) for an additional five months.

For further information, please email the Windows Azure Education team at AzureU@microsoft.com.