Monthly Archives

May 2016

Engaging with DARPA, A Presentation by DSO Director Stefanie Thompkins – May 31

By | General Interest, News

Please join us for a presentation and overview of DARPA and the Defense Sciences Office by Dr. Stefanie Tompkins, Defense Sciences Office Director.

Date:  May 31, 2016
Time: 12:30 PM
Location: Room 1500 EECS, North Campus

DARPA’s mission is to make pivotal investments in breakthrough technologies for national security, thus catalyzing the development of capabilities that give the Nation new options for preventing and creating strategic surprise.

The Defense Sciences Office (DSO) is one of six technical offices at the agency.  DSO identifies and pursues high-risk, high-payoff fundamental research initiatives across a broad spectrum of science and engineering disciplines including materials science, computing and autonomy, engineering design and manufacturing, physics, chemistry, mathematics and social science.

This presentation will give an overview of DARPA, working with DARPA and the Defense Sciences Office, and description of some of the current activities DSO’s program managers are working on.

Workshops on Algorithms for Modern Massive Data Sets — June 21-24, Berkeley

By | General Interest, News

Registration for the 2016 Workshop on Algorithms for Modern Massive Data Sets (MMDS 2016) is now available.

In addition to four days of talks on algorithmic and statistical aspects of modern large-scale data analysis, MMDS 2016 will have a contributed poster session one evening.  The registration fee is waived for student poster presenters.  You may apply to present a poster at the event website.

Event: MMDS 2016: Workshop on Algorithms for Modern Massive Data Sets
Dates: June 21-24, 2016
Location: UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
Website: http://mmds-data.org
Contact: organizers@mmds-data.org
Synopsis: The 2016 Workshop on Algorithms for Modern Massive Data Sets (MMDS 2016) will address algorithmic, mathematical, and statistical challenges in modern statistical data analysis. The goals of MMDS 2016 are to explore novel techniques for modeling and analyzing massive, high-dimensional, and nonlinearly-structured scientific and internet data sets, and to bring together computer scientists, statisticians, mathematicians, and data analysis practitioners to promote cross-fertilization of ideas.
Organizers: Michael Mahoney (UC Berkeley), Alex Shkolnik (Stanford), and Petros Drineas (RPI)

Environmental Data Commons Workshop — June 9, Chicago

By | General Interest, News

The Center for Data Intensive Science at the University of Chicago is hosting a one day workshop in Chicago on June 9, 2016 on environmental data commons and data sharing.

There will be sessions on the environmental commons, services for environmental commons, environmental data commons applications, the NOAA Big Data Alliance, and interoperability of environmental commons, clouds, and repositories.

To register and for more information including workshop location, agenda, and options for lodging, please visit the event website.

 

New graduate course offering: “Methods and Practice of Scientific Computing”

By | Educational, News

The Michigan Institute for Computational Discovery and Engineering (MICDE) is pleased to announce “Methods and Practice of Scientific Computing”, the first graduate course designed and organized by MICDE faculty. The course will be taught in Fall 2016, coordinated by Dr. Brendan Kochunas. This foundational course in scientific computing has been developed as a broad introduction to the subject, and has been designed to support research in all disciplines represented in MICDE. In addition to Brendan Kochunas, the course was developed by MICDE professors Bill Martin, Karthik Duraisamy, Vikram Gavini, and Shravan Veerapaneni, and MICDE Assistant Director Mariana Carrasco-Teja.

The details follow:

NERS 590
4 credits
Prerequisites: Graduate standing and permission of instructor.

This course is designed for graduate students who are developing the methods, and using the tools, of scientific computing in their research. With the increased power and availability of computers to do massively scaled simulations, computational science and engineering as a whole has become an integral part of research that complements experiment and theory. This course will teach students the necessary skills to be effective computational scientists and how to produce work that adheres to the scientific method. A broad range of topics will be covered including: software engineering best practices, computer architectures, computational performance, common algorithms in engineering, solvers, software libraries for scientific computing, uncertainty quantification, verification and validation, and how to use all the various tools to accomplish these things. The class will have lecture twice a week and have an accompanying lab component. Students will be graded on homeworks, lab assignments, and a course project.

A draft of the syllabus can be found here. Please contact MICDE at micde-contact@umich.edu with any questions.

Krishna Garikipati appointed Director of MICDE

By | General Interest, News

Statement from S. Jack Hu, U-M Vice President for Research:

krishnaGarikipatiI’m very pleased to announce that Prof. Krishna Garikipati (Mechanical Engineering and Mathematics) has been appointed the new Director of the Michigan Institute for Computational Discovery and Engineering (MICDE). The Institute has grown significantly since its establishment in 2013 as the interdisciplinary home for the development and use of mathematical algorithms on high performance computers at U-M. Prof. Garikipati has been involved as associate director for research since Fall 2014 and is uniquely positioned to take the institute to the next level.

MICDE is a joint initiative of UMOR, the College of Engineering, and the College of Literature, Science and the Arts. In the past year, it has seen many new and important developments, including the launching of two centers focused on network and storage-enabled collaborative science and data-driven computational physics; new planned course offerings for the PhD in Scientific Computing and the Graduate Certificate in CDE; new initiatives on industrial engagement; and the establishment of the Scientific Computing Student Club. A number of new research initiatives are also being planned, with broadening participation of MICDE-affiliated faculty, whose numbers continue to grow.

Prof. Garikipati will take over the directorship of MICDE from Prof. Eric Michielssen (EECS) who founded the institute in Fall 2013 and served as director, in addition to his role as Associate Vice President for Advanced Research Computing. Prof. Michielssen will continue as AVP.