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Research highlights: A new era in disaster research

By | News

By Bob Brustman, U-M Civil and Environmental Engineering Department

University of Michigan researchers have received a $2.5 million NSF grant to develop a computational model that is hoped to significantly advance natural hazards engineering and disaster science.

Natural hazards engineers study earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, landslides, and other disasters. They work to better understand the causes and effects of these phenomena on cities, homes, and infrastructure and develop strategies to save lives and mitigate damage.

Sherif El-Tawil

Sherif El-Tawil, the lead PI for the project, is a structural engineer interested in how buildings behave, particularly in natural or man-made disasters. He’s developed 3D models and simulators that show precisely what happens in a building if a particular column or wall is destroyed during an extreme event.

On the project team are Jason McCormick, an earthquake engineering expert, Seymour Spence, who has expertise in wind engineering, and Benigno Aguirre, who is a social scientist interested in how people behave during catastrophes. The rest of the team includes. Vineet Kamat, Carol Menassa, and Atul Prakash, who will develop the simulation techniques used in the project.

The researchers of this newly funded project are creating a computational framework, using the Flux high performance computing cluster, that will define a set of standards for disaster researchers to use when constructing their models, enabling simulation models to work together.

El-Tawil explains: “Disaster research is a thriving area because disasters affect so many people worldwide and there is a lot we can do to reduce loss of life and damage to our civil infrastructure.”

“Lots of researchers study disasters, including engineers like me, but also social scientists, economists, doctors, and others. But all of the studies are essentially niche studies, belonging in the field of the researchers. Our objective is to develop computational standards so that social scientists, engineers, economists, doctors, first responders, and everyone else can produce simulators that interact together in a large, all-encompassing simulation of a disaster scenario. Think of it as the civilian equivalent of a war games simulator.”

“Developing this common computational language will allow completely new studies to occur. Someone might look at the effects of an earthquake on a particular town and its citizens and then the subsequent effects of infectious diseases. With a common language, we can really examine the cascading and potentially out-of-control effects that occur during catastrophic events.”

Beyond developing the computational standards, they hope to create something like an app store through which researchers can share their simulation models and foster new collaborations and new areas of research. 

The grant also includes funding for a programmer housed at Advanced Research Computing (ARC) that will become a shared resource for the rest of campus. The Michigan Institute for Computational Discovery and Engineering (MICDE) provided support for the grant submission, and will continue to do so post-award.

The project brings together an experienced team with expertise in engineering, social science, and computer science. Six of the seven core members are from the University of Michigan and the seventh is from the University of Delaware.

Team members:

  • Benigno Aguirre, professor, Disaster Research Center, University of Delaware
  • Sherif El-Tawil, professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Michigan
  • Vineet Kamat, professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Michigan
  • Jason McCormick, associate professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Michigan
  • Carol Menassa, associate professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Michigan
  • Atul Prakash, professor, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Michigan
  • Seymour Spence, assistant professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Michigan

HPC User Meetups set for October, November and December

By | News

Users of high performance computing resources are invited to meet ARC-TS HPC operators and support staff in person at an upcoming user meeting:

  • Monday, October 17, 1:10 – 5 p.m., 2001 LSA Building (500 S. State St.)
  • Wednesday, November 9, 1 – 5 p.m., 1180 Duderstadt Center (2281 Bonisteel Blvd., North Campus)
  • Monday, December 12, 1 – 5 p.m., 4515 Biomedical Science Research Building (BSRB, 109 Zina Pitcher Pl.)

There is not a set agenda; come at anytime and stay as long as you please. You can come and talk about your use of any sort of computational resource, Flux, Armis, Hadoop, XSEDE, Amazon, or other.

Ask any questions you may have. The ARC-TS staff will work with you on your specific projects, or just show you new things that can help you optimize your research.

This is also a good time to meet other researchers doing similar work.

This is open to anyone interested; it is not limited to Flux users.

Examples of potential topics:

  • What ARC-TS services are there, and how to access them?
  • I want to do X, do you have software capable of it?
  • What is special about GPU/Xeon Phi/Accelerators?
  • Are there resources for people without budgets?
  • I want to apply for grant X, but it has certain limitations. What support can ARC-TS provide?
  • I want to learn more about the compiler and debugging?
  • I want to learn more about performance tuning, can you look at my code with me?
  • Etc.

MIDAS co-sponsoring Transportation Research Board’s Transformational Technologies symposium — Oct. 31 & Nov. 1 in Detroit

By | Al Hero, Educational, Events, General Interest, News

This symposium will bring together leaders from the public and private sectors and academia to meet the challenges posed by deployment of transformational transportation technologies. MIDAS affiliated faculty members Carol Flannagan, Al Hero and Pascal Van Hentenryck will be speaking.

For more information, visit the event website.

Q & A with Chaoyi Jiao, first recipient of the MIDAS Graduate Certificate in Data Science

By | Educational, General Interest, News

The MIDAS Graduate Certificate in Data Science was established in 2015 to offer students a way to enhance their skills and prepare for a workforce that values multidisciplinary knowledge, broad analytical skills, and agile technological abilities. Nearly 50 students have enrolled in the program, which requires 9 credits of courses and 3 credits of experiential training, and involves mentorship opportunities with MIDAS-affiliated faculty members.

Chaoyi Jiao, who recently received his Ph.D from the Department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering and is now a post-doc there, was the first recipient of the MIDAS Graduate Certificate in Data Science. He recently answered a few questions about the program.

What are your research interests, and how does “data science,” broadly speaking, pertain to them?
My research primarily focuses on the Arctic climate change and climate modeling. Observation shows that the Arctic is warming at a much more rapid pace compared to the middle latitudes and tropics. Thus further warming of the climate system may pose an increasing threat to the climate and ecosystem in the Arctic. I hope to gain better understanding of the Arctic climate change and improve the numerical representation of Arctic climate in the climate models. As the data generated by the current generation of climate models and observational networks are growing rapidly, more sophisticated data analyses skills become more and more important for this research area.

Why did you decide to pursue the Graduate Certificate in Data Science?
As I started to conduct my PhD research project, I realized that statistics and data analysis skills are quite important. So I started to take some statistics classes on my second year. Later I learnt that there is a Data Science certificate program. I was very interested in the learning opportunities and academic experience proposed by this program. And I also think it could greatly benefit my career. So I decided to apply.

How hard or easy was it to meet the academic requirements?
Some classes are quite challenging when I started. But generally speaking, I think the academic requirement of this certificate is quite reasonable.

Were you required to take courses that you wouldn’t otherwise have taken? If so, how did they help you broaden your view of data science?
I would say probably not. I was planning to take some courses relate to statistics and machine learning topics before this certificate becomes available. But I think if I enrolled the data science program at a earlier time, I may take one or two extra classes. My experience tells that taking classes outside one’s own research field often helps to think with a broader perspective.

Why should other U-M students pursue this certificate?
I think as many research fields are becoming more and more data driven, mastering the cutting edge data analysis skills can greatly benefit one’s career. I would say if you believe that your research field is data driven and you hope to learn more advanced data science related topics, you definitely should consider this certificate. Moreover, the data science certificate also provides a great opportunities for networking with other students in this program.

For more information on the program, visit http://midas.umich.edu/certificate/ or contact midas-contact@umich.edu.

Funding available for data set acquisition

By | Funding Opportunities, General Interest, News

The new Data Acquisition for Data Science (DADS) program supports acquisition, preparation, management, and maintenance of specialized research data sets used in current and future data science-enabled research projects across U-M, with special focus on the four challenge initiative areas pursued by the Michigan Institute for Data Science (MIDAS): transportation science, health science, social science, and learning analytics.

DADS is meant to provide datasets that can be used by multiple U-M researchers and departments.

DADS is funded through the Data Science Initiative (DSI); total funding is capped at $200,000 per year for 5 years.

DADS will be managed jointly by the Library and Advanced Research Computing (ARC), with support from ARC’s Consulting for Statistics, Computing, and Analytics Research (CSCAR), MIDAS, and ARC-Technology Services (ARC-TS) units.

For more information, see arc.umich.edu/dads.

U-M Professors Jacob Abernethy and Eric Schwartz to speak on “Statistical and Algorithmic Tools to Aid Recovery in Flint” — Sept. 12

By | Educational, Events, General Interest, News

ABSTRACT: Recovery from the Flint Water Crisis has been hindered by uncertainty in both the water testing process and the causes of contamination. On the other hand, city, state, and federal officials have been collecting and organizing a significant amount of data, including many thousands of water samples, information on pipe materials, and city records. Combining all of this information, and utilizing state-of-the-art algorithmic and statistical tools, we have be able to develop a clearer picture as to the source of the problems, to accurately estimate the greatest risks, and to more efficiently direct resources towards recovery.

U-M, Yottabyte partner to accelerate data-intensive research

By | General Interest, News

CONTACT: Dan Meisler, ARC Communications Manager, 734-764-7414, dmeisler@umich.edu

A strategic partnership between the University of Michigan and software company Yottabyte promises to unleash a new wave of data-intensive research by providing a flexible computing cloud for complex computational analyses of sensitive and restricted data.

The Yottabyte Research Cloud will provide scientists high performance, secure and flexible computing environments that enable the analysis of sensitive data sets restricted by federal privacy laws, proprietary access agreements, or confidentiality requirements. Previously, the complexity of building secure and project-specific IT platforms often made the computational analysis of sensitive data prohibitively costly and time consuming.

The system is built on $5.5 million worth of hardware and software donated to the University by Yottabyte; U-M will provide $2 million to support delivery of services to researchers and general operations.

Brahmajee Nallamothu, professor of internal medicine, tested a pilot installation of the Yottabyte Research Cloud at the U-M Institute of Healthcare Policy and Innovation for his research on such topics as predictors of opioid use after surgery and the costs and uses of cancer screenings under the Affordable Care Act.

“We recently moved a healthcare claims database, which is multiple terabytes in size and requires a great deal of memory and fast storage to process, onto the pilot platform,” Nallamothu said. “The platform allows us to immediately increase or decrease computing resources to meet demand while permitting multiple users to access the data safely and remotely. Our previous setup relied on network storage and self-managed hardware, which was extremely inefficient compared to what we can do now.”

“The Yottabyte Research Cloud will improve research productivity by reducing the cost and time required to create the individualized, secure computing platforms that are increasingly necessary to support scientific discovery in the age of Big Data,” said Eric Michielssen, associate vice president for advanced research computing at U-M.

“With the Yottabyte Research Cloud, researchers will be able to ask more questions, faster, of the ever-expanding and massive sets of data collected for their work,” said Yottabyte CEO Paul E. Hodges, III. “We are very pleased to be a part of the diverse and challenging research environment at U-M. This partnership is a great opportunity to develop and refine computing tools that will increase the productivity of U-M’s world class researchers.”

Many U-M scientists are working on a variety of research projects that could benefit from use of the Yottabyte Research Cloud:

  • Healthcare research, for example in precision medicine, often requires working with sensitive patient information and large volumes of diverse data types. This research can yield results that positively impact patients’ lives, but often involves the analysis of millions of clinical observations that can include genomic, hospital, outpatient, pharmaceutical, laboratory and cost data. This requires a secure high performance computing ecosystem coupled to massive amounts of multi-tiered storage.
  • In the social sciences, U-M research requires secure, remote access to sensitive research data about substance abuse, mental health, and other topics.
  • Transportation researchers who mine large and sensitive datasets — for example, a 24 Terabyte dataset that includes videos of drivers’ faces and GPS traces of their journeys — also stand to benefit from the security features and computing power.
  • In learning analytics, studies of the persistence of teacher effects on student learning could benefit from the enclaves to store and analyze data that includes observational measures scored from classroom videos, and elementary and middle school students’ scores on standardized tests.
  • Researchers in brain science will be able to use the Yottabyte Research Cloud to investigate a wide range of topics including  the effects of aging on brain function and structure and how we focus our attention in the presence of distraction.

The Yottabyte Research Cloud is U-M’s first foray into software-defined infrastructure for research, allowing on-the-fly personalized configuration of any-scale computing resources, which promises to change the way traditional IT infrastructure systems are deployed across the research community.  

More about Yottabyte:  www.yottabyte.com.

More about Yottabyte Research Cloud: arc-ts.umich.edu/yrc

Questions: dmeisler@umich.edu

Graduate programs in computational and data science — informational sessions Sept. 19 & 21

By | Educational, Events, News

Students interested in computational and data science are invited to learn about graduate programs that will prepare them for success in computationally intensive fields. Pizza and pop will be provided.

Two sessions are scheduled:

Monday, Sept. 19, 5 – 6 p.m.
Johnson Rooms, Lurie Engineering Center (North Campus)

Wednesday, Sept. 21, 5 – 6 p.m.
2001 LSA Building (Central Campus)

The sessions will address:

  • The Ph.D. in Scientific Computing, which is open to all Ph.D. students who will make extensive use of large-scale computation, computational methods, or algorithms for advanced computer architectures in their studies. It is a joint degree program, with students earning a Ph.D. from their current departments, “… and Scientific Computing” — for example, “Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering and Scientific Computing.”
  • The Graduate Certificate in Computational Discovery and Engineering, which trains graduate students in computationally intensive research so they can excel in interdisciplinary HPC-focused research and product development environments. The certificate is open to all students currently pursuing Master’s or Ph.D. degrees at the University of Michigan. This year we will offer a new practicum option through the Multidisciplinary Design Program.
  • The Graduate Certificate in Data Science, which is focused on developing core proficiencies in data analytics:
    1) Modeling — Understanding of core data science principles, assumptions and applications;
    2) Technology — Knowledge of basic protocols for data management, processing, computation, information extraction, and visualization;
    3) Practice — Hands-on experience with real data, modeling tools, and technology resources.

Transportation Research Board symposium on transformational technologies — Oct. 31-Nov. 1, Detroit

By | Events, General Interest, News

The Transportation Research Board (TRB) of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine is sponsoring the “Partners in Research Symposium: Transformational Technologies” on October 31-November 1, 2016, in Detroit, Michigan.

Registration is open and Patron opportunities are available.

Additional details can be found under the “Program” tab in the symposium website.

New technologies have the potential to transform transportation as we know it. Public agencies are being challenged to facilitate the deployment of these technologies in a manner and timeframe that will lead to improved safety, reduced congestion, enhanced sustainability, and economic development. This TRB symposium will bring leaders from the public and private sectors and academia together to help generate research and innovations to enable agencies to meet this challenge. The symposium will lay the foundation for research roadmaps and partnerships.

Technologies that are expected to be addressed include connected and automated vehicles, shared-use mobility services, smart cities and the internet-of-things, unmanned aircraft systems, NextGen, big data and cybersecurity, and alternative fueled vehicles.