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OKLAHOMA SUPERCOMPUTING SYMPOSIUM 2016



OSCER

OU IT

OK EPSCoR

Great Plains Network


Table of Contents


PLENARY SPEAKERS

KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Dan Stanzione
Dan Stanzione

Executive Director
Texas Advanced Computing Center
The University of Texas

Topic: "Stampede 2: The Migration to Many Core Other Burning Issues for HPC Providers"

Slides:   PDF

Talk Abstract

Stampede 2 was awarded in June 2016 to become the new flagship system of the US National Science Foundation XSEDE Cyberinfrastructure ecosystem, beginning in 2017. Stampede 2 will continue the transition towards massively parallel computing at the node level, and represents a significant architectural shift with a focus on many core processors as the primary computing elements. This talk will recap the Stampede 1 project, describe the Stampede 2 project, and describe progress in the ongoing enormous challenge of the transition to many core. The talk will also cover where Stampede 2 is not the whole or the right solution, and talk about other elements necessary beyond a big computer to support modern research computing.  

Biography

Dan Stanzione is the Executive Director of the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin and the Principal Investigator for Wrangler. He is also the PI for TACC's 10 PetaFlop Stampede supercomputer, and has previously been involved in the deployment and operation of the Ranger and Lonestar supercomputers at TACC. He served as the Co-Director of The iPlant Collaborative, an ambitious endeavor to build cyberinfrastructure to address the grand challenges of plant science. Prior to joining TACC, Dr. Stanzione was the founding director of the Ira A. Fulton High Performance Computing Institute (HPCI) at Arizona State University (ASU). Before ASU, he served as an AAAS Science Policy Fellow in the National Science Foundation and as a research professor at Clemson University, his alma mater.

Henry Neeman
Henry Neeman

Assistant Vice President – Research Strategy Advisor
Information Technology
Director
OU Supercomputing Center for Education & Research (OSCER)
Information Technology
Associate Professor
College of Engineering
Adjunct Associate Professor
School of Computer Science
University of Oklahoma
Joint Co-manager (with Dana Brunson)
XSEDE Campus Engagement program

Topic: "OSCER State of the Center Address"

Slides:   PowerPoint   PDF

Talk Abstract

The OU Supercomputing Center for Education & Research (OSCER) celebrated its 15th anniversary on August 31 2016. In this report, we examine what OSCER is, what OSCER does, what OSCER has accomplished in its 15 years, and where OSCER is going.

Biography

Dr. Henry Neeman is the Director of the OU Supercomputing Center for Education & Research, Assistant Vice President Information Techology – Research Strategy Advisor, Associate Professor in the College of Engineering and Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science at the University of Oklahoma. He and Dana Brunson have been appointed joint co-leads of the XSEDE Campus Engagement program, which includes the Campus Champions.

He received his BS in computer science and his BA in statistics with a minor in mathematics from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1987, his MS in CS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1990 and his PhD in CS from UIUC in 1996. Prior to coming to OU, Dr. Neeman was a postdoctoral research associate at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at UIUC, and before that served as a graduate research assistant both at NCSA and at the Center for Supercomputing Research & Development.

In addition to his own teaching and research, Dr. Neeman has collaborated with dozens of research groups, applying High Performance Computing techniques in fields such as numerical weather prediction, bioinformatics and genomics, data mining, high energy physics, astronomy, nanotechnology, petroleum reservoir management, river basin modeling and engineering optimization. He serves as an ad hoc advisor to student researchers in many of these fields.

Dr. Neeman's research interests include high performance computing, scientific computing, parallel and distributed computing and computer science education.

Vas Vasiliadis
Vas Vasiliadis

Director, Products, Communication and Development
Computation Institute
University of Chicago

Topic: "Globus: Making It Easy to Move, Share and Publish Your Data"

Slides:     PDF

Talk Abstract

Globus is software-as-a-service for research data management. Our goal is to make it easy for researchers to manage their data throughout its lifecycle, using just a web browser to move, share, and publish data, directly from your own storage systems. Globus provides secure, reliable, high-performance file transfer, the ability to share files with collaborators, and flexible workflows for identifying, describing, curating, and publishing data sets. Since its launch at SC10, the service has been deployed at hundreds of research institutions across the US and abroad. In this talk, we will provide an introductory overview and demonstration of Globus, and describe recent enhancements that bring additional capabilities to both researchers and research application developers.

Biography

Vas Vasiliadis is Director, Products, Communication and Development at the Computation Institute (CI). Vas focuses on Globus, an innovative software-as-a-service for research data management. His responsibilities include communications, outreach, training, and generally working with current and prospective users to grow adoption of the service and make it self-sustaining. Vas also assists in defining overall strategy for the CI, and communicating the CI's vision, projects, and products to stakeholders and funding organizations.

Vas has over 25 years of experience in operational and consulting roles, spanning strategy, marketing and technology. An experienced software product marketing professional with a passion for shaping emerging technologies to bring innovative products to market, Vas has nurtured early stage companies into successful businesses, and consulted to companies on a wide range of strategic issues.

Most recently, Vas was a principal at Strategos, the innovation consulting firm founded by Gary Hamel, where he led Fortune 100 management teams in defining their growth agenda. Prior to Strategos, Vas led marketing efforts at Univa, a leading provider of grid and cloud computing solutions. Vas joined Univa's founding team shortly after inception and was instrumental in defining the product vision, raising venture capital and launching the company's initial products.

In the late 1990's Vas served as vice president of product management and corporate strategy at CrossWorlds Software, the enterprise application integration pioneer, and was part of the executive team that grew CrossWorlds from a start-up to a successful public company that was subsequently acquired by IBM.

Vas was chief technology officer at Cimnet Systems, a company specializing in software for electronics manufacturing, which was acquired by Consona in 2005. At Cimnet he led product strategy and development of the company's supplier management and business intelligence solutions. Vas was also vice president of strategy and product management at Promeria, a supplier relationship management company which was acquired by Ariba.

Vas' management consulting experience includes Booz & Company (now Strategy&), where he focused on supply chain strategy and customer service level optimization, and Accenture, where he helped clients in the financial services industry automate trading and back office operations. He has a deep technical understanding of system development for real-time applications, including data distibution, analytics, and trading platforms for derivatives and fixed income securities.

Vas holds an MBA with High Distinction from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. He remains a network partner with Strategos and is an advisor to early-stage technology companies on all aspects of strategy, marketing, and product development.

Stephen Wheat
Stephen Wheat

Director, HPC Pursuits
Hewlett-Packard Enterprise

Topic: "The Living Heart Project: Going Beyond Traditional ModSim Use Cases"

Slides:
Parts 1 & 3 PDF
Part 2 PDF

Talk Abstract

The utilization of HPC solutions for extremely complex modeling and simulation (ModSim) in the areas of car and truck design, aircraft design, consumer product design, and even sporting goods design, among many others, has matured to the extent it seems that ModSim has been the way these designs have always been accomplished. As important as HPC ModSim is to everyday efforts, the sheen of its newness seems to have faded. Even so, we see the democratization of HPC continuing, especially in the Small and Medium Business domain. Additionally, we see innovation happening beyond the traditional use cases. One such example is the Living Heart Project (LHP) which is comprised of dozens of participating entities around the world. Initiated and led by Dassault's Simulia, the LHP has solved the initial issues regarding coupling the electrical impulses of the heart with the mechanical actions of the heart muscle. In this talk, we will review the basis of ModSim technology that has improved our quality of life, which has subsequently led to the means to improve our quality of health and health services. The talk will focus on the objectives and barriers that the Living Heart Project faces in bringing about real-time ModSim-based health services at the clinical level. In no way is the Living Heart Project the last frontier for ModSim; but it is a frontier worth understanding to inspire further innovation for years to come.

Biography

Dr. Stephen Wheat is the Director of the HPC Pursuits team within Hewlett-Packard Enterprise's HPC Global Business Unit. In this role, he is responsible for driving higher-end HPC world-wide business strategies to meet the challenges of leadership-class institutions. Having joined HPE's HPC GBU in June 2015, Dr. Wheat brings his 36-year HPC career to bear on his new role. He started in the Oil and Gas applications domain in Houston, then going to AT&T Bell Labs, where the majority of his tenure was on parallel HPC systems software for sonar processing, then going to Sandia National Labs, where his research was in massively parallel systems software. It was during his tenure at Sandia that he won the 1994 Gordon Bell Prize for performance. Subsequently, he spent 20 years at Intel, where he served in many leadership HPC roles, including being Worldwide General Manager of HPC.

Dr. Wheat's Ph.D. is in Computer Science, with a focus on massively parallel systems software. His M.S. and B.S. were also in Computer Science.

Dr. Wheat's extracurricular activities include photography, recreational bicycling, and flying, where he is a commercial multi-engine pilot and certified flight instructor for instrument/multi-engine aircraft.

He is the father of four and grandfather of nine. He and his wife of 36 years, Charlene, live in Houston, Texas.


BREAKOUT SPEAKERS

Daniel Andresen
Daniel Andresen

Professor
Department of Computer Science
Kansas State University
Director
Institute for Computational Research

Topic: "Birds-of-a-Feather Session: XSEDE Region 4 Campus Champions" (with Dana Brunson)

BoF Slides:   PDF

Abstract

The XSEDE Campus Champions program supports campus representatives as a local source of knowledge about local, regional and national High Performance Computing and Cyberinfrastructure information, including XSEDE resources.

We would like to invite everyone — any current Campus Champions, possible Campus Champions, and those who are just curious — to a "Meeting of the Champions." During our Birds-of-a-Feather session, join your fellow Region 4 Campus Champions (from AR, KS, LA, MO, NE, OK and TX) to discuss the program, what you can expect to gain from participating, what we hope to achieve in the way of both short term and long term goals, future visions for the program, etc. Dr. Dan Andresen (Kansas State University) and Dr. Dana Brunson (Oklahoma State University) will act as the emcees for this meeting, which is expected to draw attendance from both current and prospective Campus Champions from around the Region. Response to these regional meetings in other parts of the US have been very favorable, so we're anxious to offer the opportunity to all of you!

Biography

Daniel Andresen, Ph.D. is a professor of Computing & Information Sciences at Kansas State University and Director of the Institute for Computational Research. His research includes embedded and distributed computing, biomedical systems, and high performance scientific computing. Dr. Andresen coordinates the activities of the K-State research computing cluster, Beocat, and advises the local chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). He is a National Science Foundation CAREER award winner, and has been granted research funding from the NSF, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and industry. He is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery, the IEEE Computer Society, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Society for Engineering Education, and has been an XSEDE Campus Champion since 2011.

Marcus A. Bond
Marcus A. Bond

Professor
Department of Chemistry
Southeast Missouri State University

Roundtable Topic:
"Roundtable: Experiences in the Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Research & Education Facilitators Virtual Residency Program" (with Marcus Bond, Dana Brunson, James Deaton, Perdeep Mehta) and Horst Severini)

Slides:   PowerPoint   PDF

Roundtable Abstract

An Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Research and Education Facilitator (ACI-REF) works directly with researchers to advance the computing- and data-intensive aspects of their research, helping them to make effective use of Cyberinfrastructure (CI). The University of Oklahoma (OU) is leading a national "virtual residency" program to prepare ACI-REFs to provide CI facilitation to the diverse populations of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) researchers that they serve. Until recently, CI Facilitators have had no education or training program; the Virtual Residency program addresses this national need by providing: (1) training, specifically (a) summer workshops and (b) third party training opportunity alerts; (2) a community of CI Facilitators, enabled by (c) a biweekly conference call and (d) a mailing list.

In this roundtable, participants from the virtual residency will share their experiences about the program.

Biography

B.S. (Chemistry), Brigham Young University, 1983; Ph.D (Chemical Physics), Washington State University, 1990; postdoctoral research at Texas A&M University (1990-92) and Texas State University (1992-1994) before assuming a faculty position at Southeast Missouri State University in 1994. Fulbright Scholar 2007-2008 in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Copperbelt University (Kitwe, Zambia). Over sixty publications in referred journals on chemical crystallography, molecular magnetism, and solid state phase transitions, and including two feature cover articles since 2011. A Linux user since 1994, I have been extensively involved in implementing computing and Internet technology within the chemistry curriculum. I established one of the first course web servers on our campus in 1996 serving static and active content for freshman chemistry. Developed and administered the Chemistry Department web server from 1998-2008, set up and aided the administration of the physical Chemistry Lab wiki, and administered an early Moodle installation for freshman chemistry. Led the effort for internal funding in 2013 for the first commercially built HPC cluster in the sciences on our campus, and have continued as the administrator. Participated in the 2016 ACI-REF Virtual Residency and currently act as a cyberinfrastructure facilitator across our campus.

Dana Brunson
Dana Brunson

Assistant Vice President for Research Cyberinfrastructure
Director
High Performance Computing Center
Adjunct Associate Professor
Department of Mathematics
Adjunct Associate Professor
Department of Computer Science
Oklahoma State University
Joint Co-manager (with Henry Neeman)
XSEDE Campus Engagement program

BoF Topic: "Birds-of-a-Feather Session: XSEDE Region 4 Campus Champions" (with Dan Andresen)

BoF Slides: PDF

Roundtable Topic: "Roundtable: Experiences in the Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Research & Education Facilitators Virtual Residency Program" (with Marcus Bond, James Deaton, Perdeep Mehta and Horst Severini)

Roundtable Slides:   PowerPoint   PDF

BoF Abstract

The XSEDE Campus Champions program supports campus representatives as a local source of knowledge about local, regional and national High Performance Computing and Cyberinfrastructure information, including XSEDE resources.

We would like to invite everyone — any current Campus Champions, possible Campus Champions, and those who are just curious — to a "Meeting of the Champions." During our Birds-of-a-Feather session, join your fellow Region 4 Campus Champions (from AR, KS, LA, MO, NE, OK and TX) to discuss the program, what you can expect to gain from participating, what we hope to achieve in the way of both short term and long term goals, future visions for the program, etc. Dr. Dan Andresen (Kansas State University) and Dr. Dana Brunson (Oklahoma State University) will act as the emcees for this meeting, which is expected to draw attendance from both current and prospective Campus Champions from around the Region. Response to these regional meetings in other parts of the US have been very favorable, so we're anxious to offer the opportunity to all of you!

Roundtable Abstract

An Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Research and Education Facilitator (ACI-REF) works directly with researchers to advance the computing- and data-intensive aspects of their research, helping them to make effective use of Cyberinfrastructure (CI). The University of Oklahoma (OU) is leading a national "virtual residency" program to prepare ACI-REFs to provide CI facilitation to the diverse populations of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) researchers that they serve. Until recently, CI Facilitators have had no education or training program; the Virtual Residency program addresses this national need by providing: (1) training, specifically (a) summer workshops and (b) third party training opportunity alerts; (2) a community of CI Facilitators, enabled by (c) a biweekly conference call and (d) a mailing list.

In this roundtable, participants from the virtual residency will share their experiences about the program.

Biography

Dana Brunson is Assistant Vice President for Research Cyberinfrastructure, Director of the Oklahoma State University High Performance Computing Center (OSUHPCC), Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and in the Department of Computer Science, and co-leads the OneOklahoma Cyberinfrastructure Initiative (OneOCII). She earned her Ph.D. in Mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin in 2005 and her M.S. and B.S. in Mathematics from OSU. She is PI on OSU's 2011 and 2015 National Science Foundation (NSF) Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) grants for High Performance Compute clusters for multidisciplinary computational and data-intensive research. She is also co-PI on Oklahoma's NSF Campus Cyberinfrastructure - Network Infrastructure and Engineering CC-NIE grant, "OneOklahoma Friction Free Network" (OFFN), a collaboration among OSU, OU, Langston University and the Tandy Supercomputing Center of the Oklahoma Innovation Institute. Brunson became an XSEDE (initially Teragrid) Campus Champion in 2009. She joined the CC leadership team in 2012. OSUHPCC joined the XSEDE Federation as a Level 3 Service Provider in 2014, and Brunson was elected chair of the XSEDE Level 3 Service Providers in 2015 and 2016. She and Henry Neeman have been appointed joint co-leads of the XSEDE Campus Engagement program, which includes the Campus Champions.

Shane Corder
Shane Corder

HPC Systems Engineer
Center for Pediatric Genomic Medicine/Children's Mercy Research Institute
Children's Mercy Kansas City

Topic: "Advancements in Genomics at Children's Mercy Kansas City"

Slides: PDF

Abstract

HPC has been critical for the Center for Pediatric Genomic Medicine (CPGM) at Children's Mercy Hospital to make great progress in the search for rare childhood diseases. With our advanced next-gen sequencing technologies, compute cluster, DataDirect Networks storage cluster, and now with Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology from Edico Genome, the center is trying to push the envelope even further for our research and clinical work. This FPGA technology has allowed us not only to drastically speed up our analysis and reduce compute time, but also to free our primary compute cluster for new and innovative work. FPGAs are definitely not new, but are being used in exciting new ways to aid researchers and clinicians to find answers that children and their families so desperately need.

Biography

Shane Corder is the HPC Systems Engineer for the Center for Pediatric Genomic Medicine (CPGM) and the Children's Mercy Research Institute at Children's Mercy Kansas City. He has been in his current position for over 5 years. His responsibilities include: administration, support and growth of the center's compute, storage and Disaster Recovery infrastructure. Before coming to CPGM at Children's Mercy, Shane held the position of "Linux Cluster Engineer" at Advanced Clustering Inc. in Kansas City KS for nearly 7 years.

In addition to his core responsibility of supporting The Center for Pediatric Genomic Medicine's clinical and research goals, Shane has also been involved with computational support of other departmental research programs at the hospital, including the Genetics and Radiology departments, as well as genetic statistical analysis. Shane's new role in the Children's Mercy Research Institute will further the hospital's HPC footprint and computational abilities, which will support many new types of computational research.

Nishanth Dandapanthula
Nishanth Dandapanthula

Senior Engineer
High Performance Computing
Dell Technologies

Topic: "HPC Innovation Lab: Enabling HPC Community Success with Dell Technologies"

Slides: available after the Symposium

Abstract

At the HPC Innovation Lab, we work towards meeting real life, workload-specific challenges through collaboration with the global HPC research community. During the course of this research, we work on evaluating several proof of concepts on new and upcoming technologies, to quantify their use in the high performance computing domain. Along the same lines, we also undertake performance optimizations and tuning of various established HPC technologies as well. The broad focus areas include Compute, Storage, Networking and Software stacks. This talk outlines some of these latest projects being undertaken at the HPC Innovation lab at Dell Technologies.

Biography

Nishanth Dandapanthula has been a part of the High Performance Computing Engineering team for 5 years. His current focus is on Interconnects, MPI Stacks, Performance Analysis, Benchmarking and Profiling. His interests also include Accelerators, Virtualization technologies and Dev Ops. He received his B. Tech. in Information Technology from Vellore Institute of Technology in 2009 and his Master's degree in Computer Science from The Ohio State University in 2011, where he did research in D. K. Panda's MVAPICH group.

James Deaton
James Deaton

Chief Technology Officer
OneNet
Oklahoma State Revents for Higher Education

Roundtable Topic:
"Roundtable: Experiences in the Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Research & Education Facilitators Virtual Residency Program" (with Marcus Bond, Dana Brunson, Perdeep Mehta and Horst Severini)

Roundtable Slides:   PowerPoint   PDF

Roundtable Abstract

An Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Research and Education Facilitator (ACI-REF) works directly with researchers to advance the computing- and data-intensive aspects of their research, helping them to make effective use of Cyberinfrastructure (CI). The University of Oklahoma (OU) is leading a national "virtual residency" program to prepare ACI-REFs to provide CI facilitation to the diverse populations of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) researchers that they serve. Until recently, CI Facilitators have had no education or training program; the Virtual Residency program addresses this national need by providing: (1) training, specifically (a) summer workshops and (b) third party training opportunity alerts; (2) a community of CI Facilitators, enabled by (c) a biweekly conference call and (d) a mailing list.

In this roundtable, participants from the virtual residency will share their experiences about the program.

Biography

James Deaton serves as Chief Technology Officer for OneNet, Oklahoma's statewide research and education network. In this capacity, he is a key decision-maker in terms of technology oversight, engineering and long-term research and development. In addition to his responsibilities at OneNet, Deaton is accountable for maintaining close involvement with researchers and engineers of state, regional and national network initiatives. Deaton serves as a board member of the Quilt (National Consortium of Research Networks), on the Executive Council of the Great Plains Network, Vice-Chair of the Network Technology Advisory Council for Internet2, and is appointed to Internet2's Network Architecture, Operations and Policy Program Advisory Group. Deaton's involvement with the OneOklahoma Cyberinfrastructure Initiative (OneOCII) has facilitated a number of successful programs leveraging state networking facilities to serve the needs of researchers and faculty at numerous institutions in the region.

Brady Deetz
Brady Deetz

Senior Systems Administrator and Head of IT
Information Technology
Laureate Institute for Brain Research

Topic: "Another Year, Another Petabyte: A Look into the Laureate Institute for Brain Research's CephFS Deployment"

Slides:   PowerPoint     PDF

Abstract

On the brink of a storage disaster, the Laureate Institute for Brain Research hired me to develop a storage solution that would replace its slow 7 year old Oracle ZFS appliance that was 80% full. After exploring expensive options with a variety of major vendors, sights were set on Lustre, OrangeFS, and Ceph. In the end, Ceph's ability to provide scale-out block, object, and file system storage was perfect for LIBR's mixed needs.

In this presentation, a successful architecture for a balanced cost/performance/reliability Ceph deployment will be presented. Details such as choices in disk size/count, CPU model, RAM size, and Ethernet vs Infiniband will be covered.

Biography

Brady Deetz is the head of IT for the Laureate Institute for Brain Research, a clinical neuroscience research institute in Tulsa OK. At LIBR, he is responsible for research computing and data storage in support of multidisciplinary research programs in neuroimaging, behavioral health, and biochemical measures. Key cyberinfrastructure resources include petascale tape storage; an upcoming petascale disk (Ceph) resource, and local compute servers.

Prior to his arrival at LIBR, Brady worked as a system administrator for the Oklahoma Innovation Institute's Tandy Supercomputing Center, where he was the principal hands-on technical resource for the deployment of a 100-node compute cluster and supported research from several institutions of higher education in Northeast Oklahoma. His background also includes information security expertise, having filled roles as a penetration tester and co-founding technical lead for a payment card security startup.

Karl Frinkle
Karl Frinkle and Mike Morris

Professor
Department of Mathematics
Southeastern Oklahoma State University

Topic: "Sustaining HPC Curricula at a Regional Institution"
(with Mike Morris)

Slides:   PowerPoint   PDF

Abstract

There is an obvious lack of standardized HPC curricula available for small universities. This is partly due to the "old school" accreditation guidelines being used by most schools. With little guidance and few resources, Mike Morris and Karl Frinkle have been successfully teaching HPC at Southeastern Oklahoma State University for the last 6 years without a rigid structure, and in some cases quite experimentally. The courses that have been offered have given many students considerable exposure to the parallel paradigm and cluster architecture in general. This talk will report on successes and failures, and will hopefully provide help that Morris and Frinkle sorely missed to others with a desire to get HPC into their classrooms.

Biography

Karl Frinkle is an applied mathematician who earned his PhD from the University of New Mexico. He is deeply interested in numerical simulations, and most recently in parallel programming. Karl joined the SE Mathematics department in 2005, and thoroughly enjoys teaching parallel programming courses with Mike Morris through the CS department.

Kyle Hutson
Kyle Hutson

System Administrator
Department of Computer Science
Kansas State University

Topic: "Birds-of-a-Feather Session: HPC System Administrators"

Slides: none

Abstract

We recently observed that system administrators are often leary of advice (even from their direct supervisors) unless it has been given from somebody else who (a) has signficant relevant experience, (b) they know and trust, and (c) can point out the "gotchas." This Birds-of-a-Feather session is for system administrators to talk among themselves about current pain-points, things we've done that have turned out well, and things we've done that have flopped.

Biography

Kyle Hutson has been involved with Linux system administration since 1994. He received his bachelor's degree from Kansas State University in computer engineering in 1995. He has worked in non-profit, public sector, and private sector IT services, including several years as a small business IT consultant. Kyle joined Kansas State University's HPC team in 2012.

Mark Laufersweiler
Mark Laufersweiler

Research Data Specialist
University Libraries
University of Oklahoma

Topic: "One Year Later at OU: Are We Wrangling, Managing or Maximizing Our Organizations' Research Data?"

Slides:   PowerPoint   PDF

Abstract

Following up to last year's panel discussion, an overview of the activities and services that have been made available to researchers at the University of Oklahoma will be presented. From last year, challenges facing institutional libraries discussed include how to: (a) inventory the datasets, (b) describe them with relevant metadata; (c) enable and promote access and enable discoverability; (d) enable dataset reusability; (e) develop citation and curation guidelines/policies.

New and existing services helping to address the issues discussed last year include:

Also to be presented will be the charter and roadmap for the newly formed Research Computing and Data Advisory Group. This group was formed to help review, comment and advise OU IT and OU Libraries on research needs, including software, data management, storage and archiving of research data.

Biography

Dr. Mark Laufersweiler has always had a strong interest in computers, computing, data and data visualization. Upon completing his post-doc work for the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program, he was the lead computer systems administrator for 3.5 years serving the Florida State University Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science. He was then the Computer Systems Coordinator for the University of Oklahoma School of Meteorology from 1999-2013. Part of his duties included managing the real time data feed and maintaining the departmental data archive. He assisted with faculty in their courses to help foster computing skills needed for the classroom and instruction based on current best practices regarding research data and code development. Since the Fall of 2013, he has served as the Research Data Specialist for the University of Oklahoma Libraries. He is currently assisting the educational mission of the Libraries by developing and offering workshops, seminars and short courses, helping to inform the university community on best practices for data management and data management planning. He is also working on the formation of a data repository to host research data generated by the university community. He is a strong advocate of open source software and open access to data.

In 2008, Dr. Laufersweiler was awarded the Russell L. DeSouza Award. This award, sponsored by Unidata is for individuals whose energy, expertise, and active involvement enable the Unidata program to better serve geoscience. Honorees personify Unidata's ideal of a community that shares data, software, and ideas through computing and networking technologies.

Evan Lemley
Evan Lemley

Professor
Department of Engineering & Physics
University of Central Oklahoma

Topic: "Update on Computational Efforts at the University of Central Oklahoma"

Slides:   PDF

Talk Abstract

Coming soon

Biography

Evan Lemley received his BA in Physics from Hendrix College and MS and Ph.D in Engineering (Mechanical) from the University of Arkansas. His thesis work was focused on modeling and simulation of various neutron detectors. Post graduation Evan worked for the engineering consulting firm Black & Veatch in a group responsible for modeling coal power plants with custom written software.

In August 1998, Evan became an Assistant Professor in the Department of Engineering and Physics (formerly Physics) at the University of Central Oklahoma, and has been there since, teaching mechanical engineering, physics, and engineering computation courses. Early research at UCO was focused on neutron transport in materials. More recently, Evan has been involved in simulation of flow in microtubes and microjunctions and simulation of flow in porous networks.

Perdeep K. Mehta
Perdeep Mehta

Bioinformatics & Research Support Manager
Computing Services Division
The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation

Roundtable Topic:
"Roundtable: Experiences in the Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Research & Education Facilitators Virtual Residency Program" (with Marcus Bond, Dana Brunson, James Deaton and Horst Severini)

Roundtable Slides:   PowerPoint   PDF

Roundtable Abstract

An Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Research and Education Facilitator (ACI-REF) works directly with researchers to advance the computing- and data-intensive aspects of their research, helping them to make effective use of Cyberinfrastructure (CI). The University of Oklahoma (OU) is leading a national "virtual residency" program to prepare ACI-REFs to provide CI facilitation to the diverse populations of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) researchers that they serve. Until recently, CI Facilitators have had no education or training program; the Virtual Residency program addresses this national need by providing: (1) training, specifically (a) summer workshops and (b) third party training opportunity alerts; (2) a community of CI Facilitators, enabled by (c) a biweekly conference call and (d) a mailing list.

In this roundtable, participants from the virtual residency will share their experiences about the program.

Biography

Dr. Perdeep Mehta has an MS in Biochemistry and a Ph.D. in Biotechnology from Indian Institute of Technology – Delhi. He joined the group of Prof. Philipp Christen in the Department of Biochemistry, University of Zurich, Switzerland as a postdoctoral fellow in 1988, and worked for a year as wet bench biologist before switching to the emerging area of Bio-computing. He got his second postdoctoral fellowship in 1992 in the European Molecular Biology Laboratory at Heidelberg Germany, to receive formal training in Bioinformatics, where he developed and published an algorithm on prediction of protein secondary structures. He continued the bioinformatics work after returning to University of Zurich, Switzerland in 1994 as Research Scientist, and developed an algorithm to detect very distant evolutionary relationships among protein families, and published several other articles on unknown homologies. In 1999, he was recruited to the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, to start a bioinformatics core facility in the Hartwell Center of Bioinformatics & Biotechnology to support the research activities of the basic sciences departments, and he served as the group leader from 2001-2006. He later opted out to try his luck with the emerging area of clinical sequencing and founded Digital Genomics, LLC in 2013 with a former colleague. With no fruitful success, he decided to return to academia again, and joined the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation in Ardmore, OK in early 2015 to manage the Bioinformatics and Research Support core group.

Suresh Marru
Suresh Marru

Principal Architect Apache Airavata
Pervasive Technologies Institute
Indiana University

Plenary Lightning Talk Topic: "Science Gateways: Democratizing Use of Cyberinfrastructure"

Plenary Lightning Talk Slides: available after the Symposium

Plenary Lightning Talk Abstract

Science gateways, also known as web portals, virtual research environments, virtual laboratories, are a fundamental part of today's research landscape. This talk will provide an overview of the Science Gateways and will highlight freely available help for research communities to develop such infrastructure. These support services are funded by the National Science Foundation through the XSEDE Science Gateways program and the newly funded Science Gateways Community Institute. The talk will provide guidance for seeking help and will also briefly introduce plans for development of Oklahoma Cyber Gateways.

Breakout Talk Topic: "Status and Plans to Build Oklahoma Cyber Gateways"

Breakout Talk Slides: available after the Symposium

Breakout Talk Abstract

This talk will present the current status and future plans for Oklahoma Cybergateway, to facilitate easy access to campus, regional, national, and commercial computing resources by faculty, staff, and students. The cybergateway is a clone of SEAGrid.org, a computational chemistry, material science, and engineering gateway serving these communities over a decade. These gateways are powered by Apache Airavata, an open source software suite for managing the complex execution patterns of scientific applications on distributed computing resources.

In this session, we would like to engage with end users, system administrators and decision makers in examining motivating use cases of facilitating execution and data movement of scientific applications running on OU resources such as Schooner. The gateway will enable federation as needed to national-scale computing grids such as XSEDE and Amazon's Elastic Computing Cloud. The talk will be interactive, using brief slides and demos to guide the discussions.

Biography

Suresh Marru is a principal architect of the Science Gateway Research Center, Indiana University and is vice-president of the Apache Airavata project. He is an avid advocate of applying meritocratic governance principles to open source communities and is a nominated Member of the Apache Software Foundation. Suresh previously directed the XSEDE Science Gateways program from 2011 to 2015. He is an active investigator on several National Science Foundation grants, with a keen research interest to advance the deep and wide boundaries of computational and data sciences empowered by Science Gateways.

Mike Morris
Karl Frinkle and Mike Morris

Assistant Professor
Department of Chemistry, Computer and Physical Sciences
Southeastern Oklahoma State U

Topic: "Sustaining HPC Curricula at a Regional Institution"
(with Karl Frinkle)

Slides: available after the Symposium   PowerPoint   PDF

Abstract

There is an obvious lack of standardized HPC curricula available for small universities. This is partly due to the "old school" accreditation guidelines being used by most schools. With little guidance and few resources, Mike Morris and Karl Frinkle have been successfully teaching HPC at Southeastern Oklahoma State University for the last 6 years without a rigid structure, and in some cases quite experimentally. The courses that have been offered have given many students considerable exposure to the parallel paradigm and cluster architecture in general. This talk will report on successes and failures, and will hopefully provide help that Morris and Frinkle sorely missed to others with a desire to get HPC into their classrooms.

Biography

Mike Morris' degrees are in math, but he has always said he wound up on the business end of a computer. He taught Computer Science (CS) in the early 80s after working as an Operations Research Analyst for Conoco in Ponca City OK. Mike left teaching and spent 15 years doing various things in the CS industry before returning to Southeastern Oklahoma State to once again teach CS, where he remains today.

Horst Severini
Horst Severini

Research Scientist
Department of Physics & Astronomy
University of Oklahoma

Roundtable Topic:
"Roundtable: Experiences in the Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Research & Education Facilitators Virtual Residency Program" (with Marcus Bond, Dana Brunson, James Deaton and Perdeep Mehta)

Roundtable Slides:   PowerPoint   PDF

Roundtable Abstract

An Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Research and Education Facilitator (ACI-REF) works directly with researchers to advance the computing- and data-intensive aspects of their research, helping them to make effective use of Cyberinfrastructure (CI). The University of Oklahoma (OU) is leading a national "virtual residency" program to prepare ACI-REFs to provide CI facilitation to the diverse populations of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) researchers that they serve. Until recently, CI Facilitators have had no education or training program; the Virtual Residency program addresses this national need by providing: (1) training, specifically (a) summer workshops and (b) third party training opportunity alerts; (2) a community of CI Facilitators, enabled by (c) a biweekly conference call and (d) a mailing list.

In this roundtable, participants from the virtual residency will share their experiences about the program.

Biography

Horst Severini got his Vordiplom (BS equivalent) in Physics at the University of Wuerzburg in Germany in 1988, then went on to earn a Master of Science in Physics in 1990 and a Ph.D. in Particle Physics in 1997, both at the State University of New York at Albany.

He is currently a Research Scientist in the High Energy Physics group at the University of Oklahoma, where he is in charge of computing at the US ATLAS SouthWest Tier2 facility at OU. He is also the Grid Computing Coordinator at the Oklahoma Center for High Energy Physics (OCHEP), and the Associate Director for Remote and Heterogeneous Computing at OU Supercomputing Center for Education & Research (OSCER).

Nathan Sloat
Nathan Sloat

Teaching Assistant
Blue Waters Student Intern
School of Electrical & Computer Engineering
University of Oklahoma

Topic: "Adventures In Parallelization on One of The Largest Supercomputers in The Country"

Slides:   PDF

Abstract

Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is one of the most important molecules in the world of biology. From protein synthesis to viruses, there are many problems in the study of RNA which are greatly aided by computing. Multiple algorithms have been developed in the past to facilitate such computations, but they are often inefficient, too problem-specific, or both. To answer our lab's questions about the Satellite Tobacco Mosaic Virus (STMV), these algorithms were insufficient and so the Swellix algorithm was developed. Swellix uses a combinatorics approach to evaluate an RNA sequence subject to optional constraints. Swellix has performed well in our tests without being confined to any one purpose. I will be discussing the Swellix program and my development experiences on the Blue Waters supercomputer.

Biography

Nathan Sloat is an undergraduate at the University of Oklahoma studying Computer Engineering with a Physics minor. He learned of and joined the Sooner Supercomputing Club in 2015. Through the club, he gained an undergraduate research position with Dr. Susan Schroeder in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry. With Dr. Schroeder, Nathan has continued development of code used to predict RNA secondary structure. Through this project, Nathan and Dr. Schroeder, as his mentor, were accepted into the Blue Waters Student Internship Program with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Resulting from this program, Nathan gained parallel programming skills and has subsequently begun parallelization of his research code.

Neal N. Xiong
Neal N. Xiong

Assistant Professor
Department of Business and Computer Science
Southwestern Oklahoma State University

Topic: "Cloud-based Service"

Slides:   PowerPoint   PDF

Talk Abstract

HPC is very important to deal with intelligent computing, and in this report, we try to use HPC technology to implement intelligent medical applications. Specifically, we present a novel depression disorder classification algorithm named Weighted Discriminative Dictionary Learning (WDDL), based on functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) data. The underlying relationship between samples and dictionary atoms is exploited by introducing an adaptive weighting scheme. Tested on fMRI data of 29 patients with depression and 29 healthy controls, our algorithm outperforms all other classification methods compared in this work. Furthermore, we detect the discriminative brain regions of patients, which can reveal the pathogenesis of depression disorder.

Biography

Neal N. Xiong is faculty in the Department of Business and Computer Science at Southwestern Oklahoma State University. He received his PhD degrees from Wuhan University (about software engineering), and the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (about dependable networks), respectively. Before coming to SWOSU, he worked at Colorado Technical University, Wentworth Institute of Technology, and Georgia State University for many years. His research interests include Cloud Computing, Business Networks, Security and Dependability, Parallel and Distributed Computing, and Optimization Theory.

Dr. Xiong has published over 200 international journal papers. He served as an Editor-in-Chief, Associate editor or Editor member for over 10 international journals, including as Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man & Cybernetics: Systems, Associate Editor for Information Sciences, Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Internet Technology, and Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Parallel & Cloud Computing. Dr. Xiong is the Chair of the "Trusted Cloud Computing" Task Force, IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, and the Industry System Applications Technical Committee, He is a Senior member of the IEEE Computer Society.


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