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OKLAHOMA SUPERCOMPUTING SYMPOSIUM 2017



OSCER

OU IT

OK EPSCoR


Table of Contents


PLENARY SPEAKERS

KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Dan Stanzione
Dan Stanzione

Executive Director
Texas Advanced Computing Center
The University of Texas

Topic: "How Not to Get Trampled by a Stampede in a Cloudy Season"

Slides:   PDF

Talk Abstract

This talk will provide updates from the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) on the Stampede2 system (previewed at last year's meeting!), some of the trends TACC is seeing in the research computing services space, and a discussion of business models that make sense for university research computing groups large and small in this fast-evolving space.

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 16th anniversary on August 31 2017. In this report, we examine what OSCER is, what OSCER does, what OSCER has accomplished in its 16 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.

Spiros Liolis
Spiros Liolis

HPCaaS Service Provider Partnership Manager
Hewlett-Packard Enterprise

Topic: "Emerging HPC Use Cases and Deployment Models"

Slides: PDF

Talk Abstract

The High Performance Computing (HPC) segment is very much alive and well; indeed, it is thriving. With increased performance being a mainstay focus area, the rate at which new use cases are brought to bear has become just as relevant. Additionally, the desire by end-users to have easier access to HPC platforms and/or greater HPC platform capabilities has driven innovation in system deployment and provisioning. This talk will cover three primary areas: advances in HPC for Life Sciences, a deep learning solution for the Financial Service community, and the architecture behind provisioning HPC As A Service, facilitating Hybrid IT approaches to HPC provisioning.

Biography

Spiros Liolis is a Technology consultant, having 18+ years of experience in providing strategic guidance to clients and Fortune 100 organizations regarding High Performance Computing (HPC) solutions, Business to IT Transformation, Data Centers, Workload Portability, and Information Security.

He is currently the HPCaaS Service Provider Partnership Manager at Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. He manages the Product/Services/Solution (PSS) Life Cycle of High Performance Computing based Hybrid IT solutions by providing initial product/service/solution design, value proposition, messaging and/or whole product strategies (packaging, warranty, service, support), as well as forecasting through product introduction. His primary objectives are to establish strong and broad relationships with T2/T3 Service Providers, recruiting them as the GTM agents for our eventual virtual HPCaaS worldwide offering.

Spiros has been with HPE for 18 years, and joins us from Pointnext, where he has been the Worldwide Global Enablement Lead for the Hybrid Cloud Services Portfolio for almost 2 years, based in the US. Prior to that, Spiros was based in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), where he was EMEA's DC and Cloud Growth Initiatives lead, where he supported EMEA on demand generation, business development and pursuit activities in the key growth areas. He started his career in HPE as consultant in Greece, before quickly jumping to EMEA's International Experts Team as Senior Architect and Strategy Consultant.

He has a Master of Science in Engineering Management and a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering, both from the University of Tennessee.

Spiros is a father of two, and with his wife Georgina, lives in Atlanta, Georgia.


BREAKOUT SPEAKERS

Kent Altena
Kent Altena

Global Black Belt Technical Professional (SME)
Americas, Big Compute
Microsoft

Topic: "Microsoft Azure: Using the Public Cloud to Solve the Big Questions"

BoF Slides:     PDF

Abstract

Microsoft has seen the cloud as a huge enabler for researchers to solve the big questions without the limits faced by on-premises computing infrastructures. We will cover the capabilities within Azure geared towards HPC infrastructure — both Infrastructure As a Service (IAAS) and Software As a Service (SAAS), and touch upon how to integrate the cloud without being experts — whether R, Python, or another language. We will demo R integration and feature a case study where a researcher had a process that would have taken 9 months to solve but took 3 days with Azure.

Biography

Kent Altena is a member of the global team of experts within Microsoft, specializing in HPC and Microsoft Big Compute solutions across many verticals. His background prior to joining Microsoft was designing and managing grid environments for the financial services industry. Within Microsoft, he has helped many organizations upgrade on-premises grids to Microsoft HPC Pack and enable burst scenarios using the cloud (Azure) featuring tens of thousands of cores in each environment to solve some of the biggest mission critical questions. He holds a Masters degree and has over 25 IT certifications, helping develop many vendor certification exams.

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: available after the Symposium

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.

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: available after the Symposium

Talk Topic: "Coalition for Advancing Digital Research and Education (CADRE)"

Talk 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!

Talk Abstract

The Coalition for Advancing Digital Research and Education (CADRE) is a new collaborative initiative at Oklahoma State University that brings together research computing professionals, librarians, researchers, and educators. CADRE's mission is to make it easier to find and use research technology resources, to connect with people who can help with these resources, and to broaden the possibilities of the technology and people available, to make for more successful research. In this session, Brunson will describe CADRE's progress at OSU and invite a discussion on the benefits of collaborating within and across institutions as well as approaches for building communities to foster digital research and education.

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 2017. She and Henry Neeman have been appointed joint co-leads of the XSEDE Campus Engagement program, which includes the Campus Champions.

James Deaton
James Deaton

Incoming Executive Director
Great Plains Network

Outgoing 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: available after the Symposium

Roundtable Abstract

Biography

James Deaton is about to begin as Executive Director of the Great Plains Network and is outgoing Chief Technology Officer for OneNet, Oklahoma's statewide research and education network. In this capacity, he has been a key decision-maker in terms of technology oversight, engineering and long-term research and development. In addition to his responsibilities at OneNet, Deaton has been accountable for maintaining close involvement with researchers and engineers of state, regional and national network initiatives. Deaton has served 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.

Jeremy Evert
Jeremy Evert

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

Panel #1 Topic: "Implementation Update for the Oklahoma Friction Free Network"

Panelists:
Jeremy Evert, Southwestern Oklahoma State University
Robert Nordmark, OneNet
Matt Younkins, University of Oklahoma

Panel #1 Slides: available after the Symposium

Panel #1 Abstract:

A discussion of the hardware status for each school for both grants, how to measure performance of the system, and what equipment we need to start looking at to ensure proper function of the system.

Panel #2 Topic: "Administration and Application of the Oklahoma Friction Free Network"

Panelists:
James Deaton, OneNet/Great Plains Network
Jeremy Evert, Southwestern Oklahoma State University
Henry Neeman, University of Oklahoma
Richard Reif, Northeastern State University

Panel #2 Slides: available after the Symposium

Panel #2 Abstract:

A discussion of the non-hardware parts of the OFFN and MORE_OFFN grants. The panel will discuss what reporting is required, meetings and trainings available, and who needs to be using the equipment for researchers and network administrator collaborators. The panel will discuss budget periods, spending goals, and usage tracking.

Biography

Dr. Jeremy Evert is an assistant professor for the Department of Business & Computer Science at Southwestern Oklahoma State University. Jeremy teaches introductory programming and source code management. He works closely with his students on undergraduate research projects. Jeremy has been successful in securing funding for equipment and student travel from Oklahoma NASA EPSCoR and the National Science Foundation. Jeremy has been a mentor for a Blue Waters Student Intern, and has also coached teams for the 2017 and 2017 Oklahoma High Performance Computing Competition. Jeremy was selected by the SWOSU students as the 2017 Faculty of the Year.

James W. Ferguson
James Ferguson

Research Computing Facilitator
OU Supercomputing Center for Education & Research
University of Oklahoma

Roundtable Topic:
"Roundtable: Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Research & Education Facilitators Virtual Residency"
(with 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.

Slides: available after the Symposium

Biography

Jim Ferguson is a Research Computing Facilitator for OU Supercomputing Center for Education & Research (OSCER) at the University of Oklahoma. Jim has served on many workshop and conference organizing committees, with current efforts including the upcoming SCxy Conferences and the International HPC Summer School series.

Before coming to OSCER, Jim served as the Director of Education, Outreach & Training for the National Institute for Computational Sciences (NICS) at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. Before joining NICS, Jim's focus was programming for, training, and educating users of high performance computers and networks. Jim's previous experience includes positions at Pratt & Whitney Aircraft and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, including significant roles in NSF-funded projects like the National Laboratory for Applied Network Research and Web100. Jim is an alumnus of Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.

Franklin Fondjo Fotou, Dr. Eng.
Franklin Fondjo Fotou

Assistant Professor
Department Chair
Langston University
Panel Topic: "Panel: Fostering a Culture of Cyberinfrastructure Grant Proposals Across Oklahoma"

Panel Abstract

Coming soon

Biography

Franklin Fondjo Fotou received his B.S. degree in Physics, M.Sc. degrees in Physics (with a minor in Electronics), M.Sc. Degree in Physics (with a minor in Heat Transfer) from the University of Yaoundé I, Yaoundé Cameroon, in 1996, 1998, and 2000 respectively. He received the Doctor's degree in Computer Science and Communication Engineering at the Graduate School of Information Science and Electrical Engineering, Kyushu University, Japan in March 2006. Dr. Fondjo was recipient of the Japanese government scholarship for excellence, the Munbukagakusho, from April 2003 - March 2006, and has received several the Young Scientist Research Fund of the 21st Century COE Program of Japan in 2004, 2005 and 2006. He is Co-PI and key personnel on several NSF funded grants. His current research includes Computational Electromagnetics and SAR, Internet of Thing (IoT), and big Data analysis and Data Science. He is currently the Chair of the Department of Technology, Langston University, in Langston OK. The Co-Director of the Langston Computing Center for Research and Education (LU-CCRE), the Director of the Langston Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Education (LU-CIRE), and the Co-Director of the Langston Math Science and Technology (MST) Summer Program at Langston University. Dr. Fondjo Fotou is an XSEDE Campus Champion for Langston University and an active member of the OneOklahoma Cyberinfrastructure Initiative (OneOCII). He served as member of the Student Engagement program for XSEDE 16. He is also member of both the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) in US and the IEICE (The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers) in Japan.

Karl Frinkle
Karl Frinkle and Mike Morris

Professor
Department of Mathematics
Southeastern Oklahoma State University

Topic: "Undergraduates in HPC Courses Facilitate Research into an Open Problem in Algebra"
(with Mike Morris)

Slides: available after the Symposium

Abstract

In this presentation, we will discuss two HPC courses offered last academic year which solely focused on undergraduate students writing parallel code to help researchers generate and analyze data regarding an open problem in abstract algebra. At the start of the Fall 2017 semester, all that the researchers had was very slow code to generate data, and no code to analyze it. By the end of the Spring 2017 semester, large data sets could be generated in a fraction of the time originally required, and conjectures could now be tested against this data set.

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.

Garima Kochhar
Garima Kochhar

Senior Principal Systems Engineer, HPC
Dell

Topic: "Simplifying HPC with the HPC Innovation Lab"

Slides:
available after the Symposium

Talk Abstract:

Did you know that you can access a Top500 super computer today? The goals of the Dell EMC HPC Innovation Lab are to vet new technologies, evaluate different options for HPC system design and then simplify these design choices, analyze performance across a range of applications and to share this information with the HPC research community. This talk explains why we built this top500 system, what we do to design and tune HPC systems, and how you can influence and take advantage of all of this.

Biography:

Garima Kochhar is a lead engineer at the Dell EMC HPC Innovation Lab. She is interested in CPU architectures and tuning systems for compute performance. She has experience across different areas of HPC including storage solutions, networks and applications in her 13 years at Dell. Garima received her MS in Computer Science from the Ohio State University.

Diamond Lauffin
Diamond Lauffin

Principal / Senior Solution Architect
Engineering / Development
StorByte, Inc.

Topic: "Are all NAND / NVMe / 3D Flash drives Created the Same? Does Drive Design Make a Difference?"

Slides: available after the Symposium

Abstract

With the advent of the mass utilization of Flash Based storage, for many users the following question has not been addressed:

"Does Drive Design Make a Difference?"

With conventional hard drives, we have years of empirical evidence providing us with extensive information documenting every operational characteristic of spinning disk. For many, we take for granted how this information allows us to predictably and accurately determine the effect of conditions like end of life, fragmentation, parity scrubbing and how different file systems impact our spinning disk storage systems.

Today, the majority of Flash Based system providers do not address any of the operational characteristics that impact the life expectancy and performance of the actual Flash media. It could appear these suppliers expect us to accept that Flash is just fast enough, but, as with spinning disk, there are active conditions within all Non-Volatile media that are affecting the life expectancy and performance of these systems. In our talk, we will address a variety of conditions unique to Non-Volatile memory, such as, Program Erase Cycling, Write Cliff, NAND Die's and their relationship to the memory cells Logical Unit Number (LUN), Block and Page makeup, and how these relate to the Flash Translation Layer (FTL) and its relationship to the actual Logical to Physical Address Translation (LPT), and ultimately the process of Garbage Collection (GC) and Page re-allocation. These are known conditions that directly affect performance and life. We will illustrate how, through modern algorithmic abstraction, you can achieve enterprise class performance utilizing commodity based memory modules, and by incorporating this approach, you can reduce power and heat, and how, compared to conventional approaches, you can extend the life of your media and ultimately your systems up to 16 times.

Biography

In the early 1980's, Diamond Lauffin was part of the team that introduced one of the first commercially available software based music recording software programs in the world. In the 1990's, Diamond launched a worldwide program for Qualstar Corporation, developing a combined effort with Sony Corporation delivering some of the first tape based systems providing direct, file system access transparently to standard applications. Based on this program, Qualstar completed a successful and profitable Initial Public Offering (IPO) on Wall Street. In January 2001, based on the premise of utilizing an intelligent abstraction layer to deliver Enterprise Class capabilities with Commodity Based hardware, Diamond launched Nexsan Technologies, with a focus of delivering both extreme density capabilities and the foundation for one of the first affordable Disk to Disk (D2D) Backup solutions in the industry. In 2009, Diamond launched a worldwide program introducing a Multi-Site, Distributed Software Application Layer providing the capability to co-locate multi-billion object based file systems transparently abstracting disk and tape, allowing seamless access to any file located anywhere in the world from any device, regardless of the media type. With this technology approach, Diamond deployed, extreme petabyte installations with the, National Institutes of Health (NIH), Deluxe Films, The National Health System (United Kingdom), Der Spiegel (Germany) and many of the most prestigious Bio IT/Life Sciences companies in our industry. In the 2013 time frame, Diamond was one of the key contributors to the launch of Amplidata corporation, successfully introducing one of the leading Object Based Storage systems in the market. Amplidata was then successfully sold to HGST. Over his career, Diamond has successfully focused on the concept of creating intelligent abstraction layers to provide enterprise class capabilities utilizing commodity based components to specifically address the multi-petabyte, multi-billion object based initiatives presented by our industry today.

Evan Lemley
Evan Lemley

Professor
Department of Engineering & Physics
University of Central Oklahoma

Panel Topic: "Implementation Update for the Oklahoma Friction Free Network"

Panel Abstract

A discussion of the hardware status for each school for both grants, how to measure performance of the system, and what equipment we need to start looking at to ensure proper function of the system.

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.

George Louthan
George Louthan

Computer Scientist & Director
Tandy Supercomputing Center
Oklahoma Innovation Institute

Topic: "Panel: Fostering a Culture of Cyberinfrastructure Grant Proposals in Oklahoma"

Talk Abstract

Coming soon

Biography

George Louthan serves as the Director of the Tandy Supercomputing Center, an initiative of the Oklahoma Innovation Institute in Tulsa OK. He joined the institute as a volunteer computer scientist helping to develop the supercomputing center and procure its systems in 2011, before becoming OII's first full time employee in late 2012. He holds a MS in Computer Science and undergraduate degrees in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of Tulsa. Before moving to high performance computing, his background included work in information security, research software development and informatics.

Mike Morris
Karl Frinkle and Mike Morris

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

Topic: "Undergraduates in HPC Courses Facilitate Research into an Open Problem in Algebra"
(with Karl Frinkle)

Slides: available after the Symposium   PowerPoint   PDF

Abstract

In this presentation, we will discuss two HPC courses offered last academic year which solely focused on undergraduate students writing parallel code to help researchers generate and analyze data regarding an open problem in abstract algebra. At the start of the Fall 2017 semester, all that the researchers had was very slow code to generate data, and no code to analyze it. By the end of the Spring 2017 semester, large data sets could be generated in a fraction of the time originally required, and conjectures could now be tested against this data set.

Biography

Early in life, Mike Morris was torn between mathematics and motorcycles, and luckily for him, the academic side prevailed. After a stint at CONOCO in Ponca City OK in the early 80s, he took a CS teaching job at Southeastern Oklahoma State U in Durant. A couple of years later, he went into industry and spent 15 years doing various IT jobs, until returning to SOSU to once again teach CS. In 2017, he retired from teaching and resumed motorcycling. He remains active with Karl Frinkle in the HPC education arena.


Richard Reif

Chief Information Officer
Information Technology Services
Northeastern State University

Panel Topic: "Implementation Update for the Oklahoma Friction Free Network"
(with Jeremy Evert and others)

Panel Slides: available after the Symposium

Abstract

A discussion of the hardware status for each school for both grants, how to measure performance of the system, and what equipment we need to start looking at to ensure proper function of the system.

Biography

While Dr. Richard Reif may be new to the exciting world of supercomputing, he has been involved in technology since the days of transistor theory, component level troubleshooting and the introduction of the 8088/8086 microprocessors. He started his career in Higher Education in 1989 as a faculty member teaching programming, networking and computer applications. He started his career in Higher Education administration in 1996 after he was voluntold by the President to take over campus technology operations. The first course of action was to build out the campus network and bring the newfangled Internet to campus.

Dr. Reif now leads the very talented technology teams at Northeastern State University. The teams are responsible for the Service desk, Computers, Network infrastructure, Security, Datacenter, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and third party systems too numerous to mention in polite company. Dr. Reif is also an active member of the Council on Information Technology (COIT) as well as a new member to its executive council.

Horst Severini
Horst Severini

Associate Director for Remote & Heterogeneous Computing
and
Research Computing Facilitator
OU Supercomputing Center for Education & Research
Research Scientist
Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics & Astronomy
University of Oklahoma

Roundtable Topic:
"Roundtable: Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Research & Education Facilitators Virtual Residency"
(with James Ferguson)

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 and a Research Computing Facilitator at OU Supercomputing Center for Education & Research (OSCER).

Neal N. Xiong
Neal N. Xiong

Associate Professor
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Northeastern State University

Topic: "Artificial Intelligence Technology for Cloud Service"

Slides:   PowerPoint   PDF

Talk Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies are very important to deal with cloud computing. These include: learning and adaptation; sensory understanding and interaction; reasoning and planning; optimisation of procedures and parameters; autonomy; creativity; and extracting knowledge and predictions from large, diverse digital data. The applications of AI systems are very diverse, ranging from understanding healthcare data to autonomous and adaptive robotic systems, to smart supply chains, video game design and content creation.

In this report, we focus on high resolution rainfall estimation, which is one of the most significant inputs for numerous meteorological applications, such as agricultural irrigation, water power generation, and flood warnings. However, rainfall estimation is a challenging task, because it is subject to various sources of error. In this paper, an effective high resolution rainfall estimation system is presented that employs a spatiotemporal model named RANLIST. The merits of this system are listed as follows:

  1. RANLIST, which exploits both spatial structure of multiple radar reflectivity factors and time-series information of rain processes, is superior to other methods for rainfall estimation.
  2. RANLIST is used for rainfall estimation with temporal resolution of six minutes, while this system can estimate rainfall every minute which will do more help for coping with emergencies such as flood.

Experiments have been implemented over radar-covered areas of two large cities in China in June and July, 2014. Results show that the presented rainfall estimation system can obtain good performance with spatial resolution of 1km×1km, temporal resolution of six minutes or one minutes.

Biography

Neal N. Xiong is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Northeastern 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 NSU, he worked at Colorado Technical University, Wentworth Institute of Technology, Georgia State University and Southwestern Oklahoma State University. 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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