Info session: Consulting and computing resources for data science — Nov. 8

By | Data, Educational, Events, General Interest, Happenings, HPC

Advanced Research Computing at U-M (ARC) will host an information session for graduate students in all disciplines who are interested in new computing and data science resources and services available to U-M researchers.

Brief presentations from members of ARC Technology Services (ARC-TS) on computing infrastructure, and from Consulting for Statistics, Computing, and Analytics Research (CSCAR) on statistics, data science, and computing training and consulting will be followed by a Q&A session, and opportunities to interact individually with ARC and CSCAR staff.

ARC and CSCAR are interested in connecting with graduate students whose research would benefit from customized or innovative computational or analytic approaches, and can provide guidance for students aiming to do this. ARC and CSCAR are also interested in developing training and documentation materials for a diverse range of application areas, and would welcome input from student researchers on opportunities to tailor our training offerings to new areas.

Speakers:

  • Kerby Shedden, Director, CSCAR
  • Brock Palen, Director, ARC-TS

Date/Time/Location:

Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2017, 2 – 4 p.m., West Conference Room, 4th Floor, Rackham Building (915 E. Washington St.)

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Real estate dataset available to researchers

By | Data, Data sets, Educational, General Interest, Happenings, News

The University of Michigan Library system and the Data Acquisition for Data Sciences program (DADS) of the U-M Data Science Initiative (DSI) have recently joined forces to license a major data resource capturing parcel-level information about the property market in the United States.  

The data were licensed from the Corelogic corporation, who have assimilated deed, tax and foreclosure information on nearly all properties in the entire US. Coverage dates vary by county, some county records go back fifty years. Coverage is more comprehensive from the 1990s to the present.

These data will support a variety of research efforts into regional economies, economic disparities, trends in land-use, housing market dynamics, and urban ecology, among many other areas.

The data are available on the Turbo Research Storage system for users of the U-M High Performance Computing infrastructure, and via the University of Michigan Library.

To access the data, researchers must first sign a MOU; contact Senior Associate Librarian Catherine Morse cmorse@umich.edu for more information, or visit https://www.lib.umich.edu/database/corelogic-parcel-level-real-estate-data.

HPC training workshops begin Thursday, Sept. 21

By | Educational, Events, General Interest, HPC, News

series of training workshops in high performance computing will be held Sept. 21 through Oct. 31, 2017, presented by CSCAR in conjunction with Advanced Research Computing – Technology Services (ARC-TS). All sessions are held at East Hall, Room B254, 530 Church St.

Introduction to the Linux command Line
This course will familiarize the student with the basics of accessing and interacting with Linux computers using the GNU/Linux operating system’s Bash shell, also known as the “command line.”
Dates: (Please sign up for only one)
• Thursday, Sept. 21, 9 a.m. – noon (full descriptionregistration)
• Thursday, Sept. 28, 9 a.m. – noon (full description | registration)
Location:
East Hall, Room B250, 530 Church St.

Introduction to the Flux cluster and batch computing
This workshop will provide a brief overview of the components of the Flux cluster, including the resource manager and scheduler, and will offer students hands-on experience.
Dates: (Please sign up for only one)
• Thursday, Sept. 28, 1 – 4 p.m. (full description | registration)
• Monday, Oct. 2, 9 a.m. – noon (full description | registration)
Location:
East Hall, Room B254, 530 Church St.

Advanced batch computing on the Flux cluster
This course will cover advanced areas of cluster computing on the Flux cluster, including common parallel programming models, dependent and array scheduling, among other topics.
Dates: (Please sign up for only one)
• Tuesday, Oct. 10, 1 – 5 p.m. (full description | registration) Location: East Hall, Room B254, 530 Church St.
• Thursday, Oct. 12, 9 a.m. – noon (full description | registration) Location: East Hall, Room B254, 530 Church St.
• Friday, Oct. 13, 9 a.m. – noon (full description | registration) Location: East Hall, Room B250, 530 Church St.

Hadoop Workshop
Learn how to process large amounts (up to terabytes) of data using SQL and/or simple programming models available in Python, Scala, and Java.
Date:
• Tuesday, Oct. 31, 1 – 5 p.m. (full description | registration)
Location:
East Hall, Room B254, 530 Church St.

Consultation available for Android app development

By | Educational, General Interest

Researchers interested in using the Android platform for app development may consult with CSCAR about their work, free of charge.

CSCAR consultants with industry experience as Android developers can provide guidance on capabilities and limitations of Android apps, timelines for App implementation, 3D interaction, game engines, user interface design, and security.

Please contact cscar@umich.edu for more information.

MICDE announces 2017-2018 Fellowship recipients

By | Educational, General Interest, Happenings, News

MICDE is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2017-2018 MICDE Fellowships for students enrolled in the PhD in Scientific Computing or the Graduate Certificate in Computational Discovery and Engineering. We had 91 applicants from 25 departments representing 6 schools and colleges. Due to the extraordinary number of high quality applications we increased the number of fellowships from 15 to 20 awards. See our Fellowship page for more information.

AWARDEES

Diksha Dhawan, Chemistry
Negar Farzaneh, Computational Medicine & Bioinformatics
Kritika Iyer, Biomedical Engineering
Tibin John, Neuroscience
Bikash Kanungo, Mechanical Engineering
Yu-Han Kao, Epidemiology
Steven Kiyabu, Mechanical Engineering
Christiana Mavroyiakoumou, Mathematics
Ehsan Mirzakhalili, Mechanical Engineering
Colten Peterson, Climate and Space Sciences & Engineering
James Proctor, Chemical Engineering
Evan Rogers, Biomedical Engineering
Longxiu Tian, S. Ross School of Business
Jipu Wang, Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences
Yanming Wang, Chemistry
Zhenlin Wang, Mechanical Engineering
Alicia Welden, Chemistry
Anna White, Industrial & Operations Engineering
Chia-Nan Yeh, Physics
Yiling Zhang, Industrial & Operations Engineering

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Geunyeong Byeon, Industrial & Operations Engineering
Ayoub Gouasmi, Aerospace Engineering
Joseph Kleinhenz, Physics
Jia Li, Physics
Changjiang Liu, Biophysics
Vo Nguyen, Computational Medicine & Bioinformatics
Everardo Olide, Applied Physics
Qiyun Pan, Industrial & Operations Engineering
Pengchuan Wang, Civil & Environmental Engineering
Xinzhu Wei, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology

U-M students invited to apply for MICDE fellowships — May 19 deadline

By | Educational, Funding Opportunities, General Interest, News

University of Michigan students are invited to apply for Michigan Institute for Computational Discovery and Engineering (MICDE) Fellowships for the 2017-2018 academic year. These $4,000 fellowships are available to students in both the Ph.D in Scientific Computing and the Graduate Certificate Program in Computational Discovery and Engineering. Applicants should be graduate students enrolled in either program, although students not yet enrolled but planning to do so may simultaneously submit program and fellowship applications.

Fellows will receive a $4,000 research fund that can be used to attend a conference, to buy a computer, or for any other approved activity that enhances the Fellow’s graduate experience. We also ask that Fellows attend at least 8 MICDE seminars between Fall 2017 and Winter 2018, attend one MICDE students’ networking event, and present a poster at the MICDE Symposium on March 22, 2018. For more details and to apply please visit http://micde.umich.edu/academic-programs/micde-fellowships/.

Interested students should download and complete the application form, and submit it with a one-page resume as a SINGLE PDF DOCUMENT to MICDE-apps@umich.edu. The due date for applications is May 19, 2017, 5:00 E.T. We expect to announce the awardees onJune 5, 2017.

We encourage applications from all qualified candidates, including women and minorities.

New geospatial analysis and GIS support at CSCAR

By | Educational, General Interest, News

CSCAR (Consulting for Statistics, Computing and Analytics Research) is offering expanded support for geospatial analysis and geographic information systems (GIS), effective immediately.

Researchers seeking guidance in this area are encouraged to schedule an appointment by calling 764-7828.

Several members of the CSCAR staff have expertise in modeling and analysis of geospatial data, and can provide consultations on basic and advanced methods. A variety of tools including R, Matlab, Python, and Arc-GIS are supported for work in this area. The CSCAR team was recently joined by a consultant holding a PhD in Earth/Environment Sciences, specializing in GIS and remote sensing.

As a result, CSCAR is now able to support a broad range of geospatial analysis activities including GIS, geostatistics, mechanistic modeling, geospatial visualization, and large-scale geospatial data processing on Flux and other advanced infrastructure systems. New workshops in Arc-GIS and other geospatial tools will begin in November (details will appear on this website).

U-M, Coursera offer five-course specialization in Applied Data Science with Python

By | Educational, General Interest, News

Coursera and the University of Michigan are offering a five-course specialization in Applied Data Science with Python starting in September. The courses cost $79 each, and students who complete all coursework, including a capstone project, will receive a Certificate.

The courses, taught by U-M faculty members Christopher Brooks (SI), Kevyn Collins-Thompson (SI and EECS), Daniel Romero (SI and EECS) and VG Vinod Vydiswaran (Medical School and SI), are:

  • Introduction to Data Science in Python
  • Applied Plotting, Charting and Data Representation in Python
  • Applied Machine Learning in Python
  • Applied Text Mining in Python
  • Applied Social Network Analysis in Python (Capstone project)

For more information, see the Coursera webpage.