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UPDATES
Grants and awards for DSSC members and PhD
Research profiles: Raffaella Carloni (ALICE); Dimka Karastoyanova (JBI)
First DSSC PhD meeting: April 2018
Data scientist support from the CIT for 6 projects
CALLS FOR PROPOSALS
H2020
EVENTS
International Workshop on Intelligent Systems and Computational Intelligence, JBI, 22-23 Mar (no registration required)
37th Benelux Meeting on Systems and Control, 27-29 Mar, Soesterberg
DSSC seminar: Prof. Dr. Gerton Lunter (Wellcome Trust Centre Human Genetics, University of Oxford), 22 May
Information Universe Conference, 3-6 Jul, DOT Dome Groningen
IEEE Conference BioRob, 26-29 Aug., Twente
Workshop on Distributed Estimation and Control in Networked Systems, 27-28 Aug. Academy Bldg, Groningen
IEEE eScience Conference, 29 Oct.-1 Nov., Amsterdam
UPDATES
Grants and awards for DSSC members and PhD
Join us in congratulating Prof. Dr. Raffaella Carloni (ALICE, Robotics), Prof. Dr. Alexander Lazovik (JBI, Distributed Systems), Prof. Dr. Roel Verstappen (JBI, Computational Mechanics and Numerical Mathematics) and Dr. Ir. Fred Wubs (JBI, Computational Mechanics and Numerical Mathematics), DSSC members, for their H2020 and NWO grants (the project abstracts can be accessed by clicking on the researcher's name). We are also happy to announce that Atefeh Keshavarzi (MSc), DSSC PhD, won the Best thesis award at the European Master's Program in Computational Logic workshop!
Smart and intuitive osseointegrated transfemoral prostheses embodying advanced dynamic behaviors: MyLeg (coordinator: Raffaella Carloni; H2020)
The project “MyLeg - Smart and intuitive  osseointegrated transfemoral prosthesis embodying advanced dynamic behaviors” has been awarded by the European Union in the Horizon 2020 Framework Program within the ICT-25 call for research and innovation actions on advanced robot capabilities research and take-up.
The goal of MyLeg is to develop a new generation of powered transfemoral prosthetic legs that can be intuitively operated, sensed, and trusted as the healthy and reliable counterpart for a variety of tasks. MyLeg is a collaborative project between the University of Groningen (NL) as coordinator, the University of Bologna (IT), the University of Twente (NL), Roessingh Research and Development (NL), Radboud University Medical Centre Nijmegen (NL), Össur (IS), and Norwest Advanced Orthopaedics (AUS).
Raffaella Carloni (Adjunct hoogleraar in the Faculty of Science and Engineering  since September 2017) is coordinator of the MyLeg project and principal investigator within the University of Groningen. The MyLeg project has been granted EUR 4 million, of which EUR 1 million will go to Raffaella Carloni’s robotics group.
ECiDA: Evolutionary Changes in Distributed Analysis (PI: Prof. Dr. Alexander Lazovik; NWO/COMMIT2DATA)
In the past years, the collection of data has increased significantly. Large scale data analysis requires a distributed server cluster where the data is divided among the available machines such that it can be processed in parallel, speeding up the analysis substantially. Distributed data processing platforms such as Spark have become a de-facto standard in the world of large-scale data processing. The data processing pipelines for such platforms are composed during design time and then submitted to the central “master” component who then distributes the code among several worker nodes.
However, in many situations, the application is not static and evolve over time: the developers add new processing steps, data scientists adjust parameters of their algorithm and quality assurance discovers new bugs. Currently, an update of the pipeline looks as follows: the developers patch their code, re-submit the updated version, and finally restart the entire pipeline. However, restarting the processing pipeline safely is difficult: the intermediate state is lost and needs to be re-computed; some data needs to be reprocessed and, finally, the cost of restarting may not be trivial - especially for real-time streaming components that require 24x7 availability. In this project we investigate the possibility to support evolving data-intensive applications without the need for restarting them when the requirements change (e.g., new data sources or algorithms are available). We apply and evaluate the developed techniques against three different use cases coming from three top sectors: Water, Life sciences, and HTSM/Smart Industry.
Parallel-in-time methods for the propagation of uncertainties in wind-farm simulations (PI: Prof. Dr. Roel Verstappen; NWO/eScience) 
Large eddy simulations (LES) of turbulence resort to coarse-grained models of the small scales of motion for which numerical resolution is not available. LES can be applied for the aerodynamic analysis of wind farms at sea. However, the model that describes the nonlinear unresolved-resolved interactions is a major source of uncertainty. Therefore, we aim to study the nonlinear propagation the uncertainties in LES of wind farms.
To start, a comparative study of Polynomial Chaos, Gaussian process and Karhunen-Loeve based surrogate models for uncertainty propagation (UP) is performed and the best method is tailored to turbulence. The number of cores needed for this UP is so large that a space-only parallelization does not suffice; hence parallel-in-time (PinT) algorithms are applied.
Basically, multiple time steps are introduced and the serial dependencies are shifted to the largest time step. Parareal is a prime example which has been applied with success to many problems. For turbulent flows, however, parareal suffers from convergence problems and artificial dissipation. Both problems are addressed by improving the coarse-time operator. The PinT-software is set up such that it can be used for Navier-Stokes solvers; the software may also be (re)used for the time integration of similar pde’s.
Stochastic Multiscale Climate Models (PI: Dr. Ir. Fred Wubs; agency: NWO/eScience)
In climate models it will not be possible to capture all relevant processes through a higher resolution or better process description. Ocean models currently use already near eddy-resolving horizontal resolutions (e.g. 0.1°) but many important processes such as upper ocean turbulence and sub-mesoscale eddies, are not adequately captured at this resolution.
To overcome this problem one needs to exploit the property that high-frequency components in the flow get into statistical equilibrium much faster than low-frequency components and, moreover, are locally determined by low-frequency components. This can be accomplished by coupling an implicit low-resolution model to an explicit high-resolution ocean model. One runs the high-resolution model alternatingly with the low-resolution model, for a short and long time period, respectively.
In fact, we will run an instance of the high-resolution model for each grid cell of the low-resolution model, using initial and boundary values computed at low resolution. This leads to an embarrassingly parallelizable set of high-resolution models. Hence, very suitable for Exascale architectures.
This process is repeated until the model gets into statistical equilibrium. For the coupling of the models, we will extend the eScience tool OMUSE, developed by NLeSC in a recent project, to one which can deal with one low-resolution model that can interact with many high-resolution models.
*information duplicated from eScience website
Research Profiles
In every issue of the Newsletter we feature the research profiles of DSSC members and affiliates. In this issue we would like to introduce Prof. Dr. Raffaella Carloni (ALICE) and Prof. Dr. Dimka Karastoyanova (JBI).
Prof. Dr. Raffaella Carloni (ALICE)
Raffaella Carloni joined the University of Groningen in  September 2017. She is currently Associate Professor (Adjunct hoogleraar) in the ALICE Institute within the Faculty of Science and Engineering. She obtained both her M.Sc. degree and doctoral degree in the Department of Electronics, Computer Sciences and Systems at the University of Bologna, Italy. Prior to joining the University of Groningen, she was Assistant/Associate Professor at the University of Twente, The Netherlands.
At the University of Groningen, Raffaella directs the Robotics group. The Robotics group develops systems that are intended to physically interact with uncertain dynamic environments and to cooperate with humans. The group’s main focus is the development of novel actuation systems, which are the key enabling components for motion generation. The work is accomplished by developing unique mechanical designs and intelligent control architectures. Current research projects focuses on bio-inspired soft actuators/robots and lower-limb prosthetic devices.
Prof. Dr. Dimka Karastoyanova (JBI)
The major focus of eScience is on shortening the time to new discoveries about natural and social phenomena by providing generic software systems for different domains that can cope with the huge amounts of available data. In this context, Prof. Karastoyanova's goal is to enable Decision Support for Software Systems Modelling and Development that targets Domain Experts.
Her research objective is to distill a body of fundamental knowledge for building of software systems for data- and compute-intensive eScience applications. The main focus of her research is on decision support for non-experts throughout the whole system development process. She aims at providing easy access to knowledge in computer science that will help scientists decide which technology, software infrastructure, programming language and available software solutions to select in order to support their research workflows. The enabling information system will empower them to build efficient software together with the corresponding computing environment.
Previously, Prof. Karastoyanova was working on novel technologies and interactive information system, called Model-as-You-Go that allows scientist to model multi-scale and multi-physics simulations in collaboration, reduce the programming burden, reuse existing simulation software and improve the automation of the experiment modelling. Currently she focuses on improving reproducibility of scientific methods using blockchain.
First DSSC PhD meeting: April 2018
This April the DSSC will host the first of its PhD meeting series, which will provide an opportunity for the DSSC community to meet with the students at the Centre, survey the progress of their projects and exchange ideas on exciting topics. At this meeting the students recruited by the DSSC in 2016 and in 2017 through COFUND will introduce themselves. Representatives of the supervisory teams will also be present. All DSSC members are invited to the event and to the borrel that will follow it. We will follow with information about the exact date and Programme via email.
Data scientist support from the CIT for 6 projects
At the end of the last year the DSSC joined a commision consisting of experts of Digital Humanities, the eScience Center and representatives of the CIT has granted six data science proposals this year. The researchers of the granted projects get support from data scientists of the CIT to a maximum of 450 hours. The commission received twelve proposals in total, out of which six were awarded (more information is available on the website). The call for proposals is being financed from the ICT strategy plan 2016-2020 of the RUG. The next round of the call of proposals for data science will be in 2018.
Awarded projects:
- SPRINGH – Sensor data Processed for Reliable Innovative Health Guidance (Prof. Dr. Ir. J.C. Wortmann, Faculty of Economics and Business)
- Platform Pop: Spotify’s Role as an Intermediary in the Music Industry (Dr. R. Prey, dr. M. Esteve Del Valle, Faculteit of Arts, Centre for Media and Journalism Studies)
- Rewriting Nature: studying the early modern scientific vocabulary in the Republic of Letters with word2vec (Dr. A. Sangiacomo, Faculteit Philosophy, History of Philosophy)
- Central Sensitization and Physical Activity in patients with Chronic Low Back Pain; Exploration of movement patterns using new analytic strategies (Prof.dr. M.F. Reneman, Dr. R. Dekker, Dr. H.R. Schiphorst Preuper, Dr. I. Stuive, MSc. J. Ansuategui Echeita, Dr. C.J.C. Lamoth, Faculty of Medical Sciences/UMCG, Department of Rehabilitation Medicine)
- Automatic recognition of Frisian speakers: using computers to discriminate the Frisian accent and voice (Dr. M.B. Wieling, Dr. N.H. Hilton, Faculty of Arts, Computational semantics / Frisian Language and Literature)
- Automatic Processing of Eye Tracking Movies (Dr. J.C. van Rij-Tange, prof.dr. J. Järvikivi, University of Alberta, Department of Linguistics)
CALLS FOR PROPOSALS
H2020
SU-INFRA01-2018-2019-2020: Prevention, detection, response and mitigation of combined physical and cyber threats to critical infrastructure in Europe (22 Aug.)
SU-FCT03-2018-2019-2020: Information and data stream management to fight against (cyber)crime and terrorism (23 Aug.)
SU-DS01-2018: Cybersecurity preparedness - cyber range, simulation and economics (23 Aug.)
SU-DS04-2018-2020: Cybersecurity in the Electrical Power and Energy System (EPES): an armour against cyber and privacy attacks and data breaches (23 Aug.)
SU-ICT-01-2018: Dynamic countering of cyber-attacks (28 Aug.)
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