Starting the New Year With Positive Impacts
Message from WestGrid's Interim Executive Director
 Over the next few weeks, researchers across Canada will begin using their 2013 resource allocations at national platform computing facilities across the country. At WestGrid, our support staff have been busy ensuring returning users experience a seamless transition into this new allocation cycle, as well as helping new users navigate the process. At the same time, hundreds of other users running default allocations on WestGrid clusters are keeping our queues active and systems humming.
Whenever things gets busy like this, it is always uplifting to hear of the positive impact our resources have on users’ research. Two such anecdotes came to light last week, passed along from our front-line technical staff, and I would like to share them with you as an inspirational reminder of the value HPC contributes to many leading-edge research projects.
First, congratulations to UBC researchers Humaira Kamal and Alan Wagner, who achieved an exciting milestone in their investigation of the scalability of MPI middleware and MPI programs to execute on larger, potentially exascale, machines. During a recent test on WestGrid’s Orcinus cluster at UBC, Kamal and Wagner were able to execute programs with over 100 million processes on 6,480 processor cores. You can read a more detailed summary of the experiment here.
Secondly, as flu season peaks across the country this month, it was timely to hear of Bob McLeod’s projects at the University of Manitoba, which use WestGrid’s Grex cluster to simulate influenza outbreaks. Using HPC and a flexible agent-based modeling (ABM) framework, McLeod’s simulations are lending new insight into infection control strategies, which has value for policymakers and practitioners alike. Further details of his work, including links to two publications of recent study results, can be found here.
If access to WestGrid has helped you achieve an exciting milestone, overcome a challenge, or simply adds value to your research project, please contact us and we’d be happy to share the news.
Lindsay Sill
Interim Executive Director
Seminars This Week - Jan. 15 & 16
Coast to Coast Seminar Series
On Tuesday, January 15 at 11:30 am Pacific, Professor Sheelagh Carpendale from the University of Calgary will kick off the 2013 Spring Coast to Coast Seminar Series with a talk on how to design, develop, and evaluate interactive visualizations that support how people view, manage, and interact with information. This talk will be videoconferenced to WestGrid partner institutions. For a list of locations, click here.
This semester’s Coast to Coast series, " From Data to Knowledge to Action", is being coordinated by the Vancouver Institute for Visual Analytics (VIVA). Additional speakers have been scheduled for Jan. 29, Feb. 12, Feb. 26, Mar. 12, and Mar. 26. For more details on the speakers and their presentations, click here.
WestGrid and Compute Canada Seminar Series
Join us on Wednesday, January 16 at 11:30 am Pacific for our first WestGrid and Compute Canada Seminar Series session of 2013: How To Use WestGrid. This session will provide attendees with a step-by-step tutorial on using WestGrid machines, including demonstrations of how to log in, submit jobs, move data, troubleshoot, etc. This will be an introductory-level session, covering the basics of getting started and providing tips for efficient and effective use of the machines.
Following a new format this year, the talk will last 20 - 30 minutes and WestGrid support staff will be on-hand at each site to answer questions and meet with attendees after the presentation. This talk will be videoconferenced to WestGrid partner institutions. For a list of locations, click here.
Mark your calendars for our other 2013 sessions on Feb. 6, Mar. 6, and Mar. 20. More details on the topics and speakers for these sessions can be found here.
|
HPCS 2013: First Call For Submissions
Researchers working with big data and big compute are invited to submit a paper to HPCS 2013, taking place in Ottawa, ON on June 2 - 6, 2013. HPCS 2013 is seeking submissions for both contributed works and workshops related to its theme, ` Big Data + Big Compute = Big Insights’. For more details, visit the HPCS 2013 website.
Follow Us on Twitter
 Follow @WestGrid and @ComputeCanada for HPC news and events.
Do you have an event to advertise to the WestGrid community? Email us.
Disease Dynamics 2013
January 17 - 19
Vancouver, BC
More info
Combining Computing, Design & Healthcare - by Elizabeth Mynatt, Georgia Institute of Technology
January 17
Vancouver, BC
More info
A Computational Mathematician Combusts: Simulation of In-Situ Combustion for Heavy Oil Recovery
January 18
Calgary, AB
More info
TRIUMF Saturday Lectures
January 19 - April 20
Vancouver, BC
More info
Software Carpentry Bootcamps
January 21 - 22
Vancouver, BC
More info
Distinguished Speakers Series:
“Paul Nicklen's Polar Obsession” February 6
Victoria, BC
More info
The Language of Life: When Mathematics Speaks to Biology February 7
Regina, SK
More info
HPCS 2013: Big Data + Big Compute = Big Insights
June 2 - 6
Ottawa, ON
More info
ICCS 2013: Computation at the Frontiers of Science
June 5 - 7
Barcelona, Spain
More info |
