Open Science for Synthesis Workshop targets early career scientists

CHAPEL HILL, NC, and SANTA BARBARA, CA – Open Science for Synthesis is a unique bi-coastal training opportunity offered for early career scientists who want to learn new software and technology skills needed for open, collaborative, and reproducible synthesis research.

UC Santa Barbara’s National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) and University of North Carolina’s Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) will co-lead the three-week intensive training workshop with participants in both Santa Barbara, CA, and Chapel Hill, NC.

The workshop will run July 21 – August 8, 2014.

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Built for interaction

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New Social Computing Rooms at NC State and Odum Institute expand RENCI’s successful visualization technology

With RENCI’s guidance and assistance, campus units at several Triangle universities are developing interactive multimedia presentation rooms modeled after RENCI’s own Social Computing Room (SCR), located in the ITS Manning building on the UNC Chapel Hill campus. Read more

Smarter smart grids: Innovative approaches to controlling power grids

CHAPEL HILL, NC – Yufeng Xin, a senior researcher in RENCI’s networking research group, continues to work with Aranya Chakrabortty, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at NC State University, and researchers at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign on a project to develop new algorithms for controlling and monitoring large distributed power systems. Read more

DH Press featured in “Cedars in the Pines” exhibit at the N.C. Museum of History

An old family photo used in the new "Cedars in the Pines" exhibit at the N.C. Museum of History.

An old family photo used in the new “Cedars in the Pines” exhibit at the N.C. Museum of History.

RENCI Web Interface Designer Joe Hope is working with staff at the Digital Innovation Lab at UNC Chapel Hill and Akram Khater, Professor of History and Director of the Middle Eastern Studies Program at NC State University, to build a set of interactive maps for “Cedars in the Pines,” an exhibit opening Saturday, February 22 at the North Carolina Museum of History.

“Cedars in the Pines” is the first exhibition to commemorate the history of the Lebanese immigrants who have made North Carolina their home since the 1880s. The multimedia exhibit will feature personal stories, photographs, home movies, letters, artifacts, and audio recordings that will highlight the diverse experiences and contributions of Lebanese Americans in the state. Other interactive components will include maps, computer games, Arabic music, and a dance floor to learn dance steps. The exhibit runs through August 31, 2014. Read more

New RENCI project looks to improve coastal evacuation plans

Storm surge inundation from Hurricane Isabel (2003) with evacuation routes and emergency management shelters (green dots).

Storm surge inundation from Hurricane Isabel (2003) with evacuation routes and emergency management shelters (green dots).

While generating precise and accurate storm surge and atmospheric predictions during a tropical cyclone (a hurricane) is important, so too is knowing the best way to safely evacuate and shelter the large numbers of people threatened during these events.

RENCI Senior Research Scientist and Oceanographer Brian Blanton, PhD, recently launched an National Science Foundation (NSF) funded project that will use a suite of physical models for coastal storm surge, terrestrial precipitation and water routing, and mesoscale meteorology to calculate probable impacts of tropical cyclones and how these impacts affect coastal evacuation and sheltering plans.

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iRODS Consortium welcomes UK’s Sanger Institute as newest member

Chapel Hill, NC, February 18, 2014 – The iRODS Consortium today announced the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, a leading institution in the Human Genome Project now focused on understanding the role of genetics in health and disease, as its newest member. The Sanger Institute is located in Hinxton, UK, near Cambridge. Read more

National Consortium for Data Science white paper points to challenges and solutions for genomics in the age of big data

CHAPEL HILL, NC — Leading researchers in data science and genomics are recommending strategies to help genomic scientists better manage, share, analyze and archive massive research and clinical data sets in an effort to ensure that the big data explosion results in better health outcomes and faster research discoveries. Read more

Faster simulation codes for the world’s most powerful particle accelerator

Image courtesy of CERN

Image courtesy of CERN

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the most powerful particle accelerator ever built, smashes tiny particles into each other in an effort to reproduce the conditions that existed within a billionth of a second after the Big Bang.

But simulating collisions of these particles and their activity during an infinitesimal slice of time creates major computational challenges. When particles collide at high speeds, not only is energy released, but many subatomic particles pop into existence briefly. Different LHC detectors register results differently, and computational simulations must be able to account for these differences in hardware and sort through the background noise in order to accurately simulate an event.

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Kaminario and RENCI develop foolproof methodology for designing and testing storage for high performance virtual clusters (HPVCs)

NEWTON, MA–(Marketwired – Jan 14, 2014) – Kaminario, the leading scale-out all-flash array provider, and the Renaissance Computing Institute at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (RENCI), today announced a joint report that provides guidelines on how to test storage for deploying High Performance Virtual Clusters (HPVCs). Aimed at IT administrators, the paper outlines two successful reference architectures for building HPVCs that support large and medium cluster workload requirements and allow for future growth. Read more

DDN becomes first private sector member of iRODS Consortium

DENVER, Nov. 20, 2013 – The iRODS Consortium today announced that DataDirect Networks (DDN), a leading provider of high performance, high capacity, scalable storage systems for big data, has become its first private sector member. Read more