blog posts

• Social Media Analytics Summit Success

  Jan 10, 2018 2:30 pm1 views

  The Social Media Analytics Summit (led by the Illinois Data Science Initiative and co-sponsored by Research IT, Technology Services) was a gathering of over 200 registrants that spanned academic research, industry research, social media practitioners, students, and other interested parties. The goal of the summit was to showcase what is happening in the realm of social media analytics both on the Illinois campus and beyond. A researcher from Spredfast (one of the largest social media analytics companies) and the network science group from Indiana University presented on things happening with social media analytics beyond Illinois. The State of Illinois marketing officer was also present to understand what is happening in this realm. It was an incredibly successful summit and hope that this was a springboard for many activities to come within the realm of social media analytics.

• High Performance Computing topics by XSEDE

  Jan 10, 2018 2:30 pm1 views

  XSEDE is pleased to announce a regular series of remote workshops on High-Performance Computing topics.  These hands-on workshops provide a convenient way for researchers to learn about the latest techniques and technologies of current interest in HPC. 

• Handshake Helps With Job Placement

  Mar 2, 2018 7:15 am1 views

  Are you a Graduate Student starting your job search? Handshake, a new service offering at Illinois, can help you get started. With over 200,000 employers nation-wide, it's a fantastic way to get yourself seen.

  Read the full story.

• Fulbright Grants for Overseas Research

  Apr 2, 2018 9:15 am1 views

  The Fulbright program supports US citizens in all disciplines who wish to study or conduct research abroad in approximately 140 countries.

• XSEDE HPC Workshop: OpenMP

  Jan 4, 2019 9:00 am0 views

  Date of Workshop: January 16, 2019

  XSEDE along with the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center are pleased to announce a one day OpenMP workshop. This workshop is intended to give C and Fortran programmers a hands-on introduction to OpenMP programming. Attendees will leave with a working knowledge of how to write scalable codes using OpenMP. This event will be presented using the Wide Area Classroom(WAC) training platform.

  Due to demand, this workshop will be telecast to several satellite sites, given below.

  You  may attend at any of the following sites.

  • Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center
  • Purdue University
  • National Center for Supercomputing Applications (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
  • University of Delaware
  • University of Houston - Clear Lake
  • The University of Utah
  • University of Cincinnati
  • University of Tennessee, Knoxville - National Institute for Computational Sciences
  • University of Houston
  • Pennsylvania State University
  • Stanford University
  • Arizona State University

  Register by going to: https://portal.xsede.org/course-calendar

  Please address any questions to Tom Maiden at tmaiden@psc.edu.

• Webinar: Introduction to Running Jobs on Comet

  Jan 4, 2019 9:00 am0 views

  Date: Tuesday, January 8, 2019, 11am-1pm PST

  Presenter: Mary Thomas

  This webinar covers the basics of accessing the SDSC Comet supercomputer, managing the user environment,  compiling and running jobs on Comet, where to run them, and how to run batch jobs. It is assumed that you have mastered the basics skills of logging onto Comet and running basic Unix commands.  The webinar will include access to training material.

  This meeting will use the Zoom conferencing system. You should receive an email with connection details when you register. If you do not have the connection details, please send an email to eot@sdsc.edu. 

  Slides and recording will be made available after the webinar. 

  Register for this webinar. 

• NCSA Faculty Fellow Makes Breakthrough in Protein Prediction Using Deep Learning

  Jan 8, 2018 3:15 pm0 views

  Jian Peng, NCSA Faculty Fellow and Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Illinois and graduate student, Yang Liu, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, have discovered a major breakthrough in protein structure predictions using deep learning data processed by NCSA’s  Blue Waters supercomputer published in Cell Systems journal.

• 2017 December Newsletter

  Jan 8, 2018 3:30 pm0 views

  Read the December 2017 Technology Services Research IT Newsletter.

• XSEDE Researcher Applies Supercomputing to Global Financial Markets

  Jan 8, 2019 9:45 am0 views

  Until recently, the thought of using supercomputers, the world's most powerful computational machines, to study global financial markets was relatively unheard of. Today, Mao Ye, a Finance researcher from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is seeking to change that, and perhaps even inform regulatory decision-making in the future, all with the help of XSEDE's computational and consulting expertise.

• NCSA Brings Dark Energy Survey Data to Science Community into 2021

  Jan 9, 2019 10:15 am0 views

  After scanning in depth about a quarter of the southern skies for six years and cataloguing hundreds of millions of distant galaxies, the Dark Energy Survey (DES) will finish taking data on January 9, 2019. The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois will continue refining and serving this data for use by scientists into 2021.

• Blue Waters Makes Tornado Come To Life

  Jan 10, 2018 2:15 pm0 views

  Tornados are more common in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world. But to really understand these intense wind funnels of destruction, you need lots and lots of data. That's what scientist Leigh Orf with the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison is working on, with the help of one very important tool—a massive supercomputer.

  Read more...

• Illinois Campus Cluster: What Makes Us Human

  Jan 10, 2018 2:15 pm0 views

  Technology Services has a new story looking at the tiny differences in gut bacteria that may lead to large discoveries like curing autism. The Illinois Campus Cluster makes it possible for Professor Tandy Warnow and Ph.D. student Michael Nute to run complex computations to analyze billions of DNA sequences.

  Check out What Makes Us Human on the Technology Services website.

• Photorealistic thunderstorm visualization wins XSEDE15 people’s choice award

  Jan 10, 2018 2:15 pm0 views

  A tornado visualization done using Blue Waters at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois has won the XSEDE 2015 People's Choice Award.

  Peer into the Guts of a Monster Tornado (by Gizmodo).

• Cooking a Universe

  Jan 10, 2018 2:15 pm0 views

  Dr. Felipe Menanteau, a Research Scientist at NCSA and Research Associate Professor of Astronomy, and the Dark Energy Survey team study the universe and use sky mapping exercises to try to understand where everything came from and if we are alone.

  Read the full story

• Unraveling the Mysteries of the Brain

  Jan 10, 2018 2:15 pm0 views

  Dr. Xiaohui Chen, Assistant Professor in Statistics, and his team are mining data to help neuroscientists find the mechanism that makes neurodegenerative diseases tick.

  Read the full story

• Black Holes and the Music of the Spheres

  Jan 10, 2018 2:15 pm0 views

  Dr. Eliu Huerta Escudero and his team are extending our understanding of gravitational wave astronomy by developing new tools that detect and characterize wave sources in dense stellar environments.

  Read the full story

• The Future of Water

  Jan 10, 2018 2:15 pm0 views

  Dr. Maria L. Chu, Assistant Professor in Agricultural and Biological Engineering, studies how a variety of factors alter how water moves in the watershed—affecting its quantity and quality.

  Read the full story

• Increasing Integrity In Research

  Jan 10, 2018 2:15 pm0 views

  It's been 25 years since the National Academy of Sciences set its standards for appropriate scientific conduct, and the world of science has changed dramatically in that time. So now the academies of science, engineering and medicine have updated their standards.

  Read the whole story

• Who Is Doing Our Data Laundry?

  Jan 10, 2018 2:15 pm0 views

  We are seeing a surge in firms with offers to take institutions' data so that they can reformat it and make it available as dashboards, with trends and models. It is time to ask: Who is doing our data laundry, and why?

  Read the full story

• What is USIgnite?

  Jan 10, 2018 2:30 pm0 views

  USIgnite, a nonprofit organization that fosters the development and deployment of next-generation gigabit applications, created a national network of Smart Gigabit Communities, which includes Urbana-Champaign. The USIgnite team is interested in working with students, faculty and researchers to showcase innovative applications.

• What is UC2B?

  Jan 10, 2018 2:30 pm0 views

  UC2B, Urbana-Champaign Big Broadband, is a community broadband project that was funded through a federal grant. A non-profit group, UC2B-NFP, oversees the operations of the network service provider and seeks ways to enhance community involvement with an objective of expanding digital literacy. Research IT, in partnership with UC2B-NFP, is building a gig-minded ecosystem that presents opportunities for individuals and organizations to give back to the community with a goal of elevating digital literacy.

  To learn more about UC2B visit http://www.uc2b.net/

• What is CU Hack Night?

  Jan 10, 2018 2:30 pm0 views

  CU Hack Night is a group of civic-minded individuals who seek to find solutions to community challenges. Hack Nights began as a community group in January 2017. The weekly Tuesday night meetings include dinner, technical presentations and breakout sessions focusing on projects ranging from bee pollination to mass transit and public health. Hack nights locate publicly available data with the goal of addressing challenges in local communities. The group focuses on having fun with new and old friends to create new solutions.

  For more information visit the CU Hack Night Twitter or Facebook pages.What is CU Hack Night?

• Simplifying HIPAA-Related Processes

  Jan 10, 2018 2:30 pm0 views

  A cross-campus working group collaboratively drafted questions to be used in faculty interviews to assess their sensitive data needs.  The working group also identified opportunities to improve the Institutional Review Board (IRB) process, as it pertains to HIPAA, by populating the form with choices and reducing, if not eliminating, free-form text boxes.  Faculty welcomed the suggestion for simplifying the IRB form.

• Research IT Team Members Lead Sessions at IT Pro Forum

  Jan 10, 2018 2:30 pm0 views

  Research IT team members Tony Rimovsky (IT Architect) and Tracy Smith (Director of Research IT) will lead multiple presentations and workshops at the Spring 2017 IT Professionals Forum on June 7-8.

• Supercomputing for students

  Jan 10, 2018 2:30 pm0 views

  University of Illinois students interested in high-performance and extreme-scale computing can sign up now for the Joint Laboratory for Extreme-Scale Computing (JLESC) Summer School, which takes place July 20-21 at NCSA. The summer school will feature two days of talks on topics like Python, MPI, OpenACC and more. Seating is first-come, first-serve. Register today.

  Add event to your calendar:   iCal    Outlook 2010

• 2017 June Newsletter (Archive)

  Jan 10, 2018 2:30 pm0 views

  Read the June 2017 Research IT at Tech Services Newsletter.

• Presentation: Research Data Services at Cambridge

  Jan 10, 2018 2:30 pm0 views

  The Research Data Service is hosting a visit by Marta Teperek, the current Research Data Facility Manager at the University of Cambridge, from July 13-14. She’ll be presenting on their data services program on Friday, July 14, and all are welcome to attend.

• NCSA processes big data with breakthrough results for Dark Energy Survey

  Jan 10, 2018 2:30 pm0 views

  New measurements from data processed by the Dark Energy Survey Data Management (DESDM) project at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign verify the theory that 26 percent of the Universe is in the form of mysterious dark matter and that space is filled with an also-unseen dark energy, which is causing the accelerating expansion of the universe and makes up 70 percent of the Universe’s contents.

  To read the full story, visit http://illinois.edu/emailer/newsletter/135889.html

• Interactive Voice Assistant Helps New Students At Ball State

  Jan 10, 2018 2:30 pm0 views

  There's no need for the brochures and bulky maps. Now, incoming freshman, or anyone for that matter, can just ask Frog Baby for Alexa for help with navigating campus life.

  Ball State’s Information Technology (IT) services has created Frog Baby for Alexa, an interactive voice assistant designed to help assist thousands of incoming freshman and other new students.

  Read the full story

• 'Smart' Campuses Invest in the Internet of Things

  Jan 10, 2018 2:30 pm0 views

  Some campus academic leaders are interested in the possibility that IoT devices could help improve student success efforts, although obviously these efforts raise a number of privacy concerns. Arizona State University has launched a pilot project to see if using IoT to take attendance could help advisers reach out to students.

  Read the full story.

• 2017 August Newsletter (Archived)

  Jan 10, 2018 2:30 pm0 views

  Read the August 2017 Technology Services Research IT Newsletter.

• 2017 May Newsletter (Archive)

  Jan 10, 2018 2:30 pm0 views

  Read the May 2017 Research IT at Tech Services Newsletter. This will take you to the HTML version of the newsletter.

• Managing Your Research Data

  Jan 10, 2018 2:45 pm0 views

  Research Data Services offers a monthly newsletter to help researchers proactively manage their data. Focuses include organizing data, improving storage and backup security, documenting data structure, and more.

  Subscribe to the newsletter at  https://go.illinois.edu/nudge

• Research Data Services Annual Report Available

  Jan 10, 2018 3:00 pm0 views

  Research Data Services has recently made its annual report available.

  “The Research Data Service (RDS) provides the Illinois research community with the expertise, tools, and infrastructure necessary to manage and steward research data.”

• AWS Now Bills EC2 and Block Volumes By The Second

  Jan 10, 2018 3:00 pm0 views

  Amazon Web Services has announced new per-second billing for EC2 and block volumes.

  For more information visit cloud.illinois.edu.

• 2017 September Newsletter

  Jan 10, 2018 3:00 pm0 views

  Read the September 2017 Technology Services Research IT Newsletter.

• 2017 October Newsletter

  Jan 10, 2018 3:00 pm0 views

  Read the October 2017 Technology Services Research IT Newsletter.

• Updated Guidelines for Digital Humanities Advancement Grants

  Jan 10, 2018 3:00 pm0 views

  The National Endowment for the Humanities has updated guidelines for applications to receive a DH Advancement Grant through their Office of Digital Humanities. Application deadline is January 16, 2018 for projects to begin in September 2018.

  For full details visit the National Endowment for the Humanties website.

• Software and Data Carpentry Workshops Reach Over 27,000 Learners

  Jan 10, 2018 3:00 pm0 views

  Software and Data Carpentry workshops are held all around the world. The combined sessions have brought over 27,000 learners into workshops to learn to better use "R and Python to work with data, write functions, and initialize repositories in git".

  The Data Carpentry community has reviewed its assessment results and published an article on the impact of these sessions.

  Read the article

• Sign up for Data Nudge for Monthly Reminders to Manage Your Research Data

  Jan 10, 2018 3:00 pm0 views

  Want to manage your research data more proactively? Sign up to receive monthly data management reminders that come with quick, easy tips and activities designed by your local Research Data Service.

• What is a Supercomputer?

  Jan 10, 2018 3:00 pm0 views

  The article These are the world's most powerful supercomputers by Popular Science not only highlights those with the most power, but also describes what a supercomputer is and how it differs from a server farm.

   

• Gel Imaging On a Budget

  Jan 10, 2018 3:00 pm0 views

  Dr. Lindsay Clark, a Research Specialist in the department of Crop Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, needed a gel imager for her work. She didn't want to spend $10,000, so built her own for considerably less.

  Read the full story

• 200,000+ Articles Available for Text and Data Mining

  Jan 10, 2018 3:15 pm0 views

  Text and data-miners rejoice! All of the 200,000+ Public Library of Science (PLOS) articles are open and available for research at https://www.plos.org/text-and-data-mining.

• Students Capitalize on Computational Genomics Research using AWS

  Jan 10, 2018 3:15 pm0 views

  Amazon Web Services at Illinois gives students and faculty the opportunity to explore and optimize data analysis.

  Thanks to the campus contract between Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, both faculty and student researchers have access to Amazon’s cloud computing platform, and they’re already doing amazing things.

  Katherine Kendig, a research coordinator and partner with Public Affairs at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), reports that students are capitalizing on the partnership to optimize data analysis in computational genomics research. To learn more about this exciting work,visit https://cloud.illinois.edu.

• 2017 December Newsletter

  Jan 10, 2018 3:15 pm0 views

  Read the December 2017 Technology Services Research IT Newsletter.

• NCSA Faculty Fellow Makes Breakthrough in Protein Prediction Using Deep Learning

  Jan 10, 2018 3:15 pm0 views

  Jian Peng, NCSA Faculty Fellow and Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Illinois and graduate student, Yang Liu, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, have discovered a major breakthrough in protein structure predictions using deep learning data processed by NCSA’s  Blue Waters supercomputer published in Cell Systems journal.

  Read the full story.

• Cancer Center at Illinois Seed Funding Call for Proposals

  Jan 14, 2019 9:00 am0 views

  The Cancer Center at Illinois (CCIL) was founded to build campus capacity in cancer research. The CCIL Seed Funding Program provides support for Illinois cancer research teams to develop new ideas and innovative approaches bridging the engineering–biology continuum. The expected outcome of this seed grant program is a fundable interdisciplinary research proposal. The CCIL anticipates funding two or three interdisciplinary research proposals during the 2018-2019 cycle.

• Impact of the Federal Government Partial Shutdown

  Jan 14, 2019 9:15 am0 views

  As you are aware, a partial federal government shutdown has continued into the new year. While NIH and the Department of Education are funded, others such as NSF, NASA, NOAA, USDA, NIST, and NEH are not.

  Illinois Sponsored Programs Administration (SPA) has developed these FAQs to address some questions that members of the Illinois research community may have.

  Agency Contingency Plans and FAQs can be found on the OMB website:

  https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/information-for-agencies/agency-contingency-plans/

• ZEISS Light and Electron Microscopy Lunch & Learn Workshop - January 23, 2019

  Jan 18, 2019 9:00 am0 views

  Date: January 23, 2018

  Time: 8 AM to 3 PM

  Location: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
  Illinois Materials Research Laboratory104 S. Goodwin AvenueRoom 280Urbana, IL 61801

  ZEISS and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will be hosting a workshop detailing the principles of light and electron microscopy, including processes and techniques such as optical sectioning and correlative microscopy. Join us for this all-day Lunch and Learn event, and gain a better understanding of the principles behind capturing images on your microscope!

  Lunch will be provided to all registrants.

• Clowder Awarded $5 Million from NSF

  Jan 28, 2019 9:15 am0 views

  The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded $5 Million to bring together the Clowder community. Clowder, an open source data management tool based on active curation, was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in conjunction with the Coordinated Science Lab (CSL) and Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) department.