Data Science in the News

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COVID-19 HPC Consortium reflects on past year

April 1, 2021 - 
COVID-19 HPC Consortium scientists and stakeholders met virtually on March 23 to mark the consortium’s one-year anniversary, discussing the progress of research projects and the need to pursue a broader organization to mobilize supercomputing access for future crises. The White House announced the launch of the public-private consortium, which provides COVID-19 researchers with free access to...

ATOM Consortium welcomes 3 DOE national labs to accelerate drug discovery

March 29, 2021 - 
The Accelerating Therapeutics for Opportunities in Medicine (ATOM) consortium, of which LLNL is part, announced the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne, Brookhaven and Oak Ridge national laboratories are joining the consortium to further develop ATOM’s AI-driven drug discovery platform. The public-private ATOM consortium aims to transform drug discovery from a slow, sequential and high-risk...

Lab event encourages growth of women in data science

March 17, 2021 - 
Coinciding with International Women’s Day on March 8, LLNL’s 4th Women in Data Science (WiDS) regional event brought women together to discuss successes, opportunities and challenges of being female in a mostly male field. The Lab’s first-ever virtual WiDS gathering attracted dozens of LLNL data scientists as well as some from outside the Lab, and featured speakers, a career panel and...

Ana Kupresanin featured in FOE alumni spotlight

March 10, 2021 - 
LLNL's Ana Kupresanin, deputy director of the Center for Applied Scientific Computing and member of the Data Science Institute council, was recently featured in a Frontiers of Engineering (FOE) alumni spotlight. Kupresanin develops statistical and machine learning models that incorporate real-world variability and probabilistic behavior to quantify uncertainties in engineering and physics...

CASC research in machine learning robustness debuts at AAAI conference

Feb. 10, 2021 - 
LLNL’s Center for Applied Scientific Computing (CASC) has steadily grown its reputation in the artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML) community—a trend continued by three papers accepted at the 35th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, held virtually on February 2–9, 2021. Computer scientists Jayaraman Thiagarajan, Rushil Anirudh, Bhavya Kailkhura, and Peer-Timo Bremer led...

LLNL physicist wins Young Former Student award

Dec. 16, 2020 - 
Texas A&M University’s Department of Nuclear Engineering on December 10 announced it has honored LLNL physicist Kelli Humbird with its 2020-21 Young Former Student award for her work at LLNL in combining machine learning with inertial confinement fusion (ICF) research. Humbird graduated from Texas A&M with a PhD in nuclear engineering in 2019. Since joining the Laboratory as an intern in 2016...

Model for COVID-19 drug discovery a Gordon Bell finalist

Nov. 17, 2020 - 
A machine learning model developed by a team of LLNL scientists to aid in COVID-19 drug discovery efforts is a finalist for the Gordon Bell Special Prize for High Performance Computing-Based COVID-19 Research. Using Sierra, the world’s third fastest supercomputer, LLNL scientists produced a more accurate and efficient generative model to enable COVID-19 researchers to produce novel compounds...

What put LLNL at the center of U.S. supercomputing in 2020?

Nov. 12, 2020 - 
The HPC world is waiting for the next series of transitions to far larger machines with exascale capabilities. By this time next year, the bi-annual ranking of the Top500 most powerful systems will be refreshed at the top as Frontier, El Capitan, Aurora, and other DOE systems come online. While LLNL was already planning around AI acceleration for its cognitive simulation aims and had a number...

From intern to mentor, Nisha Mulakken builds a career in bioinformatics

Nov. 3, 2020 - 
The COVID-19 pandemic has sparked a wave of new research and development at the Lab, and Nisha Mulakken is very busy. The biostatistician has enhanced the Lawrence Livermore Microbial Detection Array (LLMDA) system with detection capability for all variants of SARS-CoV-2. The technology detects a broad range of organisms—viruses, bacteria, archaea, protozoa, and fungi—and has demonstrated...

AI gets a boost via LLNL, SambaNova collaboration

Oct. 20, 2020 - 
LLNL has installed a state-of-the-art artificial intelligence (AI) accelerator from SambaNova Systems, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced today, allowing researchers to more effectively combine AI and machine learning (ML) with complex scientific workloads. LLNL has begun integrating the new AI hardware, SambaNova Systems DataScale™, into the NNSA’s Corona...

LLNL, ANL and GSK provide early glimpse into Cerebras AI system performance

Oct. 13, 2020 - 
AI chip and systems startup Cerebras was one of many AI companies showcased at the AI Hardware Summit which concluded last week. Cerebras invited collaborators from LLNL, Argonne National Laboratory, and GlaxoSmithKline to talk about their early work on Cerebras machines and future plans. Livermore Computing's CTO Bronis de Supinski said, “We have this vision for performing cognitive...

Machine learning speeds up and enhances physics calculations

Oct. 1, 2020 - 
Interpreting data from NIF’s cutting-edge high energy density science experiments relies on physics calculations that are so complex they can challenge LLNL supercomputers, which stand among the best in the world. A collaboration between LLNL and French researchers found a novel way to incorporate machine learning and neural networks to significantly speed up inertial confinement fusion...

The internship that launched a machine-learning target revolution

Oct. 1, 2020 - 
Kelli Humbird came to LLNL as a student intern and became a teacher of new data science techniques. In this profile, she describes her experiences and the path that led to her research inertial confinement fusion. Read more at the National Ignition Facility.

LLNL pairs world’s largest computer chip from Cerebras with Lassen to advance machine learning, AI research

Aug. 19, 2020 - 
LLNL and artificial intelligence (AI) computer company Cerebras Systems have integrated the world’s largest computer chip into the NNSA’) Lassen system, upgrading the top-tier supercomputer with cutting-edge AI technology. Technicians recently completed connecting the Silicon Valley-based company’s massive, 1.2 trillion transistor Wafer-Scale Engine chip—designed specifically for machine...

Advancing healthcare with data science (VIDEO)

Aug. 3, 2020 - 
This video provides an overview of projects in which data scientists work with domain scientists to address major challenges in healthcare. To help fight the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers are developing computer models to search for potential antibody and antiviral drug treatments, sharing a data portal with scientists and the general public, and analyzing drug compounds via a novel text...

Software integration of AI accelerators in HPC (VIDEO)

July 31, 2020 - 
In this episode of Next Platform TV, LLNL's Brian Van Essen talks about AI accelerator integration in HPC systems and software stacks. His interview begins at timestamp 27:57. Watch on YouTube.

Machine learning model may perfect 3D nanoprinting

July 29, 2020 - 
Two-photon lithography (TPL)—a widely used 3D nanoprinting technique that uses laser light to create 3D objects—has shown promise in research applications but has yet to achieve widespread industry acceptance due to limitations on large-scale part production and time-intensive setup. LLNL scientists and collaborators turned to machine learning to address two key barriers to industrialization...

Lockdown doesn’t hinder annual Data Science Challenge

June 26, 2020 - 
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and shelter-in-place restrictions, this year’s Data Science Challenge with the University of California, Merced was an all-virtual offering. The two-week challenge involved 21 UC Merced students who worked from their homes through video conferencing and chat programs to develop machine learning models capable of differentiating potentially explosive materials from...

DL-based surrogate models outperform simulators and could hasten scientific discoveries

June 17, 2020 - 
Surrogate models supported by neural networks can perform as well, and in some ways better, than computationally expensive simulators and could lead to new insights in complicated physics problems such as inertial confinement fusion (ICF), LLNL scientists reported. Read more at LLNL News.

Modeling neuronal cultures on 'brain-on-a-chip' devices

June 12, 2020 - 
For the past several years, LLNL scientists and engineers have made significant progress in development of a three-dimensional “brain-on-a-chip” device capable of recording neural activity of human brain cell cultures grown outside the body. The team has developed a statistical model for analyzing the structures of neuronal networks that form among brain cells seeded on in vitro brain-on-a...