Data Science in the News

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Local Women in Data Science conference showcases Lab research

April 3, 2020 - 
For the third consecutive year, LLNL hosted a Women in Data Science (WiDS) regional event on March 2. The event drew dozens of attendees from LLNL, Sandia National Laboratories, local universities, and Bay Area commercial companies. Livermore was one of over 200 regional events in 60 countries coordinated with the main WiDS conference at Stanford University. According to the WiDS website...

New partnership to unleash U.S. supercomputing resources in the fight against COVID-19

March 26, 2020 - 
The White House announced the launch of the COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium to provide COVID-19 researchers worldwide with access to the world’s most powerful high performance computing resources that can significantly advance the pace of scientific discovery in the fight to stop the virus. Read more at LLNL News.

Can machine learning improve computer models enough to ignite internal confinement fusion?

Jan. 28, 2020 - 
Laser-fusion researchers have turned to machine-learning techniques to seek the combinations of laser pulse characteristics and target design needed to optimize target implosions for inertial confinement fusion. Machine learning has tripled the fusion yield of the simpler direct-drive approach being studied with the OMEGA laser at the University of Rochester. In principle, the Rochester...

Big data illuminates the physical sciences

Nov. 6, 2019 - 
Livermore teams are applying innovative data analysis and interpretation techniques to advance fundamental science research. This article describes projects in astrophysics and materials science. Read more at Science & Technology Review.

LLNL team achieves largest graph analytics to date

Oct. 28, 2019 - 
Besides broad usage in the tech industry, graph analytics also have national security applications, where algorithms dig through massive datasets to find anomalies or patterns of nefarious activity. It’s in that vein that an LLNL team of computer scientists and applied mathematicians, including Roger Pearce, Geoffrey Sanders, postdoc Benjamin Priest and visiting scholar Trevor Steil, searched...

Successful simulation and visualization coupling proves the power of Sierra

Oct. 22, 2019 - 
As the first National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) production supercomputer backed by GPU- (graphics processing unit) accelerated architecture, Sierra’s acquisition required a fundamental shift in how scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) program their codes to take advantage of the GPUs. The majority of Sierra’s computational power—95 percent of its 125...

Cindy Gonzales forges a new career in data science

Sept. 25, 2019 - 
Through LLNL’s Data Science Immersion Program, Gonzales is now among the Lab’s newest data scientists. For two and a half years, she juggled a demanding workload—coordinating Computing’s Scholar Program, interning with data scientists, learning from mentors, supporting LLNL’s Data Science Institute, and attending college part time—while also having her first child. Read more at LLNL Computing...

Collaboration drives data science workshop

Sept. 12, 2019 - 
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL’s) Data Science Institute (DSI) hosted its second annual workshop on July 23–24, 2019. Co-sponsored by the University of California (UC) system, the event drew more than 200 participants to Garré Winery in Livermore. A common theme ran throughout both days: Collaboration is always welcome. Indeed, feedback from last year’s workshop inspired a...

CANDLE illuminates new pathways in fight against cancer

Aug. 16, 2019 - 
As part of the Department of Energy’s role in the fight against cancer, scientists are building tools that use supercomputers to solve problems in entirely new ways. Cancer research provides a complex deep learning challenge that enables DOE to develop new supercomputing capabilities that will, in turn, help scientists address challenges in national security and science. The CANcer...

Livermore Lab Foundation awards scholarship to Cal State East Bay computer science student

Aug. 2, 2019 - 
Alan Noun, a computer science student at Cal State University East Bay and the recipient of the Livermore Lab Foundation's first full-year scholarship, has started a summer internship at LLNL. In partnership with Cal State University East Bay (CSUEB), the Livermore Lab Foundation (LLF) awarded Noun a one-year stipend to allow him to devote more time to academics by reducing work he needs to...

New open-air facility will be testing ground for autonomous drones, vehicles and robots

July 25, 2019 - 
LLNL’s new OS-150 Robotics Laboratory is an outdoor, 8,000 square-foot enclosure that will serve as a proving ground for the autonomous drones, vehicles and robots of the future. Informally known as the "drone pen," the 50-foot-tall rectangular enclosure, located directly across from one of the Lab’s main engineering buildings, is allowing operators to pilot their drones safely and...

LLNL Center for Applied Scientific Computing: accelerating scientific discovery (VIDEO)

July 12, 2019 - 
The Center for Applied Scientific Computing (CASC) serves as LLNL’s window to the broader computer science, computational physics, applied mathematics, and data science research communities. Major thrust areas in CASC research include: (1) Increasing simulation fidelity by integrating multi-physics and multi-scale models, increasing resolution through advanced numerical methods and more...

Protecting image classification in artificial intelligence

July 8, 2019 - 
To address vulnerability concerns in image classification, a new subfield of machine learning has emerged called adversarial machine learning, which focuses on the security of machine learning algorithms. Thomas Hogan, a doctoral student of mathematics at UC Davis, spent his summer investigating this new area of research during the National Science Foundation’s Mathematical Sciences Graduate...

Hyperion Research announces new winners of HPC Innovation Excellence Awards

June 18, 2019 - 
Hyperion Research  announced the 14th round of recipients of the HPC Innovation Excellence Award at the ISC19 supercomputer industry conference in Frankfurt, Germany. Led by Brian Spears, an LLNL team used the Trinity supercomputer to seek out successful modes of laser-driven fusion implosions by building an enormous database for supervised training of a machine learned surrogate...

NFL comes to Lab to hear latest on TBI research

June 5, 2019 - 
Officials from the National Football League visited LLNL to hear how the Department of Energy’s national laboratories are using high-performance computing and artificial intelligence to advance scientific understanding of traumatic brain injury (TBI). Read more at LLNL News.

Machine learning on a mission

April 11, 2019 - 
Machine learning uses computers to learn from data and make predictions about the environment. As the world generates more data, interpretation becomes more difficult. A smart machine—one that adapts to new information on the fly—can speed up processing and analysis times and improve its accuracy in identification and prediction tasks. Although commercial and consumer applications of ML are...

International collective of scientists seeks refined understanding of climate system

March 25, 2019 - 
LLNL climate scientists announced the release of new data sets that will provide fresh insights into past and future climate change. Some of these data sets come from model simulations performed at LLNL, one of the more than 40 climate research centers and consortia engaged in next-generation climate change simulations. These results have been produced as part of an international effort to...

CASC research showcased at major data science venues

March 20, 2019 - 
Researchers from LLNL’s Center for Applied Scientific Computing (CASC) are among the Lab’s employees making waves in the data science community, with many prominent accolades, publications, and acceptances in 2018. Data science encompasses some of the hottest technology topics—machine learning (ML), “big data” analysis, artificial intelligence, computer vision, and more—and the Center’s...

ESGF conference caps a productive year

Feb. 12, 2019 - 
Members of the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) gathered in Washington, DC, on December 3–7 for the 8th annual conference. The event packed 40 presentations, several plenary sessions, a poster session, guest speakers, an awards ceremony, and an executive committee meeting into the week. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) delegation comprised 19 staff from the Computation and...

Going deep: Lab employees get an introduction to world of machine learning, neural networks

Feb. 1, 2019 - 
Deep learning is one of the most popular and widely used machine learning methods due to its success with autonomous vehicles, speech recognition and image classification, to name a few emergent technologies. But what exactly is deep learning, and how can it best be applied to Lab projects? LLNL employees discovered the answers during a recent "Deep Learning 101" course, which introduced the...