Data Science in the News

COVID-19 detection and analysis with Nisha Mulakken (VIDEO)

LLNL biostatistician Nisha Mulakken 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 novel species identification for human health, animal health, biodefense, and environmental sampling...

Laser-driven ion acceleration with deep learning

While advances in machine learning over the past decade have made significant impacts in applications such as image classification, natural language processing and pattern recognition, scientific endeavors have only just begun to leverage this technology. This is most notable in processing large quantities of data from experiments. Research conducted at LLNL is the first to apply neural...

Lab postdocs invited to prestigious Heidelberg Forum

Two LLNL postdoctoral researchers are among a select group of 200 scientists invited to attend the 8th Heidelberg Laureate Forum, an international conference that connects young researchers with laureates of the major prizes in mathematics and computer science. For a week in September, LLNL computational engineering postdocs Ruben Glatt and Felipe Leno da Silva will meet and interact with...

The data-driven future of extreme physics

By applying modern machine learning and data science methods to “extreme” plasma physics, researchers can gain insight into our universe and find clues about creating a limitless amount of energy. In a recent perspective published in Nature, LLNL scientists and international collaborators outline key challenges and future directions in using machine learning and other data-driven techniques...

Conference papers highlight importance of data security to machine learning

The 2021 Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, the premier conference of its kind, will feature two papers co-authored by an LLNL researcher targeted at improving the understanding of robust machine learning models. Both papers include contributions from LLNL computer scientist Bhavya Kailkhura and examine the importance of data in building models, part of a Lab effort to...

Winter hackathon highlights data science talks and tutorial

The Data Science Institute (DSI) sponsored LLNL’s 27th hackathon on February 11–12. Held four times a year, these seasonal events bring the computing community together for a 24-hour period where anything goes: Participants can focus on special projects, learn new programming languages, develop skills, dig into challenging tasks, and more. The winter hackathon was the DSI’s second such...

Ana Kupresanin featured in FOE alumni spotlight

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

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...

Lawrence Livermore computer scientist heads award-winning computer vision research

The 2021 IEEE Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV 2021) on Wednesday announced that a paper co-authored by LLNL computer scientist Rushil Anirudh received the conference’s Best Paper Honorable Mention award based on its potential impact to the field. The paper, titled "Generative Patch Priors for Practical Compressive Image Recovery,” introduces a new kind of prior—a...

LLNL physicist wins Young Former Student award

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...

DOE announces five new energy projects at LLNL

The DOE today announced two rounds of awards for the High Performance Computing for Energy Innovation Program HPC4EI), including five projects at LLNL. HPC4EI connects industry with the computational resources and expertise of the DOE national laboratories to solve challenges in manufacturing, accelerate discovery and adoption of new materials and improve energy efficiency. The awards were...

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

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...

The internship that launched a machine-learning target revolution

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.

Advancing healthcare with data science (VIDEO)

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...

LLNL papers accepted into prestigious conference

Two papers featuring LLNL scientists were accepted in the 2020 International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), one of the world’s premier conferences of its kind. Read more at LLNL News.

UC Merced students receive NSF research fellowships

Maia Powell, a PhD student in Applied Mathematics at UC Merced, has been awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Powell participated in the DSI's Data Science Challenge this summer, serving as a team lead for other students. Read more at UC Merced.

COVID-19 research goes public through new portal

A new online data portal is making available to the public a wealth of data LLNL scientists have gathered from their ongoing COVID-19 molecular design projects, particularly the computer-based “virtual” screening of small molecules and designed antibodies for interactions with the SARS-CoV-2 virus for drug design purposes. The portal houses a wealth of data LLNL scientists have gathered from...

Faces of STEM: Brenda Ng (VIDEO)

In this video, LLNL machine learning scientist Brenda Ng explains why she loves her job in STEM, what advice she has for others, what inspired her to go into STEM, and what she does in her free time. Watch on YouTube.

LLNL creates web resources to aid in fight against COVID-19

LLNL is fully committed to helping protect the U.S. from COVID-19 and to speed the recovery of those affected. As a world-class research institute, we have considerable infrastructure, unique research capabilities and a dedicated team of scientists and engineers supporting the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Our current COVID-19 research and response activities are focused on four broad...

Deep learning may provide solution for efficient charging, driving of autonomous electric vehicles

LLNL computer scientists and software engineers have developed a deep learning-based strategy to maximize electric vehicle (EV) ride-sharing services while reducing carbon emissions and the impact to the electrical grid, emphasizing autonomous EVs capable of offering 24-hour service. Read more at LLNL News.