Data Science in the News

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Brian Gallagher combines science with service

June 20, 2021 - 
Brian Gallagher works on applications of machine learning for a variety of science and national security questions. He’s also a group leader, student mentor, and the new director of LLNL’s Data Science Challenge. The Lab has enabled Gallagher to combine scientific pursuits with leadership positions and people-focused responsibilities. “For a long time, my primary motivation was learning new...

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

June 7, 2021 - 
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...

Conference papers highlight importance of data security to machine learning

May 12, 2021 - 
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

March 24, 2021 - 
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...

Lawrence Livermore computer scientist heads award-winning computer vision research

Jan. 8, 2021 - 
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...

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...

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...

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...

UC Merced students receive NSF research fellowships

June 3, 2020 - 
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

May 18, 2020 - 
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...

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

March 30, 2020 - 
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...

Lab leads effort to model proteins tied to cancer

Oct. 31, 2019 - 
Computational scientists, biophysicists and statisticians from LLNL and Los Alamos National Laboratory(LANL) are leading a massive multi-institutional collaboration that has developed a machine learning-based simulation for next-generation supercomputers capable of modeling protein interactions and mutations that play a role in many forms of cancer. Read more at LLNL News.

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...

Two-week workshop lets UC Merced students step into shoes of Lab computer scientists

June 12, 2019 - 
From May 20-31, 21 undergraduate and graduate students, many of them first-generation college students, interned at the Lab. While they were on site, the students, along with their Lab mentors, were tasked with using machine learning and other computational methods to tackle real-world problems in computational immunology. Read more at LLNL News.

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.

Multi-institutional meeting centers on making the 'impossible' possible in cancer research

March 22, 2019 - 
Computer scientists, biomedical engineers, cancer biologists and bioinformaticians from eight Department of Energy national laboratories, health-related government agencies and universities converged at LLNL March 6-7 to discuss ongoing efforts to advance cancer research through computation, identify existing challenges and brainstorm future multidisciplinary projects. Read more at LLNL News...

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...