Data Science in the News

Scientific discovery for stockpile stewardship

Among the significant scientific discoveries that have helped ensure the reliability of the nation’s nuclear stockpile is the advancement of cognitive simulation. In cognitive simulation, researchers are developing AI/ML algorithms and software to retrain part of this model on the experimental data itself. The result is a model that “knows the best of both worlds,” says Brian Spears, a...

An open-source, data-science toolkit for energy: GridDS

As the number of smart meters and the demand for energy is expected to increase by 50% by 2050, so will the amount of data those smart meters produce. While energy standards have enabled large-scale data collection and storage, maximizing this data to mitigate costs and consumer demand has been an ongoing focus of energy research. An LLNL team has developed GridDS—an open-source, data-science...

Defending U.S. critical infrastructure from nation-state cyberattacks

For many years, LLNL has been conducting research on cybersecurity, as well as defending its systems and networks from cyberattacks. The Lab has developed an array of capabilities to detect and defend against cyberintruders targeting IT networks and worked with government agencies and private-sector partners to share its cybersecurity knowledge to the wider cyberdefense community. LLNL has...

UC Merced students work with LLNL mentors on potential new drugs to combat COVID-19

Students from the University of California, Merced worked with mentors at LLNL to identify drug compounds that could be used to treat COVID-19 during a two-week Data Science Challenge (DSC) that concluded on June 6. For the first time in the DSC series since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, Lab mentors visited the college campus to provide in-person guidance for five teams of UC Merced...

Assured and robust…or bust

The consequences of a machine learning (ML) error that presents irrelevant advertisements to a group of social media users may seem relatively minor. However, this opacity, combined with the fact that ML systems are nascent and imperfect, makes trusting their accuracy difficult in mission-critical situations, such as recognizing life-or-death risks to military personnel or advancing materials...

CASC team wins best paper at visualization symposium

A research team from LLNL’s Center for Applied Scientific Computing won Best Paper at the 15th IEEE Pacific Visualization Symposium (PacificVis), which was held virtually on April 11–14. Computer scientists Harsh Bhatia, Peer-Timo Bremer, and Peter Lindstrom collaborated with University of Utah colleagues Duong Hoang, Nate Morrical, and Valerio Pascucci on “AMM: Adaptive Multilinear Meshes.”...

Unprecedented multiscale model of protein behavior linked to cancer-causing mutations

LLNL researchers and a multi-institutional team have developed a highly detailed, machine learning–backed multiscale model revealing the importance of lipids to the signaling dynamics of RAS, a family of proteins whose mutations are linked to numerous cancers. Published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the paper details the methodology behind the Multiscale Machine...

LLNL establishes AI Innovation Incubator to advance artificial intelligence for applied science

LLNL has established the AI Innovation Incubator (AI3), a collaborative hub aimed at uniting experts in artificial intelligence (AI) from LLNL, industry and academia to advance AI for large-scale scientific and commercial applications. LLNL has entered into a new memoranda of understanding with Google, IBM and NVIDIA, with plans to use the incubator to facilitate discussions and form future...

Building confidence in materials modeling using statistics

LLNL statisticians, computational modelers, and materials scientists have been developing a statistical framework for researchers to better assess the relationship between model uncertainties and experimental data. The Livermore-developed statistical framework is intended to assess sources of uncertainty in strength model input, recommend new experiments to reduce those sources of uncertainty...

Data Science Challenge welcomes UC Riverside

Together with LLNL’s Center for Applied Scientific Computing (CASC), the DSI welcomed a new academic partner to the 2021 Data Science Challenge (DSC) internship program: the University of California (UC) Riverside campus. The intensive program has run for three years with UC Merced, and it tasks undergraduate and graduate students with addressing a real-world scientific problem using data...

Virtual LLNL-UC Merced Data Science Challenge tackles asteroid detection though machine learning

Over three weeks, students from the University of California, Merced collaborated online with mentors at LLNL to tackle a real-world challenge problem: using machine learning to identify potentially hazardous asteroids that could pose an existential threat to humanity. Throughout the event, the teams tackled problems around the theme of “Astronomy for Planetary Defense.” For the main...

Brian Gallagher combines science with service

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...

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...

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...

Lab researchers explore ‘learn-by-calibration’ approach to deep learning to accurately emulate scientific process

An LLNL team has developed a “Learn-by-Calibrating” method for creating powerful scientific emulators that could be used as proxies for far more computationally intensive simulators. Researchers found the approach results in high-quality predictive models that are closer to real-world data and better calibrated than previous state-of-the-art methods. The LbC approach is based on interval...

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...

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...

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

AI gets a boost via LLNL, SambaNova collaboration

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

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...