Data Science in the News

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LLNL scientists eagerly anticipate El Capitan’s potential impact

Oct. 18, 2022 - 
While LLNL is eagerly awaiting the arrival of its first exascale-class supercomputer, El Capitan, physicists and computer scientists running scientific applications on testbeds for the machine are getting a taste of what to expect. “El Capitan has the potential of enabling more than 10x increase in problem throughput,” said Teresa Bailey, associate program director for computation physics in...

Scientific discovery for stockpile stewardship

Sept. 27, 2022 - 
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...

LLNL to cooperate with University of Utah's one oneAPI Center of Excellence

Sept. 21, 2022 - 
The University of Utah has announced the creation of a new oneAPI Center of Excellence focused on developing portable, scalable and performant data compression techniques. The oneAPI Center will be headed out of the University of Utah’s Center for Extreme Data Management Analysis and Visualization (CEDMAV) and will involve the cooperation of LLNL’s Center for Applied Scientific Computing. It...

S&TR cover story: The ACES in our hand

Sept. 20, 2022 - 
Uranium enrichment is central to providing fuel to nuclear reactors, even those intended only for power generation. With minor modifications, however, this process can be altered to yield highly enriched uranium for use in nuclear weapons. The world’s need for nuclear fuel coexists with an ever-present danger—that a nonnuclear weapons nation-state possessing enrichment technology could...

Lab directors discuss LLNL’s past, present and future at ‘historic conversation’

Sept. 14, 2022 - 
On a historic occasion in the Livermore wine country, the nine living LLNL directors gathered on Sept. 8 to mark the Laboratory’s 70th anniversary, share stories and discuss their vision for the Lab in the coming years. Hosted by the nonprofit Livermore Lab Foundation, the panel brought past directors John Foster Jr., John Nuckolls, Bruce Tarter, George Miller, Parney Albright, and Bill...

Celebrating 10 years of hackathons

Sept. 7, 2022 - 
Hackathons are one of LLNL Computing’s most enduring and beloved traditions. Although some details have changed since the first hackathon, the premise remains the same: Participants have 24 hours to work on any project of their choosing, whether that’s learning a programming language, building a prototype, developing a new skill, or experimenting with a software framework. They are encouraged...

LLNL cancer research goes exascale

July 20, 2022 - 
An LLNL team will be among the first researchers to perform work on the world’s first exascale supercomputer—Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Frontier—when they use the system to model cancer-causing protein mutations. Led by Harsh Bhatia, a computer scientist in the Center of Applied Computing at LLNL, the team was awarded limited access to Frontier under the DOE's Advanced Scientific...

Panel discussion spotlights COVID-19 R&D

July 19, 2022 - 
The DSI’s career panel series continued on June 28 to highlight some of LLNL’s COVID-19 research projects. Three data scientists—Emilia Grzesiak, Derek Jones, and Priyadip Ray—joined moderator and data scientist Stewart He to talk about their work in drug screening, protein–drug compounds, antibody–antigen sequence analysis, and risk factor identification. He, who earned a PhD in Computer...

NNSA Administrator Hruby dedicates LLNL’s computing facility upgrade

June 20, 2022 - 
On June 15, Department of Energy Under Secretary for Nuclear Security and Administrator for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Jill Hruby dedicated two critical infrastructure projects at LLNL, part of a three-day visit to the Lab. Hruby attended ribbon-cutting ceremonies for the Exascale Computing Facility Modernization (ECFM) project and LLNL’s new Emergency Operations...

LLNL’s Brase discusses advances by ATOM in accelerating drug discovery pipeline

June 7, 2022 - 
The private-public Accelerating Therapeutic Opportunities in Medicine (ATOM) consortium is showing “significant” progress in demonstrating that HPC and M) tools can speed up the drug discovery process, said Jim Brase, ATOM co-lead and LLNL’s deputy associate director for data science. The consortium currently boasts more than a dozen member organizations, including national laboratories...

El Capitan testbed systems rank among top 200 of world’s most powerful computers

June 1, 2022 - 
As the U.S. welcomed the world’s first “true” exascale supercomputer, three predecessor machines for LLNL's future exascale system El Capitan managed to rank highly on the latest Top500 List of the world’s most powerful supercomputers. Despite being “testbed” machines for El Capitan, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s first exascale supercomputer, the three early access systems...

HPCIC webinar series to highlight LLNL/Hartree Center industry engagement and joint research

May 19, 2022 - 
LLNL and the United Kingdom’s Hartree Centre are launching a new webinar series intended to spur collaboration with industry through discussions on computational science, HPC, and data science. The first Hartree–Livermore joint webinar on Computational Science (HLCS) takes place May 24, where speakers from the Hartree Centre will present industrial collaboration efforts and technical work...

Kevin McLoughlin applies computational biology to complex problems

May 17, 2022 - 
Kevin McLoughlin has always been fascinated by the intersection of computing and biology. His LLNL career encompasses award-winning microbial detection technology, a COVID-19 antiviral drug design pipeline, and work with the ATOM consortium. The appeal for him in these projects lies at the intersection of computing and biology. “I love finding ways to visualize data that reveal relationships...

NNSA and Cornelis Networks to collaborate on next-generation high-performance networking

May 4, 2022 - 
The Next-Generation High Performance Computing Network (NG-HPCN) project for the NNSA’s Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) program will enable NNSA to co-design and partner with Cornelis on development and productization of next-generation interconnect technologies for HPC. The project is led by LLNL for the NNSA Tri-Labs: LLNL, Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories. The resulting...

COVID-19 R&D: Computing responds to pandemic

Jan. 19, 2022 - 
When the COVID-19 pandemic began, the Laboratory immediately started seeking solutions to the myriad challenges posed by the global crisis. The Computing Directorate jumped right in with research and development activities that combine molecular screening to inform antiviral drug experimentation; a generative molecular design software platform to optimize properties of antiviral drugs; an...

Career panel spotlights diversity, equity, and inclusion

Nov. 19, 2021 - 
The DSI’s career panel series continued on November 3 with a session highlighting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as well as the Lab’s DEI-focused employee resource groups (ERGs). ERGs are sponsored by LLNL’s Office of Strategic Diversity and Inclusion Programs. Moderator Anh Quach, member of the Asian Pacific American Council (APAC), was joined by four panelists: Raul Viera Mercado...

U.S. Department of Energy to showcase national lab expertise at SC21

Nov. 11, 2021 - 
The scientific computing and networking leadership of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) national laboratories will be on display at SC21, the International Conference for High-Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis. The conference takes place Nov. 14-19 in St. Louis via a combination of on-site and online resources. The theme of this year’s conference is “Science and...

Building confidence in materials modeling using statistics

Oct. 31, 2021 - 
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...

LLNL joins Human Vaccines Project to accelerate vaccine development and understanding of immune response

Oct. 21, 2021 - 
LLNL has joined the international Human Vaccines Project (HVP), bringing Lab expertise and computing resources to the consortium to aid development of a universal coronavirus vaccine and improve understanding of immune response. The HVP is a nonprofit, public-private partnership with a mission to decode the human immune system and accelerate the development of vaccines and immunotherapies...

Summer scholar develops data-driven approaches to key NIF diagnostics

Oct. 20, 2021 - 
Su-Ann Chong's summer project, “A Data-Driven Approach Towards NIF Neutron Time-of-Flight Diagnostics Using Machine Learning and Bayesian Inference,” is aimed at presenting a different take on nToF diagnostics. Neutron time-of-flight diagnostics are an essential tool to diagnose the implosion dynamics of inertial confinement fusion experiments at NIF, the world’s largest and most energetic...