Data Science in the News

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

June 30, 2022 - 
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

June 30, 2022 - 
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...

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...

CASC team wins best paper at visualization symposium

May 25, 2022 - 
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.”...

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...

Accelerating the path to precision medicine

March 22, 2022 - 
LLNL joined the Transforming Research and Clinical Knowledge in Traumatic Brain Injury (TRACK-TBI) consortium in 2018. The national, multiyear, multidisciplinary effort, led by the University of California at San Francisco in collaboration with Lawrence Berkeley and Argonne national laboratories and other leading research organizations and universities, combines neuroimaging, blood-based...

Paving the way to tailor-made carbon nanomaterials and more accurate energetic materials modeling

March 17, 2022 - 
To better understand how carbon nanomaterials could be tailor-made and how their formation impacts shock phenomena such as detonation, LLNL scientists conducted machine-learning-driven atomistic simulations to provide insight into the fundamental processes controlling the formation of nanocarbon materials, which could serve as a design tool, help guide experimental efforts and enable more...

Machine learning model finds COVID-19 risks for cancer patients

March 10, 2022 - 
A new study by researchers at LLNL and the University of California, San Francisco, looks to identify cancer-related risks for poor outcomes from COVID-19. Analyzing one of the largest databases of patients with cancer and COVID-19, the team found previously unreported links between a rare type of cancer—as well as two cancer treatment-related drugs—and an increased risk of hospitalization...

LLNL team models COVID-19 disease progression and identifies risk factors

Feb. 15, 2022 - 
An LLNL team has developed a comprehensive dynamic model of COVID-19 disease progression in hospitalized patients, finding that risk factors for complications from the disease are dependent on the patient’s disease state. Using a machine learning algorithm on a dataset of electronic health records from more than 1,300 hospitalized COVID-19 patients with ProMedica — the largest health care...

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...

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

Jan. 10, 2022 - 
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...

Understanding materials behavior with data science (VIDEO)

Dec. 21, 2021 - 
Computational chemist Rebecca Lindsey, PhD, explains how machine learning and data science techniques are used to develop diagnostic tools for stockpile stewardship, such as models that predict detonator performance. Lindsey also describes how atomistic simulations improve researchers’ understanding of the microscopic phenomena that govern the chemistry in materials under extreme conditions...

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

Dec. 20, 2021 - 
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...

Digital twins for cancer patients could be ‘paradigm shift’ for predictive oncology

Dec. 16, 2021 - 
A multi-institutional team, including an LLNL contributor, has proposed a framework for digital twin models of cancer patients that researchers say would create a “paradigm shift” for predictive oncology. Published online Nature Medicine on November 25, the proposed framework for Cancer Patient Digital Twins (CPDTs) — virtual representations of cancer patients using real-time data — would...

Building better materials with data science (VIDEO)

Nov. 11, 2021 - 
Research engineer Brian Giera, PhD, describes how data science techniques help collect and analyze data from advanced manufacturing processes in order to craft meaningful experiments. With examples of automated microencapsulation, 3D nanoprinting, metal additive manufacturing, laser track welding, and digital twins, Giera explains how interdisciplinary teams apply machine learning to remove...

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...

Tackling the COVID-19 pandemic

Oct. 11, 2021 - 
To help the U.S. fight the COVID-19 pandemic, LLNL did what it does best: quickly bring together interdisciplinary teams and diverse technologies to address urgent national challenges. This effort includes applying advanced high-performance computing resources to biological research and anayzing complicated computer models and enormous datasets. Read more in Science & Technology Review.

Inaugural industry forum inspires ML community

Sept. 16, 2021 - 
LLNL held its first-ever Machine Learning for Industry Forum (ML4I) on August 10–12. Co-hosted by the Lab’s High-Performance Computing Innovation Center (HPCIC) and Data Science Institute (DSI), the virtual event brought together more than 500 enrollees from the Department of Energy (DOE) complex, commercial companies, professional societies, and academia. Industry sponsors included...

Visualization software stands the test of time

Sept. 13, 2021 - 
In the decades since LLNL’s founding, the technology used in pursuit of the Laboratory’s national security mission has changed over time. For example, studying scientific phenomena and predicting their behaviors require increasingly robust, high-resolution simulations. These crucial tasks compound the demands on high-performance computing hardware and software, which must continually be...