Data Science in the News

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Predicting climate change impacts on infrastructure (VIDEO)

Feb. 26, 2024 - 
At LLNL, electrical grid experts and climate scientists work together to bridge the gap between infrastructure and climate modeling. By taking weather variables such as wildfire, flooding, wind, and sunlight that directly impact the electrical grid into consideration, researchers can improve electrical grid model projections for a more stable future. In a new video, LLNL computer scientist...

Will it bend? Reinforcement learning optimizes metamaterials

Dec. 13, 2023 - 
Lawrence Livermore staff scientist Xiaoxing Xia collaborated with the Technical University of Denmark to integrate machine learning (ML) and 3D printing techniques. The effort naturally follows Xia’s PhD work in materials science at the California Institute of Technology, where he investigated electrochemically reconfigurable structures. In a paper published in the Journal of Materials...

LLNL, University of California partner for AI-driven additive manufacturing research

Sept. 27, 2023 - 
Grace Gu, a faculty member in mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley, has been selected as the inaugural recipient of the LLNL Early Career UC Faculty Initiative. The initiative is a joint endeavor between LLNL’s Strategic Deterrence Principal Directorate and UC national laboratories at the University of California Office of the President, seeking to foster long-term academic partnerships and...

Making machine learning safer for biomedicine

Aug. 15, 2023 - 
It’s hard to understate the impact machine learning will have on biomedicine. The ability to train computers to spot patterns by analyzing large, complex datasets is driving discoveries in heart disease, cancer, neurodegenerative diseases and more. For instance, Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) has used machine learning to aid cancer research and accelerate COVID-19 antiviral discovery. One...

Explainable artificial intelligence can enhance scientific workflows

July 25, 2023 - 
As ML and AI tools become more widespread, a team of researchers in LLNL’s Computing and Physical and Life Sciences directorates are trying to provide a reasonable starting place for scientists who want to apply ML/AI, but don’t have the appropriate background. The team’s work grew out of a Laboratory Directed Research and Development project on feedstock materials optimization, which led to...

Machine learning reveals refreshing understanding of confined water

July 24, 2023 - 
LLNL scientists combined large-scale molecular dynamics simulations with machine learning interatomic potentials derived from first-principles calculations to examine the hydrogen bonding of water confined in carbon nanotubes (CNTs). They found that the narrower the diameter of the CNT, the more the water structure is affected in a highly complex and nonlinear fashion. The research appears on...

Data science meets fusion (VIDEO)

May 30, 2023 - 
LLNL’s historic fusion ignition achievement on December 5, 2022, was the first experiment to ever achieve net energy gain from nuclear fusion. However, the experiment’s result was not actually that surprising. A team leveraging data science techniques developed and used a landmark system for teaching artificial intelligence (AI) to incorporate and better account for different variables and...

Fueling up hydrogen production

April 3, 2023 - 
Through machine learning, an LLNL scientist has a better grasp of understanding materials used to produce hydrogen fuel. The interaction of water with TiO2 (titanium oxide) surfaces is especially important in various scientific fields and applications, from photocatalysis for hydrogen production to photooxidation of organic pollutants to self-cleaning surfaces and biomedical devices. However...

Scientists develop model for more efficient simulations of protein interactions linked to cancer

March 28, 2023 - 
LLNL scientists have developed a theoretical model for more efficient molecular-level simulations of cell membranes and their lipid-protein interactions, part of a multi-institutional effort to better understand the behavior of cancer-causing membrane proteins. Developed under an ongoing collaboration by the Department of Energy and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) aimed at modeling cell...

From plasma to digital twins

March 13, 2023 - 
LLNL's Nondestructive Evaluation (NDE) group has an array of techniques at its disposal for inspecting objects’ interiors without disturbing them: computed tomography, optical laser interferometry, and ultrasound, for example, can be used alone or in combination to gauge whether a component’s physical and material properties fall within allowed tolerances. In one project, the team of NDE...

New HPC4EI project to create 'digital twin' models for aerospace manufacturing

Jan. 19, 2023 - 
A partnership involving LLNL aimed at developing “digital twins” for producing aerospace components is one of six new projects funded under the HPC for Energy Innovation (HPC4EI) initiative, the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy announced. Sponsored by the HPC4Manufacturing (HPC4Mfg) Program, one of the pillars of HPC4EI, the collaboration between LLNL...

ML model instantly predicts polymer properties

Nov. 30, 2022 - 
Hundreds of millions of tons of polymer materials are produced globally for use in a vast and ever-growing application space with new material demands such as green chemistry polymers, consumer packaging, adhesives, automotive components, fabrics and solar cells. But discovering suitable polymer materials for use in these applications lies in accurately predicting the properties that a...

Understanding the universe with applied statistics (VIDEO)

Nov. 17, 2022 - 
In a new video posted to the Lab’s YouTube channel, statistician Amanda Muyskens describes MuyGPs, her team’s innovative and computationally efficient Gaussian Process hyperparameter estimation method for large data. The method has been applied to space-based image classification and released for open-source use in the Python package MuyGPyS. MuyGPs will help astronomers and astrophysicists...

Papers win Test of Time awards at 2022 IEEE VIS conference

Oct. 31, 2022 - 
Two LLNL-led teams received SciVis Test of Time awards at the 2022 IEEE VIS conference on Oct. 18, for papers that have achieved lasting relevancy in the field of scientific visualization. Published in 2008, an LLNL-led paper that—for the first time—allowed Digital Morse Theory to be applied to large scale and three-dimensional data, won the 14-year Test of Time award for making a lasting...

Project co-led at LLNL looks to improve visualization of largescale datasets

Oct. 27, 2022 - 
LLNL researchers are starting work on a three-year project aimed at improving methods for visual analysis of large heterogeneous data sets as part of a recent Department of Energy funding opportunity. The joint project, entitled “Neural Field Processing for Visual Analysis,” will be led at LLNL by co-principal investigator (PI) Andrew Gillette. Gillette is joined by lead PI Matthew Berger at...

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...

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...

Introduction to deep learning for image classification workshop (VIDEO)

July 6, 2022 - 
In addition to its annual conference held every March, the global Women in Data Science (WiDS) organization hosts workshops and other activities year-round to inspire and educate data scientists worldwide, regardless of gender, and to support women in the field. On June 29, LLNL’s Cindy Gonzales led a WiDS Workshop titled “Introduction to Deep Learning for Image Classification.” The abstract...

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...