August 2015 newsletter

News and events from NeSI, the New Zealand eScience Infrastructure.
Issue No. 24
August 2015
  • Case Study: Reliability of bloodstain pattern analysis
  • Workshop: HPC scientific programming 
  • NeSI Application Support team spotlight
  • Join NeSI's team: Grow the computing and analytics capability of NZ researchers 
  • Access NeSI's HPC platforms
  • eResearch Australasia 2015 
  • Figshare for Institutions: The next generation research data management platform
  • Research Data Alliance webinar
  • Recent research outputs

Case Study: Reliability of bloodstain pattern analysis

Bloodstain pattern analysis is a pattern recognition task in which interpretation of the size, shape, and distribution of bloodstains can provide valuable information in a crime scene investigation. This study investigates the factors that influence reliability in bloodstain pattern using a computationally complex Bayesian framework.

“Without an organisation like NeSI, and the services that they provide, it is unlikely that we would have been able to advance the research methodology to a Bayesian framework.” Dr. Niki Osborne Read more

Workshop: HPC scientific programming

Auckland region workshop from 21-22 September 2015.

NeSI in collaboration with NVIDIA and the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) is offering a NVIDIA graphics processing unit (GPU) Workshop in the Auckland region. 

This intensive two day workshop will be held at NIWA in Auckland from 21-22 September and will cover a number of topics including:
  • NVIDIA GPU technology overview
  • GPU enabled applications (e.g. MatLab)
  • Directives based programming using OpenACC
  • Introduction to CUDA C/C++ and popular libraries (e.g. blas, fft, curand) as well as CUDA tools
  • Opportunity for researchers to ask for help with their existing GPU code, participate in group discussions on the problem, and receive advice on how to effectively parallelise their code
Followup support will be available for attendees including one-on-one support as well as future workshops. If you miss out on this opportunity stay tuned as NeSI will be offering more workshops like this during the year in other regions. Click here to register


NeSI Application Support team spotlight

Gene Soudlenkov joins the Application Support team.

NeSI is building a new support team to extend the tradition of providing a first class personalised experience to NZ researchers. We are pleased to welcome Gene Soudlenkov as the newest member of the team.

"Our team is always ready to help," says Gene. "We assist researchers in optimising their software, show them how to get the best performance out of the software packages they use, and help them if they find their cluster jobs in limbo or their workflows are in knots. We also run regular workshops on cluster usage as well as a few other workshops on various computational issues, such as parallelisation, optimisation, profiling." 

Some facts about Gene:

Q: Why did you choose to work at NeSI and what is the biggest challenge?
A: I always enjoyed the challenge of scientific computing and the complexity of parallel computations. I guess the biggest challenge is the variety of operations - where else can you help researchers count possums in the morning and model asteroid distributions in the afternoon?

Q: What's your favourite thing on your desk and what is one thing that has surprised you about working at NeSI?
A: My screen and my keyboard... and the piles of books. What keeps surprising me is the fact that we (with great help from all the researchers) do our best to break the machines - and they still work, even better than before!

Join NeSI's team: Grow the computing and analytics capability of NZ researchers  

NeSI positions are currently available at the University of Auckland.

NeSI is offering unique opportunities to join a collaborative national team and work along side NeSI’s High Performance Computing (HPC) systems. We are currently recruiting for positions in Auckland. 

Join us as we continue to innovate and support the research community in New Zealand. In return we offer the chance to work for a group committed to HPC best practice and excellence.

New Zealand eScience Infrastructure is a collaboration of five research institutions, working in partnership with the Crown, providing HPC, analytics and consultancy services to the NZ Research sector, Government Initiatives/Agencies and Industrial Research.  NeSI’s primary aim is to grow the computing and analytics capability of researchers to ensure New Zealand’s future prosperity. Read more about available positions

Access NeSI's HPC platforms


All New Zealand researchers are invited to apply for access to New Zealand’s largest research computers. This call closes on Friday, 11 September 2015

NeSI's Access Policy outlines the terms and conditions for applying and how access is allocated. To better support NZ researchers, allocations of CPU core hours for Merit, Postgraduate and Proposal Development projects are provided at no cost.

NeSI is hosting a video conference from 10-11am on Tuesday, 8 September, where you can learn more about eligibility or the suitability of NeSI HPC for your research. Apply now

eResearch Australasia 2015


This year's ninth annual eResearch Australasia conference will be held at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre. The theme for this conference is 'Fuelling the knowledge economy'. 

The Workshops and Main Conference Programs are now available.

Poster submissions are currently being accepted until2 October 2015. Posters enable individuals or groups to display information about innovative projects or activities in an informal, interactive environment. They can include live demonstrations. Posters remain on display throughout the conference. Click here to participate

Research data management


Figshare recently launched their next generation research data management platform, Figshare for Institutions. This platform was developed to address the specific needs of academic institutions to store research data securely and was piloted in the U.K., Australia, New Zealand and mainland Europe. Figshare for Institutions supports the need for better storage, preservation, accessibility and publication of the outputs produced by researchers. Some new functionality are:
  • Portals that showcase research of an institution or department
  • Ability to group content into collections
  • Data curation and administrative workflows
  • Flexible storage options
  • Increased file upload limits
  • Enhanced content discoverability through a revamped search, categorization and metadata

Research Data Alliance


The Research Data Alliance (RDA) is a volunteer organisation with the aim of building social and technical bridges for data sharing. As part of its commitment to engage all of its members in the organisation's future planning process, a series of webinars have been scheduled to foster discussion, feedback and contribution to defining the priorities and future actions of the RDA:Additional information on RDA future directions planning can be found here.

The next RDA Plenary Meeting will be held from 23-25 September 2015 in Paris, France. The Plenary will feature a special focus on research data for climate change.

Recent research outputs

Below is a sample of research outputs that NeSI has been made aware of. To notify NeSI of upcoming publications, please email pubs@nesi.org.nz
  • Gravitational Wave Consistency Relations for Multifield Inflation. L. C. Price, H. V. Peiris, J. Frazer and R. Easther. Phys. Rev. Lett. 10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.031301
  • Hierarchical Failure Time Regression Using Mixtures for Classification of the Immune Response of Atlantic Salmon. J. S. Romeo, R. Meyer and F. E. Reyes-Lopez. J. Agri. Biol. Environ. Stat. 10.1007/s13253-014-0188-8
If you would like to be kept up to date with research outputs as NeSI includes them, please join our Mendeley group.

Have a question?

If you would like to ask anything, please email us support@nesi.org.nz
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