April newsletter

 
Issue No. 37
April 2017
  • 2017 Science Coding Conference
  • Training Workshops for Researchers
  • Welcome on board team NeSI!
  • Case study: Speeding up Basilisk with GPGPUs
  • NeSI Vacancies
  • IEEE International eScience Conference 2017
  • In other news...
  • Recent research outputs

2017 Science Coding Conference

The 2017 Science Coding Conference will be held from Tuesday August 1st to Wednesday August 2nd at the Massey University Campus in central Wellington.

For 2017, we have changed the name from CRI Coding Conference to Science Coding Conference (SciCo!) to reflect the broadening audience of this event.

This event is for anyone involved in the programming side of NZ research. We encourage all research software engineers, IT managers, researchers and operational software developers from NZ Crown Research Institutes, universities and other public sector organisations to attend the conference.

The call for submissions is now open and we welcome presentations on a variety of topics.

We are looking forward to seeing you in Wellington for SciCo 2017!

Read more...

Training Workshops for Researchers

NeSI is partnering with the University of Auckland, University of Otago, and Scion to deliver three training workshops that build skills in high performance computing, data management, and programming. The workshops are introductory and aimed at faculty and graduate students from all disciplines.

April 20 Introduction to HPC using NeSI @ University of Auckland

11:00 am - 3:00 pm

This hands-on session will provide an introduction to High Performance Computing (HPC). Using a cluster provided by NeSI, you will learn how to access the cluster, submit computational jobs using a job scheduler, and how to transfer your data between the cluster and your storage.

April 20 - 21 University of Otago & NeSI Data Carpentry Workshop

9:00 am - 4:00 pm

Data Carpentry courses are designed to teach fundamental concepts, skills, and tools for working more effectively with data. This session will cover data organisation in spreadsheets and OpenRefine, and provide an introduction to R, data analysis and visualization in R and SQL for data management.

May 8 - 9 Scion & NeSI Software Carpentry Workshop

9:00 am - 5:00 pm

Software Carpentry teaches basic computing skills to help researchers get more work done in less time and with less pain. This two-day, hands-on workshop will cover basic concepts and tools, including program design, version control, data management, and task automation.

Find more information and links to register here...

Welcome on board team NeSI!

We'd like to give a very warm welcome to Jun Huh, who has joined the NeSI team as Product Management and Software Engineering Lead based at the University of Auckland.

Welcome Jun, we're very excited to be working with you!

Read more about Jun...

Case study: Speeding up Basilisk with GPGPUs

Dr Emily Lane, a Coastal Modeller and Hydrodynamics Scientist at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), describes her experience as a NeSI user.

“I first put in my NeSI application to call someone’s bluff. I knew broadly what NeSI was, but had not really looked into it much. My colleagues and I use numerical models to study tsunami and flood inundation and we had heard about codes that had been sped up orders of magnitude by moving the calculations onto GPGPUs (general-purpose graphics processing units). I liked the idea but no one at NIWA had the technical background to translate Basilisk, the code we use for modelling tsunami and flood inundation, to make it run on GPGPUs.”

“We were discussing this at a meeting and someone suggested that I applied for a NeSI project. It sounded appealing but then others told me NeSI didn’t ‘do that kind of thing’ and would offer support but go no further than that. This was just at the start of NeSI 2 though so I figured what did I have to lose? Worst case scenario they’d just say no and I wouldn’t have lost anything.” Read more...

NeSI Vacancies

Could you be the Solutions Architect we are looking for?

NeSI's Solutions Architect role offers an application and team leadership position to a strategically minded and hands-on technologist. This is an exciting opportunity to make a significant contribution to the New Zealand research landscape by working with New Zealand eScience Infrastructure (NeSI).

This position is based with NIWA - the leading environmental research institute and key provider of atmospheric, freshwater and marine research and consultancy services in New Zealand. NIWA's High Performance Computing Facility is a key component of NeSI infrastructure and is used to support both NIWA and NeSI research activities.

Apply now!

IEEE International eScience Conference 2017

Auckland, 24-27 October

From 24 – 27 October this year the 13th IEEE eScience conference will be held in Auckland. The objective of the eScience Conference is to promote and encourage all aspects of eScience and its associated technologies, applications, and tools.

This conference is the premier forum worldwide to present the results of the latest research and product development. Read more...

In other news...

Recent research outputs

We are always interested in hearing about research outputs generated with the help of NeSI. To notify NeSI of upcoming publications, please email pubs@nesi.org.nz. 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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