Category Archives: Computer Science
Deslauriers named Smithfield’s Teacher of the Year 2021 – Valley Breeze
5/5/2021
SMITHFIELD Any student in the past 11 years who took computer science courses at Smithfield High School has Michael Deslauriers to thank, and the Smithfield School Department has extended its own thanks and recognition to the math teacher in naming him the 2021 Smithfield Teacher of the Year.
During a presentation at Mondays meeting, Supt. Judy Paolucci said Deslauriers began teaching in 2001, and soon after recognized a need for students to learn computer science, beginning classes in 2010.
After years of teaching all-male computer science classes, Deslauriers began exploring ways to bring girls into the computer science classroom and other courses.
Paolucci said Deslauriers brought in grants to create two new programs, computer science and information technology, focused on bridging the disparity of females in computer science and technology.
In addition to many other accomplishments, Deslauriers also won the Aspirations in Computer Programming Award for his commitment to encouraging interest in computer science for women, gender non-binary, and queer people.
Paolucci said of the numerous great educators in Smithfield, it was a difficult choice selecting a teacher of the year.
Michael is well-deserving of this acknowledgment, she said.
Deslauriers thanked the School Department for the award, with members of his family and members of the math department on the call during Mondays Zoom meeting to help celebrate.The Valley Breeze is committed to keeping quality news stories like this one free to our readers. You can be a huge part of this local journalism success story by making a one-time or monthly contribution to what we do every week. Thank you as always for reading.
Deslauriers said he is most proud of his efforts at boosting interest in computer science programs.
Its definitely getting more females into computer science and getting the program going, he said when asked about his greatest achievements.
He runs three after-school programs, including Girls Who Code, the App Inventors Club and the Cyber Patriot Team.
Principal Dan Kelley said Deslauriers is a great teammate in the math department and said there are many students who prove that this teachers commitment worked. Kelley said senior Bailey Gaffney presented to the School Committee the perfect success story of taking a student not interested in computer science to a person who will now major in information technology at the University of Rhode Island in the fall.
Thats thanks to Mike and him having the foresight to start working and putting these programs and CTE (career and technology education) pathways together, Kelley said.
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Deslauriers named Smithfield's Teacher of the Year 2021 - Valley Breeze
Worcester County names 2020-2021 Teacher of the Year – Delmarva Now
Special to The Daily TImes Published 6:00 a.m. ET May 6, 2021
As the coronavirus pandemic continues into the fall, three Wicomico County teachers explain how they're preparing for the upcoming virtual semester. Salisbury Daily Times
Worcester Tech teacher Aarti Sangwan has been named Worcester County's 2020-2021 Teacher of the Year.
Sangwan earned her Bachelor of Science in physics. She got her master's degree in computer science from Western Illinois University, and received a Governors Citation for her work in education, motivating her to earn a Master of Arts in Teaching from Salisbury University.
This Teacher of Promise awardee believes that scientific literacy empowers individuals to be effective problem solvers and life-long learners.
Her passion towardscientific discovery led her to teach AP physics, pre-engineering, bio-med and computer science over the past fiveyears at Worcester Tech. She coaches also Science Olympiad teams, the Girls Coding-Cluband Team Engineering Challenge at SkillsUSA.
Aarti Sangwan(Photo: Submitted image)
The full list of school-level teachers of the year nominees:
Mia Byrd, Snow Hill Elementary School
Beverly Hart, Pocomoke Middle School
Catherine Herr, Ocean City Elementary School
Cara Kurtz, Snow Hill Middle School, finalists
Kurt Marx, Stephen Decatur High School
Ellen Masters, Berlin Intermediate School
Melissa Reid, Buckingham Elementary School, finalist
Stacey Russell, Cedar Chapel Special School
Aarti Sangwan, Worcester Technical High School
Jennifer Taylor, Pocomoke High School
Nicholas Traud, Snow Hill High School
Lauren Walker, Pocomoke Elementary School, finalist
Laura Wheeler, Showell Elementary School
Caleb Wilson, Stephen Decatur Middle School
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Worcester County names 2020-2021 Teacher of the Year - Delmarva Now
Spring Science Week Featured Discussion on Documentary, ‘Coded Bias,’ Citing Social and Political Impacts of AI – WPI News
Among the storylines in the film is the use of facial recognition AI by law enforcement agencies. One particularly powerful scene shows a person having their face scanned by facial recognition technology just to buy a soda from a vending machine in China.
How bias is coded
Part of the discussionfocused on how AI technology tends to favor the creators, who are often white men, and thus leaves marginalized groups behind.
The same way that we see institutionalized bias in admissions to higher education institutes, job placement, immigration policies, and access to a host of things, we see the same bias played out in algorithms, Brown said. [The] documentary does a stellar job of highlighting how technology is biased and arguing that the government might need to step in and regulate AI in some way.We often forget that the person doing the coding has their own assumptions, stereotypes, and bias, which carries into code.
When asked by Brown what inspired her to create the film,Kantayya said she read Weapons of Math Destruction:How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens DemocracybyCathy ONeil, which sent her down a rabbit hole.
I didnt realize the extent to which we as human beings are already outsourcing our autonomy to machines, she said. Were trusting them to make such important decisions I realized that these same systems were trusting so implicitly have not been vetted for racial bias or gender bias.
One of the main messages of the film, according to Kantayya, is that bias in AI can make historically vulnerable communities open to further discrimination and brutality, as in the case with police surveillance. Harm is whats at stake, she said. These things infringe on our civil rights.
Its such an important conversation for us to be having at all scaleslocally, nationally, globallyabout the level of impact that algorithms and AI can have on humans and society, Smith said.
Noting a storyline in the film about residents of an apartment building in Brooklyn fighting back against facial recognition software and teaching themselves about AI, Smith said she often thinks about this imbalance of public understanding of computer science and algorithms.
Action items
Kantayya said that data scientists have almost too much responsibility, in having to question what is ethical and fair and what might impact someones civil rights. What needs to happen, she said, is a radical inclusion of more people, including ethicists and policy makers.Inclusion has to be a part of the picture and the process, she said. [Diverse] voices need to be in the rooms where these decisions are being made.
When it comes to training the next generation of computer scientists,Kantayya suggested integrating more liberal arts education into a computer science education and making it more of an interdisciplinary study to change the pipeline of how these subjects are being taught.
As the computer scientist on the panel, Smith agreed, pointing out that she doesnt remember having learned any of that as an undergraduate student.
Another way to diversify the field, Kantayya added, is to have a massive investment campaign and outreach to get more women and people of color in STEM. By speaking to low-income high school students and showing students how AI can be relevant to them, the more competitive these industries will be, she said.
When some WPI students go on to work at big tech companies, she implores them to speak up and be a voice of dissent. Listening to people who are radically different from us makes technology more fair, ethical, and competitive, she said.
Closing the discussion, Jean King, Peterson Family Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences, thankedKantayya for combining arts and sciences into one conversation and for giving everyone a lens with which to look at these topics. All professors and students have a role to play, she said.
Responding to a question from King about the next steps in this journey, Kantayya reiterated the importance of national literacy around algorithms and AI. Maybe your institution could be a part of spreading that curriculum, she said.
Aside from increasing literacy, Ive seen how everyday people can make a difference, Kantayya said. I think if we each do one thing, everyday people can make a difference when we care enough to make a difference.
Melanie Thibeault
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Tired of brushing your own hair? Now you can get a robot to do it for you – SYFY WIRE
Have you ever been stuck in the tangled doldrums of hair brushing and just found yourself thinking: Boy, I could really use some help with this?
Well, now the smarties at MITs Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and the Soft Math Lab at Harvard University have put their heads together to bring you RoboWig, a robot who can gently but effectively brush your hair. Just imagine all the multitasking opportunities!
To be fair, there is a valid reason to attempt such a heady robotic task, as a personal care bot with RoboWig's brushing skills could be very useful to someone who has a hard time performing physical tasks, for instance eldery or disabled people. According to an MIT CSAIL article, nurses spend somewhere between 18 to 40 percent of their time on direct patient care tasks, such as hair brushing. So you can see where such a bot could come in handy.
Obviously, creating a skilled brusher bot is no small task, considering you have to have a robot that can gauge force so as to comb through tangles, but not painfully pull out all your hair. To accomplish as much, scientists equipped a robotic arm with a sensorized soft brush and a camera, which basically allows it to see curls and assess the most delicate and time-efficient way to brush them out.
Check out RoboWig in action as it brushes through increasingly more curly wigs in the MIT CSAIL video below:
In order to apply the proper amount of force, RoboWig uses the sensorized hair brush in conjunction with computer vision. The feedback collected from the sensors allows the barber bot to adjust the force with which it brushes, by adapting to the degree of tangling in the fiber bunch.
As youd guess, it all boils down to math really. The data presents the tangled bunches as sets of entwined double helices, akin to DNA strands. Such granularity allows the team to create mathematical models and control systems used to manipulate soft fibers bundles.
By developing a model of tangled fibers, we understand from a model-based perspective how hairs must be entangled: starting from the bottom and slowly working the way up to prevent 'jamming' of the fibers, CSAIL postdoc Josie Hughes, lead author on a recent paper about RoboWig, said in the article. This is something everyone who has brushed hair has learned from experience, but is now something we can demonstrate through a model, and use to inform a robot.
Aside from the obvious patient care tasks, the technology could also foreseeably be applied in textiles, animal care, or other fibrous systems, according to the article. Or it could also just come in handy if youve just got really curly hair (and are perhaps lazy).
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Tired of brushing your own hair? Now you can get a robot to do it for you - SYFY WIRE
Better vision care in the palm of your hand – UMSL Daily
The two, along with Senior Research Engineering Technician Michael Howe, are building a prototype for a tool that can be used with a smartphone.
It works with the phone to collect data that is analyzed using computer vision techniques.
You can reduce the cost using the power inside the smartphone to do things that are dependent on very expensive instruments otherwise, Bhatia says.
The tool doesnt even require a trained clinician at the controls.
Smartphones can also store data when there is poor or no connectivity and be used to deliver information asynchronously to a trained clinician for evaluation and to make a diagnosis.
What we want is to develop a tool that has essentially low degrees of freedom that guides the operator in not just making a diagnosis but learning how to use the tool and understanding what they see, Nabhan says. It cant be inferior to current standards. Thats where we draw the line. I think thats where others have failed in the field.
He adds, If we take advantage of that technology, we think we can penetrate not just the market but penetrate communities that are hard to get to and provide more access to care.
They hope the tool will be ready for testing by the fall. Theyve already received funding to beta-test it on campus, and OneSight has granted them permission to test the device at its clinics.
Nabhan and Bhatia have had a fruitful partnership since they first started collaborating on hardware-software solutions in 2015.
That was the year they met at an institutional research workshop, though Nabhan had been aware of Bhatia and his expertise. Nabhan had been looking to connect with Bhatia when the workshop began.
I dont remember if I heard his name during roll call or he raised his hand and asked a question and they responded back with his name, but I was in the back, looking around trying to see where this guy was, Nabhan says. I made a beeline as soon as that meeting was over to introduce myself.
Much of Bhatias research had been connected to the defense industry when they started working together, but collaborating with an optometrist made a lot of sense.
I teach computer vision, and early on in the class, we talk about the human vision system because that is what we are trying to replicate, Bhatia says.
The software driving computer vision technology attempts to mimic the way the eye and the brain work to process information. The pixels of data captured by cameras can serve the same function as the photoreceptor cells in the eye that read color or gray scale.
The technology hes developing with Nabhan can afford to process things at a little bit slower speed than when hes working on defense projects.
When you are flying an airplane and trying to look for threats, you cannot afford to drop any frames, Bhatia says. The computers you need to have are much more powerful. Over here, its still very important, but if it takes a couple of seconds longer to make a diagnosis, its not going to be a matter of life and death.
Nabhan and Bhatia have learned a lot from each other through their shared efforts, and they plan to continue tackling other challenges in the future.
Its great being around people who dont do what you do because they think about it in different ways, Nabhan says. I see it as a no-brainer to try to work with computer scientists to solve these problems, and Dr. Bhatia has been my No. 1 advocate and mentor. Were really excited to be solving problems together.
This story was originally published in the spring 2021 issue ofUMSLMagazine. If you have a story idea forUMSLMagazine, emailmagazine@umsl.edu.
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Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Awarded Grant for Catheter Research Project – Syracuse University News
For the 75 million people who require a urinary catheter, urinary tract infections are a serious concern. Catheters are prone to colonization by bacterial and fungal pathogens, which causes antibiotic-resistant infections. An infection can also lead to pH changes in the urine and block a catheter due to stone formation with potentially fatal consequences. Catheter associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs) that are antibiotic resistant cause 13,000 deaths in the U.S. each year.
College of Engineering and Computer Science professors Dacheng Ren, Stevenson endowed professor of biomedical and chemical engineering and associate dean for research and graduate programs; Teng Zhang, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering; and Huan Gu, research assistant professor and Upstate Medical Universitys Dmitriy Nikolavsky, MD, associate professor of Urology, were awarded an National Institutes of Health (NIH) R01 grant for a project aiming to engineer a new urinary catheter using smart biomaterials to reduce catheter associated complications.
Conventional antibiotics commonly fail to eradicate infections associated with medical devices because of the remarkable capabilities of microbes to colonize these surfaces and form drug-resistant biofilms. To solve this challenging problem, we need new strategies that can provide long-term protections. This R01 project gave us an exciting opportunity to do exactly that, said Ren, the principal investigator of this project.
Rens lab has developed a new strategy designed to make catheters smarter and more resistant to infection. They successfully created micron-sized pillars with supermagnetic nanoparticles on the tip so the pillars can beat in response to an electromagnetic field generated using an insulated copper coil embedded in the catheter wall. By controlling the on and off of an electric current, they could turn the magnetic field on and off, and thus control the beating frequency and beating force of the pillars. This strategy (active topography) worked well, as these moving pillars prevented biofilm formation of multiple bacterial species by up to 99.9% compared to flat control surfaces. A prototype catheter with active topography remained clean for 30 days while the control catheters were blocked by biofilms of uropathogenicEscherichia coliwithin five days in an in vitro test with flow of a medium mimicking urine. Their study was published in a recent issue ofNature Communications.
Now Ren, Gu, Zhang and Nikolavsky will move forward and study the mechanism of infection control by such active topographies, and further engineer their catheter porotype for in vivo tests in this R01 project. By optimizing micron sized pillars on the catheter wall, they hope to develop a self-cleaning catheter that would be much safer for long term use.
This strategy is inspired by the motile cilia in human airways that protects our lungs from foreign particles during respiration, said Gu. Thanks to the development in materials and surface engineering, we can replicate this defense strategy, make it more robust and adaptable, and apply it to address challenges such as biofilm-associated urinary tract infections in this project.
Numerical simulations from Zhangs lab and the collaboration with Nikolavsky in Upstate Medical Universitys urology department are key components to the potentially groundbreaking work.
Biofilms are highly complicated biological materials with active bacteria embedded in polymer networks. This poses challenges and provides opportunities to integrate mechanics modeling and simulations with well-controlled experiments to uncover the working mechanism and design principles of medical devices.
Zhang has been collaborating with the Ren lab prior to this award and he is also a co-author of the Nature Communications paper.
If successful, the findings from this study may also help solve other infections that involve microbial biofilms, especially those associated with medical devices.
I am very excited about this design of smart catheters, Bacterial colonization and biofilm formation on catheters, stents and other implantable devices is an enormous problem in medicine, said Nikolavsky. Creating such smart surfaces on catheters that would actively expel pathogens, could potentially prevent bacterial colonization, catheter-associated urinary tract infections and may save patients with chronic catheters from bladder stone formation and recurrent catheter encrustation and clogging. I expect this will improve medical care and have positive effect on quality of life for many patients and prevent some of the common urological emergencies.
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Wang receives NSF CAREER award – UB Now: News and views for UB faculty and staff – University at Buffalo Reporter
As web applications become more complex, it is almost impossible to ensure that they are not vulnerable to malicious attacks.
Web access failures that compromise millions of users data and security breaches that install malicious software on computers and networks are just a few of the issues that have become ubiquitous.
Weihang Wang, assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, is investigating ways to streamline complex web applications and mitigate their unwanted effects with support from the National Science Foundations prestigious Early CAREER award.
My project addresses the technical boundaries that exist in complex web applications and the creation of a scientific foundation for understanding, analyzing and debugging them that involves diverse languages and multiple parties, says Wang.
The project will support web application reliability, increase web development productivity and provide critical assurance for web users by shielding them from common web issues.
Wang will also use the award to educate future computer scientists and engineers by involving them in the research project at both the undergraduate and graduate level, and by collaborating with the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences CSExplore Summer Camp, an established day camp for high school girls that teaches the fundamentals of computing.
She plans to organize technical tutorials at conferences and give seminars at software companies to educate others on effective approaches for studying, mitigating and resolving common web issues.
One of the outcomes of Weihangs work is to help make complex web applications more secure and have better privacy protection. As we interact with web applications so often, her work has tremendous social impacts in addition to technical merits, and I am very proud of her achievement, says Chunming Qiao, SUNY Distinguished Professor and chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering.
Wangs main research interests are in software engineering, computer systems and software security, with a focus on building practical techniques for improving the reliability and efficiency of software systems.
My long-term career goal is to create effective tools that solve important software development, security and sustainability issues that affect a significant number of people, says Wang. My work leverages emerging software infrastructures and hardware devices to create innovative techniques and systems that can respond to ever-changing computing requirements.
The five-year award, entitled Cross-Boundary Program Analyses for Web Applications, is funded with $500,000 from the NSFs Division of Computing and Communication Foundations.
In addition to the NSF CAREER Award, Wang received a Facebook Testing and Verification Research Award in 2019, a Mozilla Research Award in 2019 and the Maurice H. Halstead Memorial Research Award in 2018.
She joined the UB engineering faculty in 2018 after earning her PhD from Purdue University.
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National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences elect 36 new UC members – University of California
The National Academy of Sciences and American Academy of Arts andSciences announced their newly elected members this week, expanding their ranks by 11 and 25UC faculty, respectively.
Membership in these prestigious organizations puts one in distinguished company.
The National Academy of Sciences was established in 1863 under President Abraham Lincoln to recognize achievement in science. Along with the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Medicine, members provide advice to the federal government on matters related to science, engineering and health. Its 2021 class includes 11 faculty from across five UC campuses who join an elite group of 2,461 active members (511 additional members are internationally-affiliated). This year, NAS elected 59 women among its 120 new members, representing a new record and near parity for its class.
The American Academy of Arts andSciences is an honorary society and independent research center that convenes leaders from across disciplines and professions to address significant challenges. More than 13,500 members have been elected since 1780, when it was founded by John Adams, John Hancock and others. 252 new members join the organization as part of its 2021 class, including 25UC faculty from eight campuses.
Congratulations to all of UCs newly elected members in both academies. They are:
Arturo Alvarez-Buylla, Heather and Melanie Muss Chair, department of neurological surgery, University of California, San Francisco
David Card, Class of 1950 Professor of Economics, department of economics, University of California, Berkeley
Glenn H. Fredrickson, Mitsubishi Chemical Chair in Functional Materials, department of chemical engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara
N. Louise Glass, professor and chair, department of plant and microbial biology, University of California, Berkeley
Holly A. Ingraham, Hertzstein Distinguished Investigator, professor, and associate vice chairman, department of cellular and molecular pharmacology, University of California, San Francisco
Kenneth Lange, Rosenfeld Professor of Computational Genetics, department of computational medicine and departments of human genetics and statistics, University of California, Los Angeles
Isabel P. Montaez, distinguished professor and chancellor's leadership professor, department of earth and planetary sciences, University of California, Davis
Denise J. Montell, Duggan Professor, department of molecular, cellular, and developmental biology, University of California, Santa Barbara
Geeta J. Narlikar, professor, department of biochemistry and biophysics, University of California, San Francisco
Linda Petzold, distinguished professor, department of computer science, University of California, Santa Barbara
Michael Turelli, distinguished professor and Joel Keizer Endowed Chair in Theoretical and Computational Biology, department of evolution and ecology, University of California, Davis
Thelists below present the American Academy of Arts and Sciences newest members grouped in thethirty sections,organized within five classes, in which they were elected. The academy has elected members by class and section since 1815.
Joseph Incandela, Joe and Pat Yzurdiaga Chair in Experimental Science, professor of physics, University of California, Santa Barbara
Marilyn N. Raphael, interim director of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and professor of geography, University of California, Los Angeles
Stefan Savage, professor of computer science and engineering, University of California, San Diego
Jodi M. Nunnari, distinguished professor and chair of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, College of Biological Sciences, University of California, Davis
James A. Estes, professor of ecology & evolutionary biology, University of California, Santa Cruz
Tyrone B. Hayes, professor of integrative biology, University of California, Berkeley
Victoria L. Sork, director of the UCLA Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Garden and distinguished professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, University of California, Los Angeles
Geerat J. Vermeij, distinguished professor of marine ecology and paleoecology, University of California, Davis
Ananda Goldrath, professor of molecular biology, University of California, San Diego
Stephen P. Hinshaw, professor of psychology, University of California, Berkeley, and professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, and vice-chair for child and adolescent psychology, University of California, San Francisco
Judith Kroll, distinguished professor of language science, University of California, Irvine
Stefano DellaVigna, co-director of the Berkeley Initiative for Behavioral Economics and Finance, Daniel Koshland, Sr., distinguished professor of economics and professor of business administration, University of California, Berkeley
Robert Christopher Feenstra, director of the Center for International Data, C. Bryan Cameron Distinguished Chair in International Economics, University of California, Davis
Annette Vissing-Jrgensen, Arno A. Rayner Chair in Finance and Management and chair of the Finance Group at Berkeley Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley
Barbara Geddes, professor emeritus of political science, University of California, Los Angeles
Daniel N. Posner, James S. Coleman Professor of International Development in the Department of Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles
Kimberl W. Crenshaw, distinguished professor of law, Promise Institute Chair in Human Rights, UCLA School of Law
Barbara Rogoff, distinguished professor of psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz
Angela Y. Davis, distinguished professor emeritus, University of California, Santa Cruz
R. Jay Wallace, Judy Chandler Webb Distinguished Chair for Innovative Teaching and Research and professor of philosophy, University of California, Berkeley
Kelly Lytle Hernndez, director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, Thomas E. Lifka Endowed Chair in History and professor of history, African American studies, and urban planning, University of California, Los Angeles
Andrs Resndez, professor of history, University of California, Davis
Terence O. Blanchard, Kenny Burrell Chair in Jazz Studies, University of California, Los Angeles
Elisabeth Le Guin, professor of musicology, University of California, Los Angeles
Rucker C. Johnson, Chancellors Professor of Public Policy in the Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley
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Next-generation database will democratize access to massive amounts of turbulence data – The Hub at Johns Hopkins
ByLisa Ercolano and Caroline Swartz
Led by Johns Hopkins University, a team of 10 researchers from three institutions is using a new $4 million, five-year grant from the National Science Foundation to create a next-generation turbulence database that will enable groundbreaking research in engineering and the atmospheric and ocean sciences.
This powerful tool will let researchers from all over the world access data from some of the largest world-class numerical simulations of turbulent flows. Such simulations are very costly and their outputs are traditionally very difficult to share among researchers due to the data sets' massive size.
"Access to such data is needed to more effectively model many processes, enabling us to build better vehicles that move through air and water and design better wind turbine blades and wind farms. We will be able to simulate everything from meteorological patterns, ocean currents, our changing climate and dispersals of pollutants in cities, to oil spills in the ocean," said Charles Meneveau a professor of mechanical engineering, leader of the team, and associate director of the Institute for Data Intensive Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins.
Meneveau is working with colleagues at Johns Hopkins, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and Georgia Institute of Technology on the project.
Charles Meneveau
The researchers say that the new database cyberinfrastructure will democratize access to more than 2.5 petabytes of highly accurate numerical simulations of turbulent flows, helping bridge the existing resource gap between top computer simulation experts and the broader turbulence data user community. A petabyte is the equivalent of 1 million gigs of data; with an internet connection of 100 Mbits/second, downloading 2.5 petabytes would take more than 6 years.
Previously, users seeking specific information within a large database would have to download and comb through massive amounts of data to find the specific subsets they needed. The new database will save time and effort by further refining and modernizing the system used by the Johns Hopkins Turbulence Databases, which employ virtual flow sensors to let users locate and then download only what they need.
"Fluid turbulence is now a scientific field in which massive amounts of data create new opportunities for significant progress, including for deployment of AI. But the data must be broadly accessible to diverse research communities, something that Johns Hopkins and IDIES has been propelling in various fields," Meneveau said.
In addition to user-programmable server computation tools, efficient batch processing tools, and easy-to-use visual representations of the data, users can store and query the locations of specific flow patterns and the system will be backwards compatible so that users of the existing, very successful JHTDB system have continued access.
"The new system will leverage the unique collaborative capabilities of the SciServer platform," said team member Gerard Lemson, a research scientist at IDIES. (Based in IDIES, SciServer is a fully integrated cyberinfrastructure system that offers researchers a variety of tools and services to cope with scientific big data.)
Team member Tamer Zaki, a professor of mechanical engineering at Johns Hopkins, is excited about the impact the new system will have on his research and field.
"New datasets for turbulence created in compressible boundary layers and cylinder wakes will help us better understand drag forces generated and their relationships to the fluid's tendency to spin in the wake of objects in a flow," said Zaki, whose research has applications in areas such as hydro- and aerodynamics and materials processing and medical interventions, such as inhaled drug delivery.
At Johns Hopkins, team members (all affiliated with the Institute for Data Intensive Science and Engineering) also include Alex Szalay, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor in the Department of Computer Science and director of IDIES; Randal Burns, professor and chair of the Department of Computer Science; Gregory Eyink, professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics; and Thomas Haine, a professor of earth and planetary sciences and of physical oceanography in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.
Other team members include Peter Sullivan, senior scientist at National Center for Atmospheric Research; Edward Patton, project scientist III at National Center for Atmospheric Research; Pui-Kuen Yeung, professor of aerospace engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
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So What, What Does It Mean to Be You? A Look Into Subin Cheong – Lawrentian
Sophomore Subin Cheong. Photo by Dani Massey.
Double majoring before the pandemic was challenging enough. It consisted of maintaining time for yourself, getting around to doing everything on your to-do list and staying on top of your work while everything around you demands some form of attention. However, sophomore Subin Cheong faces each of these challenges with a lab coat and a wide smile on her face. Cheong majors in both biology and computer science and minors in data science. Sounds busy, right? But wait, theres more! Cheong spends the time she isnt in class working in the biology stockroom, setting up labs for different biology classrooms while making sure everything meets high lab standards. Cheong is the essence of biology, eating, sleeping and breathing it with every atom filled with a love for the sciences.
As you can piece together, science is a part of Cheongs everyday life but digging into her freshman year, Cheong recalled she started at Lawrence with a focus in English literature. Cheong reflected, I wanted to come in doing English literature, which is crazy cause I took a U-turn. I came [into Lawrence], and I learned a little bit more about Lawrences science department and it just drew me in like the whole science building. She said that this first moment of inspiration came from her first term of college in which she took Biology 130 professors Beth De Stasio and Shannon L. Newman. This opened a new door of opportunity for Cheong, one she hadnt ever taken the chance to fully open. She mentioned struggling to find practicality in her future if she stayed with English, and she thought her parents felt the same. This newfound passion that Cheong unlocked was met with happy approval from both her parents and from herself.
Cheong didnt set her tunnel vision onto the sciences simply for parental approval, though. Biology is written into Cheongs history. She explained that she grew up sick. I grew up mostly in the hospital and so all around me, it was biology, you know, science and stuff like that, she said. So I was like, you know, maybe I could give [biology] a shot. I do really enjoy bio. Cheongs history with the hospital developed a hidden passion within her. Her young self held onto the curiosity of that worldthe world of medicine and scienceuntil she was ready to foster it into a fully realized passion.
With this newly developing passion thrust into her life during her first term of college, a time of new discoveries and self-growth, Cheong found comfort in being at Lawrence. She found herself with support from her peers and advisor, professor Karen Hoffmann, who helped nurture this change. She recalled that the transition from the English department to biology was extremely supportive as her advisor helped through every step of the process, I talked to my advisor who is an English professor because obviously I came in with English and she was so supportive, and she reached out to multiple [biology] professors to help me out with scheduling my [biology] classes for the year. And I couldnt have been more grateful for that. Cheong was met with validation from her peers and guidance from her advisor from the beginning, the kind of support that would allow her to be comfortable with change and seek out what she wanted.
For someone like Cheong, who enjoys the challenge of change and new opportunities, Lawrences liberal arts education is perfect. She began to push her curiosity beyond biology and tried new classes. Of these classes, she hooked onto computer science and data science as another major and minor. After taking one term of each, she found herself exhausted but with a vast amount of new information. While she recognized the difficulty of the course, ultimately the payoff was too rewarding to not pursue. She recognized that because of the experience Lawrence gave her, Youre able to explore all kinds of different things. Even if youre a science major, youre open to taking music classes or humanities classes, and vice versa. It just felt like I was free to choose my own path. I wasnt constrained from the very beginning to go down one certain path and then have to go through this whole process of trying to change majors as other colleges do.
Cheong is driven. When she isnt in biology class or the labs, shes in the stock room working to either set up a lab experiment or make sure everything is in place. If somehow you dont find her there, you can catch her coding Java and Python for her computer science classes. While Cheong is very busy and has a lot on her plate every day, Cheong said that she has found a sense of community and home with people in her classes and her work which has helped mitigate feelings of burnout and prevent being overwhelmed. She explained that working in the biology stockroom with other people experiencing the same frustrations and successes gave her a sense of support and community unlike any other. She also found that the people with whom she takes classes have helped her find ways to cope through shared experiences. They recognize and validate her day-to-day experiences at the same core level.
Subin Cheongs world is a love for science. She is driven by the urge to find biology in everything around her and understand the world from a biological standpoint. While Cheong is figuring out the next stage of her life, one thing is clear: this passion and love is her driving purpose, one that she will undoubtedly pursue long after Lawrence. This is the name of someone who will be important in science and a name to remember.
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So What, What Does It Mean to Be You? A Look Into Subin Cheong - Lawrentian