Top Stories:

Chorin and Sethian Honored by ICIAM

Alexandre Chorin and James Sethian of Berkeley Lab's Computational Research Division won prestigious prizes from the International Council for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM) for groundbreaking work in applied math. Chorin won the 2011 Lagrange Prize and Sethian won the 2011 Pioneer Prize. More>
For a full history of Berkeley Lab Computing Sciences awards Click here.

Kathy Yelick Named Associate Lab Director for Computing Sciences

Kathy Yelick, a renowned expert on parallel languages, compilers, algorithms, libraries, architecture, and storage has been named Associate Lab Director for Computing Sciences. Yelick has been the director of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) since 2008, a position she will continue to hold. More>

James Demmel Receives 2010 Fernbach Award

James W. Demmel has been named the recipient of the 2010 IEEE Computer Society Sidney Fernbach Award for his contributions to high-performance linear algebra software. Demmel is a professor of mathematics and computer science at the University of California, Berkeley and has a joint appointment as a member of the Future Technologies Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Demmel is the fourth Berkeley Lab scientist to receive a Fernbach Award, the other awardees are David Bailey (1993), Phillip Colella (1998), and John Bell (2005). More>

Berkeley Lab and Princeton Scientists Watch Stars Explode in 3D

Researchers from Princeton University and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have found a way to make computer simulations of supernovae exploding in three dimensions. The new simulations are based on the idea that the collapsing star itself is not sphere-like, but distinctly asymmetrical and affected by a host of instabilities in the volatile mix surrounding its core. The team which includes CRD's Ann Almgrean and John Bell performed these simulations with approximately 4 million cpur hours on NERSC's Cray XT4 "Franklin" system. More>

Catching Carbon with Computer Simulations

To speed up the research, development and commercialization of carbon capture technologies, the Department of Energy is dedicating $40 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds to develop computer simulations tools for carbon capture and storage systems research. In the next year, scientists in the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Computational Research Division (CRD) will receive $2 million from this Carbon Capture and Storage Initiative to build a software framework that enables communications between existing modeling tools and provide software development support. More>

Berkeley Lab Researchers Tackle Supercomputing Challenges with $6.3 Million

Eight research groups from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory will receive approximately $6.3 million in grants from the Department of Energy’s Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research to investigate critical technologies and architectures for exascale computing, extreme scale scientific data management and analysis, as well as X-Stack software. More>

NewsBytes:

New to Berkeley Lab Computing Sciences

Introducing: Praveen Narayanan, Ben Yoo, Annette Greiner and Hasan Metin Aktulga. More>

Katie Antypas Appointed NERSC User Services Group Lead

Katie Antypas has been appointed NERSC User Services Group (USG) Lead. In making the announcement, NERSC Division Director Kathy Yelick said, "As a USG member since 2006, [Katie] has been a passionate advocate for the NERSC users, which she has demonstrated in planning activities for the 2010 NERSC Policy Board meeting and the 2010 Operating Assessment review. She has also shown excellent leadership as a member of the NERSC-6 procurement team, co-lead of the NERSC-6 implementation team, and co-lead on a number of the Franklin stabilization ‘tiger’ teams. Please join me in welcoming her to this important position."

CRD's Michael Wehner Joins Congressional Briefing on Extreme Weather

Michael Wehner, a member of the Scientific Computing Group who researches extreme weather conditions resulting from global climate change, was one of four panelists providing input during a Congressional briefing on “Extreme Weather in a Warming World.” The Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, chaired by Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) held the briefing on Thursday, Sept. 23 in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, D.C. More>

ESnet Call for Proposals: Advanced Network Initiative Testbed

ESnet is now soliciting research proposals for its ARRA-funded testbed. It currently provides network researchers with a rapidly reconfigurable high-performance network research environment where reproducible tests can be run. This will eventually evolve into a nationwide 100Gbps testbed, available for use to any researcher whose proposal is accepted.More>

In the News:

Time.com: The Supernova's Secrets Cracked at Last?

Given the Type II supernovas' cosmic importance, you might think astronomers would have figured out how they work — and in a general way, they have. But when it comes to the most critical few moments of the detonation process, says Princeton theorist Adam Burrows, you'd be wrong. Thanks to a new, powerful supercomputer simulation, though, reported in the current Astrophysical Journal, Burrows and a group of colleagues at Princeton and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in California, are convinced they're getting closer. More> For the Berkeley Lab release click here.

insideHPC: John Shalf a "Rock Star of HPC"

The online magazine insideHPC is doing a series of interviews with people they consider the “Rock Stars of HPC.” HPC refers to High Performance Computing. Their list includes John Shalf of the Computational Research Division. “Shalf’s energy and dedication to HPC are helping to actively shape the future of HPC, and that’s what makes him this month’s HPC Rock Star,” says the magazine. More>

CRD's David Bailey Comments on Pi Calculations in New Scientist

Yahoo researcher has made a record-breaking calculation of the digits of pi using his company’s computers, calculating the 2 quadrillionth (2 x 1015) binary digit of pi. The feat comes hot on the heels of a breakthrough Rubik’s cube result that used Google’s computers. Together, the results highlight the growing power of internet search giants to make mathematical breakthroughs. CRD Chief Technologist David Bailey, who in 1996 co-discovered the first formula allowing one to skip ahead to compute distant digits of pi, offers his perspective in the New Scientist articleby David Shiga. More>

Marquette University Features NERSC Intern Christine Matheney

Christine Matheney works as a Student Technology Support Specialist in IT Services at Marquette University and is currently majoring in both Electrical and Computer Engineering. She has worked for the past three summers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) with the networking team. More>

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