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Association for Computing Machinery

XRDS: News Archive 2011

IBM TEAMS WITH RUTGERS UNIVERSITY TO BUILD HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTING CENTER

Rutgers recently announced its plans to build one of the world's largest academic supercomputer systems on its Piscataway, NJ campus. IBM will be providing software and hardware in the first phase of the new high-performance computing (HPC) center. With businesses lacking the capability to perform advanced computation to support their data analytic needs, the HPC center will create a competitive economic hub in New Jersey focused on innovation in computer science and engineering, cancer and genetic research, medical imaging and informatics, advanced manufacturing, environmental and climate research, and materials science.

The HPC center will be part of the newly created Rutgers Discovery Informatics Institute (RDI2). The IBM Blue Gene supercomputer, housed in the Hill Center for Mathematics, will be the only supercomputer available to commercial users in the state.

Manish Parashar, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rutgers, is the university’s lead faculty member on the project and will direct the new institute. He said: “There is a strong correlation between having this level of sophisticated research infrastructure and research productivity. It will enable research at a scale we could not support at Rutgers before and allow students and industry to have access to HPC to a much greater degree. And this installation is the first step in creating a large-scale infrastructure at the institute, so it’s a huge milestone.”

“There is immense potential here because Rutgers and IBM have some of the best minds in high-performance computing,” said Michael J. Pazzani, vice president for research and economic development and professor of computer science at Rutgers. “The ability to conduct data analysis on a large scale, leveraging the power of ‘big data,’ has become increasingly essential to research and development.”

 

CALL FOR ACM STUDENT RESEARCH COMPETITION POSTER AT SC 11

 

The SC11 conference continues a long and successful tradition of engaging the international community in high performance computing, networking, storage and analysis. SC11 will place an emphasis on bringing together communities to facilitate information exchange, discussions and new collaborations for research and education related to innovating high performance computing applications and advancing scientific discovery and scholarship.

Posters provide an excellent opportunity for short presentations and informal discussions with conference attendees. SC11 is soliciting submissions for posters that display cutting-edge, interesting research in high performance computing, storage, networking and analytics. Submissions are strongly encouraged to consider the SC11 thrust of data intensive science and/or the SC11 technical program focus on sustained performance. Posters will be prominently displayed for the duration of the conference, giving presenters a chance to showcase their latest results and innovations. It is also planned that electronic versions of the posters will be archived and made publicly available after the conference. Finally, there will be one award for Best Poster.

Students who are ACM members are encouraged to submit posters as part of the ACM Student Research Competition (SRC), with awards and special recognition at SC11 and the chance to compete in the SRC grand finals. Otherwise the same restrictions as for regular posters apply.

Submission deadline: Friday July 22, 2011
Notification: Friday, August 19, 2011

For details visit: http://sc11.supercomputing.org/?pg=posters.html

MICROSOFT ANNOUNCES IMAGINE CUP 2011 WORLDWIDE FINALISTS

May 23, 2011—Today, Microsoft announced the Imagine Cup 2011 Finalists! The finalists include 124 student teams from 73 countries and regions, all of whom will make their way to New York City for the Worldwide Finals July 8-13. As the winners of regional, national and/or online Imagine Cup competitions, these high school and university students represent the best of the best from around the globe!

Microsoft created the Imagine Cup nine years ago with the idea that students can and will change the world. The Imagine Cup competition spans one year, beginning with local, regional, and online contests in over 100 countries/regions. The finalists go on to attend the Worldwide Finals held in a different country every year. 

In its nine years the Imagine Cup has grown from 1,000 student registrants from 25 countries to more than 350,000 from 183 countries.The Worldwide Finals events have been hosted everywhere from Cairo, Egypt, to Sao Paulo, Brazil, to Paris, France – and this year the United States will host the competition for the first time!

This year’s projects provide avenues for individuals with disabilities to use technology, software to help streamline healthcare in rural communities, solutions to help boost education globally and a whole lot more. With students’ inspiration ranging from personal frustrations with their country’s healthcare system to wanting to give a visually-impaired friend an extra set of eyes, these students are leading the way toward a brighter tomorrow.  Please read some of the past blogs to learn about some of the amazing projects that have been coming out of the regional competitions.  

List of Finalist could be found Here

For 2010 archived news content, visit here.

For current news content, visit here.