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Research Computing Days

Boise State’s annual Research Computing Days event occurred on March 28-29 in the Student Union Building.

About Research Computing Days

Please note this event has passed.

Students, faculty, professional staff, and community members are invited to join us for Research Computing Days in the Jordan Ballroom and Bishop Barnwell Room, Student Union Building, Tuesday, March 28 through Wednesday, March 29, 2023.

A continental breakfast and box lunches will be provided for registered attendees.

National Science Foundation logo

Keynote speaker Tom Gulbransen, U.S. National Science Foundation Program Director, will introduce the mission of NSF’s Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (CI), deliver an in-depth view of NSF’s Advanced CI Coordination Ecosystem of Services and Support (ACCESS), and discuss OAC programs dedicated to developing CI professionals and career pathways. Gulbransen has decades of experience serving the Environmental Data Sciences team and large program management at Battelle Memorial Institute. The National Science Foundation is supporting Gulbransen’s participation.

Boise State’s Research Computing Services professionals and university faculty will provide two full days of research computing and data skills training.

A poster competition and “Research Data as Art” exhibit will be held in the Stein Luminary, Center for the Visual Arts. Also, the university’s Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) Student Chapter will hold a co-located Hackathon on Wednesday, March 28. Prizes for the best poster and Hackathon team will be awarded.

What to expect

Learn to efficiently process your workflow using Unix Shell to automate tasks and Python for manipulating data.

Save your desktop! Learn how to use high performance computing on Boise State’s and Idaho Research Computing Consortium’s clusters.

Learn tools for reproducible science using containers to create portable software stacks.

Poster Session and Data As Art Gallery share how computing/data and use of coding tools have helped in your research.

Transfer data in less time with fewer headaches by learning how to use Globus, Science DMZ, and R Clone.

Invited speakers! Hear from experts from across campus and beyond. Learn about the cutting edge in computational research and best practices for data management.

Register for Research Computing Days
Poster Session — Call for Submissions

Tell Us About Your Research

Present your computational and data-intensive research as an academic poster.

Research Data as Art Gallery

Share Beautiful Data

Do you have beautiful data to share? The sky’s the limit…plots, simulation trajectories, image recognition analysis of photographs or videos, etc. If HPC resources were used in the data generation, dissemination, or analysis, it is welcome here! Submissions will be visually displayed in the Luminary!

Submit your hi-res image or video

Keynote Speaker

Tom Gulbransen headshot
Tom Gulbransen

Tom Gulbransen is a Program Officer in the National Science Foundation’s Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure. He serves in that capacity as a “rotator” on temporary assignment from his career as a Large Program Manager at the Battelle Memorial Institute where he co-founded their Environmental Data Sciences practice many years ago.

Tom helps with a variety of activities at NSF. His primary focus directs the “ACCESS” program of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem Services and Support. ACCESS expands upon the XSEDE program, which served high-performance computing researchers for nearly a decade. Another part of the ecosystem Tom helps is NSF’s Learning and Workforce investments – especially those aimed at developing cyberinfrastructure professionals. These programs together amount to approximately $80M in awards.

Prior to his current duties, Tom helped complete construction and operation of the cyberinfrastructure for NSF’s National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) led in Bolder CO. He also co-led the environmental cyberinfrastructure for BP in their response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Conference Agenda, Tuesday, March 28

Please note this event has passed.

View recorded presentations and recaps.

Bishop Barnwell Room

8:00 am – 9:00 am, Intro to Containers

  • Kyle Shannon, Scientific Programmer, Research Computing, Boise State University

9:00 am – 10:00 am, Fast Data Transfer

  • Jason Watt, Cyberinfrastructure Engineer, Research Computing, Boise State University

10:00 am – 11:00 am, Intro to Falcon

  • Benji Oswald, HPC Director, Research Computing and Data Services, University of Idaho

1:00 pm – 4:00 pm, Advanced HPC

  • Frank Willmore, HPC Engineer, Research Computing, Boise State University

Stein Luminary, Center for the Visual Arts

4:00 pm – 5:00 pm, Poster Session and “Data as Art” Gallery

Jordan Ballroom

8:00 am – 11:00 am, The Unix Shell

  • Eric Jankowski, Associate Professor, Micron School for Materials Science and Engineering, Boise State University

11:00 am – Noon, RC Days Welcome and Introduction

  • Nancy Glenn, Vice President of Research and Economic Development, Boise State University
  • Tom Gulbransen, U.S. National Science Foundation Program Director

Noon – 1:00 pm,  Lunch

1:00 pm – 4:00 pm, Intro to HPC

  • Jenny Fothergill, HPC Engineer, Research Computing, Boise State University

Conference Agenda, Wednesday, March 29

Please note this event has passed.

View recorded presentations and recaps.

Bishop Barnwell Room

2:00 pm – 5:00 pm, Introduction to Machine Learning with Scikit Learn

  • Evi Ofekeze, Ph.D. in Computing Student, Boise State University
  • Ibrahim Alabi, Ph.D. in Computing Student, Boise State University

Jordan Ballroom

8:00 am – 8:30 am, Data Compliance

  • Mark Fitzgerald, Chief Information Security Officer, Boise State University

8:30 am – 9:00 am, Ethics in AI

  • Leif Nelson, Director of Learning Technology Solutions, Boise State University

9:00 am – 9:50 am, The Campus Data Landscape

  • Ellie Dworak, Research Data Librarian, Boise State University

10:00 am – 11:00 am, Cloud Seeding Research on HPC

  • Mel Kunkel, Sr. Atmospheric Scientist, Idaho Power

11:00 am – Noon, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning on AWS

  • Muni Doddala, Solution Architect for Boise State, Amazon
  • Jianjun Xu, Principal Research Solutions Architect, Amazon

Noon – 1:00 pm, Lunch

1:00 pm – 2:00 pm, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning on AWS (continued)

  • Muni Doddala, Solution Architect for Boise State, Amazon
  • Jianjun Xu, Principal Research Solutions Architect, Amazon

2:00 pm – 5:00 pm, Programming with Python

  • Brian Jackson, Associate Professor, Department of Physics, Boise State University

Contact Us

Email Research Computing Support at researchcomputing@boisestate.edu.

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