RUTGERS DISCOVERY INFORMATICS INSTITUTE NEWSLETTER

Dear friends of RDI2,

Greetings from the Rutgers Discovery Informatics Institute (RDI2).

Great institutes have traditionally been built on core disciplinary strengths. What differentiates RDI2 from these institutes is its ability to bridge across traditional disciplinary boundaries and enable truly cross-disciplinary research, education and outreach programs that fundamentally integrate computation, data with science, engineering, medicine and business to address im-portant grand challenges.

This is an exciting time for RDI2, particularly in the areas of Advanced Computing and Data Cyberinfrastructure (ACI). RDI2 is enabling computational and data-enabled research across a broad range of disciplines that would not be possible otherwise by providing access to state-of-the-art supercomputing resources and services to the broader New Jersey academic commu-nity. Active research projects using RDI2’s advanced research cyberinfrastructure span biochemical engineering, finance, economics, physics and cosmology. Our resources are open to all students and researchers, and we invite applications for the allocation of computing resources on Caliburn, New Jersey's largest academic supercomputing facility. We are also striv-ing to make sure that our resources are broadly accessible by students and researchers across the state. For example, we organize information and training sessions at various campuses and have regularly scheduled “office hours”.

Sincerely,

Manish Parashar

Founding Director of RDI2

Distinguished Professor of Computer

Science

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

Director’s Message Pg. 1

Research in Action Pg. 2—3

A Global Community Pg. 4

Events & Accomplishments Pg. 5

RDI2 Staff Member Spotlight Pg. 6

Internships Pg. 7

Contact Pg. 8

Volume 3, Fall 2018

UPCOMING

EVENTS

October 25, 2018

RDI² Open House

November 2, 2018 +

December 3, 2018

Student Fellow Speaker Series

November 13, 2018

Code Ocean Data Publication

Workshop

Research in computational and data-enabled science and engineering remains central to our mission at RDI2 as we ad-dress the grand challenges in science and society. Researchers and students at RDI2 continue to explore novel computa-tional and data abstractions, methodologies, and infrastructure, bringing novel extreme scale and data-driven approaches to a range of applications. This research is leading new grants, prestigious publications, software deployments, and new collaborations. For example, in 2018, we received over $1 Million in new federal research funding.

Education and community outreach the other central component of RDI2’s mission. RDI2 welcomes the 2018-2019 student awardees of the RDI2 Fellowship for Excellence in Computation and Data Science. Through this award, the Rutgers Discovery Informatics Institute supports students working on multi-disciplinary, collaborative, computational and data-enabled research projects in science and engineering, with a specific research focus on Big Data and Extreme Scale computing. We are also pleased to launch the first RDI2 high school internship program and welcome our this first high-school intern this fall.

It is no secret that our successes at RDI2 are due to our outstanding: the extraordinary researchers, faculty, staff, and students who, with great dedication, bring their intellectual curiosity, academic rigor and collabora-tive spirit to addressing complex challenges. They are joined by a worldwide network of alumni and partners who share great pride in RDI2 and its achievements.

Our goal for 2018-2019 is to continue to address emerging opportunities and challenges as we navigate rapidly changing technology landscapes in this era of extreme compute and big data. Our mission at RDI2 remains to fundamentally integrate research, education and outreach and ad-vanced cyberinfrastructure towards addressing the most important challenges for science and society.

We invite you to join us on October 25 at the RDI2 Open House event, where we will feature the Large Scale Computing and Data Science Capabilities and expertise as well as provide updates on the exciting research new initiatives of the institute. Come learn about how RDI2 is helping researchers tackle and solve the world’s most pressing problems.

RDI2’S ADVANCED CYBERINFRASTRUCTURE ENABLES RE-

SEARCHERS TO TACKLE AND SOLVE THE WORLD’S MOST

PRESSING PROBLEMS

The mission of the Rutgers Discovery Informatics Institute is to establish a

comprehensive and internationally competitive Computational and Data-

Enabled Science and Engineering (CDS&E) effort at Rutgers University that

can nurture the fundamental integration of research, education, and infra-

structure.

One way we are ensuring our continued growth and excellence is by provid-

ing the best facilities we can to educate our students and conduct world-class

research. RDI2 provides specialized high-performance computing services to

the Rutgers community, including support to projects seeking to solve over-

arching questions about the nature of the cosmos and the development of

easily programmable and scalable optimization software.

“I would like to thank RDI2 for providing the necessary computational resources for

my dissertation research… RDI2’s help was essential in obtaining impactful re-

search results. Rutgers’ supercomputing facility couldn’t be in better hands.”

—Rutgers Business School PhD Alumnus

To submit a proposal for allocations request, visit bit.ly/RDI2allocations.

To learn more about RDI’s recent cyberinfrastructure initiatives, visit

rdi2.rutgers.edu/initiatives.

$899K NSF GRANT AWARDED FOR SUSTAINABLE

DATA FRAMEWORK

RDI2 has been awarded with an NSF grant ($899,139) for developing a sustainable scalable data frame-work for enabling critical geoscience problems such as early tsunami detection. This project develops a real-time processing system capable of handling a large mix of sensor observations. The focus of this system is automation of the detection of natural hazard events using machine learning, as the events are occurring. Rutgers University’s team, led by Dr. Ivan Rodero (PI) and J.J. Villalobos (co-PI), is part of the four-organization collaboration to develop a data framework for generalized real -time streaming analytics and machine learning for geoscience and hazards research.

This grant complements a recent NSF CC* Integration grant (DyNamo) awarded to RDI2 in collaborative

effort with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Southern California, and Uni-

versity of Massachusetts at Amherst.

To learn more, visit nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1835692

RESEARCH

IN ACTION

CYBERBULLYING INITIATIVE

In order to combat the increasing prevalence of cyberbullying amongst elementary, middle, and high-school students, RDI² created a program dedicated to studying the nature, extent, caus-es, and consequences of cyberbullying. In Phase 1, RDI² researchers partnered with South Brunswick Public Schools (SBPS) and New Brunswick Public Schools (NBPS) to sur-vey students in grades six through twelve with the goal of understanding cyberbullying behav-iors and victimization patterns within the com-munity as part of a regional assessment. During Phase 2, RDI2 researchers have suc-cessfully extended their research partnership to six districts in Sussex County, NJ to survey stu-dents in grades six through twelve. A full report of both phases of the survey are currently pending submission, and the re-searchers will be sharing highlights at the Inter-national Bullying Prevention Association World Conference. Moving forward, the Initiative plans to extend the study into Newark schools as well as mov-ing into a large-scale social data research fo-cus. To learn more, visit rdi2.rutgers.edu/page/cyberbullying-initiative

RESEARCH WITH IMPACT: Issuing accu-

rate and time-effective tsunami warnings is

paramount to minimizing both loss of life and potential

damage to property and infrastructures in coastal are-

as.

RDI² is working towards increasing the accuracy and decreasing the delay of tsunami warnings by utilizing several data sources, such as underwater seismo-graphs managed by the Incorporated Research Insti-tutions for Seismology (IRIS) and maintained by the Ocean Observatory Initiative (OOI); underwater bot-tom pressure and tilt instruments deployed and man-aged by OOI; and high-precision GPS stations in-stalled by UNAVCO.

Increasing the volume of data used in these calcula-tions will help develop a more sophisticated warning system that could save countless lives.

$10K TO ENHANCE EDUCATION IN TECHNOLOGY

Congratulations to Dr. Thu Nguyen, Professor and Chair of Computer Science and research collaborator at the Rutgers Discovery Informatics

Institute, on being awarded a Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) supplement from the National Science Foundation, which supports local schoolteachers in their research. This supplement will be added to his

existing award, II-EN: Collaborative Research: Enhancing the Parasol Experimental Testbed for Sustainable Computing. Dr. Nguyen’s efforts will allow for innovative educational research to occur in the field of wire-

less networks.

To learn more about the COSMOS Project, visit engineering.columbia.edu/

news/nsf-cosmos-testbed

MACHINE LEARNING FOR DATA MANAGEMENT

Data staging and in-situ workflows are being explored extensively as

an approach to address data management costs at very large scales. How-

ever, addressing the overhead of emerging storage architectures (e.g., 3D

XPoint, burst buffers) upon data staging solutions remains a challenge. The

research collaboration between Rutgers Discovery Informatics Institute, Oak

Ridge National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories is currently

looking into Autonomic Data Movement Engine for Extreme-Scale Data

Staging-Based In-Situ Workflows.

RDI² is specifically exploring how and when various applications access

data, and when to move data closer to these applications before it is

requested. These techniques enable the highest quality of service as the

data access latency is reduced significantly. In this work, machine learning-

based prefetching techniques were used to move data between the

storage levels in an autonomous manner. Stacker, a prototype of the pro-

posed solutions, was designed and implemented within the DataSpaces data

staging service by tiering data across SSD and DRAM to enable high capaci-

ty data staging. Stacker also performs autonomous data movement across

these tiers by predicting the up-coming sequence of data access requests.

This research collaboration is further looking into adapting these techniques

not only for data management, but for additionally managing when and how

data-intensive applications are scheduled for efficient resource utiliza-

tion.

Congratulations to Dr. Ivan Rodero, Associate Direc-

tor for Technical Operations and Associate Research

Professor, on being awarded CC * Integration: Deliv-

ering a Dynamic Network-centric Platform for Data-

driven Science (DyNamo). Dr. Rodero represents

RDI² in support of programmable, on-demand access

to high-bandwidth, configurable network paths from

community data repositories to national CI facilities.

These efforts, referred to as DyNamo, will allow at-

mospheric scientists and hydrologist to improve short

and long-term weather forecasts and aid the oceano-

graphic community.

$180K GRANT AWARDED TO RDI2 FOR

NSF DYNAMO PROJECT

GLOBAL ENGAGEMENT AND COLLABORATION

RDI2 is part of an international team with INRIA Avalon called SUS-

TAM, Sustainable Ultra Scale Computing, Data and Energy Manage-

ment. This long-term collaboration primarily focuses on Edge Compu-

ting and data-driven placement of operators for workflow applications,

HPC and energy-efficient data management, scheduling and resource

management using OOI data. The collaboration has expanded to in-

clude the RDI2 Visiting Research Scholar Program. Through this pro-

gram collaboration, a PhD student will spend one year at RDI2 and two

years at INRIA Avalon. RDI2 will provide partial funding and co-

advisorship towards the student’s doctoral research and studies.

The SUSTAM associate team enables a long-term collaboration be-

tween the Avalon and RDI² research teams, guiding conversation about

energy efficiency to new levels. This collaboration allows both teams to

pursue common research activities in topics such as sustainable soft-

ware solutions, resource and big-data management, elasticity of stream

and batch applications,

and energy efficiency.

The involved members

contribute to the design

of a common architec-

ture and framework

with components and

algorithms adapted to

various contexts.

BIG DATA AT EXASCALE

The Exascale Computing Project (ECP), one of the largest among the current Department of Energy initiatives, is focused on accelerating the delivery of an exascale computing ecosystem that is capable to perform in the order of 2018 operations per second, and deliver 50 times more computational science and data analysis power than currently possible with existing Department of Energy (DOE) High Performance Computing (HPC) systems. With a goal of launching a US exascale eco-system by 2021, the ECP will have profound effects on the American people and the world. ECP is an amalgamation of multiple projects that are dedicated to making specific contributions in the areas of scientific discovery, energy assurance, economic competitiveness, and national security; as well as making more fundamental advances in scientific computing and computer engineering.

Rutgers Discovery Informatics Institute (RDI2) is a partner on three distinct ECP efforts:

"The partnership between Rutgers and PPPL has been an example of true synergistic co-design, where improved data management software has allowed the physicists to achieve scientific discovery more quickly, while the needs of the physicists have driven computer

science research that is applicable to a wide variety of projects in many domains of science and engineering."

—Philip Davis, RDI2 researcher and developer

More information about the broader exascale computing project can be found at exascaleproject.org.

As part of the ECP, the Princeton University Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) is develop-ing a high-fidelity Whole Device Model (WDM). RDI2 is a partner in this project and is respon-sible for the development, integration and optimization of the code coupling infrastruc-ture. The key focus of the activities at RDI2 as part of the WDM project is to further develop the current DataSpaces-based in-memory coupling framework to handle the core- edge coupling between the XGC and GENE plasma physics simulation codes, and to prepare for exascale architectures and technologies.

Rutgers Discovery Informatics Institute is col-laborating as part of the Codesign Center for Online Analysis and Reduction (CODAR). The goal of CODAR is to produce infrastructure and understanding for running extreme scale codesign studies in computational science and applying the lessons learned to exascale appli-cations. In collaboration with CODAR, the RDI2 team is integrating in-situ reduction and analysis capabilities into data staging frame-works that are capable of highly-scalable oper-ation without impacting application codes.

As part of the ADIOS2 ECP project in collabo-ration with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), RDI2 is focused on redesigning the Adaptable IO System (ADIOS) framework to optimize I/O for exascale application. ADIOS provides portable performance for applica-tions, and allows application developers to adapt the I/O parameters of their applications at run-time. Rutgers Discovery Informatics Institute is working with the ADIOS team to develop next-generation staging technologies, in order to address the unique I/O challenges of running scientific workflows at exascale.

SBAC-PAD: International Sym-posium on Computer Architec-ture and High Performance Computing September 2018. Ecole Nor-male. Lyon, France

SBAC-PAD is an international symposium which has continuously presented an overview of new developments in parallel and distributed computing technologies, and is open to faculty members, re-searchers, specialists and graduate stu-dents worldwide.

One of the four keynote speeches at the event was given by RDI²'s founding Direc-tor Manish Parashar, who presented the talk: Big Data at Extreme-Scales: Ad-dressing Computational Challenges in the 21st Century.

Three papers from RDI2 researchers and students were also featured at the sympo-sium, including Shouwei Chen, Ivan Ro-dero, Yubo Qin, Pradeep Subedi, Manish Parashar, Ali Reza Zamani, Daniel Balouek-Thomert, and J. J. Villalobos.

RDI² Fellowship of Excellence in Computational Data Science Student

Speaker Series

RDI² has launched a Student Fellow Speaker Series. Students and post-docs will have the opportunity to hear from the most recent recipients of the RDI² Fellow-ship for Excellence in Computational Data Science as they present their work. The Fellowship of Excellence in Computational Data Science provides partial support to three PhD students across the university as they work on interdiscipli-nary computational research projects.

2012-2018

UPCOMING EVENTS IN 2018

RDI2 ACCOMPLISHMENTS MAY 2018-PRESENT

$50,199,300

136

113

$1,899,300

46

40

FUNDING

CONFERENCE/WORKSHOP

PRESENTATIONS

ARTICLES INCLUDING JOURNAL & PROCEEDINGS

“Stacker: An Autonomic Data Movement

Engine for Extreme-Scale Data Staging-

based In-Situ Workflows”

Pradeep Subedi, Philip Davis, Shaohua Duan,

Scott Klaskyy, Hemanth Kollaz, and Manish Pa-

rashar—The International Conference for High

Performance Computing, Networking, Storage,

and Analysis (SC'18).

“Realizing a Cyberinfrastructure Ecosys-

tem that Transforms Science”

Manish Parashar, Keynote Speaker—2018 Inter-

net2 Global Summit, San Diego.

“The Invention Gender Gap”

Forough Gharamani , Kathleen Sohar, Lisa

Goble, Bethany Loftier, Nicole Mercier—June

2018, Technology & Innovation Journal.

“Scalable Data Resilience for In-Memory

Data Staging”

Shaohua Duan, Manish Parashar, Philip Davis,

Pradeep Subedi—2018 International Parallel and

Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS).

“Putting the Next 500 VM Placement Algo-

rithms to the Acid Test The Infrastructure

Provider Viewpoint”

Adrien Libre, Jonathan Pastor, Anthony Simonet,

Mario Sudholt—July 2018, IEEE Transactions on

Parallel and Distributed Systems.

For a full list of publications, please visit

rdi2.rutgers.edu/publications

2018 PUBLICATIONS, AWARDS,

AND HONORS

10:30 a.m.—11:30 a.m. Events are held at the CoRE Building (Busch Campus), Room 701

Maliche Alikhani—Deep data-driven mod-eling of multimodal communication November 2, 2018

Humna Awan—Big Data in Astrophysics: Clustering Analysis of Partial Galaxies December 4, 2018

Distinguished Speaker Seminar The RDI² Distinguished Seminar series regularly hosts leading researchers from academia, governments and industry and is designed to bring members of the Rutgers community together to explore Data Science topics. The Rutgers Discovery Informatics Institute will host Margaret Martonosi, Director of the Keller Center for Innovation in Engineering Education at Princeton, in the fall of 2018—date TBD. Please visit rdi2.rutgers.edu/all-news-events for updates.

Open House Event The Rutgers Discovery Informatics Institute will host their annual Open House Research Expo and Networking event on October 25, 2018 from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Featured keynote speaker is Sanjay Padhi, PhD, Principal, Amazon Web Services’ Global Scientific Computing. This event will showcase the Large Scale Computing and Data Science capabili-ties and expertise at RDI² and provide updates on exciting new initiatives at the Institute. A poster showcase will feature RDI² research collaborations. To register for this event, visit goo.gl/emQ5vb

Preparing Data and Code for Reproducible Publication Date: November 13, 2018, 1 p.m.—3 p.m. Location: Teleconference Lecture Hall, Alexander Library, 169 College Ave, New Brunswick, NJ

Diving into Big Data, High School Workshop (Camden School System) Date: December 6, 2018 Location: CoRE Building room 701, Rutgers Busch Campus, Piscataway, NJ

NJBDA Research Collaboration Workshop Date: December 7, 2018 Location: CoRE Building room 701, Busch Campus, Piscataway, NJ

RDI2 welcomes Noraida Martinez as the RDI² Depart-

ment Administrator. Noraida is responsible for sup-

porting RDI²’s finances, administration, and event co-

ordination, and has been working at Rutgers for 15

years.

“This is a fast paced institute. Time management and

streamlining all administrative and financial processes

are the key to success.”

—Noraida Martinez NE

W S

TA

FF

ME

MB

ER

Juan José Villalobos (J.J. Villalobos) is the Assistant Director of Re-

search Computing and Cybersecurity at the Rutgers Discovery Informat-

ics Institute (RDI2), where he is responsible for the security, stability, and

operational excellence of the research and production advanced cyber-

infrastructure, including Caliburn, the Rutgers supercomputer, one of the

fastest academic supercomputers in the United States, and among the

first clusters to use the Intel Omni-Path fabric and equip its compute

nodes with NVMe (non-volatile memory express) devices, making Cali-

burn a unique asset for the research community.

He joined RDI2 in January 2016, as Research Associate, serving as the

technical lead for the National Science Foundation Ocean Observatories

Initiative cyberinfrastructure, a networked infrastructure of science-

driven sensor systems that has transformed research of the oceans by

integrating multiple scales of globally distributed marine observations

into one observing system and allowing for that data to be freely downloaded over the internet in near-real

time. He also contributes as senior personnel in several NSF-funded projects, such as the Virtual Data Col-

laboratory, a research platform in the US northeast region designed to drive data-intensive, interdisciplinary

and collaborative research, and enable data-driven science and engineering discoveries, or the DyNamo pro-

ject, which will develop innovative network-centric algorithms, policies and mechanisms to enable programma-

ble, on-demand access to high-bandwidth, configurable network paths from scientific data repositories to na-

tional cyberinfrastructure facilities, and help satisfy data, computational and storage requirements of science

workflows.

J. J. Villalobos has over fifteen years of experience across several Information Technology disciplines includ-

ing, but not limited to, systems architecture, high-performance computing, complex public-facing internet infra-

structures and high-traffic sites reliability operations. He has built and managed engineering teams able to

cope with ever-changing high-velocity environments. Prior to moving to the United States and into his role at

RDI2, he held senior level industry positions in Europe. Fur-

thermore, he is senior member of the Institute of Electrical

and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and also active member

of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the

American Association for the Advancement of Science

(AAAS).

RDI2 MEMBER

SPOTLIGHT

COMMUNICATIONS INTERN

CAMERON FOSTER

B.A IN JOURNALISM AND SPANISH

Cameron is a junior in the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University. At RDI2, Cameron is

responsible for creating promotional and outreach materials, including digital and print content for

RDI2’s social media and website. Cameron also designs and edits RDI² newsletters and posters.

MEET RDI2

INTERNS

COMMUNICATIONS INTERN

SHANNON MCINTYRE

B.A IN JOURNALISM AND PUBLIC HEALTH

Shannon is a senior in the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University. At RDI2, Shannon was responsible for writing RDI2’s newsletter articles, as well as working on promotional materials and organizing the RDI2 Fellowship of Excellence in Computational Data Science Speaker Series.

COMPUTER SCIENCE INTERN

VAIDEHI HEMANT BAPAT

M.S. IN COMPUTER SCIENCE

Vaidehi is enrolled in the MS Computer Science Program and will be graduating in January 2019.

Working for RDI2 allowed Vaidehi to work on Drupal 8, increasing her knowledge about module de-

velopment, Drush interface, PHP Composer, and Bootstrap.

HIGH SCHOOL INTERN

JULIA SCHNEIDMAN

SENIOR AT BERGEN COUNTY ACADEMICS

Julia attends the Academy for the Advancement of Science and Technology at Bergen County Academies.

She plans to major in mathematics and computer science in college. Julia will be working at RDI2 from Sep-

tember 2018 to May 2019, and will participate in big data research related to data analysis, computational

modelling, and simulation.

RESEARCH INTERN

MATTHEW PLATOFF

B.A IN COMPUTER SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS

Matthew is a senior at Rutgers University. He is working on the Cyberbullying Initiative for RDI². Mat-

thew is part of the Aresty undergraduate research program.

“Conducting research is one way to open a student’s eyes to potential careers in data science. One of the potential

career paths is as a data scientist in academia or industry, and by working at the Institute, students can get a better

understanding of what a career in data science research can be.”

—Forough Gharamani, Associate Director , RDI2

info@rdi2.rutgers.edu

/rutgersRDI2 @RDI2_rutgers

rdi2.rutgers.edu/

RDI2 THANKS

OUR PARTNERS AND SPONSORS