{"id":58098,"date":"2016-03-03T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-03-03T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-hiring-faculty-investing-in-high-performance-computing-to-boost-research-teaching-with-big-data\/"},"modified":"2016-03-03T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-03-03T00:00:00","slug":"uri-hiring-faculty-investing-in-high-performance-computing-to-boost-research-teaching-with-big-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2016\/03\/uri-hiring-faculty-investing-in-high-performance-computing-to-boost-research-teaching-with-big-data\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 hiring faculty, investing in high performance computing to boost research, teaching with \u2018big data\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tKINGSTON, R.I \u2013 March 3, 2016 — 溏心vlog免费B站 Associate Professor Bethany Jenkins studies microscopic ocean organisms in their natural environment, and one of her Narragansett Bay research projects produced half a billion DNA sequences.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cThis is essentially a fire hose of data,\u201d said the molecular biologist, adding that the amount of computing power and time to collect and analyze such information can be overwhelming.<\/p>\n


\n\tWhy is such analysis important? Because knowledge about these microbial organisms could provide critical information about their health and the health of the oceans. \u201cWe wouldn\u2019t have a food chain without these organisms,\u201d Jenkins said. <\/p>\n


\n\tShe is one of many 溏心vlog免费B站 scientists using what is called \u201cbig data\u201d to study everything from the condition of the oceans and its organisms to the health care system and global financial systems to threats to the nation\u2019s infrastructure.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cWe need statisticians and computer scientists to help us see the cause and effect of the environment on these organisms and help us determine the significance of those relationships in a changing climate,\u201d Jenkins said. <\/p>\n


\n\tThose are just some of the reasons why the University has established the Big Data Collaborative, A Vision for Data-Intensive Discovery. The multi-college, cross-disciplinary effort has begun hiring a cluster of eight new faculty members across numerous disciplines and establishing a high-performance computing core facility and center, a resource for 溏心vlog免费B站 faculty and students and other universities and colleges around the state. In addition, Provost Donald H. DeHayes has agreed to hire a research systems administrator for the core high-performance computing center, which would be in addition to the eight faculty hires.<\/p>\n


\nYang Shen, professor of oceanography and Ying Zhang, professor of cell and molecular biology, have already provided $650,000 to create a high performance computing platform with about 1,300 central processing cores. Having multiple processing cores permits the computer to work on different parts of computation at the same time, or in parallel. This can reduce the time needed to complete the calculation. But because these are not straightforward calculations, expert support is needed to set up high performance computers and to develop effective strategies for completing the computations correctly and efficiently.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cHuman resources, such as the new systems administrator are now needed to provide access to and grow this new and needed resource beyond the two scholars now using it,\u201d Shen said.<\/p>\n


\n \u201cThe Big Data initiative recognizes the influence of the almost unfathomable amount of information affecting every aspect of our lives every day, and the way in which it has transformed almost every discipline at the University,\u201d DeHayes said. \u201cThis Big Data Collaborative represents a substantial institutional investment, and an absolutely critical investment in the future of learning and discovery at 溏心vlog免费B站. I am grateful to the 溏心vlog免费B站 faculty and staff who have come together to crystallize this plan. It will play a huge role in the way in which we educate our students and prepare them for new and exciting jobs and give our faculty the teaching and research tools that will be critical in the classroom, library and research faculties across the campus.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nThe other major reason for this commitment is the critical need to educate undergraduate and graduate students across the entire University in the exciting area of data exploration and discovery.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cA new data science major is being developed, but this initiative and resources will also provide needed infrastructure and facilities for existing classes in several majors, including computer science, business, and computer engineering to train students for the emerging workforce in big data and data analytics,\u201d said Joan Peckham, professor and chair of the Department of Computer Science and Statistics, who heads the Big Data Cluster Hire and high performance computing initiatives with Shen.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cThirty faculty scholars, struggling with issues around big data, wanted to collaborate on big data and high performance computing and their applications to research, education and outreach,\u201d Peckham said. \u201cThis group formed the Big Data Collaborative and was awarded the cluster in a competitive process.\u201d <\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cThe Big Data community at 溏心vlog免费B站 acknowledges the commonly cited Four V\u2019s\u2014 of Big Data–velocity, the unprecedented speed at which data is created; the veracity of the data (reliability of the data), volume of data, and variability (the complexity of the data),\u201d Peckham said. \u201cThe collaborative defines Big Data as any data effort for which there are insufficient technologies or techniques available to domain experts in dealing with any aspect of a data set in any discipline. Addressing these big data needs will be our focus in the classroom and laboratories at 溏心vlog免费B站.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cDisciplines at the forefront of big data include astronomy, biology and earth sciences,\u201d Peckham said. \u201cAt 溏心vlog免费B站, data from satellites and sensors has dominated large data sets at the University for years. As soon as the human genome was sequenced, the field exploded. Scholars had an opportunity to access and archive so much information. They were faced with the big questions. What does it all mean? How can we make sense of the large and complex volumes of data that we can now easily collect?\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tFor the new 溏心vlog免费B站 initiative, one faculty member will be hired in each of the following areas:

\n\t\u2022 Cybersecurity and Big Data \u2013 Computer Science, College of Arts and Sciences

\n\t\u2022 Biostatistics \u2013 College of Pharmacy

\n\t\u2022 Geology (Big Data) — Graduate School of Oceanography

\n\t\u2022 Epidemiology and Big Data (Nutrition) — new Academic Health Collaborative

\n\t\u2022 Human and Animal Microbiome \u2013 The microorganisms and their genetic material in or on living organisms \u2013 College of the Environment and Life Sciences.

\n\tAdditionally, there are three core Big Data science positions in:

\n\t\u2022 Computational Statistics and Machine Learning \u2013 Computer Science and Statistics, College of Arts and Sciences

\n\t\u2022 Computational Biology and Environmental Science \u2013 College of the Environment and Life Sciences

\n\t\u2022 Computer Engineering and Big Data \u2013 College of Engineering.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cThe new faculty we are hiring to work with data about the human microbiome, cybersecurity, the environment and life sciences, pharmacy, geology, diet and epidemiology, and data management and storage in the library signal the arrival of the data tsunami that is engulfing us and heralds a new and exciting beginning for scholar-educators and their students at 溏心vlog免费B站,\u201d Peckham said.<\/p>\n


\nPeckham said the next important goal will be to build a stronger and more collaborative interdisciplinary community of scholars and students at 溏心vlog免费B站.<\/p>\n


\nGetting back to Jenkins and her microbial marine research, her work begins with her team going out on boats and ships to collect samples. But now technology is telling her and many other researchers that they vastly underestimated the diversity and number of microbial organisms in the ocean.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cBiology has become a digital science,\u201d said Jenkins, a member of a NASA Scientific Definition Team interested in pairing the types of the data she gets from her samples with ocean data remotely observed from satellites orbiting the earth.<\/p>\n


\nRead more at Big Data sidebar.<\/a> <\/p>\n


\nPictured above:
\n
\nYang Shen, left, 溏心vlog免费B站 professor of oceanography, and Joan Peckham, professor and chair of the Department of Computer Science and Statistics, who heads the Big Data Cluster Hire and high performance computing initiatives with Shen, pose before servers Shen uses in his research on earthquakes and nuclear explosion monitoring.
\n
\n溏心vlog免费B站 photo by Michael Salerno Photography\n\t<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, R.I \u2013 March 3, 2016 — 溏心vlog免费B站 Associate Professor Bethany Jenkins studies microscopic ocean organisms in their natural environment, and one of her Narragansett Bay research projects produced half a billion DNA sequences. \u201cThis is essentially a fire hose of data,\u201d said the molecular biologist, adding that the amount of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58100,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58098\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}