Applications have just opened for UC-HiPACC's Science/Engineering Journalism Boot Camp "Computational Astronomy: From Planets to Cosmos" June 24-27, 2012 for 12 to 16 practicing science journalists--the first such intensive backgrounder on astronomy to be offered on the West Coast. Two full days of sessions led by top astrophysics faculty from across the UC system and affiliated DOE labs will be held on the campus of the University of California, Santa Cruz, followed by a day visiting the computational/visualization facilities at NASA Ames Research Center and California Academy of Sciences. For details, including confirmed faculty and online application form, see http://hipacc.ucsc.edu/2012CAJBC.html

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posted: 2012-03-09 17:32:02

 AstroInformatics—data mining for computational astronomy—is the special topic to be featured at the 2012 International Summer School on AstroComputing, to be held on the campus of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), July 9–20. Hosted by the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) and the University of California High-Performance AstroComputing Center (UC-HiPACC), the two-week summer school is open to graduate students and post-doctoral fellows.

“Today’s telescopes are generating huge amounts of new information about the universe – in some cases by the second,” said Michael Norman, director of SDSC and a world-renowned astrophysicist. “Astronomers will need to know how to leverage the capabilities of data-intensive supercomputers to analyze all this data efficiently while bringing these observations and simulations into a common framework.”

“This summer school will empower astronomers to compare massive observational data with massive theoretical outputs,” said Joel R. Primack, director of UC-HiPACC, a consortium of nine UC campuses and three Department of Energy (DOE) laboratories: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Los Alamos National Laboratory. “‘Big Data’ is a challenge for many fields of science and engineering. People who have learned how to use data-intensive supercomputers will be increasingly valuable.”

SanDiego Supercomputer Center where sessions of the 2012 International Summer School on AstroComputing will convene July 9–20. (Credit: Alan Decker)

Hands on
A key feature of the UC-HiPACC summer schools has been...

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posted: 2012-03-06 11:27:52

 What do you get when you combine 28 brilliant students with 15 top experts at a UC campus and a Department of Energy laboratory, with a major supercomputer? The two-week 2011 UC-HiPACC International Summer School on AstroComputing (ISSAC)!

ISSAC students attend hands-on afternoon coding workshops

Theory and practice

Morning sessions at LBNL were tutorials...

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posted: 2011-10-10 12:16:27