HIGHER PERFORMANCE: SUPERCOMPUTING IN THE CONNECTED ERA – Michael Dell (CEO, Dell Inc.)

2008 marks the 20th anniversary of the SC Conference series bringing together the world’s leading high-performance computing researchers, scientists and engineers. From the environment to health and energy, these leaders have helped address many of the world’s most pressing challenges. The next era of HPC will be enabled by super-scalable, increasingly simple technologies that will make possible even greater collaboration, productivity and scientific breakthroughs.

DISCOVERING DATA IN THE CLASSROOM – Diane Baxter & Jeff Sale (San Diego Supercomputing Center)

Real scientific data – the foundations of science – can be difficult to identify, locate, and use effectively in the classroom. SDSC's Discover Data Portal (http://education.sdsc.edu/discoverdata/) offers lessons created around authentic data from a variety of scientific disciplines, offering a real-world approach to science learning. Workshop participants will explore lessons built around scientific data sets and offered to educators through the Moodle course management system. Each participant will get a permanent account on the portal, and discover lessons based on data sets from marine science, bioinformatics, seismology and astronomy. Participants will also test and give feedback on a prototype interactive data mapping tool for teachers and students to upload and share their own environmental data.

STOCHASTIC STATISTICS IN PHYSICS – Norman Chonacky (Yale University), Dave Joiner (Kean University)

Stochastic solutions to a variety of problems in physics, including the Ising model and crystal structure, will be discussed. Participants will create simple models of stochastic systems and apply a simulated annealing solution to the problem of the configuration of multiple charges in a charged box. A demonstration of how sockets communications can connect simple Java-based visualization to high performance codes on a remote cluster will be made.

CHEMISTRY EDUCATION SOFTWARE (LEVEL 1, BEGINNER) – Clyde Metz (College of Charleston), Shawn Sendlinger (North Carolina Central University)

A variety of software from the Journal of Chemical Education will be discussed and available for use by participants.

GNU, INTEL, & TOTALVIEW TOOLS – Paul Gray (University of Northern Iowa), Charlie Peck (Earlham College)

Insight is a wonderful thing. As computer science wrestles with academic issues surrounding many-core, many-thread programming and GPGPUs in the curriculum, the tools used to provide insight and understanding of these topics will make the difference between cutting-edge academic content and complacency with the status quo. This session will focus on integrating the generic topics of benchmarking, tuning and debugging tools in the context of HPC into the computer science curriculum. Specific tools from Intel, TotalView and Open Source resources (such as the Performance API, PAPI) will be presented during this session, with an emphasis on infusing the content of courses in the undergraduate Computer Science curriculum with the tools of High Performance Computing.

EXPLORING COMPUTATIONAL SCIENCE PROJECTS FOR UNDERGRADUATE ENGINEERS (PART 1) – Steve Gordon, James Giuliani, & Siddarth Samsi (Ohio Supercomputer Center), Steve Stevenson & Dan Warner (Clemson University)

Example projects and work time for participants to create their own projects.

INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTATIONAL SCIENCE – Robert Panoff (Shodor)

Computational science continues to advance the accurate description and prediction of the dynamics of the world around us. We have the challenge and opportunity to help students see that computing really matters. Computational thinking matters because quantitative reasoning touches all aspects of a liberal education. Multiscale modeling is the intellectual "heart and soul" of 21st Century mathematics and the physical and social sciences and therefore is one of the essential skills of the 21st Century workforce. Computational thinking matters because we can demonstrate the power of interactive computing to help all students and teachers reach a deeper understanding and application of data in every content area. Computational thinking matters because computational tools integrated with curriculum become both the content of education and a most effective tool for learning. Examples will be drawn from the National Science Digital Library, with emphasis on data analysis and modeling for accurate quantitative simulations built with system dynamics and agent modeling tools.

SYSTEM DYNAMICS MODELING OF CHEMICAL AND ENZYME KINETICS USING VENSIM PLE, MATLAB©, AND GNU OCTAVE – Jeff Krause (Shodor)

This session will survey computational resources and tools that can be used to allow students to see the operating principles of the cell’s molecular machines and to help them to make the connection to mathematical and computational representations of these operating principles. Molecular-structure viewing software and agent-based simulations will be used to demonstrate the fundamental molecular processes of association-dissociation, conformational change and catalysis. Then the processes of abstracting these phenomena into a system diagram, system dynamics model and system of equations will be presented. Visualization and analysis of model behavior will be linked to experimental approaches that are used to try to isolate model parameters to enable more accurate estimation and model validation. Finally, standards-based tools that have been developed to facilitate the construction and sharing of models of biochemical reaction systems will be introduced.

MASHUPS FOR K-12 ESCIENCE – Tim Hardt (Washington Middle School), Jeff Sale (San Diego Supercomputing Center), Stephanie Stevenson (Fort Caroline Middle School)

This session will introduce mashups — defined by Google as "a web site that combines content data from more than one source to create a new user experience" — to K-12 educators. This introduction will focus on incorporating a variety of scientific data into shared maps, an area of mashups accessible to most K-12 teachers and their students. More sophisticated mashups and mashup authoring tools will also be introduced and a link to a fuller introduction to these tools will be provided. Two examples of mashups being used in K-12 classrooms will be presented and discussed.

WAVE PROBLEMS IN QUANTUM MECHANICS (PART 1) – Richard Gass (University of Cincinnati)

This session will focus on using Mathematica and gridMathematica to solve some interesting and computationally hard problems in quantum mechanics. These problems are of interest in the study of electrons confined in nano-structures and are accessible to undergraduates. Both serial and parallel computation will be discussed.

CHEMISTRY DATABASES (LEVEL 1, BEGINNER) – Clyde Metz (College of Charleston), Shawn Sendlinger (North Carolina Central University)

Educational uses of chemistry databases will be discussed. Participants will then explore databases from Biorad and the Cambridge Structural Database.

GNU & INTEL SCIENTIFIC LIBRARIES – Charlie Peck (Earlham College)

EXPLORING COMPUTATIONAL SCIENCE PROJECTS FOR UNDERGRADUATE ENGINEERS (PART 2) – Steve Gordon, James Giuliani, & Siddarth Samsi (Ohio Supercomputer Center), Steve Stevenson & Dan Warner (Clemson University)

Example projects and work time for participants to create their own projects.

SYSTEM & AGENT MODELING FOR LEARNING AND PHYSICAL CHALLENGES EDUCATION – Robert Panoff & Kent Robertson (Shodor)

Interactive computer models are powerful spaces to introduce concepts in math and science from the simple to the complex. By way of introduction, we will examine free and inexpensive modeling environments that allow the beginner modeler to understand global and local representations of the world. In "systems models" the world is described in terms of observables and rates of change, applying the change over and over to see how the system behaves. In "agent models" the world is described by the probabilities of behavior of the objects in the world, and that behavior is repeated over and over to see how the system changes. We will explore simple models to connect the key ideas of rates of change and probabilities.

REALISTIC SIMULATION AND VISUALIZATION OF ENZYME REACTIONS WITH MCELL AND DREAMM – Joe Stiles (National Resource for Biomedical Supercomputing, Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center)

Enzymes are essential to cellular function. In high school or college classes, discussion typically begins with a definition of catalysis and progresses to lock-and-key models illustrated by simple pictures. Much more is now possible – in fact, enzymes present a unique opportunity to intermix important principles of biology with math, chemistry and physics. The challenge, of course, is to do so effectively and engagingly. I will show how MCell and DReAMM software (www.mcell.psc.edu) can be used to simulate and visualize enzyme and substrate molecules as they diffuse and react in solution. Students can engage in realistic "computational experiments" to learn how molecules move in three dimensions, how they encounter and react with each other, and how changes in different physical parameters shift the balance and rate of reaction. They thus learn to "see" the physical basis of enzyme reactions and the chemical and mathematical equations used to describe them.

COLLABORATION BAZAAR – Thomas Loughran (University of Notre Dame)

This session provides an opportunity for participants to view and discuss with their colleagues a wider variety of computational science and HPC resources for K-12 classrooms than were featured in the main conference sessions. Time will be set aside at the end of the session for participants to develop the written follow-up plan required as a condition of conference attendance.

WAVE PROBLEMS IN QUANTUM MECHANICS (PART 2) - Richard Gass (University of Cincinnati)

This session is hands-on and will build on the topics covered in Part 1 with an emphasis on parallel computation. The goal is for everyone to run at least one parallel computation using gridMathematica.

COMPUTATIONAL CHEMISTRY EDUCATION - REVISITED – Clyde Metz (College of Charleston), Shawn Sendlinger (North Carolina Central University)

A discussion concerning the appropriate educational use of the various software packages introduced from the previous days will be followed with more hands-on time for further participant exploration.

SPRNG INTRODUCTIONS – Michael Mascagni (Florida State University)

We will introduce the attendees to the mysterious and charming world of random numbers. We unmask the mysteries to reveal a world of simple mathematical recurrences that masquerade as random. While we normally don't think about random numbers, we will engage in some hands-on experimentation to see that random numbers are sometimes not nearly as random as you think. However, good random number generators are powerful tools and allow you to do all kinds of computations easily on a wide variety of high-performance systems via simulation and Monte Carlo methods. Yet, the ability to pick this computational low-hanging fruit depends on a solid, reliable random number generation package for parallel, distributed, and Grid-based computing. Thus, we will introduce you to the Scalable Parallel Random Number Generators (SPRNG) library via lecture material and some hands on examples. SPRNG is available and free to non-profit users at http://www.sprng.org.

EXPLORING COMPUTATIONAL SCIENCE PROJECTS FOR UNDERGRADUATE ENGINEERS (PART 3) – Steve Gordon, James Giuliani, & Siddarth Samsi (Ohio Supercomputer Center), Steve Stevenson & Dan Warner (Clemson University)

Example projects and work time for participants to create their own projects.

WIKIS IN, OUT OF AND BETWEEN CLASSROOMS – Kent Robertson (Shodor)

A wiki is a web page or group of pages that are developed by a group of people. Everyone in the group has access to tools that are used to edit the pages. Like other web pages, wiki pages can be a combination of text, graphics, pictures and video. Wikis allow students individually or in groups to collaboratively develop and publish multi-media projects. The multi-media capabilities make this a valuable medium for deaf students. WikiSpaces provides additional tools for the teacher to monitor and control the students' work. The teacher can control who accesses the pages and can invite students in different schools to join in the development or view the pages. This session will demonstrate the creation and development of wiki’s and discuss a variety of opportunities to use them in main stream and Deaf classes.

BEHAVIORS OF BIOLOGICAL NETWORK MOTIFS AND MODULAR NATURE OF BIOLOGICAL NETWORKS – Jeff Krause (Shodor)

From the 1970s through the 1990s basic research in biochemistry and molecular biology was dominated by detailed studies of individual molecules along with a small number of metabolites or interacting species. In the past decade new high-throughput technologies have enabled the measurement of large numbers of molecular species in living systems in a single experiment. Our ability to interpret and make inferences with these data requires an understanding of the functional properties and dynamic behaviors of networks of interacting molecular machines. While the molecular networks within a cell can be extremely vast and complex, many small sets of interacting biomolecules with useful and understandable functions have been identified in various systems. The features of some of these functional building blocks as well as a survey of concepts and resources for "network biology" will be the focus of this session.