University of California High-Performance AstroComputing Center

The University of California High-Performance AstroComputing Center (UC-HiPACC), based at the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC), is consortium of nine University of California campuses and three Department of Energy laboratories (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, and Los Alamos National Laboratory). The goal of the consortium is to support and facilitate original research and education in computational astrophysics, and to engage in public outreach and education.[1] The UC-HiPACC consortium sponsors or co-sponsors conferences and workshops and an annual advanced international summer school at a UC campus. It promotes educational outreach to the public, and maintains a website[2] featuring the latest UC news and findings in computational astronomy, a large archive of lecture videos and presentations,[3] and a gallery of supercomputer-generated astrophysics videos and images.[4]

Staff and Organization

Joel R. Primack, Distinguished Professor of Physics at UCSC, has directed the UC-HiPACC consortium since its inception.[5] The staff includes Senior Writer Trudy E. Bell, Administrator Sue Grasso, Scientific Visualization Coordinator Alex Bogert, and webmaster Steve Zaslaw.[6] The consortium is organized at UCSC under the aegis of the Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics (SCIPP).[7]

Principal Activities

The UC-HiPACC consortium, which began operating[8] in January 2010,[9] supports activities to facilitate and encourage excellence, collaboration, and education in astronomy across the University of California system[10] and affiliated DOE National Laboratories. It does not directly fund research or major hardware. Instead, UC-HiPACC sponsors working groups of UC scientists from multiple campuses and labs pursuing joint projects in computational astrophysics; workshops and conferences on topics in computational astrophysics; and an annual advanced summer school on a topic in computational astrophysics.[11] Work done by the staff helps bring the fruits of computational astrophysics research back to the public.[12]

UC-HiPACC Meetings and Summer Schools 2010 – 2013

Fourteen multiday meetings and International Summer Schools on AstroComputing (ISSAC) were held from 2010 to 2013.[13]

Dates Name of Meeting Meeting Location/s Participants No. of Faculty No. of Students
2010
June 28–30 Enzo User Workshop UCSD/SDSC 45
July 26–August 13 ISSAC 2010: Galaxy Simulations UCSC 10 59
August 16–20 Santa Cruz Galaxy Workshop UCSC 120
December 16–17 The Future of AstroComputing UCSD/SDSC 40
2011
July 18–29 ISSAC 2011: Explosive Astrophysics UCB/LBNL 14 28
August 8–12 Santa Cruz Galaxy Workshop UCSC 86
2012
June 14–16 The Baryon Cycle UCI 130
June 23–27 Computational Astronomy Journalism Boot Camp UCSC/NASA/CAS 20 15
July 9–20 ISSAC 2012: AstroInformatics UCSD/SDSC 11 34
August 13–17 Santa Cruz Galaxy Workshop UCSC 95
August 18–20 AGORA kickoff workshop UCSC 52
2013
July 22–August 9 ISSAC 2013: Star and Planet Formation UCSC 16 48
August 12–16 Santa Cruz Galaxy Workshop UCSC 95
August 16–23 AGORA workshop UCSC 37
2014 (planned)
February 12–14 Near-Field Deep-Field Connection Conference UCI
March 21–22 Future of UC-HiPACC Workshop UCB/LBL
July 21–August 1 ISSAC 2014 UCSD/SDSC
August 11–15 Santa Cruz Galaxy Workshop UCSC
August 15–18 AGORA workshop UCSC

AGORA = Assembling Galaxies of Resolved Anatomy; CAS = California Academy of Sciences; CGE = Center for Galaxy Evolution; ISSAC = International Summer School on AstroComputing; LBNL = Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; NASA = NASA Ames Research Center; NSF = National Science Foundation; SDSC = San Diego Supercomputer Center; UCI = UC Irvine; UCSC = UC Santa Cruz. All participants in the journalism boot camp were professional science journalists.

Workshops and Conferences on Computational Astrophysics

To further its mission in astronomy and education across the UC system, and to enable researchers in the field of AstroComputing to share and further their research through cross fertilization and collaboration, UC-HiPACC sponsors conferences on topics in computational astrophysics.

Future of AstroComputing Workshop (2010)

In December 2010 UC-HiPACC organized a major conference on the Future of AstroComputing[14] at the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California, San Diego (SDSC). UC-HiPACC provided partial support for the Enzo[15] workshop[16] at UCSD in spring 2010.

2012 Science Journalism Boot Camp in Computational Astronomy

In June 2012, science and engineering journalists — whose publications and productions are estimated to collectively reach more than 10 million readers and viewers worldwide — attended the first journalism “boot camp” on computational astronomy.[17] Called “Computational Astronomy: From Planets to Cosmos,” the workshop was an intense three-and-a-half-day backgrounder for practicing science or engineering journalists from all media — print, online, broadcast, social media, and film — whether on staff or freelance.[18][19][20]

Santa Cruz Galaxy Workshops

Five-day workshops for galaxy researchers worldwide co-sponsored by UC-HiPACC were held at UCSC in August in 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013.[21] The most recent, in August 2013, was attended by nearly 90 participants from about 30 institutions in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Korea, Spain, and the United States. Approximately 50 sessions were held over five days. About 85 presenters from around the world conducted sessions on a variety of current concerns in astrophysics.[22]

Annual Summer School in Computational Astrophysics

UC-HiPACC supports an annual international advanced school aimed at graduate students and postdocs who are currently working in or actively interested in doing research in AstroComputing. Topics and locations of the annual school rotate among the UC campuses and national laboratories, and Caltech and Stanford also participate. Lectures from summer school sessions are posted on the UC-HiPACC website so that they can be useful worldwide. During these schools, students are afforded direct access to some of the largest supercomputers in the world for running their own simulations.[23]

2010 Summer School

The first UC-HiPACC summer school was held in July 2010 on the campus of UC Santa Cruz where students learned about the main software models currently used in high resolution simulations of galaxy formation and evolution. In labs, students worked on projects using these codes, supervised by the lecturers. The summer school was directed by Anatoly Klypin, New Mexico State University.[24]

2011 Summer School

In 2011, 28 grad students — 17 from outside California — gathered at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory to learn about Explosive Astrophysics. The focus was on computational explosive astrophysics, including the modeling of core collapse and thermonuclear supernovae, gamma-ray bursts, neutron star mergers, and other energetic transients. Workshops guided students in running and visualizing simulations on supercomputers using codes such as FLASH, CASTRO, GR1D and modules for nuclear burning and radiation transport. The conference was organized by Daniel Kasen and Peter Nugent of UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Labs.[25]

2012 Summer School

Taught from July 9 to 20, 2012, the summer school on the campus of UC San Diego, under the direction of Alex Szaley, hosted by SDSC Director Michael Norman, taught the next generation of researchers how to deal effectively with the avalanche of data that comes from current astronomical observations. The field of study is called AstroInformatics. Students were afforded access to the San Diego Supercomputer Center for computational and infrastructure support. Conducted over 10 days, 30 hours of lectures, combined with five hours of post-lecture discussions, and 20 hours of hands-on computation labs.[26][27]

2013 Summer School

The 2013 AstroComputing Summer School trained future researchers in the use of large-scale simulations in star and planet formation problems. The school covered many of the major public codes in use today, including tutorials and hands-on experience running and analyzing simulations. Student were led by instructors in labs on the new 3,000-core Hyades supercomputer[28] on the UCSC campus.[29][30]

Cosmological Simulations

Large cosmological simulations are now the basis for much current research on the structure of the universe and the evolution of galaxies and clusters of galaxies. “Numerical simulations have become ... one of the most effective tools to study and to solve astrophysical problems.”[31] Researchers associated with UC-HiPACC are deeply involved in the two projects described below, which are relevant to UC-HiPACC’s mission to promote UC computational astrophysics. The HiPACC website is hosting the Bolshoi website. The UCSC AstroComputing system Hyades, including the Huawei 1 PetaByte AstroData system, will be hosting many of Bolshoi simulation outputs.

Project AGORA

In 2012, the center launched a galaxy supercomputer simulation project called AGORA (Assembling Galaxies of Resolved Anatomy).[32][33][34][35][36][37] [38] [39]

Bolshoi Simulation

The Bolshoi Cosmological Simulation (q.v.) is the most accurate cosmological simulation of the evolution of the large-scale structure of the universe made to date.[40][41][42][43][44][45][46]

Education of Public and Other Outreach

As UC-HiPACC states on its website, “A crucial goal of UC-HiPACC outreach is to give the fruits of UC computational astrophysics research back to the taxpaying public through formal (classroom) and informal (extracurricular) education.”[12]

Activities include the preparation by UC-HiPACC staff of articles to help astronomers reach classroom students and teachers and collaboration with planetaria, science museums, and other organizations that reach the astronomy-interested general public. Planetarium shows for which UC-HiPACC members have contributed astronomical computations and images include “Life: A Cosmic Story” in the 75-foot dome of the Morrison Planetarium in San Francisco, and “Deep Space Adventure” in the 71-foot 8000 pixel-across dome of the Adler Planetarium in Chicago.[12][47]

The UC-HiPACC staff creates and posts to its website approximately monthly “AstroShorts”—illustrated capsule stories about especially interesting work in computational astronomy around the UC-HiPACC consortium, designed for use in the newsletters of astronomical societies, science clubs, newspapers, or other outlets.[12] The website’s “Press Room” publishes press releases on computational astronomy from around the UC-HiPACC consortium.[48] A visualization from the Bolshoi Cosmological Simulation, the most detailed cosmological simulation run to date, was narrated in the National Geographic TV special Inside the Milky Way.[49] UC-HiPACC provided footage from the Bolshoi Simulation to the Icelandic performer Björk for her musical number “Dark Matter” for her Biophilia concert.[12]

The organization conducts outreach to raise funds to support the activities described in this article.[12]

References

  1. ↑ Primack, Joel. "Welcome from the Director". University of California High-Performance AstroComputing Center. UC Santa Cruz. Retrieved 10 Jan 2014.
  2. ↑ "Home Page". University of California High-Performance AstroComputing Center. UC Santa Cruz. Retrieved 10 Jan 2014.
  3. ↑ "UC HiPACC Lectures". University of California High-Performance AstroComputing Center. UC Santa Cruz. Retrieved 10 Jan 2014.
  4. ↑ "Astronomy Visualization Gallery". University of California High-Performance AstroComputing Center. UC Santa Cruz. Retrieved 10 Jan 2014.
  5. ↑ "Joel R. Primack". UC Santa Cruz Department of Physics. UC Santa Cruz. Retrieved 10 Jan 2014.
  6. ↑ "Contact Us!". University of California High-Performance AstroComputing Center. UC Santa Cruz. Retrieved 10 Jan 2014.
  7. ↑ "Theoretical Astrophysics and Cosmology". Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics. UC Santa Cruz. Retrieved 10 Jan 2014.
  8. ↑ Brown, J.M. (21 July 2009). "Four UCSC programs receive research grants". Santa Cruz Sentinel. Retrieved 10 Jan 2014.
  9. ↑ "UC MultiCampus Research Programs & Initiatives Competition Results - June 2009 Awards List" (PDF). Research Grants Program Office. University of California Office of the President. Retrieved 10 Jan 2014.
  10. ↑ Dawson, William. "The Merging Cluster Collaboration wins funding by UC-HiPACC". Merging Cluster Collaboration. Retrieved 11 Jan 2014.
  11. ↑ "Missions & Goals. What We Do". University of California High-Performance AstroComputing Center. UC Santa Cruz. Retrieved 10 Jan 2014.
  12. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Education & Public Outreach". University of California High-Performance AstroComputing Center. UC Santa Cruz. Retrieved 10 Jan 2014.
  13. ↑ "The First Three Years: 2010–2012" (PDF). University of California High-Performance AstroComputing Center. UC Santa Cruz. p. 3. Retrieved 9 Jan 2014.
  14. ↑ "UC-HiPACC 2010 Annual Report". University of California High-Performance AstroComputing Center. UC Santa Cruz. Retrieved 7 Jan 2014.
  15. ↑ "Enzo". Enzo version 2.0. UC San Diego. Retrieved 10 Jan 2014.
  16. ↑ "Enzo Workshop at UCSD". UC San Diego. Retrieved 7 Jan 2014.
  17. ↑ "Computational Astronomy: From Planets to Cosmos webpage". University of California High-Performance AstroComputing Center. UC Santa Cruz. Retrieved 7 Jan 2014.
  18. ↑ "First Science Journalism Boot Camp in Computational Astronomy Held at UCSC". University of California High-Performance AstroComputing Center. UC Santa Cruz. Retrieved 7 Jan 2014.
  19. ↑ Bell, Trudy E. "From ScienceWriters: A computational astronomy boot camp". ScienceWriters magazine. The National Association of Science Writers. Retrieved 11 Jan 2014.
  20. ↑ "2012 Science Engineering Journalism Boot Camp PlayList". shelf3d. Retrieved 11 Jan 2014.
  21. ↑ "HiPACC Conferences & Workshops". University of California High-Performance AstroComputing Center. University of California, Santa Cruz. Retrieved 7 Jan 2014.
  22. ↑ "2013 Santa Cruz Galaxy Workshop". University of California High-Performance AstroComputing Center. University of California, Santa Cruz. Retrieved 7 Jan 2014.
  23. ↑ "The International Summer School on AstroComputing". University of California High-Performance AstroComputing Center. UC Santa Cruz. Retrieved 10 Jan 2014.
  24. ↑ "2010 International Summer School on Astro-Computing". University of California High-Performance AstroComputing Center. UC Santa Cruz. Retrieved 10 Jan 2014.
  25. ↑ "2011 International Summer School on Astro on AstroComputing". University of California High-Performance AstroComputing Center. UC Santa Cruz. Retrieved 10 Jan 2014.
  26. ↑ "The 2012 International Summer School on AstroInformatics". University of California High-Performance AstroComputing Center. UC Santa Cruz. Retrieved 10 Jan 2014.
  27. ↑ "Astroinformatics: 2012 Int'l Summer School on Astrocomputing". Astrostatistics and Astroinformatics Portal. Penn State. Retrieved 11 Jan 2014.
  28. ↑ Stephens, Tim. "UCSC acquires powerful new astrophysics supercomputer system". Phys.org. Science X network. Retrieved 11 Jan 2014.
  29. ↑ "International Summer School on AstroComputing 2013". University of California High-Performance AstroComputing Center. UC Santa Cruz.
  30. ↑ "2013 UC-HIPACC International Advanced Summer School on Computational Astrophysics". AAS Calendar. American Astronomical Society. Retrieved 11 Jan 2014.
  31. ↑ Moscardini, Lauro; Dolag, Klaus. "Cosmology with numerical simulations" (PDF). Institute of Sciences of the Cosmos. Universitat de Barcelona. Retrieved 9 Jan 2014.
  32. ↑ "Astrophysicists launch ambitious assessment of galaxy formation simulations". Phys.org. Science X network. Retrieved 10 Jan 2014.
  33. ↑ Ji-hoon, Kim. "The AGORA High-resolution Galaxy Simulations Comparison". Google Sites. Retrieved 11 Jan 2014.
  34. ↑ "Project AGORA Home". Project AGORA: Assembling Galaxies Of Resolved Anatomy. UC Santa Cruz. Retrieved 12 Jan 2014.
  35. ↑ "Announcing project agora: Ambitious comparison of computer simulations of galaxy evolution". National Science Foundation News. National Science Foundation. Retrieved 11 Jan 2014.
  36. ↑ "Astrophysicists Launch Ambitious Assessment of Galaxy Formation Simulations". ScienceNewsline Sapce. ScienceNewsline. Retrieved 11 Jan 2014.
  37. ↑ Bell, Trudy E. "AstroShort - December 2013. AGORA: Seeing the Invisible Elephant". University of California High-Performance AstroComputing Center. UC Santa Cruz. Retrieved 10 Jan 2014.
  38. ↑ Bell, Trudy E. "Worldwide Collaboration Announces Project Agora: Ambitious Comparison of High-Resolution Computer Simulations of Galaxy Formation and Evolution". University of California High-Performance AstroComputing Center. University of California. Retrieved 10 Jan 2014.
  39. ↑ Ji-hoon, Kim (1970). "The AGORA High-Resolution Galaxy Simulations Comparison Project". The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series. Cornell University Library. 210 (14): 14. arXiv:1308.2669Freely accessible. Bibcode:2014ApJS..210...14K. doi:10.1088/0067-0049/210/1/14.
  40. ↑ Stephens, Tim. "Scientists release most accurate simulation of the universe to date". Phys.org. Science X network. Retrieved 11 Jan 2014.
  41. ↑ Primack, Joel; Bell, Trudy E. (July 2012). "Universe on Fast Forward". Sky & Telescope: 28–35.
  42. ↑ Jenvey, Karen. "NASA Supercomputer Enables Largest Cosmological Simulations". NASA Ames Research Center. NASA. Retrieved 11 Jan 2014.
  43. ↑ Stephens, Tim. "Astrophysicists launch ambitious assessment of galaxy formation simulations". Phys.org. Science X network. Retrieved 11 Jan 2014.
  44. ↑ Kanipe, Jeff. "News: Cosmic simulation". Communications of the ACM. Association for Computing Machinery. Retrieved 11 Jan 2014.
  45. ↑ Tolentino, Mellisa. "SiliconANGLE » The Origin Of The Galaxies: According To Pleiades The Supercomputer The Origin of the Galaxies: According to Pleiades the Supercomputer". SiliconANGLE. SiliconANGLE. Retrieved 11 Jan 2014.
  46. ↑ Boyle, Alan. "How to build a virtual cosmos". NBC News Science. NBC. Retrieved 11 Jan 2014.
  47. ↑ Morrison Planetarium. "Life, A Cosmic Story, credits tab, Science Data and Simulations". California Academy of Sciences. Retrieved 13 Jan 2014.
  48. ↑ "HiPACC Press Room". University of California High-Performance AstroComputing Center. UC Santa Cruz. Retrieved 9 Jan 2014.
  49. ↑ "Excerpts from "Inside the Milky Way", produced by National Geographic TV". University of California High-Performance AstroComputing Center. UC Santa Cruz. Retrieved 9 Jan 2014.
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