Rhode Island NSF Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) will send three university students to the 25th annual international SuperComputing13 (SC13) Conference in November to represent the Ocean State.
The three students — Layla Oesper, Brown University; Mary Penniman, Bryant University; and Brianna Mellon, Roger Williams University — earned student volunteer slots at the prestigious event through a highly competitive selection process that took only 85 students from a pool of 335 national and international applicants.
“The competition for selection was intense,” said Dr. Edward Hawrot, Brown University Department of Molecular Pharmacology, Physiology & Biotechnology. “Only about one in four applicants from across the national NSF EPSCoR community of participating states and jurisdictions were invited to attend as EPSCoR Student Volunteers.”
Hawrot also serves as co-principal investigator for Rhode Island NSF EPSCoR (Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research).
The SC meetings Nov. 17-22, held in Denver this year, spotlight the most advanced scientific and technical applications in the world, bringing together the international supercomputing community for an exceptional program of technical papers, tutorials and timely research posters.
Oesper, a graduate student from Colorado Springs, Colo., in Brown’s Computer Science department, is conducting research focused on designing algorithms to analyze high-throughput DNA sequencing of cancer genomes.
The continually decreasing costs of DNA sequencing and several large initiatives that aim to sequence large cohorts of patients with dozens of different types of cancers have led to a deluge of cancer genomic data.
Consequently, the datasets that Oesper needs to analyze with the algorithms she designs are enormous, requiring the use of high performance computational techniques and resources.
“By attending SC 2013, I hope to identify new tools and techniques that will be useful for both me as well as the rest of my lab group,” she said. “I am extremely honored to be a participant.”
Penniman, a Bryant junior majoring in environmental studies and Army ROTC cadet from Leominster, Mass., is focusing her studies on modeling ecosystem communities and relationships.
“I have made it my goal to learn as much as possible about all angles of science,” Penniman said. “Hands-on experience is very important to me and I try to seize every opportunity to learn something new. I am very excited about being selected to attend SC13.”
Dr. Dan McNally, Bryant Department of Science and Technology chair, said, “Being selected as a staff member for this conference is a great achievement for our students and it recognizes their high level of performance in the classroom and laboratory.”
Mellon, a junior, majoring in marine biology with a minor in psychology, said she hopes the conference will expand her knowledge related to her fields of study, such as creating a model of currents in Narragansett Bay to predict patterns of larval movement.
Dr. Scott Rutherford, RWU Department of Environmental Sciences, said Mellon’s selection to attend the conference is a reflection of her initiative and research that introduced her to scientific computing.
“She quickly learned the language and has shown both the aptitude and desire to further her computing knowledge and skills,” Rutherford said. “The conference is a great fit because it will introduce her to advance scientific computing topics and methods.”
By Amy Dunkle
Rhode Island EPSCoR is funded by the National Science Foundation under EPSCoR Research Infrastructure Improvement Award #OIA-1655221. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.