Google to award over USD$1M to Latin America researchers

Google is well known for supporting the development of sciences and technology around the globe. This time, the Internet giant is looking for world-class scientists in the Latin America region to support them and work with them in research topics of mutual interest. In particular, researchers in the domain of computational science are likely to have common interests with Google and their in-house research programs. These are the research areas that are of interest for Google (every proposal should be classified in one of these areas): 

• Geo/maps
• Human-computer interaction
• Information retrieval, extraction and organization
• Internet of things
• Machine learning and data mining 
• Mobile 
• Natural language processing 
• Physical interfaces and immersive experiences 
• Privacy
• Other topics related to web research  

Google has offered over one million dollars to support scientists in the region. This represents a significant cash injection into the Latin America research community. Each project should have one student, either PhD or Master and one faculty member. For the case of PhD students, the student will receive an allowance of USD$1200/month and the faculty USD$750/month for one year. For Master students, the student will receive USD$750/month and the faculty USD$675/month. 

Thousands of students and faculty member sent their applications last month. Precise guidelines on how to build a good application were given. Google senior researchers wrote a guide on how to write a strong proposal, which was a great place to start for applicants. The notifications would be sent directly to the fortunate winners in the coming weeks. We should keep an eye on those fortunate teams to see what great research results come out of this in the coming months. 

HPC Research in Applications

Roughly speaking, there are three big areas of research in HPC: hardware, software and applications. All well-versed HPC researcher and practitioner must know a fair amount in each one, but usually focus on a single one. I personally believe that Latin America HPC research should focus on applications, because this area has potential to impact the most people.

Two areas, in which I have been working in the recent years, are good examples of applications that are important and LA has already lots of knowhow: Weather/Climate and Natural Resources. In addition, those areas would improve in quality and scale with help of new methods and techniques from HPC.

In weather and climate modeling, usually the meteorologist simplify the physics of the processes involved so that they can run in a feasible amount of time their simulations. However, these simplifications result in loss of accuracy and precision. Human resources are needed to redesign the applications for large scale machines so that more realist models can run. Those models can be used to improve peoples lives, for example to plan for electricity production.

In natural resources, there is much research for example in oil and gas. In LA, there are many companies that perform large simulations to better extract oil and gas without damaging the environment. For example, in Bucaramanga - Colombia, Ecopetrol has a research center: http://www.ecopetrol.com.co/especiales/Portafolio%20ICP/portafolio/centro/index.htm . It has 20 labs with over 100 researcher. They improve safety by using simulations and, definitely would benefit from HPC to run larger and more realistic simulations.

Another possible application in natural resources is fracking. Simulating fractures is difficult and using realist models to preform those simulations is expensive. New methods to accelerate these techniques are important for the industry to allow safer operations. I particularly have been interested in XFEM method, since it does not require explicit representation of fractures, that would be difficult to maintain for complex geometries.

Finally, I believe that much can be done in basic software and hardware in LA, but applications should probably be central in HPC research here. Primarily, because it directly produces results used by society. Some sites in LA where software and data about Weather/Models can be obtained are:

http://previsaonumerica.cptec.inpe.br/

http://www.master.iag.usp.br/

Recruiting Research Assistants through a Graduate-level HPC Class in Latin America

During the introductory seminars to graduate school, a faculty professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign used to equate the process of finding an advisor (or finding students, for that matter) to that of finding a spouse. A good relationship student-advisor was like a good marriage. It is not easy to really find whom to work with in your research. Similarly, it is not easy to find whom to share your life with. Although I found the analogy quite amusing, I am not sure I would go to that extent when it comes to define the process of finding students to work in your research group. However, something is clear. If you want to build a productive research team, you would better be on the lookout for good students. How do you recruit them?

For those young assistant professors in Latin America starting a new research team, here is a little piece of advice. A graduate course is a very efficient mechanism to find good matches for your research group. Here are some of the reasons why:

• The course extends for a relatively long period (usually one semester), giving you time to get to know your students, both at the technical and personal level.
• The course exposes students to a fairly rich body of knowledge about a particular topic. Therefore, by the end of the semester the student will have a better clue on whether the topic is interesting or not.
• The graduate class is usually more flexible in the format. That opens up an opportunity to explore particular research problems that may engage students and bring them up to speed into your research agenda.
• The class usually has more students than available spots in your research group, so it gives you the chance to choose good elements from a bigger sample.

Note that the course works both ways: professor identify good candidates for their groups and students find attractive research groups. So, the course is a meeting point to establish long-lasting relationships and spark new and interesting collaborations. Make sure you carefully design your graduate class. Here are some recommendations:

• Provide a multiple-session introduction to the topic, where you cover most of the fundamentals of the discipline.
• Select intriguing papers (both recent and classic) to make up the reading list for the class. 
• Provide a small collection of project descriptions that students could pick up for their term project. That way you would have them working on your research direction and determine if they are a good match for your team. Make sure all projects generate a scientific write-up with the findings of the project.
• Schedule presentations from the students, so you can refine their presentation skills. As one of my colleagues says when it comes to the contribution of a paper "half is what you do, the other half is what you show".

Given that many universities in Latin America have a graduate program in Computer Science, you would have a good chance to offer a graduate course in HPC and start building your research group.

Discussion on HPC collaboration between EU and LA tomorrow (July 16)!

As we have previously covered last month, the Workshop on HPC collaboration between Europe and Latin America will take place tomorrow (July 16, 2015) at the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) in Frankfurt, Germany. The workshop will happen in the Candela Room of the Frankfurt Marriot Hotel (5th floor).

If you happen to be in the conference or just curious, you can check the updated schedule for the workshop here. 

Help us map supercomputing in Latin America

Since we started the endeavor that is HPCLA, we have gathered many news and information about Latin American supercomputers, workshops and conferences in High Performance Computing, and international projects related to the region, among others. Although we are still in the start of our mission of gathering and reporting on this large subject, we already find issues in the way this information is organized online. In this context, we would like to ask for your help to make things better!

We have started to map the institutions in Latin America that are related to High Performance Computing, such as laboratories and universities. For all institutions mapped so far, we have also added a link to the posts that discuss topics related to them. We invite you to help make this map more complete, with new information, photos and links to institutions already listed or missing. You can send your new information to us through hpclatinamerica at gmail. You can expect more of this soon!