{"id":123322,"date":"2020-07-23T10:56:33","date_gmt":"2020-07-23T20:56:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=123322"},"modified":"2020-07-23T11:24:17","modified_gmt":"2020-07-23T21:24:17","slug":"uh-researchers-pearc20-awards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2020\/07\/23\/uh-researchers-pearc20-awards\/","title":{"rendered":"UH<\/abbr> researchers receive top awards at national computing conference"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>
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Hawaiian Coral Reef Museum by UH<\/abbr> Hilo MEGA<\/abbr> Lab<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Researchers from University of Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> received top awards for the 2020 Practice & Experience in Advanced Research Computing<\/a> (PEARC<\/abbr>), an annual conference that explores current practice and experience in advanced research computing including modeling, simulation and data-intensive computing.The researchers consisted of UH<\/abbr> faculty, staff, graduate and undergraduate students working in areas of cyberinfrastructure, artificial intelligence (AI<\/abbr>) and virtual reality (VR<\/abbr>).<\/p>\n

Sean Cleveland<\/strong>, a cyberinfrastructure research scientist with UH<\/abbr> Information Technology Services along with Director of Cyberinfrastructure Gwen Jacobs<\/strong> and a team from the Texas Advanced Computing Center received Best Paper in application software, support and outcomes for their paper on Tapis, a research framework<\/a> that provides a hosted, unified web-based Application Program Interface for securely managing computational workloads across institutions supporting tools for scientists to gather data and conduct computationally intensive research.<\/p>\n

UH<\/abbr> M\u0101noa\u2019s Laboratory for Advanced Visualization and Applications<\/a> (LAVA<\/abbr>) graduate students Alberto González Martínez<\/strong>, Troy Wooton<\/strong>, Nurit Kirshenbaum<\/strong>, Dylan Kobayashi<\/strong> and LAVA<\/abbr> director and professor of information and computer sciences Jason Leigh<\/strong> won Best Paper in Trending Now–Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence for their work on human steerable AI<\/abbr>. This work allows analysts to steer computer models and make insights based on domain knowledge that are more easily recognized by humans than a computer running a mathematical algorithm.<\/p>\n

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Tapis, an open source, science-as-a-service API<\/abbr> platform for powering research<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Additionally, a team of UH<\/abbr> Hilo and UH<\/abbr> M\u0101noa faculty, staff and students won Best Visualization Showcase for their work in exploring coral reefs in Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> through VR<\/abbr><\/a>. Thousands of images from long-term monitoring sites throughout the Papah\u0101naumoku\u0101kea Marine National Monument were used to create high-resolution 3D reconstructions to create this immersive VR<\/abbr> platform. This project ran over two years in collaboration with the Multi-scale Environmental Graphical Analysis lab<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Many of the award-winning faculty volunteered their time to serve on the PEARC<\/abbr>20 committee to ensure a successful virtual conference after a quick pivot from the usual in-person format due to the COVID-19 pandemic. UH<\/abbr> Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> Data Science Institute<\/a> Co-Directors, Jacobs and Leigh served as conference chair and visualization showcase chair respectively, with Cleveland serving as technical program co-chair.<\/p>\n

UH<\/abbr> researchers will present their award winning papers and visualization from July 27 to 31, 2020 at PEARC<\/abbr>. Additionally, research from UH<\/abbr> virtual institutes C-MAIKI<\/a> and Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> Data Science Institute<\/a>, and Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> EPSCoR<\/abbr>‘s ʻIke<\/span> Wai project<\/a> will be presented throughout the conference, including work in science gateways, data visualization, and software applications for rainfall analysis and mapping and microbiome analysis.<\/p>\n

List of PEARC<\/abbr>20 awards won by UH<\/abbr> researchers<\/h2>\n

Best Paper in Application Software, Support and Outcomes Track<\/strong><\/p>\n

Title: “Tapis API<\/abbr> Development with Python: Best Practices In Scientific REST API<\/abbr> Implementation\u2013Experience implementing a distributed Stream API<\/abbr>”
\nAuthors: Sean Cleveland, Anagha Jamthe, Smruti Padhy, Joe Stubbs, Julia Looney, Michale Packard, Steve Terry, Richard Cardone, Maytal Dahan, and Gwen Jacobs<\/p>\n

Best Paper in Trending Now–Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence Track<\/strong><\/p>\n

Title: “Exploring collections of research publications with human steerable AI<\/abbr>”
\nAuthors: Alberto González Martínez, Billy Troy Wooton, Nurit Kirshenbaum, Dylan Kobayashi and Jason Leigh<\/p>\n

Best Visualization Showcase Award<\/strong><\/p>\n

Title: “Exploration of Coral Reefs in Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> through Virtual Reality: Hawaiian Coral Reef Museum VR<\/abbr>”
\nAuthors: Francis Ray Cristobal, Michael Dodge, John Burns, Briana Noll, Nickolas Rosenberg, Joseph Sanchez, Kailey Pascoe, Alexandra Runyan and Drew Gotshalk<\/p>\n

View all awards for PEARC<\/abbr>20.<\/a><\/p>\n

—By Maria E. Dumanlang<\/em><\/p>\n