S5E1 - Lois Curfman McInnes: Building Software Sustainability and Workforce Diversity
Release Date: 07/10/2024
S5E4 - Paulina Rodriguez: Building Credibility and Authenticity
Science in Parallel
Early in her applied math journey, Paulina Rodriguez was a little skeptical of calculators and computers. But her desire to really understand what’s going on under the hood has ultimately led to satisfying research. During her Ph.D., she’s explored the credibility of computational models for medical device applications, making sure that researchers understand the accuracy, validity and uncertainty of simulated results. Paulina shares how she honed her problem-solving skills and creativity as she navigated her education. Her enthusiasm and determination are infectious, and she describes her...
info_outline
S5E3 - Paul Sutter the Spaceman: Adventures in Science and Outreach
Science in Parallel
Science communication often attracts people with diverse interests, who thrive in multiple roles. Paul Sutter is no exception: he’s an astrophysicist, host, author and more. He’s also a visiting professor at Barnard College, Columbia University. Paul’s roots are in computational science, and he shares how his many projects continue to build on that foundation. We also discuss his most recent book: Rescuing Science: Restoring Trust in an Age of Doubt, which critiques today’s scientific enterprise and and offers ideas for supporting a better future. You'll meet: is a theoretical...
info_outline
S5E2 - Rogelio Cardona-Rivera Plays Games for Science
Science in Parallel
Video games are everywhere, but the fundamental elements that generate human reactions such as suspense or surprise aren’t understood. Instead, game designers start from scratch each time they want to build a new experience for players. Rogelio Cardona-Rivera of the University of Utah wants to understand games and the fundamental elements that make people respond as they do—as a science of games. The research is important for more than just gaming—Rogelio is working on a variety of projects, including artificial intelligence research, technology for Indigenous storytelling and virtual...
info_outline
S5E1 - Lois Curfman McInnes: Building Software Sustainability and Workforce Diversity
Science in Parallel
The field of high-performance computing (HPC) currently faces dual challenges: important technical problems that require a skilled workforce and the need to recruit more computational researchers, especially those from underrepresented communities. This conversation with Lois Curfman McInnes of Argonne National Laboratory examines both the complexity in building scientific software and the work needed to build the HPC workforce of the future. You'll meet: is a senior computational scientist in the mathematics and computer science division at . She served as deputy director for the software...
info_outline
S4E4 - Anubhav Jain: Hacking Materials
Science in Parallel
Artificial intelligence is reshaping research to discover new materials for a range of important applications. In this episode, meet of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a researcher who has been at the forefront of this transition. He uses machine learning and other computational tools as a materials scientist to discover compounds that could store and convert energy and solve other societal problems. Anubhav’s current research path started in graduate school at MIT, where he was supported by a . We discuss how computational tools including AI have moved from a novel idea to a central...
info_outline
Season 4, Episode 3 -- Danilo Pérez: Embracing Versatility
Science in Parallel
Sometimes extraordinary circumstances like the pandemic offer researchers unexpected opportunities to serve others. Danilo Pérez, now a Ph.D. student in computational neuroscience at New York University, found himself in this situation in Puerto Rico in 2020. He contributed his mathematical modeling expertise as part of a team that built and maintained Puerto Rico’s public health data during that intense period. Later he contributed to AI-based modeling of coronavirus variants that won major honors in the computing community: the 2022 Gordon Bell Special Prize for HPC-Based COVID-19...
info_outline
Season 4, Episode 2 -- Casey Berger: Choose Your Own Multidimensional Career
Science in Parallel
Traditional science career advice often urges people to specialize and become the best at one activity. But that perspective can undervalue interdisciplinary researchers and other polymaths who can see connections between and beyond science and engineering fields. This episode’s guest, Casey Berger, describes how she has navigated this second approach, embracing her many interests, such as science, computing, teaching and storytelling, to make her mark as a physicist and data scientist and as a fiction author. In the second episode of our podcast series on creativity in computing, Casey...
info_outline
Season 4, Episode 1 -- Creativity in Climate Modeling
Science in Parallel
Season 4 of Science in Parallel centers around creativity and computing, starting with an interview about climate modeling. At this nexus of physics, earth science, mathematics and computing, researchers are also racing against the clock to accurately predict how global climate is shifting before the changes happen. Pulling all the scientific pieces together and communicating those results so that others can use them are significant creative challenges—ones that both Tapio Schneider and Emily de Jong of California Institute of Technology have embraced. In our conversation, Tapio and Emily...
info_outline
Season 3, Episode 5 -- Beyond Exascale: Exploring Emerging Hardware
Science in Parallel
The exascale era in computing has arrived, and that brings up the question of what’s next. We’ll discuss some emerging processor technologies-- molecular storage and computing, quantum computing and neuromorphic chips—with an expert from each of those fields. Learn more about these technologies’ strengths and challenges and how they might be incorporated into tomorrow’s systems. You’ll meet: , professor of and CEO of the AI startup . , senior scientist and department head for computational sciences at and deputy director of the . , is a neuromorphic computing...
info_outline
Season 3, Episode 4 -- Gabriel Casabona: It All Comes Down to Gravity
Science in Parallel
Although he’s always loved space, Gabriel Casabona pursued other fields, including medicine and religion, before landing in astrophysics. We discussed how his passion for physics motivated him to deepen his knowledge of math and computing, how gravity’s mysteries define his work and other big challenges he hopes to work on during his career. You’ll meet: is a Ph.D. student in computational and theoretical astrophysics at Northwestern University. His work is supported by a Department of Energy Computational Science graduate fellowship. This conversation was recorded in person in November...
info_outlineThe field of high-performance computing (HPC) currently faces dual challenges: important technical problems that require a skilled workforce and the need to recruit more computational researchers, especially those from underrepresented communities. This conversation with Lois Curfman McInnes of Argonne National Laboratory examines both the complexity in building scientific software and the work needed to build the HPC workforce of the future.
You'll meet:
Lois Curfman McInnes is a senior computational scientist in the mathematics and computer science division at Argonne National Laboratory. She served as deputy director for the software technology focus are of the U.S. Department of Energy's Exascale Computing Project and completed her Ph.D. in applied mathematics at the University of Virginia.