Community
Monthly CIRC Symposia
Every third Friday of the month, the Center for Integrated Research Computing hosts a research symposium (known as the CIRC Symposium), where faculty, staff, and student researchers convene to learn about research projects utilizing the center’s resources, meet potential collaborators, and learn about new technologies and trends in research computing. This event is user-driven and features presentations by researchers using CIRC systems. CIRC Symposia are open to all members of the university community and a complimentary lunch is provided.
The Center for Integrated Research Computing (CIRC) will host its next symposium on Friday, November 21st 11:30 am – 1 pm in Wegmans Hall 1400
This month’s featured speaker is Hongbo Liu from the Department of Biomedical Genetics. Hongbo will highlight how new computational methods and statistical models reveal the ways noncoding DNA changes affect key genes, cell types, and potential drug targets, including their roles in complex diseases like kidney disease.
Large-Scale Multiomic Integration Links ‘Junk’ DNA to Age-Related Chronic Disease
Hongbo Liu, PhD
Department of Biomedical Genetics
Genome-wide association studies have identified numerous DNA sequence variants associated with complex human diseases. However, over 90% of disease-associated variants reside in noncoding genome regions, and their functions in complex diseases remain largely unknown. To address this, we integrated various genomic and epigenomic datasets to identify the regulatory variants by developing several computational strategies, and developed a statistical model, Open4Gene, to link non-coding variants to their target genes using single cell multiome data. Open4Gene identified 1,351 target genes of genetic variants located within open chromatin regions. By integrating these GWAS and multiome datasets (total 32 types), we found over 24,000 regulatory variants targeting more than 1,000 genes, with over 600 genes also targeted by coding variants. In particular, we discovered the convergence of coding and regulatory variants on 161 key disease genes, critical cell types (including proximal tubules), transcriptional regulators (including HNF4A), and potential drug targets for kidney disease, providing an integrative strategy for functional annotation of noncoding variants in complex human diseases.
Machine Learning Optimization of Photonic Crystal Nanocavities
Christer Everly
The Institute of Optics
Photonic crystal cavity design can be an exceptionally complex and computationally expensive endeavor. This talk examines the use of data driven approaches toward optimization of dual photonic crystal nanobeam cavities for optomechanics applications. We explore the use of hybrid deep learning and genetic algorithm optimization to create novel designs.
Information about previous CIRC Symposia is available.
CIRC Summer School
Every summer, CIRC hosts a four-week training session on various operating systems, programming languages, computational programs and libraries, and data analytics tools for the research community. Known as the “CIRC Summer School,” these workshops are broken down into individual topics and feature small, interactive, classroom-based instruction sessions. Topics range from basic training in Linux to optimizing codes for parallel computing. The courses are designed for beginner and advanced users alike. Extra emphasis is placed on using the various available languages, libraries, etc., specifically on BlueHive.
CIRC Winter Boot Camp
Have you ever wanted to learn how to program or add a new programming language to your existing knowledge? Have you been looking for the right time to pick up a few essential technical computing skills to help with your research projects or course work? Well, now you have the opportunity during the CIRC Winter Boot Camp!
The Center for Integrated Research Computing (CIRC) hosts a multi-week winter program to help students, postdocs, research staff, and faculty learn new programming languages and sharpen their computing and data analytics skills. The classes are designed for beginners and cover basic topics to give enough direction to move on to self-learning tutorials or other more advanced coursework.
Check again soon for an announcement about the next Winter Bootcamp!
CIRC Workshops
The Center for Integrated Research Computing (CIRC) offers workshops every Spring and Fall that introduce users to the BlueHive computing environment and other computing resources that CIRC supports. The workshops include sessions in the morning targeted for new and beginning users, and afternoon sessions covering a few more in-depth topics and tools and applications that are available to the research community.
Annual CIRC Poster Session
The Center for Integrated Research Computing holds the Annual CIRC Poster Session at the end of each Spring semester. At this event, attendees discover the wide range of research that is enabled by computation and displayed to the University community. This event provides an informal venue to share computational and data analytics techniques and methodologies with colleagues from a wide variety of disciplines.
Check again later for an announcement about the next CIRC Poster Session!