Spring 2026 Webinar Series

February 20 

Engaging Students in Data Science and High-Performance Computing: Twenty-five undergraduate students participated in the week-long Advanced Computing Student Collaborative, co-located with SC25 held in St. Louis, MO. During the ACSC experience, students learned to use the TACC Analytics Portal (TAP) to analyze and visualize large public data to confirm or debunk a research hypothesis. Research projects varied from uncovering patterns of cognitive function and vulnerability in human-AI interaction, to training and testing a supervised machine learning model to investigate how momentum and injuries in major league baseball impact athlete success. A panel of students will present their ACSC data science student projects using high-performance computing as examples of exercises and projects that could be incorporated into semester-long courses.

Dr. Rosalia Gomez and Dr. Delores Rice, The University of Texas at Austin Texas Advanced Computing Center will provide a brief program overview, outcomes, an introduce the student panel. Dr. Gomez leads education and outreach activities that expand understanding and appreciation of the value of high-performance computing and the career opportunities available in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields, particularly among underrepresented populations. Dr. Rice focuses on program design and implementation, research, and evaluation, investigating ways to enhance the recruitment and retention of historically marginalized students in the STEM disciplines.

March 20

Classroom Applications of Fuzzy Oligo Primer Scanner (FOPS): A GPU-Accelerated Pipeline for High-Throughput Screening of Degenerate Oligonucleotide Primers and Probes: Dr. Feseha Abebe-Akele, Assistant Professor at Elizabeth City State, designed a new tool for optimal degenerate oligonucleotide primers that efficiently target conserved regions across large, diverse sequence datasets. In this webinar, Dr. Abebe-Akele will provide an overview of FOPS, a novel, GPU-accelerated pipeline built on the PyTorch deep learning framework and how this tool could be used in teaching. 

Dr. Feseha Abebe-Akele has extensive academic and research background. He earned his PhD in Genetics in 2013 from the University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH. His dedication to teaching and science led him to complete an MSC in College Teaching In Science in 2014, also at the University of New Hampshire. In addition to this, he holds an MSc in Bioinformatics Programming from Seneca College, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, earned in 2004. Furthermore, he completed an MSc in Molecular Biology from Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia, in 1994. 

April 17

Developing a Data Visualization and Communication Course through the CDS-Exchange Program will be presented by Suzan Anwar, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Computer Science Department Chair at Philander Smith University. Dr. Anwar will share the development of a Data Visualization and Communication course proposal that ahw designed through her participation in the CDS-Exchange program last year. She will discuss the steps involved in developing the course, how the program supported the process, and how the course benefits both her institution and students.