Keynote Talk: Scientific Big Data Analysis and Modern Cyber Infrastructures: Challenges and Opportunities in Alaska:

Abstract: Recent advances in large-scale experimental facilities ushered in an era of data driven science. These large-scale data increase the opportunity to answer many fundamental questions in basic science. However, these data pose new challenges to the scientific community in terms of their storage and processing. In the first part of this talk, I will address these challenges from both the aspects of modern cyber infrastructure as follows: 1) Software aspect that includes developing scalable algorithms and software framework using modern big data analytic programming models such as MapReduce, NoSQL, and AI/ML-programming models and 2) Designing a balanced HPC-infrastructure that these software tools need for good performance while balancing the cost of the infrastructure also. For this part of this talk, I will mostly explain my past research experience in cost-effective and scalable analysis of big genomic data.

Later in the talk, I will discuss some major challenges and opportunities in Alaska where scientists often generate large-scale datasets using their experimental facilities leveraging the unique location, communities, and climate of the state. Big cyberinfrastructure, computational expertise, and  is becoming pivotal to analyze these data which impacts Alaska's future. I will briefly describe some of our recent collaborative initiatives to improve the foundation of research and education cyber infrastructure of UAF (both software and hardware) with multiple federal supports including the support for a brand-new GPU-based supercomputing cluster to empower scientists across Alaska to do big data research.  Finally, I will conclude my talk with a call for collaboration which is the last but probably the most important foundation to foster multidisciplinary big data research and education in Alaska.