Education & Mobility

The NorTex Data Science Cluster promotes Transatlantic collaboration between Norway and Texas in researcher and student mobility and education. In 2018 the cluster is supporting participation in R&D and Innovation activities across the participating organizations and institutions; Rice University, University of Texas-Austin, NORCE (formerly IRIS), GCE NODE and University of Agder (UiA).

The project includes summer schools and seminars with selected topics within drilling, data security and big data in O&G, relevant to the SFIs. A joint curriculum within selected topics is being developed in cooperation with Rice University and UT Austin, to be integrate in UiA’s MSc/PhD program in ICT and Mechatronics. In addition, the partners offer training courses within their particular areas of expertise. A mobility scheme for researchers and PhDs including mobility grants is included.

The partnership will adapt teaching methods from the US partners to Norway by use of web-based learning leveraging the OpenStax2 College, OpenStax Tutor and OpenStax CNX platforms developed by Rice University. The OpenStax platform offers the NorTex Data Science Cluster a unique opportunity to not only develop and share educational material amongst its partners, but a platform that extend globally by being part of the world’s largest collections of open educational resource. The development of joint curriculum within OpenStax benefits not only MSc/PhD students, but opens for continuing education (tied to EVU-program at the Norwegian Universities) for all the partners in the SFIs, GCE NODE and others outside the consortium.

RICE UNIVERSITY
The following activities organized by the Ken Kennedy Institute at Rice University are being offered to the NorTex Data Science Cluster community. For more information contact Søren Kragholm (soren.kragholm@uia.no) or Jan Erik Ødegård (odegard@rice.edu).

Rice 2018 Rice Oil & Gas HPC Conference, March 12-13, 2018
The Oil and Gas High Performances Computing (HPC) Conference, hosted annually at Rice University, is the premier meeting place for networking and discussion focused on computing and information technology challenges and needs in the oil and gas industry. High-end computing and information technology continues to stand out across the industry as a critical business enabler and differentiator with a relatively well understood return on investment. However, challenges such as constantly changing technology landscape, increasing focus on software and software innovation, and escalating concerns around workforce development still remain. Website

The HPC Boot Camp, May 21-25, 2018
Leading HPC faculty and staff members from Rice University serve as instructors for the HPC Boot Camp. The curriculum covers topics ranging from MPI, OpenMP, Pthreads, Performance analysis (HPCToolkit), accelerated computing using GPGPU (OpenACC and CUDA), and GPU programming including Numba, Tensorflow and domain-specific CUDA libraries. Using Rice’s shared computing infrastructure, hands on laboratory sessions supported by the instructor and lab assistants, will be offered each day allowing participants to practice what is being taught in the class sessions.

Prerequisites HPC Boot Camp: Participants should be comfortable with using Linux command line for program development and compiling. You should have basic knowledge of development and debugging of sequential programs in C/C++ and/or Fortran. Website

The Data Science Boot Camp, August 6-10, 2018
Leading Data Science faculty serve as instructors for the Data Science Boot Camp at Rice University.   The curriculum covers topics ranging from R, Python, Cloud Computing, Unsupervised and Supervised Learning to Deep Learning.  Using Rice’s shared computing infrastructure, hands on laboratory sessions supported by the instructor and lab assistants, will be offered each day allowing participants to practice what is being taught in the class sessions.

Prerequisites Data Science Boot Camp: Participants should have some previous exposure to basic probability, statistics, linear regression, matrix and vector notation, as well as some familiarity with R and Python programming languages. Website

Rice 2018 Data Science Conference, October 8-9, 2018
The conference will be a research, development, and innovation (RD&I) gathering, bringing together university and research labs (technology developers), key industry verticals (technology consumers), and IT industry (technology providers) that are looking at opportunities created by advances in AI, data analytics, machine learning and deep learning. Website

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS-AUSTIN
For more information on offerings from UT-Austin please contact Predeep Ashok (pradeepkumar@mail.utexas.edu) or Søren Kragholm (soren.kragholm@uia.no)

UT’s Summer Statistics Institute (SSI) offers intensive four-day workshops on diverse topics from introductory data sciences to advanced statistics. Whether you are new to data analysis or a seasoned statistician, SSI provides a unique hands-on opportunity to acquire valuable skills directly from experts in the field. Website

Full catalogue: https://stat.utexas.edu/images/SSC/Institute/SSI_2017_brochure_8.5x11in_v2.pdf