Getting Started With High Performance Computing for Humanities, Arts, and Social Science

15-20 Minute Paper

Alan B. Craig, PhD
Senior Associate Director for Human-computer Interaction at the Institute for Computing in Humanities, Arts, and Social Science (I-CHASS)
Research scientist at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)

Biography:
Alan B. Craig, PhD is the senior associate director for human-computer interaction at the Institute for Computing in Humanities, Arts, and Social Science (I-CHASS) and a research scientist at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). Additionally he is the humanities, arts, and social science liaison for the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE). He has been with NCSA for over 25 years and has been involved in many aspects of high performance computing as well as research and development work in virtual reality, augmented reality, scientific visualization, data mining, collaborative systems and web systems.

Abstract
This talk addresses the question of “Why would someone in humanities, arts, or social science be interested in high performance computing?”, and discusses the resources and assistance that are available to humanists, artists, and social scientists who are interested in high performance computing. The Extreme Science And Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) provides a network of high performance computing resources that are available to researchers. In this talk I will discuss the resources that are available, who is eligible for these resources, and assistance that is available to help you use those resources. My role within XSEDE is to help you get started on XSEDE as well as to help you after you get resources allocated. In this talk I will walk you through the process of applying for an XSEDE startup account and let you know what to expect as you begin using the resources. Finally I will discuss some of the different types of projects that have been done by humanities, arts, and social science researchers which range from large scale analysis of texts, images and videos, network analysis (including social media), map based problems, simulations, and others. Whether you need computational power, storage, assistance with analysis of large datasets, or are just curious of what these types of resources can do for you, this talk will provide answers that you are looking for.