Honors 352 - Cyberscience: Computational Science and the Rise of the Fourth Paradigm

Overview
Materials

Old photograph of two women operating a large switchboard

U. S. Army Photo, made available courtesy ofWikipedia and is in the public domain.

Term:

Fall 2010

Published:

October 17, 2011

Revised:

June 5, 2016

In the last half of the 20th century, the role of computation in the sciences grew rapidly, driven by advances in silicon-based processors, fiber-optic networks, a host of numerical algorithms, and sets of standard protocols for processing and exchanging data. Much of this digital technology now permeates everyday life. Building on these and emerging technologies, the 21st century is poised to unleash a new, data-intensive paradigm of scientific discovery that will dramatically enhance the scope and scale of data capture, curation, and analysis. In this new (4th) paradigm, cures for cancer might be found by the collective investigations of agents computing "in the cloud.”

This course will invite students to explore the social and technical development of computing for the sciences, from the ENIAC through the top-500 list of supercomputers and on to Amazon's EC2. Through a selection of readings, discussions with invited guests, and first-hand experimentation, students in the course will learn about an assortment of technologies that underlie modern scientific inquiry, investigate their use by U-M cyber-scientists, and gain an appreciation of the fiscal, political and social challenges imposed by this growing area of scholarship.

Instructor: August Evrard

dScribes: Kevin Smith, Sarah Sophia Na

Course Level: Undergraduate, Honors

Course Structure: Meets twice a week for 1.5 hours

Awards: 2012 Provost's Teaching Innovation Prize Winner

Learning Outcomes

Students who have taken this course should:

1. Be able to explain what computation means in the context of scientific inquiry, and provide examples of the different roles that computing plays in the sciences.

2. Be aware of the cyberinfrastructure elements that power computational science, including

hardware, software and network components, their historical development and their mutual interactions
data management processes, including authorization, authentication, and securitization of networked resources, and
institutional roles, including facilities management, governance, and publication of digital assets.

3. Appreciate current challenges to scholarship associated with cyberinfrastructure, such as

the environmental impact of large-scale computing nature of scientific publication, peer review, and career advancement
costs, benefits and risks to research institutions.

Reading List

The textbook for this course is The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery[Paperback], Eds., Tony Hey, Stewart Tansley, Kristin Tolle
The book is available for free download at www.fourthparadigm.org and it can be purchased in paperback from Amazon for $39, or $0.99 for the kindle reader version.
Publisher: Microsoft Research (October 16, 2009)
ISBN-10: 0982544200
ISBN-13: 978-0982544204

About the Creators

Gus Evrard

Gus Evrard is a Professor in the Department of Physics who specializes in Astrophysics Theory. Professor Evrard studies phenomenological problems in cosmology. As a computational cosmologist, he uses numerical methods to model the formation and evolution of large-scale cosmic structure. Universes are realized in silico using algorithms that solve the time evolution of the coupled astrophysical processes that drive the development of dark and visible matter components within large random spatial volumes. These virtual worlds are created within the framework of a particular underlying cosmology. Mock telescopic observations of galaxies and clusters of galaxies contained within this virtual environment afford the means for direct comparison to data from real-world observatories. Such comparative studies address questions ranging from the fundamental (What are the energy and matter components that dominate our universe?) to the detailed (How much material is lost by a typical galaxy over its lifetime?). Prof. Evrard was a recipient of a 2012 Provost's Teaching Innovation Prize.

B.S. University of Pennsylvania 1981
Ph.D. The State University of New York, Stony Brook 1986