While studying mathematical models of related objects may not seem relevant to most people, this area of research has many everyday applications: filling in missing data for social network users and electronic healthcare records; detecting online fraud; discovering attributes of proteins from their interactions; and the list goes on. Graph mining, as it is called, is the subject studied by IACS student Bryan Perozzi, one of this year’s winners of the Institute for Advanced Computational Science (IACS) 2014 Junior Researcher Fellowship.
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Bryan Perozzi |
“I'm honored to receive the Junior Researcher Fellowship from IACS,” said Perozzi. “Its support opens new options for presenting my work, allowing me to broaden my participation in the global discussion on mining and modeling large attributed graphs."
This is the first year IACS has offered this fellowship, which is for advanced PhD students who are studying computational science with a core member of the institute. “All of the applicants were involved in exciting research, and it is wonderful to see such talent in the IACS community,” said IACS Director Robert Harrison. “It was certainly tough choosing two from the excellent pool of candidates, but Perozzi and Jacobs stood out from the crowd because of the passion with which they spoke about their research; the sophistication, breadth and depth of the computational science tools they are employing; and the significance of the potential outcomes of their accomplishments.”
The award comes with an increase to the students’ stipends to $32,000 plus $4,000 for travel. There were 16 applicants, five of whom were chosen to give 20-minute presentations to the fellowship committee. Out of the five who presented, the two winners were Perozzi, from the Computer Science Department studying under Professor Steven Skiena, and Adam Jacobs, from the Physics & Astronomy Department studying under Associate Professor Michael Zingale.
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Adam Jacobs |
Jacobs studies Type Ia Supernova explosions, which are among the most violent explosions in the universe and therefore bright enough that you can see them from far away. Explosions don’t happen that often in any one galaxy, but there are enough galaxies that you can see these Type Ia Supernova explosions regularly, and studying these explosions allows scientist to accurately measure distances in the universe. The main science application for Jacobs’ research is to enable cosmologists to more precisely study the physical universe: how it has evolved; what it is composed of; what will be the fate of the universe in the future. On a more applied note, the computational tools Jacobs develops for astrophysical studies can be used by collaborators at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL) investigating combustion. LBL’s combustion research provides insight to engineers tackling problems such as reducing pollution and increasing fuel efficiency.
Upon learning that he was one of the fellowship winners, Jacobs said, “I was thrilled when I heard about the award! Over the next year I will be searching for postdoc positions. The award will both make me more competitive and make it possible to travel to computational conferences that the grant I'm funded by now doesn't cover. The award enables a level of research and interdisciplinary exploration that would be otherwise impossible.”
These fellowships and the formation of IACS were made possible by an anonymous donation of $10M matched by another $10M from the Simons Foundation. The Institute provides resources for and engages with faculty, students and postdocs from a wide variety of academic backgrounds, all of whom have research interests that involve the use of high-performance and data-intensive computing. To find out more about IACS and the schedule of events, see http://iacs.stonybrook.edu/.
PH: 631-632-4629 | FX: 631-632-4125 | iacs@stonybrook.edu