Science in Parallel
23 episodes - English - Latest episode: 6 months ago - ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsScience in Parallel focuses on people in computational science and their work simulating climate and the cosmos, understanding viral infections, building alternative energy strategies and more – using high-performance computing (HPC). Host Sarah Webb interviews researchers about their career paths and motivations. Our conversations cover topics such as artificial intelligence, integrating emerging hardware, the effects of remote work, promoting diversity and inclusion, and the role of creativity in computing.
Our show is for curious, science-oriented listeners who like technology. You don’t need a deep background in science and computing to learn from our guests.
Science in Parallel has been shortlisted twice for the Publisher Podcast Awards: for 2022 Best Technology Podcast and for 2023 Best Science and Medical Podcast. It is produced by the Krell Institute and is a media outreach project of the Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship (DOE CSGF) program.
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Episodes
Season 4, Episode 4 -- Anubhav Jain: Hacking Materials
November 08, 2023 08:00 - 32 minutes - 45.2 MBArtificial intelligence is reshaping research to discover new materials for a range of important applications. In this episode, meet Anubhav Jain of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a researcher who has been at the forefront of this transition. He uses machine learning and other computational tools as a materials scientist to discover compounds that could store and convert energy and solve other societal problems. Anubhav’s current research path started in graduate school at MIT, whe...
Season 4, Episode 3 -- Danilo Pérez: Embracing Versatility
October 25, 2023 07:00 - 37 minutes - 51.5 MBSometimes extraordinary circumstances like the pandemic offer researchers unexpected opportunities to serve others. Danilo Pérez, now a Ph.D. student in computational neuroscience at New York University, found himself in this situation in Puerto Rico in 2020. He contributed his mathematical modeling expertise as part of a team that built and maintained Puerto Rico’s public health data during that intense period. Later he contributed to AI-based modeling of coronavirus variants that won major...
Season 4, Episode 2 -- Casey Berger: Choose Your Own Multidimensional Career
October 11, 2023 07:00 - 29 minutes - 40.9 MBTraditional science career advice often urges people to specialize and become the best at one activity. But that perspective can undervalue interdisciplinary researchers and other polymaths who can see connections between and beyond science and engineering fields. This episode’s guest, Casey Berger, describes how she has navigated this second approach, embracing her many interests, such as science, computing, teaching and storytelling, to make her mark as a physicist and data scientist and a...
Season 4, Episode 1 -- Creativity in Climate Modeling
September 27, 2023 07:00 - 36 minutes - 50.6 MBSeason 4 of Science in Parallel centers around creativity and computing, starting with an interview about climate modeling. At this nexus of physics, earth science, mathematics and computing, researchers are also racing against the clock to accurately predict how global climate is shifting before the changes happen. Pulling all the scientific pieces together and communicating those results so that others can use them are significant creative challenges—ones that both Tapio Schneider and Em...
Season 3, Episode 5 -- Beyond Exascale: Exploring Emerging Hardware
June 21, 2023 07:00 - 41 minutes - 56.7 MBThe exascale era in computing has arrived, and that brings up the question of what’s next. We’ll discuss some emerging processor technologies-- molecular storage and computing, quantum computing and neuromorphic chips—with an expert from each of those fields. Learn more about these technologies’ strengths and challenges and how they might be incorporated into tomorrow’s systems. You’ll meet: Luis Ceze, professor of computer science at the University of Washington and CEO of the AI ...
Season 3, Episode 4 -- Gabriel Casabona: It All Comes Down to Gravity
June 07, 2023 07:00 - 29 minutes - 39.9 MBAlthough he’s always loved space, Gabriel Casabona pursued other fields, including medicine and religion, before landing in astrophysics. We discussed how his passion for physics motivated him to deepen his knowledge of math and computing, how gravity’s mysteries define his work and other big challenges he hopes to work on during his career. You’ll meet: Gabriel Casabona is a Ph.D. student in computational and theoretical astrophysics at Northwestern University. His work is supported by ...
Season 3, Episode 3 -- Tammy Ma: Fusion Ignition and Beyond
May 24, 2023 07:00 - 19 minutes - 26.5 MBIn early December 2022, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced that the National Ignition Facility (NIF) had achieved fusion ignition—a reaction of merging hydrogen isotopes that produced more energy than the lasers put in. High-performance computing is an important part of designing, analyzing and refining these experiments, and this episode examines the connection between computing and fusion energy. You’ll meet: Tammy Ma, a plasma physicist at Livermore, talks about how supe...
Season 3, Episode 2 –- Margaret Lawson: Finding Her Place
May 10, 2023 07:00 - 21 minutes - 29.4 MBEven after enjoying her first computer science course, Margaret Lawson wasn’t convinced she’d have a place in the field. But today she works on cloud storage for Google after completing her Ph.D. at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she was supported by a Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship (DOE CSGF). This conversation was recorded at the Supercomputing meeting (SC22) in Dallas in November 2022, where Margaret co-led a Birds of a Feather (BoF...
Season 3, Episode 1 -- Joe Insley: Big Data to Beautiful Images
April 26, 2023 07:00 - 29 minutes - 41 MBMaking sense of computational science takes a multidisciplinary team, including science visualization experts who translate data into images that both parse information so that it’s comprehensible and render it into beautiful images and skillful animations. Joe Insley of Argonne Leadership Computing Facility and Northern Illinois University has been doing this work for more than 20 years, leveraging deep training in both digital art and computer science to build showstopping visualizations. ...
Season Two, Episode Six-- Pushing Limits in Computing and Biology
October 26, 2022 07:00 - 41 minutes - 57.4 MBScience in Parallel’s season two concludes with a conversation about answering important questions in biology and medicine with leadership class supercomputers, including urgent issues that came up during the COVID-19 pandemic. You’ll hear from Anda Trifan of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and Amanda Randles of Duke University. Starting as a chemist, Anda is completing a Ph.D. in biophysics and quantitative biology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where she has ...
Season Two, Episode Five -- Improving Computing Performance and Workforce Diversity
October 05, 2022 07:00 - 27 minutes - 37.8 MBValerie Taylor doesn’t shy away from challenging problems with multiple layers. At Argonne National Laboratory, she manages teams that develop algorithms, data management strategies, software and hardware to support scientific simulations, including those on the Department of Energy’s leadership-class supercomputers. Her research focuses on performance analysis—the factors involved in making computations efficient. On top of that, she maintains a parallel line of work supporting computer sci...
Season Two, Episode Four -- You're moving to Finland?
July 06, 2022 07:00 - 31 minutes - 43.5 MBAfter COVID-19 lockdowns and 2020 wildfires near his Oregon home, computational scientist Jeff Hammond decided to make big moves. In 2021, his family of five emigrated from Portland to Finland, and Jeff changed positions, leaving Intel and taking a new job with NVIDIA. Even before 2020, he had worked primarily remotely and discusses the lessons he hopes technology companies learn from pandemic work. You’ll meet: Jeff Hammond, a principal engineer with NVIDIA, is affiliated with the compa...
Season Two, Episode Four -- You're Moving to Finland?
July 06, 2022 07:00 - 31 minutes - 43.5 MBAfter COVID-19 lockdowns and 2020 wildfires near his Oregon home, computational scientist Jeff Hammond decided to make big moves. In 2021, his family of five emigrated from Portland to Finland, and Jeff changed positions, leaving Intel and taking a new job with NVIDIA. Even before 2020, he had worked primarily remotely and discusses the lessons he hopes technology companies learn from pandemic work. You’ll meet: Jeff Hammond, a principal engineer with NVIDIA, is affiliated with the compa...
Season Two, Episode Three -- Two PhDs + Pandemic + Baby
June 22, 2022 07:00 - 35 minutes - 48.4 MBPandemic work was especially challenging for computational scientist parents, who often juggled new work arrangements while balancing their children's care. In this episode you’ll hear from a couple who were Ph.D. students and had a 10-month-old baby when lockdowns sent them all home in March 2020. The situation challenged their work and their mental health. As they adapted to these experiences, they changed career paths and their perspectives on life and work. You’ll meet: Kalin Kieslin...
Season Two, Episode Two -- Future of Work (part 2): Adapting to Change
June 08, 2022 07:00 - 25 minutes - 35 MBIn Season 2 of Science in Parallel, we’re examining how pandemic shutdowns have reshaped computational science workplaces. In our last episode we focused on the effects of virtual work and how the Exascale Computing Project’s Strategies for Working Remotely panel series fostered communication and creativity. This episode brings in additional stories from graduate students, a professor and an early career researcher at a DOE national lab about the challenges and benefits of remote work. You...
Season Two, Episode One -- Future of Work Part One
June 01, 2022 07:00 - 23 minutes - 31.8 MBIn our first two episodes of Science in Parallel’s Season 2, we’ll be talking about how the pandemic pivot to remote work marks a turning point in workplace structure for many computational scientists. We talk with computational scientists who worked remotely about what they struggled with, what functioned well and the lessons they’ll take into the future. In this first part, we’ll also focus on the social science of how people experienced remote work. In part one, you’ll meet: Jerry ...
Season One, Episode Six -- Aurora Pribram-Jones
October 27, 2021 07:00 - 28 minutes - 38.5 MBAurora Pribram-Jones works on hot, dense electrons – simulating extreme chemistry that can happen within giant planets like Jupiter or nuclear fusion experiments. Aurora’s career included many initial detours on the way to science, but the flexibility of community college classes and a job at a technical bookstore paved their path toward research. Now a member of the chemistry faculty at the University of California, Merced, Aurora finds purpose in teaching and mentoring students and support...
Season One, Episode Five -- Alternative Energy
October 13, 2021 07:00 - 38 minutes - 52.6 MBAvoiding the changing climate’s most extreme impacts will require a technological revolution to power daily life from renewable sources. An entrepreneur, an engineering professor and a DOE-laboratory materials scientist – all DOE CSGF and Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni – discuss technical challenges from nuclear energy to heat transfer to hydrogen generation and the importance of choosing high-impact research problems. In addition to talking about science, engineering and compu...
Season One, Episode Four -- Alicia Magann
September 29, 2021 07:00 - 19 minutes - 26.8 MBAlicia Magann got her start in control systems engineering research, exploring tools for controlling large-scale chemical processes. As a Ph.D. student, she turned the dials of quantum chemistry in Herschel Rabitz’s research group at Princeton University with support from the DOE CSGF. She talks about her work on quantum algorithms, her cross-country road trip from New Jersey to her practicum in California and how her dad is her scientific hero. Read more about Alicia and her work in the ...
Season One, Episode Three -- Quentarius Moore
September 15, 2021 07:00 - 33 minutes - 46.1 MBCuriosity, mentors and a summer working in concrete with his grandfather shaped Quentarius Moore’s science career studying 2-D materials. He recently completed his fourth year as a DOE CSGF recipient, while pursuing a chemistry Ph.D. at Texas A&M University. He completed both his bachelor's and master's degrees in chemistry at Jackson State University in Mississippi. Read more about Quentarius and his graduate research in the 2021 issue of DEIXIS magazine.
Science in Parallel -- Season One Trailer
September 02, 2021 14:10 - 51 seconds - 1.18 MBWelcome to Science in Parallel, a new podcast about people and projects in computational science. Science in Parallel is produced by the Krell Institute, and season one celebrates the 30th anniversary of the Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship Program.
Season One, Episode Two -- Artificial Intelligence and Climate Change
July 15, 2021 21:17 - 34 minutes - 46.8 MBOne of today’s hottest areas of computational research could help build better solutions for one of global society’s steepest challenges. Three early career computational scientists talk about AI’s potential for understanding and predicting climate shifts, supporting strategies for incorporating renewable energy, and engineering other approaches that reduce carbon emissions. They also describe how AI can be misused or can perpetuate existing biases. Working at this important research inter...
Season One, Episode One -- Jeff Hittinger: Leading By Example
July 15, 2021 14:06 - 32 minutes - 44.1 MBJeff Hittinger of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory embodies the term scientist-chimera. He talks about the many scientific hats he’s worn simultaneously – computer scientist, applied mathematician and physicist. As director for the Center for Applied Computing (CASC) and as co-principal investigator for the DOE CSGF, he wears many more. He talks about scientific success, leadership and the tricks he’s cultivated for communicating science to broader audiences through the Livermore Ambas...