Satellite tutorial SA4: Methods from Data Science for Model Simulation, Analysis, and Visualization

 

Organizers:

Dr. Cengiz Gunay and Dr. Anca Doloc-Mihu
School of Science and Technology, Georgia Gwinnett College, USA

Tutorial time:

Time zone: Los Angeles New York Berlin Sydney
June 30, 2021 5am - 8:30am 8am - 11:30am 14:00 - 17:30 22:00 - 00:30 (July 1)

Description of the tutorial

Computational neuroscience projects often involve a large number of simulations for parameter search of computer models, which generates a large amount of data. With the advances in computer hardware, software methods, and cloud computing opportunities making this task easier, the amount of collected data has exploded, similar to what has been happening in many fields. High-performance computing (HPC) methods have been used in the computational neuroscience field for a while. However, the use of novel data science and big data methods is less frequent. In this tutorial, we will review tools already established in the big data field and demonstrate their usefulness in computational neuroscience workflows, focusing on Apache Spark. Spark is a distributed computing framework used either for model simulation or for post-processing and analysis of the generated data. The tutorial will also have a session focusing on creating interactive visualizations. We will review novel web-based interactive notebook technologies based on Javascript (Observable) and Python (Jupyter).

Software tools

Expected knowledge/materials

  • Some familiarity with Python, Javascript, HTML
  • Command-line usage for accessing remote servers
  • For the visualization session: Google Account suggested for being able to use the online Jupyter notebook service at Google Colab

Draft schedule

NY Time Speaker Schedule item
8:00 am Cengiz Gunay From High Performance Computing to Hadoop and Spark (slides)
9:00 am   Practice & discussion
9:30 am   Break
9:45 am Anca Doloc-Mihu High-dimensional data visualizations
11:00 am   Practice & discussion
11:30 am   End of tutorial

See all CNS*2021 Tutorials here