CS 171 News

IACS Computational Challenge deadline today

2011-12-20T09:55:00.001-05:00

Cyberheroes wanted for January team challenge at SEAS

Imagine this: A hurricane has struck, flooding the streets of a small city and littering them with debris. Thousands of residents are in need of help! How can rescuers reach the most victims?

If you've already figured out that this is an optimization problem that can be solved by smart computation, consider yourself recruited! This humanitarian problem will be tackled during the first IACS Computational Challenge--a team competition for graduate students scheduled for the January winter recess. Visiting Professor Ozlem Ergun is setting up the Challenge with help from her students.

Students who enjoy modeling, data analysis, visualization, optimization and other computational challenges will compete during Jan. 10-20 to propose the best solution to the Challenge. The Institute for Applied Computational Science at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences will provide data, computing resources, advisors, workspace, beverages, pizza--and cool technology PRIZES.

Students can sign up singly or in groups of 2 or 3. You should be able to spend 36 hours on the Challenge between Jan. 10 and Jan. 20 and have approval of your advisor. Undergraduates can participate if they are in residence during January or live locally.

DEADLINE TO REGISTER is Dec. 19. More information and a registration form are online at https://iacs.seas.harvard.edu/student-activities/iacs-challenge-2012.

Questions? Contact Rosalind Reid, IACS Executive Director, rreid@seas.harvard.edu

Let's show the world that computation *can* save the day!

Programmer Position Available at Harvard Medical School

2011-11-29T11:34:00.001-05:00

A part-time programmer position is available immediately in the laboratory of Samara Reck-Peterson, in the Cell Biology Department at Harvard Medical School. The Reck-Peterson lab (https://reck-peterson.med.harvard.edu/) uses a wide variety of approaches, including single molecule imaging and whole genome sequencing, to understand how molecular motors work. Molecular motors are essential for human development and health; when motors don't work properly brain developmental and neurodegenerative diseases can result. Our goal is to understand, at the molecular level, how motors use cellular energy to create force, and how defects in transport lead to neurodegenerative diseases.

We seek a programmer with experience in Python and MATLAB to visualize and analyze data. Our group of ten researchers collaborates with other programmers and molecular animators located nearby. Our laboratory is located at the Harvard Medical School campus in the Longwood medical area, and is accessed via the Harvard M2 shuttle, which runs regularly from Cambridge to Longwood. We seek an enthusiastic and motivated individual who can work both independently and in teams. The salary for the position is $15 per hour and a commitment of at least 10 hours per week is required. Interested applicants should email Dr. Reck-Peterson at reck-peterson@hms.harvard.edu.

Visualization opportunity for TEDx Cambridge

2011-11-15T10:15:00.001-05:00

The next big TEDx in our area is coming up this weekend - TEDxCambridge is taking place at Harvard University's NorthWest Labs (52 Oxford St.) on Saturday, November 19 (http://www.tedxcambridge.com/thrive/).

The TEDx team proposes a unique data visualization opportunity. Throughout their conference, they will be collecting quotes from hundreds of attendees, and they're looking for volunteers who have interesting proposals on what they would do in realtime or near-realtime with that data.

If you're interested in taking advantage of this opportunity, you can contact Jared Chung (TEDx organizer) at jaredchung@gmail.com to discuss this idea.

Job Opening: Data Visualization Coordinator at Duke University

2011-09-07T20:43:00.001-04:00

Duke University has a new position opening designed to support information visualization across the disciplines at Duke. A full position description is available at the link that follows. I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Please feel free to redistribute this announcement as appropriate!

http://library.duke.edu/jobs/datavisualcoordinator.html

Best,

Joel

--
Joel Herndon, Ph.D.
Head, Data & GIS Services
Perkins Library, Duke University
http://library.duke.edu/data
http://blogs.library.duke.edu/data/
https://twitter.com/#!/duke_data
+1 919 660 5946

PITF Visualization Position

2011-05-14T14:44:00.001-04:00

Are you skilled in programming visualizations, and interested statistics and algorithms?

A paid position is available as a Presidential Instructional Technology Fellow (PITF) working with Harvard School of Public Health Faculty Marc Lipsitch and Miguel Hernán to design and program interactive visualizations to teach statistical and epidemiological concepts and algorithms. The idea is not data visualization, but rather creating an intuitively understandable but mathematically precise visual description of the algorithms used to transform data into estimates of scientifically interesting quantities.

Employment may be during the summer (2011), or the fall 2011 semester, or both.

For a fuller description see here. Application deadline for summer work: June 1. For fall: Sept 15.

Contact: Marc Lipsitch, mlipsitc@hsph.harvard.edu

Final projects online

2011-05-09T09:09:00.000-04:00

The videos and web pages for your final projects are now online. Please take a look and let us know if you see any problems (broken links etc.)

Thanks again for a great semester. You've been a wonderful class, and I hope you'll keep visualization in your life.

Best,

- Hanspeter Pfister

Course evaluations

2011-05-02T13:49:00.001-04:00

You can now submit your course evaluations for CS171. You can submit them until midnight Monday, May 16, by logging into http://www.extension.harvard.edu/

Thanks,

CS171 staff

Microsoft Duck Boat tour, 4/29/11

2011-04-21T23:26:00.001-04:00

David Malan passed this message along:

Hi all,

In case you've ever wanted to tour Boston on a duck boat, Microsoft has kindly donated a Duck Tour (http://www.bostonducktours.com/ourducks_main.html) to us, since a recruiting trip they'd planned was recently rained out. The day/time will be:

Fri 4/29, 2pm - 5pmish

Plan would be to take a Harvard shuttle from the Square to the Museum of Science, tour around on a duck boat, then return to Harvard by shuttle. If interested, do RSVP asap at:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?hl=en&formkey=dHBZX1RQUkFudUR1ZnY1MlFDR0p4cEE6MQ

Space is limited, so we might have to lottery spots. CS friends of yours are welcome to RSVP too.

djm

Lecture Posted

2011-04-20T18:25:00.001-04:00

The video for today's lecture has been posted.

IMPORTANT: No class Monday (Patriots' Day), class on Wednesday instead

2011-04-17T19:39:00.001-04:00

We are moving tomorrow's class to Wednesday -- it is Patriots' Day after all, and some of you may want to watch or even run the marathon.

So there will be NO CLASS TOMORROW, Monday, April 18, and instead we will have class on Wednesday, April 20.

Office hours for Friday

2011-04-14T09:51:00.001-04:00

I will be holding office hours tomorrow from 12:15pm to 1:15pm at
Maxwell Dworkin cafe area.

Please come by if you need help.

Weina

Lecture Posted

2011-04-13T21:28:00.001-04:00

The video for today's guest lecture by Fernanda Viegas and Martin Wattenberg on Social Visualization has been posted.

Free ice cream today at 4 pm

2011-04-13T09:15:00.001-04:00

David Malan is inviting everybody to get free ice cream at 4 pm today in the MD lobby. Please drop by and say hello to prospective CS concentrators and secondaries!

WHAT: Free Cone Day (i.e., CS Advising Fortnight event)
WHEN: Wed 4/13, 4pm - 5:30pm
WHERE: MD lobby
WHY:
AmeriCone Dream
Cherry Garcia
Chocolate Fudge Brownie
Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough
Chunky Monkey
Mango Mango sorbet

Guest lecture today: Viegas / Wattenberg

2011-04-13T09:13:00.001-04:00

Fernanda Viegas and Martin Wattenberg will be our guest lecturers today. This is going to be a great presentation, and I hope to see all of you despite the rain.

Lecture Posted

2011-04-12T12:19:00.000-04:00

The video for yesterday's guest lecture on Communicating with Visualizations by Bang Wong has been posted.

Guest lecture today: Bang Wong

2011-04-11T09:17:00.000-04:00

Bang Wong of the Broad Institute will give today's guest lecture. He'll talk about Communicating with Visualizations.

Office Hours

2011-04-08T14:41:00.001-04:00

I'm holding office hours right now at Maxwell Dworkin cafe. Please
come if you need help!

Weina

Lecture Posted

2011-04-07T12:03:00.001-04:00

The video for Janet Iwasa's guest lecture on Visualization in Biology has been posted.

Lecture Posted

2011-04-05T12:43:00.001-04:00

The video for yesterday's guest lecture by Ben Fry on Visualization and the Arts has been posted.

Guest lecture tomorrow

2011-04-05T10:14:00.001-04:00

Tomorrow's guest lecture is by Janet Iwasa from the Harvard Medical School. Janet's work got recently featured in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/16/science/16animate.html

Office hours this week

2011-04-05T10:10:00.001-04:00

Office hours this week will be:

No OH on Wednesday
Thursday, 11:30-12:30, Mather dining hall with Tiffany
Friday, 2:30-3:30 pm ground floor of MD with Weina

Please let us know if you want to meet with them and what you'd like to discuss.

Ben Fry guest lecture, Monday

2011-04-02T20:55:00.001-04:00

Ben Fry -- inventor of Processing and all-around visualization guru -- is giving the first guest lecture on Monday.

See you all then.

Toolkit for data collection / analysis

2011-03-27T13:47:00.001-04:00

This toolkit may be useful for some of your final projects: http://www.datasciencetoolkit.org/about

Office Hours

2011-03-24T19:42:00.001-04:00

I will be holding office hours tomorrow at Maxwell Dworkin ground
floor from 2:30pm-3:30pm. Please come see me if you need help with
final projects and such.

Weina

Office hours this week

2011-03-24T00:04:00.001-04:00

If you would like help with HW5 or would like to run your final project idea/team by a TF, Chris Lee will be holding OH tomorrow morning 8-10a, Thursday, March 24 in Adams d-hall.

Please feel free to email him at cklee@fas.harvard.edu if you would like to let him know that you plan to go to his OH.

CS 171 News

IACS Computational Challenge deadline *today*

Programmer Position Available at Harvard Medical School

Visualization opportunity for TEDx Cambridge

Job Opening: Data Visualization Coordinator at Duke University

PITF Visualization Position

Final projects online

Course evaluations

Microsoft Duck Boat tour, 4/29/11

Lecture Posted

IMPORTANT: No class Monday (Patriots' Day), class on Wednesday instead

Office hours for Friday

Lecture Posted

Free ice cream today at 4 pm

Guest lecture today: Viegas / Wattenberg

Lecture Posted

Guest lecture today: Bang Wong

Office Hours

Lecture Posted

Lecture Posted

Guest lecture tomorrow

Office hours this week

Ben Fry guest lecture, Monday

Toolkit for data collection / analysis

Office Hours

Office hours this week

IACS Computational Challenge deadline today