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!

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.

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/).

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

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