Stanford University

Science and Technology

High Performance Computing Past, Present and Future

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Abstract: Supercomputing impacts everybody, everywhere, every day. The simulation capabilities have allowed advanced medicine, energy, aviation and manufacturing. Supercomputers allow us to explore fields such as global climate change, as well as tackle problems for which experiments are impractical, hazardous or prohibitively expensive. The Department of Energy is a leader in supercomputers as part of their national security mission. With the demise of underground testing, supercomputers are a key resource used to ensure the safety and reliability of the nuclear stockpile. This talk will explore the buildup to our current petaflop systems and the challenges to obtaining exascale systems in the future.

About the speaker: As Acting Associate Director for Computation at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Trish Damkroger leads the 1,000-employee workforce behind the Laboratory’s high performance computing efforts. The Computation team develops and deploys an integrated computing environment for petascale analytics and simulations such as understanding global climate warming, clean energy creation, biodefense, and nonproliferation. LLNL’s computing ecosystem includes high performance computers, scientific visualization facilities, high performance storage systems, network connectivity, multiresolution data analysis, mathematical models, scalable numerical algorithms, computer applications, and necessary services to enable LLNL mission goals and scientific discovery through simulation.

Trish Damkroger Acting Associate Director for Computation Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Seminars

Overcoming Economic Malaise: Strategic, Educational and Social Innovation for South Korea

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South Korea has relied on its export-oriented development model to become an economic powerhouse, but has now reached the limits of this model. Indeed, Korea’s phenomenal growth has incubated the seeds of its own destruction. Learning from the Korean developmental experience, China has adopted key elements of the Korean development model and has become a potent competitor in electronics and the heavy industries. Meanwhile, the organizational and institutional legacies of late industrialization have constrained Korean efforts to move into technology entrepreneurship and the service sector. These strategic challenges are compounded by a demographic bomb, as social development has led to collapsing birthrates in Korea, much like other developed countries in Europe and Asia. Within the next few years, the Korean workforce will start diminishing in size and aging rapidly, straining the country’s resources and curtailing its growth. In this seminar, Joon Nak Choi, 2015-16 Koret Fellow at Stanford's Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Reserach Center, will discuss innovations in business strategy, educational policy and social structure that are directly relevant to these problems, and that would alleviate or perhaps even reverse Korea’s economic malaise.

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A Stanford graduate and sociologist by training, Choi is an assistant professor of management at the School of Business and Management, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. His research and teaching areas include economic development, social networks, organizational theory, and global and transnational sociology, within the Korean context. He coauthored Global Talent: Skilled Labor as Social Capital in Korea (Stanford University Press, 2015).

This public event is made possible through the generous support of the Koret Foundation.

Joon Nak Choi

Shorenstein APARC
Encina Hall
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Joon Nak Choi is the 2015-2016 Koret Fellow in the Korea Program at Stanford University's Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC). A sociologist by training, Choi is an assistant professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. His research and teaching areas include economic development, social networks, organizational theory, and global and transnational sociology, within the Korean context.

Choi, a Stanford graduate, has worked jointly with professor Gi-Wook Shin to analyze the transnational bridges linking Asia and the United States. The research project explores how economic development links to foreign skilled workers and diaspora communities.

Most recently, Choi coauthored Global Talent: Skilled Labor as Social Capital in Korea with Shin, who is also the director of the Korea Program. From 2010-11, Choi developed the manuscript while he was a William Perry postdoctoral fellow at Shorenstein APARC.

During his fellowship, Choi will study the challenges of diversity in South Korea and teach a class for Stanford students. Choi’s research will buttress efforts to understand the shifting social and economic patterns in Korea, a now democratic nation seeking to join the ranks of the world’s most advanced countries.
 
Supported by the Koret Foundation, the Koret Fellowship brings leading professionals to Stanford to conduct research on contemporary Korean affairs with the broad aim of strengthening ties between the United States and Korea. The fellowship has expanded its focus to include social, cultural and educational issues in Korea, and aims to identify young promising scholars working on these areas.

 

2015-2016 Koret Fellow
Visiting Scholar
<i>2015-16 Koret Fellow, Shorenstein APARC, Stanford University</i>
Seminars
Korean Studies Colloquium Series

Big Data: Lessons from the Field

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Gaurav Kataria is a Big Data leader at Google who is responsible for driving Production Adoption initiatives across various Google for Work product lines - Gmail, Drive, G+, Hangouts, Google Docs, Drive, Android and Chrome. His group employs sophisticated machine learning and data mining techniques to understand the usage patterns across different products, and based on that creates programs to improve user engagement.

Gaurav holds a guest lecturer appointment at Stanford Business School where he co-teaches a course on 'Data-Driven Decision Making.' He actively supports the startup community in the Bay Area and is an advisor to multiple startups in mobile space. Prior to Google, he was a senior manager at Booz Allen and a researcher at Cylab - Carnegie Mellon. He has a Masters and PhD in Information Security Risk Management from Carnegie Mellon University and Bachelors in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology. He currently lives in Palo Alto, California and enjoys hiking the Bay Area mountain ranges in his spare time.

Gaurav will share his perspective on how to create a data-driven organization and the specific capabilities businesses need to develop to harness the power of machine intelligence.

AGENDA:

4:15pm: Doors open
4:30pm-5:30pm: Talk and Discussion
5:30pm-6:00pm: Networking

RSVP REQUIRED
 
For more information about the Silicon Valley-New Japan Project please visit: http://www.stanford-svnj.org/
Gaurav Kataria, Head of Product Adoption Google for Work
Seminars
Stanford Silicon Valley-New Japan Project

Film Screening: "Seeds of Time" with Dr. Cary Fowler

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Join us for a free screening of "Seeds of Time: One man's journey to save the future of our food"  from Academy Award nominated director Sandy McLeod.

Synposis:

A perfect storm is brewing as agriculture pioneer Cary Fowler races against time to protect the future of our food. Seed banks around the world are crumbling, crop failures are producing starvation and rioting, and the accelerating effects of climate change are affecting farmers globally. Communities of indigenous Peruvian farmers are already suffering those effects, as they try desperately to save over 1,500 varieties of native potato in their fields. But with little time to waste, both Fowler and the farmers embark on passionate and personal journeys that may save the one resource we cannot live without: our seeds.

Dr. Fowler is at Stanford as a visiting scholar with FSE and will introduce the film, then answer questions following the screening.

Read the New Yorker article about Dr. Fowler's work and learn more about the film.

Lunch will be served.

Free and open to the public. Please RSVP. 

Dr. Cary Fowler

"Global Talent" praised in migration studies journal

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A recent review published in International Migration Review (IMR) lauded “Global Talent: Skilled Labor as Social Capital in Korea,” by Stanford professor Gi-Wook Shin and Joon Nak Choi. IMR reviewer Keumjae Park said the book makes an important contribution to the literature on foreign skilled workers and the problems that countries like South Korea face with demographic and economic change.

Park said the book “offers provocative policy questions” about how South Korea can encourage the development of social and cultural ties in its highly skilled labor markets, which in turn, support local and transnational markets through spread of information, innovation and trust.

Park also highlights the book’s approachability, saying it “offers theoretical lessons for general research” while it “invites attention of policy makers and business strategists.”

“Global Talent” is a part of Korea’s Global Talent, an ongoing research project at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. The project analyzes the potential benefits of transnational bridges between South Korea and the United States, and aims to provide insights that could be applied to other Asian countries.

Read the full review below and on the IMR website.

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Additive Manufacturing & High-Performance Computing: Disruptive Latent Technologies Impacting Our National Security

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Abstract: Dr. Goodwin’s presentation will discuss some of the rapid developments in additive manufacturing technology (3-D printing with metals and other materials) and their relationship to high performance computing. His will then address issues concerning the potential impacts of these technologies to include the US nuclear enterprise, nuclear proliferation and nonproliferation, and terrorism.
 
About the Speaker: Dr. Bruce Goodwin, Associate Director-at-Large for National Security Policy and Research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), is responsible for policy research and liaison with the US military, US government, and non-governmental organizations. He previously was the Principal Associate Director in charge of the nuclear weapons program at LLNL for twelve years.
Bruce Goodwin Associate Director-at-Large for National Security Policy and Research Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Seminars

Ensuring High Quality and Innovative Science and Technology for National Security

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Abstract:  Institutions like LLNL are part of an enterprise established in the mid-twentieth century to enable teams of scientists and engineers to deliver technological capabilities to address challenges to U.S. national security.  The steadily increasing pace of technological change, the reduced proportion of U.S. government funding invested in research and development relative to private sector investments, and the accelerating resources and programs for research globally have dramatically changed the context for this enterprise. Operational practices established to meet the national security needs of the last century must be updated to ensure that the national security science and technology enterprise can continue to deliver high quality capabilities to meet future threats and innovation to enhance U.S. national and economic security. Possible approaches for updating research careers and the structure of institutions include revamping policies for domestic and international partnerships, more effectively managing dual use technologies, and updating enterprise elements to draw on cutting-edge developments in academia and industry.

About the Speaker:  Patricia Falcone is the Deputy Director for Science and Technology, and Chief Technology Officer, of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). From 2009 to 2015, she served in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, including as the presidentially appointed and Senate-confirmed Associate Director for National Security and International Affairs.  Earlier she worked at the Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, CA.  She earned a Ph.D. working in the High Temperature Gasdynamics Laboratory in Stanford’s mechanical engineering department.

Patricia Falcone Deputy Director for Science and Technology, and Chief Technology Officer, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Seminars

Stanford experts discuss innovation on NHK television program

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Lisa Griswold
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Four scholars from Stanford University participated in a public panel discussion on Silicon Valley and Asian economies last month, part of a filming for an NHK Broadcasting series that aims to bring opinion leaders together to discuss issues facing contemporary Japan. The panel event will debut online this Friday.

“Silicon Valley is known worldwide as a place for many new innovative ideas, individuals and companies,” said Takeo Hoshi, director of the Japan Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC). “Such economic dynamism is what many countries and regions across the world want to imitate. This is especially true for Asian economies.”

During the hour-long event, Hoshi moderates a discussion between William Barnett, a professor of business leadership, strategy and organizations at the Graduate Business School; Francis Fukuyama, the director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law; and Kenji Kushida, a research associate of Shorenstein APARC’s Japan Program.

The panel set out to consider how Silicon Valley realized success and its implications for Asian countries that seek to develop similar innovation-based economies. Panelists started by offering a single keyword that represents Silicon Valley in their own definition. They are: harness, social capital, and failure.

“The question that everyone is interested in is how to make use of Silicon Valley,” Kushida said. “How to ‘harness’ the innovation ecosystem that works fairly well here.”

A key component of Silicon Valley’s success is the high level of social capital found in the region, the panelists said.

“The level of informal cooperation…is higher than in other parts of the country,” Fukuyama explained. Silicon Valley has a norm of reciprocity and lacks extensive business contracts that impede fluidity of ideas, he said.

The panelists also explored the impact of government policy. They said that it provides an essential service in supplying a framework – at least initially – from which innovation-based economic activities can emerge.

“The government needs to set up a playing field upon which firms and entrepreneurs…can do the unimaginable,” Barnett said.

The U.S. government played an important role in a number of defense-related projects that led to the formation of new technologies, including the Internet. However, a government role “cannot smother and be too directive,” Fukuyama said.

Kushida notes that he leads a research project that looks at the institutional foundations of Silicon Valley and offers lessons applicable to Japan. Last year, Kushida and Hoshi authored a report with three other scholars that identifies six institutional factors that encourage innovation, and what the Japanese government can do to encourage development of a more effective innovation ecosystem.

Culture can play a powerful role, too, the panelists explained. They described how both organizational and national cultures can foster or impinge upon innovation.

Barnett said it may be “cool” to be an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, but in Japanese culture, for example, it is the opposite. Barnett has studied entrepreneurs in Japan and has written many publications about how organizations and industries evolve globally.

Approaches to overcoming hard-fastened barriers to innovation include developing a culture of trust and acceptance toward failure, the panelists explained. Yet, they also cautioned against attempts to copy Silicon Valley too closely.

“I don’t think we should take this Silicon Valley gospel for granted – that disruption is always great and that things will always be necessarily better in social terms,” Fukuyama said.

The panelists recognize the outgrowth of high-tech areas in other areas around the world, and note that it is impossible to predict what innovations will come next and their impact on humanity.

The panel event was broadcast and live-tweeted with #SVAsia on Friday, March 4, from 4:10-5:00 p.m. (PST). The video can be viewed on demand here.

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"I am a Radioactive Mutant": Emergent Biological Subjectivities at Kazakhstan's Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site

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The Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site in Kazakhstan was conceived as an experimental landscape where science, technology, Soviet Cold War militarism, and human biology intersected. As of 2015, thousands of people continue to live in rural communities in the immediate vicinity of this polluted landscape. Lacking good economic options, many of them claim to be “mutants” adapted to radiation, while outsiders see them as genetically tainted. In such a setting, how do post-Soviet social, political, and economic transformations operate with radioactivity to co-constitute a “mutant” subjectivity? Today, villagers think of themselves as biologically transformed but not disabled, showing that there is no uniform way of understanding the effects of radioactive pollution, including among scientists.

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