Funding, News and Announcements

Message from ACENET
 

Our winter training sessions continue! For a full listing of our training available, see our website. All ACENET sessions are online unless otherwise indicated.

Big Data Analysis with Spark
20, 22 February, 1300-1600hrs Atlantic / 1330-1630hrs NL
Apache Spark is a user-friendly open-source platform for large-scale data processing, analytics and for parallel-computing. Using Apache Spark and Python (PySpark), this workshop is aimed at analyzing data sets that are too large to be handled and processed by a single computer. With hands-on guided examples, the workshop covers the basics of Spark and Resilient Distributed Datasets (RDD) high-level architecture. The examples are mainly written in Python, hence the APIs covered are the ones available in PySpark, including Spark Core API (RDD API), Spark SQL, and Pandas on Spark. Participants learn how to import data, use functions to transform, reduce and compile the data, and produce parallel algorithms that can run on Alliance clusters. Prerequisites: ACENET Basics or equivalent, and how to write functions in Python.  DETAILS & REGISTER

ACENET & Ocean Tracking Network: Introduction to Python 
21, 28 February, 1300-1600hrs Atlantic / 1330-1630hrs NL
Join ACENET and Ocean Tracking Network (OTN) in our Introductory Python workshop series. Over three weeks, we will explore data analysis and visualization with Python, based on the Software Carpentry lessons. Each session builds on the last. We will start with basic Python syntax and the Jupyter notebook interface. Then, we’ll teach you how to import CSV files using the Pandas package to manipulate and summarize data frames, and cover a brief introduction to plotting. The last lesson demonstrates how to work with databases directly from Python. No coding experience is required. DETAILS & REGISTER

The Why's and How's of Machine Learning
25 March, 1300-1500hrs Atlantic / 1330-1530hrs NL
What do you need to make a machine learning project successful? How can you make smart decisions about setup and execution? How should you hire and support the staff working on the project? We hope to provide clear, thoughtful answers to these, and other common questions to get you thinking about whether machine learning is a technology that you and your company or group should think about investing in. We will discuss topics like data collection, the trade-offs involved in choosing a model, and what to expect from a successful project, as well as how to salvage useful by-products and skills when projects don’t go as planned. This is a beginner session oriented to business owners and project managers curious to learn more about machine learning, or who may have an idea that involves machine learning and want to know where to begin. DETAILS & REGISTER

C as a Second Language
13 March, 1000-1200hrs and 1400-1600hrs Atlantic / 1030-1230hrs and 1430-1630hrs NL 
A great deal of high-performance computing software is written in C, but few universities offer courses in the language any more. If you have to work with "legacy code" written in C, adding features, porting to a new machine, or patching errors, or if you need to write user-defined functions for engineering packages such as Fluent, then this workshop is for you. Prerequisite: familiarity with another programming language.  DETAILS & REGISTER

Machine Learning Basics
19 March, 1300-1500hrs Atlantic / 1330-1530hrs NL
Are you curious about machine learning, but not sure where to start, or if the discipline is for you? This beginner session will offer a survey and explanation of several methods used to make machines learn. From simple models like Naive Bayes, Regression and Decision Trees to an introduction to Support Vector Machines and Feed-Forward Neural Networks. This talk is geared to be approachable to a novice audience, curious about machine learning, but not necessarily math or computer science majors. Methods and techniques will be explained using metaphors, examples, and clear language, without diving too deeply into the math and calculus on which these techniques are based.  DETAILS & REGISTER

C++ as a Second Language
27 March, 1000-1200hrs and 1400-1600hrs Atlantic / 1030-1230hrs and 1430-1630hrs NL
A great deal of high-performance computing software is written in C++, but few universities offer courses in the language any more. If you have to work with "legacy code" written in C++, adding features, porting to a new machine, or patching errors, or if you need to extend packages like OpenFOAM which are written in C++, then this workshop is for you. C++ was designed as an extension of the C language but has its own distinct idiom or style. This workshop assumes that you already know C to the level reached in the ACENET workshop "C as a Second Language".  DETAILS & REGISTER

Introduction to Neural Network Architecture
12 April, 1300-1600hrs Atlantic / 1330-1630hrs NL 
Have you wondered how machine learning models can suddenly do so many different types of work? How is it that machines can learn things like language, vision and translation in such a short amount of time, and what has helped drive these kinds of improvements? The obvious answers - big data and big processors - are only part of the story, and to understand the full picture, we need to take a closer look at the models driving the AI revolution. This talk is aimed at people who are familiar with the basics of feed-forward neural networks, and will involve an in-depth explanation of how information is represented for machines to learn from, how machines can make sense of information, and the challenges presented.  DETAILS & REGISTER

Introduction to Natural Language Processing
16 April, 1300-1600hrs Atlantic / 1330-1630hrs NL
How do computers understand language? It seems impossible that zeroes and ones could ever add up to words that humans can understand, but machine language has come a long way in the past few years. Let us take you behind the code to explain how machines simulate language comprehension, and why it’s a far more complicated problem than “bonjour = hello”. This talk is aimed at an audience who is not necessarily familiar with computers or language comprehension, but would like a primer to the field, and what it can realistically do. We will explain natural language processing from the perspective of machines that cannot understand words, but capture semantic meaning by processing data.  DETAILS & REGISTER

Fortran as a Second Language
24 April, 1000-1200hrs and 1400-1600hrs Atlantic / 1030-1230hrs and 1430-1630hrs NL
Fortran, one of the initial high-level programming languages, continues to be an excellent option for high-performance computing due to its superb performance. The newer versions of Fortran offer many modern features, including object-oriented programming capabilities to programmers. This course will cover some of these features. Prerequisite: familiarity with another programming language.  DETAILS & REGISTER


From Our Partners

More training sessions can be viewed from our partners at Calcul Québec, Compute Ontario, and for research data management, the Digital Research Alliance of Canada.