Recent news from The Johns Hopkins University
This section contains regularly updated highlights of the news from around The Johns Hopkins
University. Links to the complete news reports from the nine schools,
the Applied Physics Laboratory and other centers and institutes are to
the left, as are links to help news media contact the Johns Hopkins
communications offices.
Johns Hopkins University’s Alex Szalay will lead a two-year national effort to begin building a network allowing scientists to more efficiently store and analyze huge caches of data and share them with other researchers.
June 7, 2018 Tags: Alexander Szalay, Big Data, data sets, data-intensive science, Institute for Data Intensive Engineering and Science, National Science Foundation, Open Storage Network
| Category: Computer Science, Physics and Astronomy
The Johns Hopkins University has named four prominent scientists as its newest Bloomberg Distinguished Professors, unique faculty positions created with a landmark $350 million gift from alumnus and former New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, to foster interdisciplinary collaboration across the institution’s many divisions.
March 30, 2015 Tags: Alexander Szalay, Arturo Casadevall, Bloomberg Distinguished Professors, Christopher Chute, Johns Hopkins University, Michael R. Bloomberg, Steven Salzberg
| Category: Engineering, Institutional News, Medicine and Nursing, Public Health, Technology
Two Johns Hopkins University research scientists who use the Japanese art of paper folding, known as origami, as a metaphor for understanding the complexity of the cosmos have been named winners of an award through the “New Frontiers in Astronomy & Cosmology International Grant and Essay Writing Competition,” funded by the John Templeton Foundation. Mark Neyrinck and Miguel Aragón-Calvo, both of the Henry A. Rowland Department of Physics and Astronomy at the Johns Hopkins University’s Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, were chosen from an international competition led by the University of Chicago’s Donald G. York to receive a grant to explore fundamental questions in astronomy and cosmology that engage groundbreaking ideas on the nature of the universe
October 4, 2012 Tags: Alexander Szalay, astrophysics, cosmic web, cosmology, Donald G. York, Henry A. Rowland Department of Physics and Astronomy, huge data sets, John Templeton Foundation, Johns Hopkins' Institute for Data-Intensive Engineering and Science, Mark Neyrinck, Miguel Aragon-Calvo, origami universe, University of Chicago
| Category: Academic Disciplines, Homewood Campus News, Institutional News, Physics and Astronomy, University-Related
A Johns Hopkins University astrophysicist and computer scientist who is a national leader in the advancing understanding of the role of computing in discovery across a wide range of scientific disciplines was today recognized by the Microsoft Corporation with a Jim Gray eScience Award. Alexander Szalay, the Alumni Centennial Professor at The Johns Hopkins University and director of the university’s Institute for Data Intensive Engineering and Science, will receive the award this week during Microsoft’s annual eScience Workshop, held this week in Stockholm, Sweden. Established in 2008 as a tribute to the late Jim Gray, a Technical Fellow for Microsoft Research who disappeared at sea in 2007, the award recognizes a researcher who has made outstanding contributions to the field of data-intensive computing.
December 5, 2011 Tags: Alexander Szalay, Big Data, eScience Workshop, Jim Gray eScience Award, Johns Hopkins University, Sloan Digital Sky Survey
| Category: Academic Disciplines, Homewood Campus News, Physics and Astronomy, Technology
Financed by a $1.2 million National Science Foundation grant, one of the world’s fastest and most advanced scientific computer networks—one capable of transferring in and out of The Johns Hopkins University per day the amount of data equivalent to 80 million file cabinets filled with text—will be built on the university’s Homewood campus, with support from the University of Maryland, College Park.
November 7, 2011 Tags: Alexander Szalay, astrophysics, Bloomberg Center for Physics and Astronomy, College Park, computer science, Data-Scope, datasets, genomics, Homewood High-Performance Computing Cluster, Institute for Data Intensive Engineering and Science, Jonathan Bagger, large-scale computations, Mark Robbins, medical research, National Science Foundation, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, petabytes, physics, San Diego Supercomputer Center, scientific computer network, turbulence, U.S. Senatory Barbara Mikulski, University of Maryland, Whiting School of Engineering
| Category: Academic Disciplines, Homewood Campus News, Natural Sciences, Physics and Astronomy, Social Sciences
NVIDIA, the California-based visual computing technology company, has named Johns Hopkins University as a CUDA Center of Excellence, honoring the university’s pioneering use of GPU computing and the CUDA programming model across research within multiple science and engineering departments. The Center of Excellence will be headquartered in Johns Hopkins’ Institute for Data Intensive Engineering and Science, bringing together the expertise of scholars from the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, the Whiting School of Engineering and the Sheridan Libraries to develop tools and methods capable of mining knowledge from the colossal data sets being produced today. Scientists from the Space Telescope Science Institute, located at the JHU campus are also partnering in the activities of the Center.
October 3, 2011 Tags: Alexander Szalay, CUDA Center of Excellence, data-intensive science, GPUs, Henry A. Rowland Department of Physics and Astronomy, IDIES, Institute for Data Intensive Engineering and Science, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, nVIDIA, Sheridan Libraries, Space Telescope Science Institute, The Whiting School of Engineering, visual computing technology
| Category: Academic Disciplines, Engineering, Homewood Campus News, Physics and Astronomy, Technology
It seems perfectly natural to expect that two motorists who depart from the same location and follow the same directions will end up at the same destination. But according to a Johns Hopkins University mathematical physicist, this is not true when the “directions” are provided by a turbulent fluid flow, such as you find in a churning river or stream. Verifying earlier theoretical predictions, Gregory Eyink’s computer experiments reveal that, in principle, two identical small beads dropped into the same turbulent flow at precisely the same starting location will end up in different – and entirely random – destinations. An article about the phenomenon appears in a recent issue of Physical Review E.
June 1, 2011 Tags: Alexander Szalay, applied mathematics and statistics, Charles Meneveau, computer experiments, Gregory Eyink, Hannes Alfvéen, Krieger School of Arts and Science, National Science Foundation, Randal Burns, spontaneous stochasticity, turbulence, virtual streams, Whiting School of Engineering
| Category: Academic Disciplines, Engineering, Homewood Campus News
Imagine a tool that is a cross between a powerful electron microscope and the Hubble Space Telescope, allowing scientists from disciplines ranging from medicine and genetics to astrophysics, environmental science, oceanography and bioinformatics to examine and analyze enormous amounts of data from both “little picture” and “big picture” perspectives.Using a $2.1 million grant from the National Science Foundation, a group led by computer scientist and astrophysicist Alexander Szalay of Johns Hopkins’ Institute for Data Intensive Engineering and Science is designing and developing such a tool, dubbed the Data-Scope.
November 1, 2010 Tags: Alexander Szalay, Andreas Terzis, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Data-Scope, Department of Computer Science, electron microscope, Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic, federal stimulus grant, federal stimulus money, high-performance computing, Hubble Space Telescope, Human Language Technology Center of Excellence, Johns Hopkins' Institute for Data-Intensive Engineering and Science, Jonathan Bagger, Kenneth Church, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, National Science Foundation, petabyte, Sarah Wheelan, School of Medicine, Scott Zeger, Whiting School of Engineering
| Category: Academic Disciplines, Engineering, Environment, Institutional News, Medicine and Nursing, Natural Sciences, Physics and Astronomy, Psychology, Public Health, Social Sciences, Technology
A report released by the National Academy of Sciences names several projects involving astronomers and astrophysicists at The Johns Hopkins University as among the most important astrophysics investments in the next decade. Titled “New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics,” the recently issued report represents the consensus position of hundreds of astronomers and astrophysicists nationwide who participated in the process of prioritizing projects.
August 27, 2010 Tags: " Wide-Field InfraRed Survey Telescope, "New Worlds, Adam Riess, Alexander Szalay, Charles L. Bennett, Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor, Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer, Henry A. Rowland Department of Physics and Astronomy, Instrument Development Group, James Webb Space Telescope, JDEM, Johns Hopkins University, Johns Hopkins' Institute for Data-Intensive Engineering and Science, Joint Dark Energy Mission, Katherine S. Newman, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, National Academy of Sciences, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pan-STARRS, Shaw Prize, Warren Moos, Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe
| Category: Academic Disciplines, Engineering, Homewood Campus News, Physics and Astronomy, Technology, University-Related
A website that brings the universe into the homes and onto the computer screens of professional and amateur astronomers alike has won a Science Prize for Online Resources in Education, known as SPORE, from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Built by a Johns Hopkins University team led by astrophysicist and computer scientist Alexander Szalay, the SkyServer search tool of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey’s database makes more than 350 million stars and galaxies available to students, teachers and the public. SkyServer’s Mapquest-like interface allows them to pan through the sky, zoom in and out, and click on stars and galaxies for more information.
August 26, 2010 Tags: AAAS, AAS, Alexander Szalay, astronomy, astrophysics, Henry A. Rowland Department of Physics and Astronomy, Human Genome Project, Johns Hopkins University, Jordan Raddick, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, quasars, Science, Science Prize for Online Resources in Education, SkyServer, Sloan Digital Sky Survey, stars, universe
| Category: Academic Disciplines, Homewood Campus News, Physics and Astronomy, University-Related