Run a race using the supercomputer Sisunen and explore data

What do dinosaurs and fluid dynamics have in common? Step into a world of science created by supercomputers during the Night of the Sciences. See how the mini-supercomputer, Sisunen, makes dinosaurs run races and how researchers examine alterations in the behaviour of fluids as conditions change. Youth Day will focus on data analytics, which is profoundly changing our world.

The mini-supercomputer, Sisunen, will show what it can do

The Night of the Sciences, on Thursday 12 January, will introduce visitors to computational science and how supercomputers are indispensable in helping scientists to solve the scientific challenges of today and the future.

The Night of the Sciences will be arranged in conjunction with the Science Forum, when science is brought to downtown Helsinki. In the Science Hall, visitors will have the chance to become familiar with CSC's own mini-cluster, Sisunen. This super calculator is made of ten Intel NUC Mini PC units the size of a packet of butter, with a total capacity of around 3,100 gigaFLOPS. If we assume that Finnish schoolchildren are given around 150 sums to do each week, Sisunen could calculate all of their maths homework for 1,000 years in just one second.

Under the guidance of experts in the Science Hall, visitors can learn about how researchers model the movement of liquids and air currents. In addition, they will learn how palaeontologists can use supercomputers to investigate extinct creatures like the dinosaurs and work out, say, the walking and running speeds of these ancient animals.

Three workshops will be organised during the evening, in which our experts will discuss the ‘soul' of supercomputers and the science done using them. The workshops begin at 5.15 pm, 5.50 pm and 6.25 pm. In addition, those who wish can compete in the Dinosaur Race with their own dinosaur, challenge our experts with awkward questions and participate in the supercomputer quiz, for which prizes will be awarded.

Youth Day will focus on the revolutionary data analytics 

CSC will arrange a data analytics workshop on Youth Day on 13 January. The hours from 10 am to 2 pm will be spent getting to grips with data gathered from the internet. The event will involve seeking connections between data and creating visual presentations from it. The Jupyter Notebooks environment, which is used by professionals, will serve as the tool, with CSC's powerful computing environment working in the background.

Data is of huge importance in today's society. Through digitalisation, the amount of data is increasing at an accelerating pace. According to the Digital Universe report, global data volumes are expected to grow tenfold from today's 4.4 billion or so gigabytes to 44 billion by 2020. Data analysis and management are becoming more important to ensuring that organisations are able to use relevant data. CSC wants to be involved in familiarising the public with data analytics and science through events such as Youth Day.

– Data can show what the eyes cannot see or the ears hear. Through data analytics, a deeper and wider range of data can be used as a basis for decision-making and automation. This is creating completely new opportunities and will revolutionise society in a number of ways, says Aleksi Kallio, Development Manager at CSC.

Youth Day will be held as part of the Science Forum, from 10 am to 2 pm on 13 January 2017 in the Language Centre on the central campus of the University of Helsinki. The programme is aimed at ninth graders and groups from upper secondary school.

Further information:

Jussi Enkovaara
Training Manager
CSC – IT Center for Science Ltd.
p. 050 381 9038
jussi.enkovaara@csc.fi

Science Forum
The Night of the Sciences at Science Hall
Youth Day