[hpc-announce] [cfp - Extended Deadline to Jan 25] EduPar-19: 9th NSF/TCPP Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Computing Education

[Noemi Rodriguez]

[Deadline has been extended to Jan 25. We apologize if you receive multiple copies of this CFP.]

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EduPar 2019 - CALL FOR PAPERS
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EduPar-19: 9th NSF/TCPP Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Computing Education (EduPar-19)
Hilton Rio de Janeiro Copacabana

May 20th, 2019
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in conjunction with IPDPS

Parallel and Distributed Computing (PDC) now permeates most computing activities. The pervasiveness of computing devices containing multicore CPUs and GPUs, including home and office PCs, laptops, and mobile devices, make parallel programming a necessary skill in the toolbox of programmers. The emergence of web services, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things have also made it necessary to deal with distributed computing. As academics, we must reflect on how best to help students develop competence in these areas and on how to prepare them for addressing the challenges of current and emerging computing technologies.

To develop a broad understanding and skill set in PDC, we need to weave related subjects at various levels into the educational fabric of Computer Science (CS) and Computer Engineering (CE) programs, as well as into related computational disciplines. However, the rapid changes in computing hardware platforms and devices, languages, and supporting programming environments [MOU1] present immense challenges to educators in deciding what to include in the curriculum and what to teach in any given semester or course.

EduPar provides a global forum for exploring new ideas and experiences related to a seamless inclusion of PDC topics in a CS/CE or related curricula.  Our focus is primarily at the undergraduate level, but we are also interested in the K-12 and graduate levels, and in informal settings. To provide some historical perspective, since 2011, EduPar has been held successfully against the backdrop of the IPDPS, a major conference focusing on parallel and distributed computing. This effort is in coordination with the TCPP curriculum initiative (http://www.cs.gsu.edu/~tcpp/curriculum) for CS/CE undergraduates supported by NSF and its NSF-supported Center for Parallel and Distributed Computing Curriculum Development and Educational Resources (CDER).

EduPar invites unpublished manuscripts, poster proposals, and candidate Peachy assignments from individuals or teams from academia, industry, and other educational and research institutes from all over the world on topics pertaining to the teaching of PDC topics in the Computer Science and Computer Engineering curriculum as well as in domain-specific computational and data science and engineering curricula.

The topics of interest are as follows:
* Emerging PDC topics to inform TCPP and related curricula
* Curriculum design and models for incorporating PDC topics in core curricula, including in CS1/CS2 courses and in Computer Science Principles and other courses at K-12 level
* Parallel and distributed models of programming/computation suitable for teaching, learning, and workforce development
* Experience with incorporating PDC topics into core courses
* Experience with incorporating PDC topics in the context of other applications
* Pedagogical issues in incorporating PDC in undergraduate and graduate education, especially in core courses
* Novel ways of teaching PDC topics, including informal learning environments
* Pedagogical tools, programming environments, infrastructures, languages, and projects for PDC
* Educational resources based on higher-level programming languages such as PGAS, X10, Chapel, Haskell, Python, and Cilk, as well as emerging environments such as CUDA, OpenCL, OpenACC, and Hadoop 
* e-Learning, e-Laboratory, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), Small Private Online Courses (SPOC)
* PDC experiences at non-university levels; secondary school, postgraduate, industry, diffusion of PDC
* Employers’ experiences with and expectation of the level of PDC proficiency among new graduates

Best Paper Award: All submitted papers will be peer reviewed and considered for the Best Paper Award. 


Publication: Papers will be published in the workshop proceedings. We will have a summary paper for Peachy assignments and a summary paper for posters in the proceedings. These two brief summary papers will be compiled by the track chairs and co-authored by all contributing authors. Additionally, poster and Peachy assignments papers as well as presentations and artifacts will be published on the workshop website. Please note that Peachy assignments and posters will not be published individually in the workshop proceedings. Proceedings of the workshops are distributed at the conference and are submitted for inclusion in IEEE Xplore after the conference.


Travel support: 15 travel grants with NSF/Intel support will be available for NSF/TCPP Curriculum Early Adopter authors of papers, peachy assignments or posters.

Important dates:

Paper Abstract Submission (encouraged): January, 11 2019
Full Paper Submission: [[[old: January 18, 2019]]], now: January 25, 2019
Paper Author Notification: February 25, 2019
Paper Camera-ready Paper: March 4, 2019
Poster Submission: February 8, 2019
Peachy Assignments Submission: February 8, 2019


Submission Guidelines

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Papers: Authors are asked to submit 6-8 page papers in pdf format at the EasyChair submission site https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=edupar19.  Submissions should be formatted as single-spaced double-column pages using 10-point font on 8.5x11 inch pages (IEEE conference style), including figures, tables, and references. See style templates for details.
Submissions will be reviewed based on the novelty of contributions, impact on broader undergraduate curriculum, particularly on core curriculum, relevance to the goals of the workshop, and, for experience papers, the results of their evaluation and the evaluation methodology. 
Proceedings of the workshops are distributed at the conference and are submitted for inclusion in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library after the conference.  Authors will also be invited for a journal special issue, such as JPDC, as in the past workshops.

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Peachy Parallel Assignments: Course assignments are integral to student learning and also play an important role in student perceptions of the field. EduPar will include a session showcasing "Peachy Parallel Assignments" - high-quality assignments, previously-tested in class, that are readily adoptable by other educators teaching topics in parallel and distributed computing.

Assignments may be previously published, but the author must have the right to publish a description of it and share all supporting materials. We are seeking assignments that are

1) Tested - All submitted assignments should have been used successfully in a class.

2) Adoptable - Preference will be given to assignments that are widely applicable and easy to adopt.  Traits of such assignments include coverage of widely-taught concepts, using common parallel languages and widely-available hardware, having few prerequisites, and (with variations) being appropriate for different levels  of  students.

3) Cool and inspirational - We want assignments that excite students and encourage them to spend time with the material. Ideally, they would be things that students want to show off to their roommate.

Assignments can cover any topics in Parallel and Distributed Computing.

Initial submissions should be a single-spaced double-column one-page pdf document using 10-point font on 8.5x11 inch pages (IEEE conference style) describing the assignment and its context of use, and containing a link to a web page containing the complete set of files actually given to students (assignment description, supporting code, etc.). The document should cover the following items: What is the main idea of the assignment? What concepts are covered?  Who are its targeted students?  In what context have you used it?  What prerequisite material does it assume they have seen? What are its strengths and weaknesses?  Are there any variations that may be of interest?

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Posters: High-quality poster presentations are an integral part of EduPar. We seek posters describing recent or ongoing research. Accepted poster abstracts will be distributed to symposium participants. Interactive demos alongside posters will be supported.

Posters submissions should be a single-spaced double-column one-page pdf document using 10-point font on 8.5x11 inch pages (IEEE conference style). If accepted, authors will be asked to prepare a poster to be presented at EduPar.


Committees

Program Committee
* Joel Adams, Calvin College
* Ioana Banicescu, Mississippi State University
* David Brown, Tennessee Tech University
* Sarita Bruschi, University of São Paulo
* David Bunde, Knox College
* Valeria Cardellini, University of Rome Tor Vergata
* Jeffrey Carver, University of Alabama
* Debzani Deb, Winston Salem State University
* Silvio Fernandes, Universidade Federal Rural do Semi Árido
* Henrique Freitas, Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais
* Victor Gergel, Nizhni Novgorod State University
* Sheikh Ghafoor, Tennessee Technological University
* Nasser Giacaman, The University of Auckland
* Domingo Gimenez, University of Murcia
* Anshul Gupta, IBM Research
* Jeremy Iverson, College of Saint Benedict & Saint John's University 
* David Kaeli, Northeastern University
* Krishna Kant, Temple University
* Virginia Niculescu, Babes-Bolyai University
* Peter Pacheco, University of San Francisco
* Cynthia Phillips, Sandia National Laboratories
* Mike Rogers, Tennessee Tech University
* Arny Rosenberg, Northeastern University
* Silvana Rossetto, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
* Jawwad Shamsi, FAST National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences
* Rudrapatna Shyamasundar, Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai
* Alan Sussman, University of Maryland
* Jerry Trahan, Louisiana State University
* Ramachandran Vaidyanathan, Louisiana State University
* Charles Weems, University of Massachusetts


Organizing committee
* Workshop Chair: Sushil K Prasad (Georgia State University)
* Program Chair: Noemi Rodriguez (Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro)
* Program Vice-Chair: Martina Barnas (Indiana University)
* Peachy Assignments Coordinator: David Bunde (Knox College)
* Proceedings Chair: Satish Puri (Marquette University)

Contact
All questions about submissions should be emailed to Noemi Rodriguez <noemi at inf.puc-rio.br>