Advanced Scientific Computing

To visit High-Performance Computing website please click here: HPC website. Another cluster housed at the Biomedical Informatics Research Laboratory (BIRL) is HPCx - Al Farabi. 

We have upgraded the High-Performance Computing Committee to the Advanced Scientific Computing Group which will oversee and be the focal group for our matters related to high performance, scientific and resource-intensive computing in the School.

The Group's terms of reference include various aspects, are attached and the Group's composition goes as:

• Dr. Mudassar Razzaq
• Dr. Safee Ullah
• Dr. Mobin Javed
• Dr. Tajdar Mufti
• Dr. Hassan Mohy-ud-Din

There are plans to improve the experience of our users with respect to the existing high-performance cluster.

If you want to contact the governing team please reach out to Dr. Mudassar Razzaq mudassar.razzaq@lums.edu.pk

The detailed TOR (Terms of Reference), can be download here.

Hardware

Multicore Servers

• Intel Xeon Servers: Two Dell PowerEdge R740 multi-cores servers (2 x 14 cores, 64GB RAM per server)
   
• Intel i7 - 9th Gen Servers: 4 custom servers (9th Gen Intel i7, 16GB RAM) with low-end GPUs (MSI RTX 2080 gaming trio). Mr. Nadeem A. Fazil in IST is managing these servers. The interested faculty member can directly request Mr. Nadeem to create an account on these servers.

Bioinformatics Cluster

• Intel Xeon E7-4830: We are also equipped with two production nodes ("Darvaish" series), each of which is a Huawei RH5885H V3 having 2 x Intel Xeon E7-4830 (12 Cores) processors backed by 1 TB of RAM and 3TB of storage space. 2x NVIDIA Tesla P100 (3584 Cores) cards are hosted to support the GPU computing requirements. Additionally, three development and testing nodes ("Chiragh" series), each constituted by Dell Power Edge R730 machines having 2 x Intel Xeon E5-2620 (12 Cores) processors with 224 GB RAM and 1TB RAID storage are also available. Multi-core computing is further support with the provision of NVIDIA Tesla K40C (2880 Cores) and Grid K2 (3072 Cores) GPU cards. 15 high-end and 12 low-end development machines are also available with NVIDIA GPUs for software development and data analysis.

• Data storage support is provided by the "Danishwar" series of network-attached storage (NAS) devices. Two such NAS systems from QNAP, each having a Ci3 4150, 32 GB RAM, and 40 TB storage, have been developed to store modelling and simulation data.

• The Biomedical Informatics Research Laboratory (BIRL) at LUMS, Pakistan, aims to address such bio-medical informatics challenges by leveraging data integrative approaches that cut across disciplines. 
  For more please visit: http://biolabs.lums.edu.pk/BIRL

Softwares

• Matlab: The School has now acquired a Matlab license for *everyone* working at SSE, Faculty, staff, researchers and students. So if you have an @lums.edu.pk email address, create an account on Mathworks, obtain a license from https://www.mathworks.com/academia/tah-portal/lahore-university-of-management-sciences-31490234.html and use Matlab online, in the labs (when you visit us again) or your personal machines. This is not only Matlab, but *all its toolboxes* too.
   
• Crowdmark: A software for online assessment and grading. https://crowdmark.com/
   
• Github: Code collaboration and project management software, where millions of developers collaborate together. GitHub Campus Program (https://github.com/lumsuniversity) Mr. Zain Khan in IST is looking after GitHub services.
   
• CAS SciFinder: School has received an institutional license for CAS SciFinder which is the world's most recognized mining solution for chemical reactions, catalysts, yields, chemical substances, protein and nucleotide sequences. 

  To access SciFinder within Campus, two steps are required.

  1. Registration: Please click the given link for registration https://scifinder.cas.org/registration/index.html?corpKey=1A5012C8X86F3503FX5ED8866C583CD3E776 Registration is only for new users, and it is required only once. 

  2. Access to the SciFinder (Platform): After registration, please click the link below and use the credentials (username and password set during registration) to access SciFinder. https://scifinder-n.cas.org

  To access SciFinder away from campus, please track the steps below: 
      1. Click https://vpn.lums.edu.pk 
      2. Use LUMS login details (Zambeel credentials for students) 
      3. Select Library
      4. Click on E-Databases Tab
      5. Electronic Databases A-Z
      6. Search CAS SciFinder from the list and click the word "New Users" for Registration. After you get registered, click the below link, and use the credentials (username and password set during registration) to access the platform (SciFinder). https://scifinder-n.cas.org

Online Courses

• Founded in 2000, the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI) program https://about.citiprogram.org/en/homepage/ has been in the vanguard of online research ethics and compliance training for over 20 years. The program houses an impressive catalog of peer-reviewed courses, developed by experts at the forefront of their fields. CITI courses are used by more than 2,200 organizations worldwide as many communities rely on the program for its efficient and effective training. 

  SBASSE Faculty, staff and students can receive this training through an institutional license. See the attached guidebook. Given below is a scope of the CITI.

  Courses are centered on ethics, research, meeting regulatory requirements, responsible conduct of research, research administration, and other areas of focus appertaining to ethics and human subject research (HSR). Carefully curated content provides core training in HSR ethics and various streams of research conduct. Faculty embedded in vibrant research communities ought to benefit from institutional access to CITI, with a broad spectrum of courses on topics such as public health research, animal care and use, good clinical practice, conflicts of interest, information privacy & security, and responsible conduct of research. Faculty looking to fine-tune their research methods to integrate a more stringent approach to ethics into their research methods and enhance their professionalism could take relevant courses. Such training fosters an environment of authentic research and professional integrity, making the program an asset for higher education communities.