Catching up on my polar research news (Cryolist and ArcticInfo), this call for proposals to the Polar High Performance Computing Workshop and Hackathon caught my eye :

This workshop and hackathon is open to polar scientists who would like to increase their computing knowledge and abilities related to a specific problem during the hackathon or through general training during the workshop.

Training topics during the morning workshops include, but are not limited to, the basics of UNIX, version control, introduction to high-performance parallel and distributed computing (HPDC), selecting a HPDC approach and platform, and publishing and sharing code.

Organizers are accepting proposals that address science questions, pose computational challenges that HPDC can address, and for which major progress is possible within the limited time frame. […]

After a couple of hours of brainstorming and recruiting, I contacted one of the organizers asking if there were still spots open for the hackathon. Long story short, there is and I’ll be heading there the first week of August with Charles Gignac (PhD candidate in the same group as me, with Professor Monique Bernier).

We’ll be implementing a multi-temporal classification for my RADARSAT-2 and TerraSAR-X sea ice imagery datasets. I hope to capture the temporal dynamic of the landfast sea-ice in the Nunavik bays we are studying : does the ice cover evolve uniformly as time goes by, or do some parts of the ice cover change differently ? Such patterns could be linked to snow accumulation patterns for instance.

I’m very excited to learn these new skills; it’s bringing me back to my physics roots !