Name: CERN School of Computing 2019
Start: 2019-09-15T15:00:00+03:00
End: 2019-09-28T11:00:00+03:00
Location: Babeş-Bolyai University

Monday, September 9, 2019
Tuesday, September 10, 2019
Wednesday, September 11, 2019
Thursday, September 12, 2019
Friday, September 13, 2019
Saturday, September 14, 2019
Sunday, September 15, 2019

3:00 PM Arrival and registration
Arrival and registration
3:00 PM - 7:00 PM

7:45 PM Dinner
Dinner
7:45 PM - 8:45 PM

Monday, September 16, 2019

8:45 AM Bus to Babeș-Bolyai University
Bus to Babeș-Bolyai University
8:45 AM - 9:00 AM

9:15 AM Opening Ceremony
Opening Ceremony
9:15 AM - 10:45 AM

10:45 AM Welcome coffee
Welcome coffee
10:45 AM - 11:15 AM
11:15 AM Introduction to Physics Computing L1: Hadron Collider Physics - Arnulf Quadt (University of Göttingen)
Introduction to Physics Computing L1: Hadron Collider Physics (Physics Computing)
- Arnulf Quadt (University of Göttingen)
11:15 AM - 12:15 PM
Here we will focus on the physics of particle collisions, theoretical aspects of the standard model of particle physics, its predictive power as well as its shortcomings. Experimental aspects such as collider facilities and modern particle physics experiments as well as example physics questions and corresponding data analyses will be discussed. Furthermore, the compute models with the resulting amount of recorded data and simulated Monte Carlo events will be described.
12:30 PM Lunch
Lunch
12:30 PM - 1:45 PM
2:00 PM Software Security L1: Introduction - Sebastian Lopienski (CERN)
Software Security L1: Introduction (Software Engineering)
- Sebastian Lopienski (CERN)
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM
First lecture starts with a definition of computer security and an explanation of why it is so difficult to achieve. The lecture highlights the importance of proper threat modelling and risk assessment. It then presents three complementary methods of mitigating threats: protection, detection, reaction; and tries to prove that security through obscurity is not a good choice.
3:00 PM Tools and Techniques L1: Introduction - Bob Jacobsen (UC Berkeley)
Tools and Techniques L1: Introduction (Software Engineering)
- Bob Jacobsen (UC Berkeley)
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
To start, we discuss some of the characteristics of software projects for high energy physics, and some of the issues that arise when people want to contribute to them. This forms the framework for the Software Technologies Track. We then continue with a brief introduction to software engineering from the perspective of the individual contributor, both as a formal process and how it actually affects what you do. The lecture discusses several categories of tools & techniques you can use to make yourself more productive and effective. Continuous testing and documentation has proven to be important in producing high quality work, but it's often difficult to do; we discuss some available approaches. Many problems require specific tools and techniques to solve them effectively: We discuss the examples of performance tuning and memory access problems.
4:00 PM Announcements
Announcements
4:00 PM - 4:15 PM

4:15 PM Afternoon coffee
Afternoon coffee
4:15 PM - 4:30 PM
4:30 PM Software Security L2: Security in different phases of software development - Sebastian Lopienski (CERN)
Software Security L2: Security in different phases of software development (Software Engineering)
- Sebastian Lopienski (CERN)
4:30 PM - 5:30 PM
The second lecture addresses the following question: how to create secure software? It introduces the main security principles (like least-privilege, or defense-in-depth) and discusses security in different phases of the software development cycle. The emphasis is put on the implementation part: most common pitfalls and security bugs are listed, followed by advice on best practice for security development.
5:30 PM Introduction to Physics Computing L2: Digital Data, Simulation and Reconstruction in Modern Particle Physics Experiments - Arnulf Quadt (University of Göttingen)
Introduction to Physics Computing L2: Digital Data, Simulation and Reconstruction in Modern Particle Physics Experiments (Physics Computing)
- Arnulf Quadt (University of Göttingen)
5:30 PM - 6:30 PM
Here, a focus will be placed on specific detector sub-components and their data readout concepts as well as data reconstruction techniques, simulation techniques and analysis techniques.
8:00 PM Welcome dinner
Welcome dinner
8:00 PM - 10:00 PM
Tuesday, September 17, 2019
8:45 AM Tools and Techniques E1 - Bob Jacobsen (UC Berkeley)
Tools and Techniques E1 (Software Engineering)
- Bob Jacobsen (UC Berkeley)
8:45 AM - 9:45 AM
The first three exercises provide some direct experience with the tools and techniques described in Lectures 1 and 2. Teams of two students will work together on through examples designed to show the strengths and weaknesses of various tools and approaches. This will be followed by small projects for additional development experience.
9:45 AM Morning coffee
Morning coffee
9:45 AM - 10:00 AM
10:00 AM Tools and Techniques E2 - Bob Jacobsen (UC Berkeley)
Tools and Techniques E2 (Software Engineering)
- Bob Jacobsen (UC Berkeley)
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
The first three exercises provide some direct experience with the tools and techniques described in Lectures 1 and 2. Teams of two students will work together on through examples designed to show the strengths and weaknesses of various tools and approaches. This will be followed by small projects for additional development experience.
11:00 AM Tools and Techniques E3 - Bob Jacobsen (UC Berkeley)
Tools and Techniques E3 (Software Engineering)
- Bob Jacobsen (UC Berkeley)
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
The first three exercises provide some direct experience with the tools and techniques described in Lectures 1 and 2. Teams of two students will work together on through examples designed to show the strengths and weaknesses of various tools and approaches. This will be followed by small projects for additional development experience.
12:00 PM Announcements
Announcements
12:00 PM - 12:15 PM

12:30 PM Lunch
Lunch
12:30 PM - 1:15 PM

1:30 PM Study time / daily sports
Study time / daily sports
1:30 PM - 3:00 PM
3:15 PM Guest lecture: Computational Science - The Third Pillar of Science? - Emil Slusanschi (UPB)
Guest lecture: Computational Science - The Third Pillar of Science? (Additional lectures)
- Emil Slusanschi (UPB)
3:15 PM - 4:15 PM
In this talk we will talk about the way in which in the 21st Century we will probably be limited to design and create by what we can compute, not by what we can measure, as was the case in the 20th Century. We will discuss about current trends in HPC technology, hardware and software alike, the landscape of Supercomputing in terms of computing architectures and likely development trends, as well as the opportunities that HPC offers for many scientific and engineering domains.
4:15 PM Afternoon coffee
Afternoon coffee
4:15 PM - 4:30 PM
4:30 PM Software Security E1 - Sebastian Lopienski (CERN)
Software Security E1 (Software Engineering)
- Sebastian Lopienski (CERN)
4:30 PM - 5:30 PM
In the practice session, a range of typical security vulnerabilities will be presented. The goal is to learn how they can be exploited (for privilege escalation, data confidentiality compromise etc.), how to correct them, and how to avoid them in the first place! Students will be given small pieces of source code in different programming languages, and will be asked to find vulnerabilities and fix them. The online course documentation will gradually reveal more and more information to help students in this task. Additionally, students will have a chance to try several source code analysis tools, and see how such tools can help them find functionality bugs and security vulnerabilities.
5:30 PM Software Security E2 - Sebastian Lopienski (CERN)
Software Security E2 (Software Engineering)
- Sebastian Lopienski (CERN)
5:30 PM - 6:30 PM
In the practice session, a range of typical security vulnerabilities will be presented. The goal is to learn how they can be exploited (for privilege escalation, data confidentiality compromise etc.), how to correct them, and how to avoid them in the first place! Students will be given small pieces of source code in different programming languages, and will be asked to find vulnerabilities and fix them. The online course documentation will gradually reveal more and more information to help students in this task. Additionally, students will have a chance to try several source code analysis tools, and see how such tools can help them find functionality bugs and security vulnerabilities.
6:30 PM Software Security E3 - Sebastian Lopienski (CERN)
Software Security E3 (Software Engineering)
- Sebastian Lopienski (CERN)
6:30 PM - 7:30 PM
In the practice session, a range of typical security vulnerabilities will be presented. The goal is to learn how they can be exploited (for privilege escalation, data confidentiality compromise etc.), how to correct them, and how to avoid them in the first place! Students will be given small pieces of source code in different programming languages, and will be asked to find vulnerabilities and fix them. The online course documentation will gradually reveal more and more information to help students in this task. Additionally, students will have a chance to try several source code analysis tools, and see how such tools can help them find functionality bugs and security vulnerabilities.
8:00 PM Special dinner and pub quiz
Special dinner and pub quiz
8:00 PM - 10:00 PM
Wednesday, September 18, 2019
8:45 AM Machine Learning L1: Understanding Classification - Anna Scaife (University of Manchester)
Machine Learning L1: Understanding Classification (Physics Computing)
- Anna Scaife (University of Manchester)
8:45 AM - 9:45 AM
This lecture introduces machine learning for classification in a general way before demonstrating a specific example of classification using random forests. The lecture describes the concepts of training, validation and test data sets, and introduces the problem of class imbalance and various methods for addressing this issue. The lecture gives an overview of standard performance metrics, including those for specific machine learning classification problems, and introduces the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve.
9:45 AM Morning coffee
Morning coffee
9:45 AM - 10:00 AM
10:00 AM Tools and Techniques L2: Tools for Collaboration, Software Engineering Across the Project - Bob Jacobsen (UC Berkeley)
Tools and Techniques L2: Tools for Collaboration, Software Engineering Across the Project (Software Engineering)
- Bob Jacobsen (UC Berkeley)
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
HEP software is built by huge teams. How can this be done effectively, while still giving people satisfying tasks to perform? Large systems are a hard problem, and this lecture focuses on the current techniques for dealing with it. Use of central source control has become routine, so we build on that understanding to discuss distributed systems like Git. We then discuss the larger area of release & distributing via a package versioning system vs. a distributed build system (e.g. Git and CMake). Now that we've covered both individual and group work, we go back to the software engineering topics of the first lecture to see how these fit together. How does our individual work affect the ability of the entire project to proceed? What are tools and techniques that will improve both our individual work, and out contributions to the whole? We close with a summary of observations.
11:00 AM Announcements
Announcements
11:00 AM - 11:15 AM
11:15 AM Machine Learning L2: Gaussian Process Modelling - Anna Scaife (University of Manchester)
Machine Learning L2: Gaussian Process Modelling (Physics Computing)
- Anna Scaife (University of Manchester)
11:15 AM - 12:15 PM
This lecture introduces the machine learning method of Gaussian Process Modelling (GPM). It introduces the concept of covariate Gaussian noise, including the covariance matrix as parameterised using covariance kernels, and illustrates the effect of different degrees of covariance on a simulated dataset. The lecture shows how the covariance matrix can be inverted for imputation of missing data or forward prediction based on a training data set.
12:30 PM Lunch
Lunch
12:30 PM - 1:15 PM

1:30 PM Study time / daily sports
Study time / daily sports
1:30 PM - 3:00 PM

3:15 PM Student presentations
Student presentations
3:15 PM - 4:15 PM
4:15 PM Software Security L3: Web application security, exercise debriefing - Sebastian Lopienski (CERN)
Software Security L3: Web application security, exercise debriefing (Software Engineering)
- Sebastian Lopienski (CERN)
4:15 PM - 5:15 PM
This third hour consists of a debriefing of the exercises, and in particular those web-related. Various vulnerabilities typical to web applications (such as Cross-site scripting, SQL injection, cross-site request forgery etc.) are introduced and discussed.
5:15 PM Afternoon coffee
Afternoon coffee
5:15 PM - 5:30 PM
5:30 PM Tools and Techniques E4 - Bob Jacobsen (UC Berkeley)
Tools and Techniques E4 (Software Engineering)
- Bob Jacobsen (UC Berkeley)
5:30 PM - 6:30 PM
After the two-person teams acquire some experience with the development and release tools, we will group projects to demonstrate some of the real-world issues discussed in the lecture. Groups of two teams will first work together to create a functional release from individual sub-projects at various stages of completion to show the strengths and weaknesses of test and release tools. This is followed by a larger scale exercise with groups of teams.
6:30 PM Tools and Techniques E5 - Bob Jacobsen (UC Berkeley)
Tools and Techniques E5 (Software Engineering)
- Bob Jacobsen (UC Berkeley)
6:30 PM - 7:30 PM
After the two-person teams acquire some experience with the development and release tools, we will group projects to demonstrate some of the real-world issues discussed in the lecture. Groups of two teams will first work together to create a functional release from individual sub-projects at various stages of completion to show the strengths and weaknesses of test and release tools. This is followed by a larger scale exercise with groups of teams.
8:00 PM Dinner
Dinner
8:00 PM - 8:45 PM
Thursday, September 19, 2019
8:45 AM Software Design L1: Parallelism in a Modern HEP Data Processing Framework - Enric Tejedor (CERN)
Software Design L1: Parallelism in a Modern HEP Data Processing Framework (Software Engineering)
- Enric Tejedor (CERN)
8:45 AM - 9:45 AM
Even though the miniaturization of transistors on chips continues like predicted by Moore's law, computer hardware starts to face scaling issues, so-called performance 'walls'. Probably, the best known is the 'power wall', which limits clock frequencies. Amongst others, a way of increasing processor performance remains now to integrate many cores in the same chip. At the same time, the upcoming LHC upgrade will increase the required CPU power drastically. Both problems challenge the current way of software design in high energy physics (HEP). Developers in high energy physics are forced to re-think their ways of software design and need to move to massively parallel applications. This lecture will explain the current HEP software design, the hardware and physics issues that need to be tackled, and possible approaches to achieve the required level of parallelization.
9:45 AM Morning coffee
Morning coffee
9:45 AM - 10:00 AM
10:00 AM Software Design L2: Base Concepts of Parallel Programming: A Pragmatic Approach - Andrei Gheata (CERN)
Software Design L2: Base Concepts of Parallel Programming: A Pragmatic Approach (Software Engineering)
- Andrei Gheata (CERN)
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
This and the following lecture will explain the concepts behind various parallelization methodologies. First, a theoretical introduction into threads, thread-safety and concurrent data access will be given. As the new C++ standard (C++11) now provides build-in support for parallel programming, the new features of this standard will be shown. Finally, concrete solutions for the theoretical problems will be discussed.
11:00 AM Announcements
Announcements
11:00 AM - 11:15 AM
11:15 AM Machine Learning L3: Convolutional Neural Networks - Anna Scaife (University of Manchester)
Machine Learning L3: Convolutional Neural Networks (Physics Computing)
- Anna Scaife (University of Manchester)
11:15 AM - 12:15 PM
This lecture introduces the method of using Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) for image based classification. The lecture gives an overview of examples of popular CNN architectures and describes the functionality of each layer within a CNN. It uses the example of binary cross entropy to introduce the concept of a cost function and explains how this is optimised using a gradient descent algorithm and the principle of back-propagation. The lecture concludes by giving an example of how a particular CNN architecture can be implemented in Python.
12:30 PM Lunch
Lunch
12:30 PM - 1:15 PM

1:30 PM Special sports afternoon
Special sports afternoon
1:30 PM - 10:00 PM
Friday, September 20, 2019
8:45 AM Data Science: Tools for interactive exploration - Bob Jacobsen (UC Berkeley)
Data Science: Tools for interactive exploration (Physics Computing)
- Bob Jacobsen (UC Berkeley)
8:45 AM - 9:45 AM
High energy physics has a rich history of interactive exploration of physics data, starting with tools like PAW and ROOT. The explosion of Data Science has created new tools for interactive exploration of large and ad-hoc datasets. This lecture introduces some of these, and shows how they can be used to find new and useful features starting with available data.
9:45 AM Morning coffee
Morning coffee
9:45 AM - 10:00 AM
10:00 AM Software Design L3: Understanding, Debugging and Profiling a Complex Multithreaded Application - Andrei Gheata (CERN)
Software Design L3: Understanding, Debugging and Profiling a Complex Multithreaded Application (Software Engineering)
- Andrei Gheata (CERN)
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Dealing with a parallel application is complex. We need to use procedures to rise fences to protect against mistakes, like static analysis tools allowing to find bugs in an automatic way. We also need to use tools to inspect and manipulate the behavior of programs at runtime, like the GDB debugger. Finally, profilers such as igprof can help us understand the performance bottlenecks of an application and get more insight on its efficiency. The objective of this lecture is to become familiar with these tools and be able to apply them in multithreaded programs.
11:00 AM Announcements
Announcements
11:00 AM - 11:15 AM
11:15 AM Software Design L4: Patterns for Parallel Software Development - Enric Tejedor (CERN)
Software Design L4: Patterns for Parallel Software Development (Software Engineering)
- Enric Tejedor (CERN)
11:15 AM - 12:15 PM
This lecture will present a set of common patterns in parallel programming. The sequential origin of these patterns will be discussed, as well as the restrictions that they impose. A particularly successful combination of patterns, Map-Reduce, will be described in detail and examples of its everyday use at large scale will be given. On the other hand, it will be shown how high-level features like C++ lambdas, the TBB library or the Spark framework can help get started with the aforementioned parallel patterns.
12:30 PM Lunch
Lunch
12:30 PM - 1:15 PM

1:30 PM Study time / daily sports
Study time / daily sports
1:30 PM - 3:00 PM
3:15 PM Guest lecture: Physics-inspired computer algorithms - Liliana Teodorescu (Brunel University)
Guest lecture: Physics-inspired computer algorithms
- Liliana Teodorescu (Brunel University)
3:15 PM - 4:15 PM
This lecture will introduce a few computer algorithms developed in computer science using simplified versions of physics phenomena as inspiration. The lecture will focus on the parallel between some physics concepts and principles, and counterparts in computer algorithms. Examples of applications of such algorithms will also be presented. The lecture aims to inspire physicists and computer scientist or practitioners to see physics not only as a source of large amounts of data that drives computer algorithm development and applications, but also as a potential source of new ideas for such algorithms.
4:15 PM Afternoon coffee
Afternoon coffee
4:15 PM - 4:30 PM
4:30 PM Machine Learning E1 - Anna Scaife (University of Manchester)
Machine Learning E1 (Physics Computing)
- Anna Scaife (University of Manchester)
4:30 PM - 5:30 PM
5:30 PM Machine Learning E2 - Anna Scaife (University of Manchester)
Machine Learning E2 (Physics Computing)
- Anna Scaife (University of Manchester)
5:30 PM - 6:30 PM
6:30 PM Machine Learning E3 - Anna Scaife (University of Manchester)
Machine Learning E3 (Physics Computing)
- Anna Scaife (University of Manchester)
6:30 PM - 7:30 PM
8:00 PM Dinner
Dinner
8:00 PM - 8:45 PM
Saturday, September 21, 2019
8:45 AM Software Design E1 - Enric Tejedor (CERN) Andrei Gheata (CERN)
Software Design E1 (Software Engineering)
- Enric Tejedor (CERN)
- Andrei Gheata (CERN)
8:45 AM - 9:45 AM
The exercises will cover the topics of lectures 1 to 4 at a hands-on basis, based on C++11, TBB and Spark. It covers examples for the new C++11 functionality related to threads and thread safety. In addition, there will be examples for concurrent access to data, lock and lock-free data structures, and task based programming. Finally, there will be an exercise to practise the Map-Reduce pattern by using the Spark parallel data processing framework.
9:45 AM Morning coffee
Morning coffee
9:45 AM - 10:00 AM
10:00 AM Software Design E2 - Enric Tejedor (CERN) Andrei Gheata (CERN)
Software Design E2 (Software Engineering)
- Enric Tejedor (CERN)
- Andrei Gheata (CERN)
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
The exercises will cover the topics of lectures 1 to 4 at a hands-on basis, based on C++11, TBB and Spark. It covers examples for the new C++11 functionality related to threads and thread safety. In addition, there will be examples for concurrent access to data, lock and lock-free data structures, and task based programming. Finally, there will be an exercise to practise the Map-Reduce pattern by using the Spark parallel data processing framework.
11:00 AM Software Design E3 - Andrei Gheata (CERN) Enric Tejedor (CERN)
Software Design E3 (Software Engineering)
- Andrei Gheata (CERN)
- Enric Tejedor (CERN)
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
The exercises will cover the topics of lectures 1 to 4 at a hands-on basis, based on C++11, TBB and Spark. It covers examples for the new C++11 functionality related to threads and thread safety. In addition, there will be examples for concurrent access to data, lock and lock-free data structures, and task based programming. Finally, there will be an exercise to practise the Map-Reduce pattern by using the Spark parallel data processing framework.
12:00 PM Announcements
Announcements
12:00 PM - 12:15 PM

12:30 PM Lunch
Lunch
12:30 PM - 1:15 PM

1:30 PM Free time
Free time
1:30 PM - 7:30 PM

8:00 PM Dinner
Dinner
8:00 PM - 8:45 PM
Sunday, September 22, 2019

8:30 AM Excursion to Turda salt mines, and to Sighișoara
Excursion to Turda salt mines, and to Sighișoara
8:30 AM - 10:30 PM