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PACE Hosts First Hackathon

“They asked if we were hacking the actual PACE satellite,” she said. “They had some questions.”

About 41 students participated in PACE’s first hackweek at UMBC. Here is a group image. Credit: NASA

Windle understands the confusion. While the terms “hackweek” and “hackathon” might bring to mind criminals breaking into secure computer networks, in reality these events are a helpful tool for new scientific missions and the people who want to explore how to use new data sources.

Hackathons, essentially coding sprints, are meant to spur development of software or data products. Scientists and coders can get together and trade skills while creating novel data products from scientific observations.

In August, about 40 participants did just that when they participated in the PACE HackWeek at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

It was an intense masterclass in creating practical tools to use the mission’s data, several participants said. Students spent their time learning about programming, collaboration, and problem solving.

Shortly after arriving, participants were asked to come up with ideas on what they might do with PACE data, whether niche or far-reaching. From there, they were asked to form groups and pick a project to work on.

Participants taking part in a paint night after a day of tutorials. Credit: NASA

One group, called the OCEANOMALIES (Optical Characterization and Evaluation of Anomalous Notable Observations in Marine and Aquatic Light Environments from Satellite), investigated ways to take advantage of PACE’s hyperspectral capabilities to fully characterize optical variables that could not be accurately described or distinguished with legacy multi-spectral instrumentation.

“I was interested in this topic because it allowed me to develop some of the skills I was hoping to gain from this experience - more knowledge and experience with hyperspectral technologies,” said Dorothy Sue Grimmer, an oceanography graduate student at Texas A&M University and a member of that group.

Sarah Lang, a doctoral student in physical oceanography and ocean optics, worked with another group that looked for ways to track eddies or swirling currents in the world’s oceans.

“We called our project ‘GO-SWACE,’ a mash-up of the three global observing systems we combined to uncover how eddies affect phytoplankton ecosystems,” she said.

Those three systems are PACE, which illuminates phytoplankton distributions; the SWOT satellite, which shows the ocean currents and dynamics driving biological distributions observed with PACE; and biogeochemical-Argo floats, which reveals the vertical structure associated with the satellite near-surface observations.

Team member Marin Cornec, a postdoctoral scholar from the University of Washington, said the project inspired their team to continue the work beyond the hackathon.

“We’re trying to get a better understanding of what those rotational features can teach us and how they impact things like algae blooms,” he said.

In addition to the group projects, the hackathon provided a series of hands-on lectures and tutorials on how to code with PACE data. Ideas for coursework were developed by the PACE team, who spent nearly a year creating the curriculum.

The interactive computing platform for the workshop was provided by the CryoCloud hub operated by 2i2c. Cryocloud is a cloud-based JupyterHub set up for Python programming.

More about the technology can be found in their companion blog here.

For co-organizer and PACE scientist Ian Carroll, establishing open communication between producers and data users helped solve problems.

“A cool moment occurred when a participant asked for debugging help and the resolution came through so effectively because key people were all in the room together: a researcher pouring through lots of data and hitting a ‘weird error’, a data scientist able to pinpoint the faulty data product, and our science data system lead on hand to implement the fix,” he said. “That actually happened twice.”

Participants also made sure to have fun. Organizers helped everyone unwind with activities like a crab feast, paint night, and talks.

Participants enjoying a crab feast. Credit: NASA

“The emphasis on social events helped create camaraderie and bonds, which is great emotionally and also advances science by growing each participant’s network,” Grimmer said.

The event was funded by a grant from the Ocean Carbon and Biochemistry Project Office of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The PACE team hopes to host more hackathons in the future.