Using Containers and HPC to solve the mysteries of the Universe

Container technology is being used to answer some of the biggest questions in science today - what is the Universe made of? How has it evolved over time? Scientists use vast quantities of data to study these questions, and analyzing this data requires Big Data solutions on high performance computing resources. In this talk we discuss why containers are being deployed to answer fundamental scientific questions using the #5 supercomputer in the world, Cori at NERSC (the National Energy Research Scientific Computing center). We will give examples of the use of Docker in simulating complex physical processes and analyzing experimental data in fields as diverse as particle physics, cosmology, genomics and material science. We will demonstrate how container technology is being used to facilitate access to scientific computing resources by scientists from around the globe. Finally, we will discuss how container technology has the potential to revolutionize scientific publishing, and could solve the problem of scientific reproducibility.