Frontiers of CyberScience Lecture Series Distinguished Speaker

In light of the growing importance of the interdisciplinary field of cyber-enabled discovery and innovation, the Institute for  CyberScience is sponsoring this speaker series.  Prominent experts are scheduled to present talks on campus throughout the academic year.  The goal is to explore the frontiers of this intrinsically interdisciplinary research area of cyberscience and to bring the diverse community of Penn State researchers together around new and emergent themes.

“The Blue Waters Petascale Computer: Scientific Research Opportunities at the Frontiers of Computing”

Dr. Robert Wilhelmson, Chief Scientist, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Date: Thursday, August 26, 2010
Time: 4:00 – 5:30 pm
Location: The Cybertorium (Room 113 IST Building)
 
Abstract:  Blue Waters will be one of the most powerful supercomputers available for open scientific research when it comes online in 2011 at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana.  The Blue Waters project includes NCSA, the University of  Illinois, IBM, NSF, and the Great Lakes Consortium* (of which Penn State is a member).

Dr. Wilhelmson will provide an overview of the Blue Waters project and its purposes along with some of the challenges that must be overcome to enable applications to efficiently make use of the more than 200,000 cores that will be available.  Access to the system to carry out frontier research will be presented along with an overview of research and development opportunities related to sustained petascale computing.

Biography:  Dr. Wilhelmson was one of the original founders of NCSA in 1985.  He holds a BSc degree from Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois (1966) and a PhD in computer science from the University of Illinois (1972).  He is known for his work in studying severe storms and for his work with the visualization team at NCSA in creating animations of storm and tornado evolution that have been widely seen in IMAX and NOVA productions.  One of the earlier animations paving the way for scientific visualization of model data was nominated for an Academy Award in the animation category.  Dr. Wilhelmson serves on the Blue Waters Technical Advisory Committee with an emphasis on applications.  In addition, he will be a future user of Blue
Waters, studying the formation, evolution, and decay of tornadoes that form in supercell storms.
 
This lecture is sponsored by NCSA and the Institute for CyberScience
 
The Institute for CyberScience is a part of the Office of the Vice President for Research