Brookhaven Lab Computational Science Initiative Researchers Join in White House Workshop
October 22, 2015
On October 20 and 21, 2015, the White House sponsored a National Strategic Computing Initiative Workshop in McLean, Virginia, that brought together high-performance computing professionals from universities, industry, and labs across the Department of Energy (DOE) complex. The workshop explored several themes, including the convergence of data-intensive and numerically intensive computing, hardware technology for future high-performance computing (HPC) beyond Moore’s law, and improving productivity in HPC application development and deployment and workforce development.
President Barack Obama issued an Executive Order in July 2015 establishing the National Strategic Computing Initiative (NSCI) to create a cohesive, multi-agency strategic vision and coordinated federal investment strategy in high-performance computing. This coordinated research, development, and deployment strategy will draw on the strengths U.S. departments and agencies to move the federal government into a position that sharpens, develops, and streamlines a wide range of new 21st century applications. It is designed to advance core technologies to solve difficult computational problems and foster increased use of the new capabilities in the public and private sectors.
Workshop participants included Kerstin Kleese van Dam, Director of the Computational Science Initiative at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, Robert Harrison, Director of Brookhaven Lab’s Center for Data-Driven Discovery and a joint appointee at Stony Brook University, and Barbara Chapman, a core member of the University’s Institute for Computational Science and a new joint appointee at Brookhaven Lab. Chapman was also a featured panelist for the discussion on improving productivity in HPC application development and deployment and workforce development.
The keynote speaker on October 20 was Thomas Theis, on assignment from the IBM Corporation as the Executive Director of the Nanoelectronics Research Initiative at the Semiconductor Research Corporation. The October 21 keynote speaker was Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council member Kathy Yelick, Professor of Computer Science at UC Berkeley and the Associate Laboratory Director for Computing Sciences at DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
“It is testament to Brookhaven Lab's growing role in data-intensive computing at the national level that three of our scientists were invited to this high-level workshop, and are helping to define the future strategy and direction of this important White House initiative,,” said Kleese van Dam. “Going forward, Brookhaven aims to play a key role, including the exploration of the convergence of data-intensive and numerically intensive computing approaches.”
2015-6015 | INT/EXT | Newsroom