I visited the Center for Computation and Technology at LSU in Baton Rouge on Monday. With Ed Seidel's arrival, and much funding from the state, there is a rapidly growing group of smart and interesting people (e.g., Gabrielle Allen, Thomas Sterling, Tevfik Kosar, Dan Katz, and Jon McLaren) and also a growing scientific infrastructure and collection of strong projects.
As one might expect, there is a lot of interest in how to use HPC to predict hurricanes and their impact. E.g., if a hurricane is heading towards the delta, then one wants to run a storm surge model to determine when flood gates will need to be closed. That in turn leads to a need for on-demand scheduling of computers, etc. A good driving problem for a more dynamic approach to HPC and Grid.
I gave a variant of my talk on "scaling eScience impact" (or "service-oriented science"). I find the message keeps getting clearer, as I understand the issues better. Lots of good questions, including how science can afford to build the software and hardware infrastructure needed to enable information-intensive science. (How can it afford not to?)
Certainly CCT is a place to watch, and at this time of year, also a very pleasant place to visit!
Comments