Conference to Explore Emerging Information Technologies
released 04.12.05
Contact
Deborah A Israel
University of Illinois Department of Computer Science
disrael@cs.uiuc.edu
217.333.1621
NCSA director to participate in HPC discussion
URBANA, IL —
Information technology industry executives and experts from around the world will convene on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for the Illinois Department of Computer Science Affiliates Conference from April 28 to April 30.
"We will be exploring emerging technologies and using the department's resources in a variety of activities that blend computers, art, and entertainment," explained Marc Snir, head of the Department of Computer Science. According to Snir, the purpose of the event is not only to gain more support from industry, but also to encourage more interaction and provide industry with a more transparent window into top-notch computer science talents at the University.
"With engineering research, you eventually want to see your work incorporated into the products of different corporations," Snir added. "To do that, it is important to maintain strong ties with industry."
The conference will begin with a security workshop featuring panels of academicians and leading industry representatives, who will focus on emerging tools and technologies as they relate their perspectives on the opportunities and challenges faced by today's security professionals.
At Thursday evening's "Digital Cabaret," technology will transform music and dance. This event features students and faculty from the Cultural Computing Lab, School of Music, and Department of Dance performing original works that incorporate the latest in sensor technology and human-computer interfaces. Part demonstration and part concert, the works apply tracking and magnetic sensing technology to synthesize and process sound and video, augmenting the human performance.
Richard Wirt, vice president, senior fellow, and general manager of Intel Corporation's Software and Solutions Group, will be Friday's keynote speaker. Wirt, whose group maintains the company's laboratory in Champaign, has been with Intel since 1981. His keynote will address symbiosis in university/industry relations.
Saturday's reverse job fair will give companies the opportunity to become familiar with the knowledge and achievements of University computer science students.
"Employers can move from lab to lab and booth to booth to view students' research projects," said Deborah Israel, the conference coordinator. "It will give potential employers substantive access to our students, and allow students to make important contacts in industry and learn more about industrial applications of technologies within their area of interest."
The conference also features a four-track lecture series, with tracks focused on performance, business intelligence, software engineering, and pervasive computing.
The performance track will focus on the design of systems that maximize cost performance while consuming less time, space and other resources. Specific areas of interest to be discussed include the modern era of high-performance computing and continuous program optimization, with speakers including IBM's Calin Cascaval and Thom Dunning, director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. The HPC panel will also include Henry Potts, vice president and general manager for system design at Mentor Graphics, Luiz DeRose, senior principal engineer at Cray, Inc., Emmet Kilgariff from NVIDIA, and Apple Computer's Blaine Garst.
The business intelligence track will explore emerging techniques for managing business data to better inform decisions and improve business operations. Topics include information integration and data mining, with speakers such as Phil Bernstein, a senior researcher at Microsoft Corporation, and Usama Fayyad, chief data officer and senior vice president of the Strategic Data Solutions Group at Yahoo.
The utility track will explore tools and methods that promise to advance efforts to design sturdier, more functional software. A discussion of hot topics in embedded systems will feature panelists including Gary Cristiano, corporate vice president of engineering at Motorola, Ford's Shuh-Yuan Liou, and Gary Hafen, corporate fellow at Lockheed Martin. The Formal Methods and Software Validation panel will focus on the benefits and challenges of applying mathematically based models to ensure the correctness and trustworthiness of software systems.
The fourth track, ubiquity, will explore ways to satisfy users in a transparent yet dependable manner. Film artist Ron Brinkmann from Apple Computer will speak in a "Beyond 3-D" panel. Brinkmann has supervised work on major motion pictures, such as Speed, James and the Giant Peach, and Contact, in addition to authoring a seminal visual effects books, The Art and Science of Digital Compositing. In a discussion regarding the future of mobile systems, panelists such as Tapani Ryhanen, head of Multimedia Devices Research at Nokia Research Center in Helsinki, Steve Bunch, vice president of the Technical Staff of the Personal Communications Sector of Motorola, and Marion Lineberry, senior member of the technical staff at Texas Instruments, look into future uses of voice and data communications by increasingly mobile workers.
The conference also will feature a "Computing Habitat" programming competition. The competition challenges teams of any size and composition—including both students and faculty—to develop applications that build upon the "smart" infrastructure embodied by the Siebel Center.
"The goal of the conference is for the industry to gain a better idea of how to leverage a relationship with the university to make their computing technology more productive and profitable," Israel said. "We want them to be able to make the best use of our students, faculty and resources."
For full conference information and a complete schedule, go to http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/events/idcsa/.
