SC13 kicks off with keynote by Genevieve Bell

The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC13) is flying high in celebration of its 25^th year, and will touch down at the end of the month in Denver, Colorado, US. Known for its strong technical program – not to mention hosting SciNet, one of the most powerful and advanced networks in the world – SC13 is your ticket to the mile high city.

Anthropologist Genevieve Bell. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Noted anthropologist and Intel fellow Genevieve Bell will officially open the conference with the keynote address on Tuesday morning. Bell was a researcher at Stanford until 1998, when she joined Intel Corporation as a cultural anthropologist studying how different cultures around the globe use technology.

Named an Intel fellow in November 2008 for her work in the Digital Home Group, Bell now directs the Interaction and Experience Research group. Certain that we’ve actually faced big data issues for thousands of years, she maintains that the key to addressing today’s challenges is approaching with the right frame of reference.

Fourteen speakers – including Nobel Laureate Saul Perlmutter – headline the Invited Talks program at SC13. The talks provide longer-term perspectives compared to individual research papers, and integrate multiple research insights into a broader context. This year’s speakers will focus on new approaches to our most complex questions; the latest innovations in supercomputing and data analytics; and how high-performance computing is not only shaping modern scientific and engineering discovery, but also relationships among nations. For dates and times of invited talks, visit the interactive program schedule.

Eight student teams from universities in the United States, Germany, and China, along with the first ever team from Australia (flying 9,000 miles to participate) will compete in the. Held as part of HPC Interconnections, the competition is designed to introduce the next generation of students to the high-performance computing community. The real-time, 48-hour challenge takes place non-stop on the SC13 exhibit floor and will feature teams of undergraduate and/or high school students building, tuning, and racing their own high-performance clusters.

The SC13 exhibition hall will showcase latest technologies from industry, academia, and government research organizations, many of which will exhibit for the first time in Denver. For more information about SC13, visit the event website – and, on November 17, sit back, relax, and enjoy your flight.