ISC High Performance Announces Conference Chairs for 2017

Print Friendly, PDF & Email
Jack Dongarra, University of Tennessee

Jack Dongarra, University of Tennessee

Today the ISC Group announced the appointment of Prof. Dr. Jack Dongarra of University of Tennessee, USA, as the program chairman for ISC 2017. This appointment underlines the international dimension of this conference.

I am honored to be named the program chair for ISC High Performance in 2017. I have been participating and actively contributing to ISC every year over the last three decades, first as a speaker, and later as a collaborator with Hans Meuer, Erich Strohmaier, and Horst Simon as one of the TOP500 authors,” said Dongarra. “My mission as program chair for ISC 2017 is to continue to improve the quality of the ISC technical program and to help expand the HPC community.”

As the program chair, Dongarra will be actively involved in leading the ISC program team to define the 2017 program, whilst also working with the steering committee in a multi-year effort to further elevate the value of ISC High Performance for the high performance computing community.

The position of an annually rotating ISC program chair was created in 2015, thus opening the conference to international members of the community who play a pivotal role in advancing the field of HPC. Japan’s renowned HPC expert, Prof. Dr. Satoshi Matsuoka of Tokyo Institute of Technology, who currently serves as the 2016 chair, will be passing the baton to Dongarra at the end of this year’s conference.

Prof. Dr. Jack Dongarra is highly regarded as an expert of numerical algorithms in linear algebra and parallel computing in the HPC domain. His LINPACK benchmark is used to measure the performance of supercomputers submitted for the TOP500 list in order to determine the world’s fastest machines.

He currently holds an appointment as University Distinguished Professor of Computer Science in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the University of Tennessee and also the title of Distinguished Research Staff in the Computer Science and Mathematics Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).

Dongarra specializes in numerical algorithms in linear algebra, parallel computing, and the use of advanced computer architectures, programming methodology, and tools for parallel computers. His research includes the development, testing and documentation of high quality mathematical software. He has contributed to the design and implementation of the many open source software packages and systems, including EISPACK, LINPACK, BLAS, LAPACK, ScaLAPACK, Netlib, PVM, MPI, NetSolve, TOP500, ATLAS, and PAPI.

Dongarra has published approximately 200 articles, papers, reports and technical memoranda, and he is co-author of several books. He was awarded the IEEE Sidney Fernbach Award in 2004 for his contributions in the application of high performance computers using innovative approaches. In 2008 he was the recipient of the first IEEE Medal of Excellence in Scalable Computing; in 2010 he was the first recipient of the SIAM Special Interest Group on Supercomputing’s award for Career Achievement; in 2011 he was the recipient of the IEEE IPDPS Charles Babbage Award; and in 2013 he was the recipient of the ACM/IEEE Ken Kennedy Award for his leadership in designing and promoting standards for mathematical software used to solve numerical problems common to high performance computing. In 2016 he is serving as the ISC Research Papers Chair. He is a Fellow of the AAAS, ACM, IEEE, and SIAM and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Other New Appointments

ischpThe ISC organizers have also taken the opportunity to revamp the conference committees, thus further diversifying the ISC High Performance. Their varied research interests will be reflected in the 2017 program, broadening the topic set in next year’s conference.

Dr. Pavan Balaji of Argonne National Laboratory will serve as the Research Paper chair and Prof. David Keyes of KAUST will lend his expertise as the committee’s deputy chair. The Research Poster committee will be headed by Dr. Jeffrey S. Vetter of Oakridge National Laboratory and Dr. Matthias S. Müller of RTWH Aachen will act as its deputy chair. Prof. Dr. William Gropp of University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign is the new PhD Forum program chair and he will be advised by Prof. Dr. Gerhard Wellein of the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen in Nuremberg.

The ISC Workshops committee will be headed by Dr. Michela Taufer of University of Delaware, with John Shalf of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as its deputy chair. Dr. Michelle Weiland of EPCC at the University of Edinburgh will act as the Tutorials chair and the deputy chair will be Rosa M. Badia of Barcelona Supercomputing Center. Dona L. Crawford of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will chair the Birds-of Feather committee and she will be assisted by Prof. Dr. Georg Hager from the Erlangen Regional Computing Center.

Prof. Dr. Satoshi Matsuoka of Tokyo Institute of Technology will lead the HPC in Asia Program committee and existing committee member Dr. Marek T. Michalewicz of A*STAR Computational Resource Centre will serve as the deputy chair. Industry experts, Dr. Alfred Geiger of T-Systems and Dr. Marie-Christine Sawley of Intel will further strengthen the industry program as the Industry Track chair and deputy chair, respectively. The organizers have also created the position of Proceedings chair, which will be headed by Dr. Julian Kunkel of German Climate Computing Centre (DKRZ). He will be assisted by Assoc. Prof. Rio Yokota from the Tokyo Institute of Technology.

ISC 2017 Focus Topics

The focus topics for next year’s conference embrace a range of subject matter on the latest developments and research efforts in the realm of high performance computing. They are:

HPC Systems

  • Processor Elements & Memory for HPC
  • Exascale System Developments: Future Concepts
  • Programming Models & User Experience

HPC Applications

  • Life Sciences & Drug Design
  • Earthquake Prediction & Sea Level Rise
  • HPC Influences on Energy Exploration
  • Combustion/Turbulences & Extreme Scale Algorithms
  • Advanced Material Science

Emerging Topics

  • Virtual & Simulated Reality
  • Large Scale Engineering & Cloud Computing
  • Big Data Analytics – SKA & LHC
  • Deep Learning Goes HPC
  • How HPC Influences Industrie 4.0

The organizers are confident that the 2017 conference will once again emerge as Europe’s most important HPC forum, offering talks that encompass an array of unique topics and speakers. The full program details will be available when the registration opens in March 2017.

The conference will once again be held at Forum Messe Frankfurt, from June 18-22, 2017.

Registration is now open for ISC 2016, which takes place June 19-23 in Frankfurt.

Sign up for our insideHPC Newsletter