Timothy, Heine and I attended the Frontiers in Scientific Computing Symposium. This two day gathering organised by Professor Kevin Naidoo of UCT's Chemistry department attracted some big names in scientific computing, both locally and internationally.
While many of the lectures focused on very specific domain problems in chemistry and earth sciences and for the most part went right over my head several things were very clear; the issues under discussion are often critical to very real human social problems, for instance long term climate modelling. The problems are often complex and the methods used to tackle them require immesnse computing power. More worryingly is the demand for huge amounts of storage with little thought given to retention, curation or backups.
Heine, Timothy and Andrew in the back row, trying to keep up. (pic (c) UCT NEWSROOM & PUBLICATIONS)
There is also a very clear need for interdisciplinary communication, especially between the computer scientists who develop code and problem solving methods, scientists researching problems in their specific domains and the back room technical support staff who have to turn these ideas into silicon reality.
We'd like to thank the organisers for a very enjoyable and well hosted event.
Heine, Timothy and Andrew in the back row, trying to keep up. (pic (c) UCT NEWSROOM & PUBLICATIONS)
There is also a very clear need for interdisciplinary communication, especially between the computer scientists who develop code and problem solving methods, scientists researching problems in their specific domains and the back room technical support staff who have to turn these ideas into silicon reality.
We'd like to thank the organisers for a very enjoyable and well hosted event.