We are pleased to invite you to a seminar to be given by John Towns on November 11, 2013.

When: 11 am

Where: Business center «Ural», Russian quantum center (RQC), 3d floor. Room 28.3

Guest Speaker: John Towns is  Director of the Collaborative eScience Programs Office at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois. He is also PI and Project Director for the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) and the Operations Manager for the Illinois Campus Cluster Program. Towns plays significant roles in the deployment and operation of high-end resources and services, and distributed computing projects. His background is in computational astrophysics utilizing a variety of computational architectures with a focus on application performance analysis. At NCSA, he provides leadership and direction in the support of an array of computational science and engineering research projects making use of advanced computing resources and services. He earned M.S. degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Illinois and a B.S. in Physics from the University of Missouri-Rolla.

Abstract: This talk will introduce two synergistic topics. The first is a brief overview of the XSEDE program (Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment) which is funded by a $121M award from the National Science Foundation to provide advanced, integrated digital resources including compute, storage, network and visualization to US researchers and educators. In this part of the talk we will discuss the vision, mission and goals of this project and some of the distinguishing characteristics of the program.  This will be accompanied by a look ahead at where the program is headed over the next several years.  In addition we will discuss the Illinois Campus Cluster Program (ICCP) as a model of campus level shared research infrastructure and the emerging co-investment model.