News & Announcements

September 23, 2009

"Bio-Computing a Major Focus of 22nd Annual SC Conference"

SC09, the 22nd annual supercomputing conference, recognized as the premier international conference on high performance computing (HPC), networking, storage and analysis, will offer presentations, seminars and panels featuring a world-class roster of thought leaders and innovators discussing the rapidly expanding role of HPC in the biological sciences.

SC09, to be held November 14-20 at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, OR, annually attracts thousands of scientists in industry, government and academia from around the world. The Bio-Computing Thrust Area features a technical program that will include refereed technical papers, tutorials, invited speakers, panel discussions and posters examining how HPC is transforming bio-computing.

"The bio-computing thrust at SC09 is a critically important program of events for computational biologists, bioinformaticists and biologists who seek to understand the newest solutions in bio-centric computing, storage and networking," said Peg Folta, division leader within Computing Applications and Research, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and head of the SC09 Bio-Computing Thrust Area. "Biological research today is driven by the acceleration of knowledge creation, explosion in data around the world, and growing interdependence of disciplines. New HPC solutions allow for far more comprehensive approaches to scientific investigation and enable a systems approach to understanding and predicting life, which is fundamental to the global challenges in medicine, energy and defense."

As part of SC09's special focus on Bio-Computing, the Department of Energy's Genomic Science Program will be hosting a workshop titled, Using Clouds for Parallel Computations in Systems Biology. According to Susan Gregurick, DOE Program Manager, "Our discussion at SC09 will explore the possibility of on-demand access to computing resources that democratize access to the diverse, rapidly expanding and distributed data generated in biology, along with sharing information about our planned Systems Biology Knowledgebase. The attendance of so many leading computational biologists at SC09 makes this an ideal venue for hosting this workshop."

According to Chris Heier, President of Tycrid Platform Technologies, a company that specializes in GPU-based HPC platforms for the life sciences and pharmaceutical industries, and a first-time exhibitor at SC09, "Bio-Computing and computationally ...

 

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