Annual CSE Research Symposium
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
SPEAKER: Dr. John Gustafson
Ames Research Laboratory
Iowa State University, Ames, IA
DATE: FRIDAY, April 17, 1998
TIME: 10:00 AM
PLACE: B02 CSRL, 1308 W. Main St., Urbana, IL
TITLE: Experimentless Science
ABSTRACT
"Computational science" is a third approach to science, complementing
the theoretical and experimental approaches. As reliance on
computer simulation increases, there is decreasing use of real
physical experiments. With the Accelerated Strategic Computing
Initiative (ASCI), experiments are completely excluded; there can
be no more nuclear tests to confirm readiness of the U.S. arsenal.
Are we ready for this absolute reliance on computer simulations?
Can we really get rigorous confirmation from simulations, and not
mere guidance or visual suggestion? This talk proposes that we can,
but only if we use a drastically different approach from what we
are doing right now.
BIOGRAPHY
Dr. John Gustafson is a Computational Scientist at Ames Laboratory in
Ames, Iowa, where he is working on various issues in high-performance
computing. He has won three R&D 100 awards for work on parallel computing
and scalable computer benchmark methods; and both the inaugural Gordon
Bell Award and the Karp Challenge for pioneering research using a
1024-processor hypercube. Dr. Gustafson received his BS degree with
honors from Caltech and MS and PhD degrees from Iowa State, all in Applied
Mathematics. Before joining Ames Laboratory, he was a software engineer
for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Product Development Manager
for Floating Point Systems, Staff Scientist at nCUBE Corporation, and
Member of the Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories. He is a
member of IEEE and ACM.