Seminar Snack Time

Here are the pictures from last week's seminar snack time and Manasa's Birthday Celebration

Special Seminar - November 2 - 10 a.m. - FRNY 3059

John Siirola, Senior Member of Technical Staff

Exploratory Simulation Technologies

Sandia National Laboratory

“Current Trends in Parallel Computation and the Implications for Decision Support Tools”

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

10:00-11:30 a.m.

FRNY 3059

Abstract: In recent years the historical increase in processor net serial instruction rate has slowed dramatically, with processors first reaching an effective upper limit for clock speed and now approaching apparent limits for microarchitecture efficiency. Current trends in processor development suggest that future performance gains will occur primarily through exploitation of parallelism. While historically many decision support tools have leveraged serial computing, for these tools to continue to leverage the “free” advancements from computing technology in the future, the decision support toolset will need to embrace the use of parallelization.

This talk will survey some of the current and emerging parallel processing environments and present several ongoing efforts for exploiting parallel processing within the context of decision support. While by no means comprehensive, I will focus on three representative efforts: the development of parallel branch and bound algorithms for single-objective optimization, distributed collaborative optimization environments for multi-objective optimization, and massively multithreaded parallel discrete event simulation. Each of these applications leverages distinctly different parallel environments from multi-core to massively parallel to specialty parallel systems in order to provide key capabilities within a general-purpose decision support toolset.

Bio: John Siirola received a BS in chemical engineering from Purdue University in 2000. While there, he participated in the Cooperative Education program with Air Products and Chemicals in Allentown, PA, where he focused primarily on process simulation and computer-aided design, including the development of batch process scheduling, configuration management and on-line data reconciliation applications. He went on to obtain his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 2005. His research focused on developing agent-based methods for non-convex mixed-integer multi-objective optimization using distributed computer clusters.

John joined Sandia National Laboratories in 2005 and is currently a Senior Member of Technical Staff in the Exploratory Simulation Technologies department. His research activities focus on the development of agent-oriented software applications for simulation and optimization of complex network systems with applications in logistics networks, infrastructure systems, and regional markets. Current projects include developing hybrid modeling environments for capturing continuous, discrete event and agent-based paradigms, and developing frameworks for implementing both agent-based and non-agent-based hybrid optimization algorithms.

Jason Papastavrou Seminar - 4/21 @ 4:30 in Gris 280

Jason Papastavrou, who was on the Purdue IE faculty for many years, will be visiting next Tuesday. Jason is founder and Chief Investment Officer for Aris Capital Management: www.ariscapital.com

Seminar: Tuesday, April 21 at 4:30pm in GRIS 280.

"I have always been afraid of banks." Andrew Jackson
The past year & a half has seen "unprecedented" turmoil in the financial markets & the economy in general. Words like subprime, toxic assets, bailout, stimulus, trillion, Madoff and the struggle between "Wall Street" & "main street" have become part of the daily vernacular. A brief historical perspective of the crisis, as well as a view from the inside - but not an insider's view - of the events & the players that led us to this mess, a discussion of personal experiences with Madoff's scam, some glaring concerns about the current recovery plans and some thoughts about how to mitigate the risks & effects of future crises.

If you would like time with Jason, please let Kirsty (kmaccoll@purdue.edu) or Dr. Schmeiser (bruce@purdue.edu) know.

Events for March 2 - 6

Travel Grant Applications are due by 5 pm today.

MGL lab tour has been postponed until March 24th due to faculty candidate seminar tomorrow.

Faculty Candidate Seminar on Tuesday, March 3, 2009 at 4:30 pm in Grissom 180
Guanghui (George) Lan, Georgia Institute of Technology
Robust and accelerated stochastic approximation approaches for stochastic optimization

NSF Director Arden L. Bement, Jr. speaks at Purdue, March 4 at 3:30 pm in East Faculty Lounge (PMU)
“In the Barash Tradition: Imagining the Shape of Things to Come”
Director of the National Science Foundation and former Purdue distinguished professor Arden L. Bement, Jr. will be the featured speaker for the inaugural Moshe M. Barash Distinguished Lectureship for Manufacturing Engineering, which is named for the late Purdue professor emeritus.
A reception will follow immediately in the Lafayette Room, PMU.

Faculty Candidate Seminar on Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 4:30 pm in Grissom 180
Lu (Andrew) Liu, Johns Hopkins University

Shirt Design Competition for COE Graduate Programs - Must be turned in by 5 pm Friday, March 6th

Students needed for breakfast with the last faculty candidate on March 11th... please contact Ashley (ajbenedi@purdue.edu) if you are interested.

Don't forget to vote on the date of the plant trip - on the right side.