Seminar Snack Time

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

Bowling Social Pictures

Pictures from the Bowling Social...

Pictures from IE GSO Social #1

Pictures from the first IE GSO Social ofSpring 2010!!!!

What a fun night.

IE GSO Travel Grant

Liang (Leon) Zeng is being awarded the IE GSO Travel Grant for the fall semester. Many Congratulations!!

Leon will be presenting his work on "The Significance of Creativity in IT Product/Service Development" at the 53rd Annual Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES) Conference, San Antonio, TX held from October 19-23 2009.

Abstract: It is creativity that ultimately triggers innovations and their commercial success in information technology products and services. Previous research in ergonomic design considers only issues regarding functionality, safety, usability, and affectivity. We first propose a conceptual framework for ergonomic design that high-lights the central role of creativity in achieving synergy of the four preceding design dimensions. Then, a conceptual model of the creative design process for IT products and services is proposed based on the literature in creative cognition and engineering design. The discussion provides insights into how to increase creativity and profitability of IT products and services.

Due to Leon's efforts, the Purdue HFES chapter has submitted an application for recognition as an outstanding chapter, which Leon will be responsible for accepting (assuming that the chapter receives that recognition). He will also supervise the presentation of posters being prepared to showcase the human factors research programs of three laboratories at Purdue in a special session.

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.

Korean IE Graduate Students WIN Annual Korean Softball Game

Congrats to the 2009 Korean Graduate Student Softball Champions!!! On Saturday, October 10th, the IE graduate students joined the HTM graduate students to win the annual softball tournament.

Here is the winning team's photo!

WAY TO GO!!!!

Badminton Tournament - SUNDAY

Our first annual Badminton Tournament games are going to be held this Sunday, October 4th starting at 2 pm in the co-rec.

Details are as follows:

• All IE graduate students, faculty, and staff are invited to watch, play and socialize in our Badminton Tournament
• There will be a social at GRIS 155 following the tournament
• Prizes will be given for most points scored, best team costume, least points scored, best team name, etc
• All games are doubles games: 2 vs. 2
• Pairs can be guys, girls, or mixed
• Shuttlecocks are provided
• Novice and intermediate brackets will be provided
• Email Ashley (ajbenedi@purdue.edu) or Martin (zhang112@purdue.edu) tp sign up
• If you want to play but do not currently have a partner, let us know and we will make pairs from individuals interested in playing
• The game schedule will be emailed out on October 3