Saturday, November 21, 2009 East Central Illinois

Champaign hosting computing conferences

By The News-Gazette
Saturday, October 17, 2009 7:00 AM CDT

CHAMPAIGN – Two computing conferences are expected to draw a variety of attendees to Champaign-Urbana next week.

About 150 people are expected to attend the first High-Performance Computing Conference at the I-Hotel and Conference Center on Monday and Tuesday.

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The conference is sponsored by R Systems, a company in the University of Illinois Research Park that makes high-performance computing available for research.

Later in the week, the International Mathematica User Conference will be held Thursday through Saturday at the Hilton Garden Inn in Champaign. The conference is sponsored by Wolfram Research, maker of the Mathematica computation system.

The High-Performance Computing Conference begins Monday evening with a reception, technology showcase and rock band.

It continues Tuesday with presentations by several users of high-performance computing – including iCyt, Wolfram Research, Dana Automotive, L&L Products, Nimbis Systems, Ernst & Young, Extreme Networks, Microsoft and the Research Triangle Institute.

One of two keynote speeches will be made by Cynthia McIntyre, senior vice president for strategic operations at the Council on Competitiveness, who encourages businesses to use high-performance computing.

The other keynote speech will be given by a representative from Dell Inc., said R Systems founder and Chief Operating Officer Brian Kucic.

The High-Performance Computing Conference is free, while registration for the three-day Mathematica user conference is $695, with significant discounts for educators and students.

Wolfram Research founder Stephen Wolfram will give the conference's keynote address at 1:30 p.m. Thursday. Conrad Wolfram, the company's strategic and international director, and Theodore Gray, the director of user interface technology, will speak at 8 a.m. Friday.

The conference includes presentations, hands-on workshops and step-by-step Mathematica tutorials for all levels of users. The conference includes a half-day workshop for teachers Saturday on how to integrate Mathematica into their courses.

On Wednesday – the day before the conference begins – Wolfram|Alpha LLC is hosting Wolfram|Alpha "Homework Day," a live Web event to show students and teachers how the site can be used to solve specific problems.

A permanent Homework Day Web site – http://homeworkday.wolframalpha.com – has been set up where people can contribute ideas and lesson plans before, during and after the event.

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