The LSU Center for Computation & Technology, or CCT, will host the 17th Annual Mardi Gras Conference on "Computational Materials and Methods" Feb. 11-14 at the Lod Cook Alumni Center on campus.

The Mardi Gras Conference will bring together researchers and workers in this broad area of computational materials science to introduce both groups to the current state of the field and future developments, foster information exchange and enable community building among faculty and students at different institutions.

The conference features tutorial presentations, posters, in-depth discussions and demonstrations in addition to several invited speakers. The list of invited presenters is available at http://www.mardigrasconference.org/invite.php. Conference participants will travel to New Orleans on Saturday, Feb. 13, to see the Endymion Mardi Gras parade.

Registration fee is $400 by Jan. 26, 2010, or $450 for participants who register after that date. Conference fee is $100 for LSU participants. A limited amount of travel support of up to $500 per person is available for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers who wish to attend.

The conference is accepting poster submissions through Jan. 24. 

CCT is hosting this conference with support from the LONI Institute and the Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter, and organizational support from faculty with the LSU Department of Physics & Astronomy. 

Nearly 70 attendees from around the world will attend the conference to present papers on topics including advances in hardware and software, computational approaches to strongly correlated electronic systems, computational modeling of biological materials, classical methods of simulation, and computational approaches to reactions and catalytic processes.

To learn more about the conference or register online, please visit www.mardigrasconference.org.