Representatives from Cornell University will present three of the six sessions scheduled for the upcoming Bio-Environmental Complexity + Computational Sciences = High Performance Computing Colloquium, to be held on Dec. 16, 2004, in Washington, D.C. -- Sessions presented by Dave Lifka, Cornell Theory Center (CTC) chief technical officer, and Cornell University Professor Harold van Es, from the department of Soil, Crop, and Atmospheric Sciences, will highlight successes and future directions for the computational agriculture initiative recently undertaken by the Cornell Theory Center and Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. The interdisciplinary partnership focuses on using CTC’s computational infrastructure and expertise to develop science-based cutting edge technologies in support of farmers. “The Colloquium is an opportunity for Cornell to share the advancements we’ve made by applying the advantages of high-performance computing [HPC] to crop and soil sciences, economics, climate modeling, and data-mining,” said Linda Callahan, CTC executive director. “The presentations at the Colloquium will explain new directions in HPC, how HPC can facilitate research and development in precision agriculture, and illustrate the progress that can be made when HPC is applied to data-intensive challenges.” Lifka’s presentation, “Data-Driven Science: the New Paradigm in HPC?” will explain how HPC enables data-driven science. “HPC cluster technology has made it possible for scientists to capture and consume massive amounts of data,” said Lifka. “To maximize the opportunities inherent to data-driven science and to take advantage of the benefits offered by seamless HPC, four ‘pieces’ of the puzzle must collaborate: scientists, plumbers, miners, and tool makers.” Van Es’ presentation, “Applications of High-Performance Computing to Agricultural Problems,” will offer examples of opportunities to apply HPC to agricultural issues. “High performance computing methods have thus far found limited application to agricultural problems,” said van Es. “Yet, agriculture involves the management of complex systems that can greatly benefit from this technology. Examples of this include the use of data-intensive simulation modeling, data warehousing, and data mining. Also, adoption will be facilitated by the development of an effective user interface technology that brings sophisticated HPC to end users.” In addition, Jaroslaw Pillardy, senior research associate with CTC’s Computational Biology Service Unit (CBSU), will present “Computational Biology Tools, Applications, and Research at CBSU,” explaining how CBSU’s resources and bioinformatics can facilitate research efforts in animal and plant genomics. “Recent orders of magnitude increases in the ability to generate and store environmental data on soil, air, and water, and biological data on vegetation and genomics have created a tremendous need to organize, analyze, and interpret large data sets,” said Callahan. “It’s apparent that HPC is now finding many new applications in a wide variety of data-rich disciplines, such as bioinformatics, air quality, and regional crop modeling.” The Colloquium will provide a glimpse into several new applications in HPC in agriculture and the environment. Other presentations will be offered by the Center of Excellence for Environmental Computational Science, the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University, and the USDA Forest Service. Background: CTC is a high-performance computing and interdisciplinary research center located on the Ithaca campus of Cornell University with additional offices in Manhattan. CTC currently operates an Intel/Windows cluster complex consisting of more than 1,500 processors, in addition to Unisys ES7000 Servers. Scientific and engineering projects supported by CTC represent a vast variety of disciplines, including bioinformatics and computational biology, behavioral and social sciences, computer science, engineering, finance, geosciences, mathematics, physical sciences, and business. CTC offers assistance to institutions that are considering implementing Windows-based HPC systems and provides online and hands-on training in all aspects of Windows HPC, from systems management to code porting. For more information, visit http://www.tc.cornell.edu or http://www.ctc-hpc.com.