CDSE Days spotlights big data and supercomputing

BUFFALO, N.Y. – Interested in personalized medicine? Want to know how IBM’s Watson outsmarted “Jeopardy!” champ Ken Jennings? Curious about big data and the world’s most powerful supercomputers?

These topics – and much more – will be under discussion at CDSE Days, a six-day program at the University at Buffalo that explores how big data and high-performance computing have become essential to scientific progress, economic competitiveness, national security, medicine and other issues.

The program, which will bring some of the nation’s most preeminent scholars of data-enabled science to Buffalo, kicks off today, Thursday, March 24, with lectures, workshops and other events on North Campus. It will conclude on April 1 with a career workshop at the Student Union.

CDSE stands for Computational and Data-Enabled Sciences, a new doctoral program at UB.

Highlights include:

March 24

• 4:15-5 p.m. – A keynote lecture by David Higdon, professor in the Social Decision Analytics Laboratory at the Biocomplexity Institute of Virginia Tech, at 101 Davis Hall. His lecture is titled “Connecting model-based predictions to reality.”

March 28

• 3:30-5 p.m. – A workshop by Gandolfo “Randy” Messina, worldwide public sector manager, IBM Watson Analytics, at the Student Union Theater. His presentation is titled “An introduction to Watson analytics.”

March 29

• 4:15-5 p.m. – A keynote lecture by Thom H. Dunning Jr., director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, at 101 Davis Hall. His lecture is titled “Leading-edge computers and the extraordinary research they enable.”

March 31

• 4:15-5 p.m. – A keynote lecture by Mark Ainsworth, professor of applied mathematics at Brown University, at 101 Davis Hall. The lecture is titled “Multigrid at scale?”

Here is a full schedule of events: https://www.buffalo.edu/cdse/cdse-days.html.

The CDSE program is part of UB’s “E Fund” initiative, which supports programs that will have a high impact both inside and outside the university. The “E” stands for excellence. The fund is supported by NYSUNY 2020, the higher education bill signed into law by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.

CDSE will bring together the efforts of faculty in UB’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the College of Arts and Sciences, the School of Management, the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, and the School of Public Health and Health Professions.

The initiative will, among other things, increase educational opportunity and employability for students, attract new graduate students to UB, and boost research opportunities for aligned faculty members.