Computing in the Service of Science
Spring 2013 PLATO[i] Lecture Series:
Tuesdays, 3:30-4:45, LH 5
The following speaker list and topics are tentative; as the quarter progresses, the list will be refined and more details will be posted for each week.
April 9: Nik Stevenson-Molnar, Conservation Biology Institute: The Data Basin and Programming practices at CBI and for VISTAS, broadly applicable.
April 16: Lois Delcambre, Ph.D., Professor, Computer Science Department, Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science, Portland State University. tentative topic: Machine Learning applied to classifying user web sessions for the Danish Cancer Society.
April 23: Veronika Megler, Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Science Department, Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science, Portland State University. Extending database technology in the service of Science – an Oceanography case study. Data Near Here. See cmop project. Veronika’s Slides
April 30: Guillaume S. Mauger, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Research Associate, Climate Impacts Group, College of the Environment, University of Washington. Introduction to Climate Change and Climate Change Models. Guillaume’s Slides
May 7: Bill Howe, Ph.D., Director of Research, Scalable Data Analytics, eScience Institute, Affiliate Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Washington. http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~billhowe/ how cloud computing can support interactive, visual, exploratory science, SQL Share. Bill’s Slides
May 14: Michael Wolfe, Ph.D., Compiler Engineer, The Portland Group, Inc. Technical
Computing on GPUs: Why, How, Present and Future.
May 21: Jenny Orr, Ph.D., Professor and Chair, Computer Science Dept., Willamette University. Computer graphics for non programmers – Processing. Jenny’s Slides.
May 28: Bob McKane, Environmental Protection Agency, Corvallis OR. Modeling Natural Hydrologic Systems with VELMA (Visualizing Ecosystems for Land Management Assessments) – Coupled hydrological & biogeochemical cycle. Bob’s Slides
June 4: Tom Herndon, University of Massachusetts (Amherst). See information about Herndon that we made available to students.
[i]The Evergreen PLATO Lecture Series was endowed in ~1985 by John Aikin to fund an annual series of lectures about computing and its implications and applications. Funds for the lecture series were set up in perpetuity from royalties accrued from PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automated Teaching Operations) CAI (Computer Aided Instruction) courses for BASIC and Pascal written by Aikin and his Evergreen students under a grant from CDC (Control Data Corporation). Originally written in American English, those courses were translated into many other (natural) languages and given worldwide exposure. There is now a PLATO simulation Cyber1 , though the Evergreen courses have not been loaded. Rumor has it that there were many fine games on this system, which was 30+ years ahead of its time.