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HPC@UNM Invited Lecture
May 4, 2004
5:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Anthropology Bldg., Room 163
Open to the Public
A History of Predicting the Future
by
Andrew White, Director Institutional Computing Project
Los Alamos National Laboratory
ABSTRACT:
The quest to accurately predict the course of future events is driven
by the desire to make good decisions, from wearing appropriate clothes
for the weather to evacuating people from danger. This talk will examine
our ability (or lack thereof) to predict the future. We will concentrate
on the last hundred years or so, emphasizing the period following the
invention of electronic computers. We will first examine the question
of how and how well computers can predict the weather. Long-range weather
prediction is generally considered impossible, yet there are some ways
to beat these odds. Similarly, long-range prediction of wildfire behavior
is a difficult task. We will discuss the interplay between weather and
fire and the state-of-the-art in wildfire prediction. Lastly, we will
look at the fundamental changes in computers that have, at least in part,
enabled the advances discussed above. We will emphasize both technological
progress and the role of the marketplace.
BIOGRAPHY:
Andrew White is the Director of the Los Alamos [Institutional] Computing
Project. This new Laboratory enterprise focuses on research issues in
computer and computational sciences associated with employing the largest,
most complex computational resources to address important national issues
such as stockpile stewardship, energy and environment, systems biology,
nanotechnology and crisis management. From 1989 to 1998, he was founder
and Director of the Advanced Computing Laboratory at Los Alamos, as well
as the Program Manager for DOE's HPCC (High Performance Computing and
Communications) program. He has been an Associate Director of the NSF
Science and Technology Center for Research on Parallel Computation (CRPC);
a member of the ad hoc Task Force on the Future of the NSF Supercomputing
Centers (Hayes Committee); Principal Investigator for the DOE High Performance
Computing Research Center at Los Alamos and at various times assistant,
deputy and acting Division Leader of the Laboratory's computing division.
His research interests are in the areas of applied mathematics, high performance
computing, computational simulation and modeling, and predictive computational
capabilities.
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