Saudi Gazette report

THUWAL — King Abdullah University of Science and Technology’s (KAUST) applied mathematics and computational science professor David Keyes is chairing the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) 2020 as the first program chair from a Middle Eastern institution, the ISC High Performance conference has announced.

As program chair, Keyes, Director of Extreme Computing Research Center (ECRC), is working with a team of about a hundred steering committee and program committee volunteers to define the conference topics and will lead joint efforts to elevate the value of ISC 2020 within the high-performance computing (HPC) community.

The ISC 2020 conference, taking place in June in Frankfurt, Germany will tackle HPC in terms of processing, storage, network, HPC algorithms and applications and the convergence of large-scale simulation with machine learning and big data analytics.

“ISC is Europe's leading HPC conference, so it is a great opportunity to have technical influence over the meeting as its Program Chair,” said Keyes, who is also senior associate to KAUST president.

“HPC evolves as rapidly as any field of scientific endeavor today, making it important for us to be aware of all trends that affect our competitiveness and to network for the placement of our graduates with top HPC partners.”

Keyes is also participating in the ISC 2019 taking place next month with a special session on HPC in Asia relating to high watermarks in HPC applications.

Not only does KAUST take the lead for being the first institution in the Middle East to chair the ISC program, it is also home to the most powerful supercomputer in the Middle East, Shaheen II.

"Ten years into KAUST's supercomputing legacy, literally half of all KAUST faculty have accounts for their research groups on Shaheen, and their ability to serve the Kingdom with predictive simulations and data analytics depends upon KAUST continuing to provide expertise in and top-ranked facilities for high-performance computing,” Keyes concluded.