Trouve Organizes Cyber-based Combustion Workshop

Prof. Arnaud Trouve is organizing a NSF-sponsored Workshop on the cyber-infrastructure, defined herein as a set of base technologies for computation, storage, communication, and data processing services. The cyber-infrastructure has become a reality in recent years; its development has already impacted many, if not all, scientific fields; and there is a growing consensus that future progress in computer and network technologies, combined with the dissemination of these technologies on a global scale, will lead to further revolutionary changes in scientific methods and organizations. Mindful of this new world of possibilities, the National Science Foundation (NSF) is actively promoting the development of a nation-wide strategy to build a cyber-infrastructure in support of 21st century scientific discovery and engineering innovations.

Prof. Arnaud Trouve is organizing a 1.5-day workshop that will bring together the U.S. combustion science community in order to meet the following objectives: (1) have combustion scientists participate in the development of a nation-wide strategy to build a cyber-infrastructure; (2) identify specific cyber-infrastructure capabilities and needs in support of combustion science and combustion engineering education; (3) develop a community-wide vision for combustion science, that is consistent with, building upon, and even embracing the revolutionary changes in methods and organizations that will accompany the new cyber-infrastructure.

The workshop is scheduled to take place on April 19-20 2006 at NSF headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. The list of participants will include representatives of the combustion science community from academia, national laboratories, government agencies, and industry. The format of the workshop will consist of a mix of invited talks and breakout group discussion sessions. The following themes will be emphasized: (1) sub-community-specific, cyber-based combustion science applications (i.e. high-performance computing, sensor-driven modeling, etc); (2) community-wide, cyber-based combustion science applications (i.e. chemical libraries, web-enabled collaboratories, etc); and (3) cyber-based combustion education (i.e. curriculum and work force opportunities and needs for academia, government and industry, in a cyber-based environment).

The main outcome of the workshop will be the articulation of a community-wide vision for a new combustion science empowered by the emerging cyber-infrastructure; this vision will also include a list of recommendations to NSF in order to facilitate the adaptation of combustion science to the new cyber-induced transformations in scientific methods and organizations.

For more information, please go to: http://www.nsf-combustion.umd.edu/

Published April 16, 2006