Fresh on heels of announcing the new Coda tower in Tech Square, the School of Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) celebrated the launch of its Strategic Partnership Program (SPP) by hosting an inaugural workshop, April 27.

The SPP is an initiative to bring together High-Performance Computing (HPC) experts from the public and private sectors to solve the industry's emerging problems, develop the field’s workforce, and leverage CSE expertise.

For this first-of-its-kind workshop, the SPP invited a variety of partners offering a broad perspective on Big Data and computational information. These partners included Accenture, Cray, IBM, LexisNexis, Northrop Grumman, NVIDIA, and Yahoo Labs. Other participants representatives from Oak Ridge National Lab, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, and U.S. Department of Defense.

“Our visitors were impressed with our leadership and vision in high-performance computing and data analytics,” said David Bader, CSE school chair. “We’re poised to make Georgia Tech the ‘go-to’ place in the nation to understand HPC and Big Data.” Bader further discussed his plans to expand the program within the next year, recruit more partners, and enhance CSE curriculum.

The day featured talks on various data analytics and utility topics. These included updates from CSE Professors Srinivas Aluru and Haesun Park. Aluru discussed his research using parallel algorithms to get the most from genomic data, the new Institute for Data Engineering and Science, and the NSF South Big Data Innovation Hub. Park talked about her work analyzing massive unstructured text and image data using high-speed algorithms.

Associate Professor Rich Vuduc engaged workshop attendees in discussions about current and future CSE curriculum, and about developing a prepared and relevant workforce. The meeting concluded with SPP partners engaging with CSE students.

For more information on the Strategic Partnership Program, please contact the College of Computing Director of Development John Hannan.