Today I got to attend a good (really good) workshop on High Performance Computing for Science and Engineering. It was really refreshing. It was a really cool way to get to know the latest cutting edge research in fields as diverse and intensely intriguing such as material design, biomolecular research, genome sequencing, etc. More than the “Ah” factor of the Teraflops of computing power required, number of years it takes to solve some equation, blah blah, the fascination for me lay in understanding the problems being tackled today in pure and applied sciences and engineering. Of course, the stated objective of the workshop - understanding the computing challenges was met by most presenters, I am just giving my perspective of what made it interesting for me.
While I did not know anything beyond the terms such as “molecular dynamics”, “weather research”, “material design”, “drug therapy”, it helped me gain a decent understanding of the area and the problems being worked on. The talks also gave an idea of some of the convergences that were happening in some of the fields and potential convergences in the offing. It helped that the idea of the workshop was to discuss and understand the challenges the research problems posed in terms of computing. So all the presentations provided a rounded picture of the work, the achievements so far, the “where-we-are” pitch and the challenges faced in terms of computing, often in the form of simulation and modeling.
The workshop turned out to be an eye opener in more ways than one. As I listened to the various lectures, I had many a dejavu moment. I saw a term that invoked in me a “Ah, I know that!” thought. But, embarrassingly, I found that I was unable to place it exactly or explain that term properly. It was seriously disappointing that I was unable to explain something as basic as “van der Waals force”. So, the dejavu moment was followed by a few moments of depression before I got caught up in the lecture and forgot about my disappointing near nil recollection of my science subjects. The blissful state would last for a few minutes before I encountered another dejavu-depression sequence. Now and then, there came by a term for which I was to recollect an explanation satisfactorily, giving me a little consolation.
But for all my little disappointments, the workshop left me with a lot of feel good factors. I had understood the basics of a number of fascinating research domains. I got some reassurance that good research did happen in India. And last but not the least, I left with a resolution to brush up on my science.
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