CTC lecturers will offer insights on topics from black holes to Wall Street

By Linda Callahan

Are you ticketed for an upcoming airline flight? Turned on by DNA? Thrilled at the very thought of black holes colliding in space? Or tuned into the stock market? If you fit any of these descriptions, or if you wish you did, then you have a vested interest in computational science. Plan on joining the Cornell Theory Center (CTC) for an afternoon of Distinguished Lectures in Computational Science Tuesday, Sept. 1.

This is your opportunity to learn from the experts about the role that advanced computing plays in defining and exploring the next frontiers in aircraft engineering, genetics, theoretical physics and high finance.

The program begins at 2 p.m. in Room G10 of the Biotechnology Building, and it is free and open to the public. Advanced registration is requested, however.

Attendees can register at <http://www.tc.cornell.edu/Events/Symp_Reg. html>, by calling 254-8692 or by sending e-mail to <carolc@tc.cornell.edu>.

Anthony R. Ingraffea, the Dwight C. Baum Professor of Engineering and of civil and environmental engineering at Cornell, will begin the lectures by exploring the scope and proportion of an important public safety issue. His topic: "How Long Can They Fly? Computer Simulation and the Aging Aircraft Problem." Ingraffea heads a team of researchers studying the way things crack ­ from the rumbling of earthquakes to the spread of microscopic fractures in the skin of an airplane wing.

He is recognized internationally for his expertise in fracture behavior and for his leadership as an educator, especially for his efforts to improve the quality of undergraduate engineering education and to attract and graduate larger numbers of women and underrepresented minority engineers. He has recently joined CTC as associate director for research.

Visiting from the University of Washington, Richard M. Karp will speak next on "Computation as a Tool for Understanding the Genome." He will explain how computers identify and match gene sequences and then learn from their experience. Karp's special interest is in devising methods that will allow researchers to scale up their understanding of the human genome so that they can study the complexes of genes likely to control many biological functions and diseases. He is a professor of computer science and engineering and an adjunct professor of molecular biotechnology at the University of Washington.

Karp's distinguished work in the study of combinatorial algorithms has earned him great recognition from his peers in computer science, mathematics, engineering and the national scientific community at large. Among his many awards, he has received the U.S. National Medal of Science and the Turing Award, and he is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

On the cosmic scale, Cornell astrophysicist Saul A. Teukolsky will present a talk on "Colliding Black Holes." The professor of astronomy and of physics is following in the footsteps of Albert Einstein with the help of supercomputers and collaborators around the nation. Black holes, which seemed like fantasy only a few years ago, are now accepted phenomena. His work focuses on computing the behavior of gravitational waves that are given off during the encounters of two black holes.

Teukolsky's methods are used to predict the gravitational signals that will be detected by the next generation of ground- and space-based detectors.

The final lecture of the afternoon will be presented by David E. Shaw, founder of the Wall Street firm D.E. Shaw & Co., a technology-oriented investment bank whose roughly 1,000 employees include an unusually large number of computer scientists. The firm has been described as "in the vanguard of computerized trading" (Wall Street Journal, Oct. 15, 1992) and as "arguably the most cutting-edge trading firm on Wall Street" (Investment Dealer's Digest, Nov. 15, 1993). Shaw will give an insider's perspective on the increasingly important role that computers play within the world's financial markets. He will talk about new methods used to value complex financial instruments, computational tools used to maximize return while minimizing risk and how computers are being used to change the very nature of the financial markets themselves. In addition to his responsibilities on Wall Street, Shaw serves on the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology, as chairman of the Panel on Educational Technology.

The afternoon will be capped off by a reception with the speakers and the announcement of the winner of the 1998 IBM Undergraduates in Computational Science Award.

"The Distinguished Lectures in Computational Science is an opportunity to provide an overview of the state of the art of computational research in four important areas," said Theory Center Director Thomas Coleman.

Coleman, who is on the faculty of Cornell's Department of Computer Science, is actively engaged in the field of computational finance and is an expert in optimization.

The Cornell Theory Center is a high-performance computing and interdisciplinary research center at Cornell that receives funding from New York state, the National Center for Research Resources at the National Institutes of Health, Cornell and corporate partners.