SwarmFest:2008

SwarmFest 2008

Thanks to participants for a successful SwarmFest 2000! SwarmFest 2008 was our 12th annual conference of agent-based modelers and platform developers and users. This year our host was Dr. Gary An of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago from 11-13 May. SwarmFest 2008 had two special focus themes: high-performance computing and systems biology applications.

Watch our SwarmFest 2008 page for an upcoming archive of the meeting, including pictures from Pietro Terna, and links to presentations from the meeting.

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Vital information

• Dates: May 11, 2008: Opening Reception. May 12-13, 2008: Scientific Sessions.
• Location: Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Chicago, Illinois
• Host: Dr. Gary An, Department of Surgery, Northwestern University School of Medicine.

Conference themes and featured speakers

SwarmFest 2008 will include two special emphasis sessions on areas that have the potential for explosive growth in the ABM community.

The first is in the area of Systems Biology. This session will take place on Monday, May 12, and will discuss the growing application of ABM techniques to the problems of cellular metabolism and control, gene regulation, and their effectson the pathophysiology of disease offers this field a powerful paradigm for looking at these issues from a true system-wide approach. Invited speakers in Systems Biology include:

• Gordon Broderick of the Department of Medicine, University of Alberta. Dr. Broderick was the lead developer of the CyberCell Project, and is a pioneer in the application of agent-based modeling in the characterization of intracellular signalling and membrane dynamics.
• Kathleen Sprouffske of the Wistar Institute at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Sprouffske is a member of the Maley laboratory at the Wistar Institute, and is applying evolutionary and ecological theory to neoplastic progression and cancer therapy in order to modulate the evolution of neoplastic cells and thereby prevent cancer and its relapse.

The second special session will take place on Tuesday, May 13, and will address applying the advances in High Performance Computing to the current computational constraints on truly mega-scale ABMs. We are inviting researchers from several organizations to present their work on low-cost, high-performance platforms for ABMs. These speakers are expected to include:

• Roshan D'Souza of Michigan Tech. Dr. D'Souza is pioneering the development of software for agent-based modeling on graphics processor units, which feature low cost, high processor performance, and high memory bandwidth.

Members of IBM's Blue Gene Development Team:

• Rajiv D. Bendale, Americas Group Leader for BlueGene Systems. Dr. Bendale will give an introduction to Blue Gene P, one of the most advanced and powerful supercomputers in the world.
• Kirk Jordan, Emerging Solutions Executive, Deep Computing Branch, Systems and Technology Group. Dr. Jordan will discuss some of the specific issues related to ABM model design and implementation on BlueGene P.

Program

Click here for the current Program