Ken Kennedy Institute at Rice University Offers Insights into Exascale Computing for the Oil and Gas Industry

Rice University’s Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology (“Ken Kennedy Institute” or the “Institute”) is set to host the 11th annual Rice Oil and Gas High Performance Computing Conference in Houston, Texas on March 12-13, 2018 with plans for multi-disciplinary discussion about the role of exascale (1018) computing, the latest research, trends and IT innovations for the oil and gas industry.

Several hundred participants from the academic/national labs community, the IT industry and the oil and gas industry will come together to learn, assess industry needs and foster relationships across all three disciplines. Conference highlights include opening keynote speaker Doug Kothe of Oak Ridge National Lab and Director of the Department of Energy’s Exascale Computing Project, who will address the status and future of the Exascale Computing Project and the potential impact of exascale computing’s computational power in the oil and gas industry. Ahmed Hashmi, Global Head of Upstream Technology at BP will offer an inside perspective on the importance of high performance computing for the energy industry.

Executive Director Comments
Jan E. Odegard, Executive Director of the Ken Kennedy Institute, asks, “Will exascale be a commercially viable product? Is it good enough to just build capable hardware, or do we need to do a better job training people and providing software and tools that will enable developers to efficiently leverage performance for oil and gas applications?”

About the Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology
The Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology is dedicated to the advancement of research in the fields of computing, data science and information technology. The Institute’s goal is to provide broad support for a strong community of research experimentation that challenges traditional disciplinary limits. It serves as a catalyst for research collaboration across the conventional boundaries of school, department, center and laboratory.

Conference logistics
Location: Rice University’s BioScience Research Collaborative
6500 Main Street, Houston, TX 77030

Conference program and registration: http://rice2018oghpc.rice.edu/

The views and opinions expressed here belong to Jan. E. Odegard and do not necessarily reflect those of Rice University.