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The proposed conference will focus on the state of numerical linear algebra by examining past and present accomplishments as well as opportunities for future research. The catalyst for the meeting is the recent retirement and upcoming 70th birthday of G.W. (Pete) Stewart.

NEW: Pictures from the event

View pictures taken by various participants

A Vibrant Field of Research

Numerical linear algebra is fundamental to all fields of science and engineering. Quoting from a popular text, Numerical Linear Algebra by Trefethen and Bau:

• It is here [referring to NLA] that one finds the essential ideas that every mathematical scientist needs to work effectively with vectors and matrices. In fact, our subject is more than just vectors and matrices, for virtually everything we do carries over to functions and operators. Numerical linear algebra is really functional analysis, but with the emphasis always on practical algorithmic ideas rather than mathematical technicalities... if any other mathematical topic is as fundamental to the mathematical sciences as calculus and differential equations, it is numerical linear algebra."

While the subject dates back to before the first computations were performed by computers, it continues to be a vibrant topic of research. It is central to practical fields like optimization, data mining, signal and image processing, and control, to name a small subset. Recent advances in computer architecture, including the emergence of hardware accellerators like GPGPUs and the Cell Broadband Accellerator, have forced a fresh look at perturbation (e.g., because such processors often do not support IEEE standard arithmetic and/or mix precisions), performance (how to unleash the promised performance), and portability (programmability) issues.

G.W. (Pete) Stewart

G. W. Stewart is a world-renowned expert in computational linear algebra. It is widely accepted that he is the successor to James Wilkinson, the first giant in the field, taking up both the algorithmic and the perturbation theory research that Wilkinson so ably began. Stewart's results on rounding error in numerical computations provided basic understanding of floating point computation. His results on pertubation of eigensystems, generalized inverses, least squares problems, and matrix factorizations are fundamental to numerical practice today. His algorithms for the singular value decomposition, updating and downdating matrix factorizations, and the eigenproblem broke new ground and are still widely used in an increasing number of applications. His papers, widely cited, are characterized by elegance in theorems and algorithms and clear, concise, and beautiful exposition. His six textbooks are very popular and are excellent sources of knowledge and history. Stewart is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and has received numerous additional honors, including an honorary degree.

Venue

The conference will take place in the Avaya Auditorium of Applied Computational Engineering and Sciences (ACES) building on The University of Texas at Austin campus.

Organizing Committee

• 	Ake Bjorck	Linkoping University			Jack Dongarra	University of Tennessee
  	Howard Elman	University of Maryland			Misha Kilmer (Co-Chair)	Tufts University
  	Dianne O'Leary	University of Maryland			Danny Sorensen	Rice University
  	Xiaobai Sun	Duke University			Robert van de Geijn (Co-Chair)	The University of Texas at Austin

Invited Speakers

Poster Session

Graduate and postdoctoral students are encouraged to submit to the poster session to be held the afternoon of the first day. A mechanism for submission will be put in place later. We expect travel funding to be available to help support some of the graduate and postdoctoral students who participate in the poster session.

Other attendees are welcome to also bring their poster related to the conference topic.

Schedule

Accommodations

The conference has secured a block of rooms at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center at 1900 University Avenue; Austin, TX 78705 at a rate of $139 per night for a single or $159 per night for a double.

To make your reservation please call 512-404-3600 and request a room referencing College of Natural Sciences-Department of Computer Science or promo code COMPSC0710 or online at http://www.meetattexas.com with the same promo code. The cut-off date for the room block is June 17, 2010.

If you are looking to share a room with another person, please contact Gem Naivar (gem@cs.utexas.edu). (Currently there is a female graduate student looking to share with another female attendee.)

Registration

There will be no registration fee for this conference, thanks to the generous support from the sponsors. There will, however, be a charge for those who attend the conference dinner.

Please fill out the conference registration form.

Sponsors

We gratefully acknowledge support from

• The National Science Foundation
  • Division of Mathematical Science (DMS)

  • Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE)

• UT-Austin:

  • The UT-Austin Division of Statistics and Scientific Computation (SSC).

  • Dean Mary Ann Rankin of the College of Natural Sciences (CNS).

  • The UT-Austin Center for Numerical Analysis (CNA).

  • The UT-Austin Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences (ICES).

  • The UT-Austin Department of Computer Science (UTCS).

• The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST).

We are hopeful to secure additional support in the near future.

Acknowledgements

• Prof. Henk van der Vorst was kind enough to design and contribute the logo that features Pete Stewart. More of Henk's work.

• The picture of Pete crewing in Maine was taken by Cpt. Leslie Hogben and borrowed from Pete's homepage at the University of Maryland.
• The remaining pictures were "borrowed" from various places in the internet.

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