Early-Career and Student Support for the XX Householder Symposium

Virginia Polytechnic Institute And State University, Blacksburg VA

Investigators

Abstract

This project will support the participation of early career scientists and PhD students from US universities in the "Householder Symposium XX on Numerical Linear Algebra," to be held at The Inn at Virginia Tech, June 18-23, 2017, in Blacksburg, Virginia, http://www.math.vt.edu/HHXX/. The Householder symposium is the premier meeting in the field of numerical linear algebra and participation in this symposium is by application and invitation only. The symposium places a strong emphasis on supporting early-career scientists and the intermingling of such scientists with the leading experts in the field. The support of young researchers will enhance the continued leadership of the US in this crucial discipline and its application to technologies that greatly benefit society. Advances and applications of numerical linear algebra are fundamental for handling large data sets with applications crossing web searches, medical imaging, scientific simulations, all high performance computing applications, and the design of both materials and structures. Google's PageRank algorithm is a smart combination of methods from two numerical linear algebra fields, Perron-Frobenius theory/Markov chains and eigenvalue solvers. Similarly, deriving crucial information from today's giant data sets, which dwarf anything encountered before, whether from business, government, or the sensors in new medical imaging equipment, relies on substantial innovations to a core numerical linear algebra method, the singular value decomposition. Finally, ensuring efficient simulations on the next generation of supercomputers to assess the continued safety of the nation's nuclear weapons requires drastic changes to linear solvers, another ubiquitous numerical linear algebra method. Participation in the Householder Symposium, which includes discussions of hot new research topics and emerging areas will allow young researchers to be exposed to problems of significant societal importance.