BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — IT researchers studying the world’s most pressing problems – including infectious disease, climate change, and water quality – will gather on the Indiana University Bloomington campus October 15-17 for the 27th annual Pacific Rim Application and Grid Middleware Assembly (PRAGMA) conference. PRAGMA is a community of people and institutions from countries that lie along the Pacific Ocean collaborating on ways to use technology to address societal issues and share knowledge.
The workshop will take place in the Cyberinfrastructure Building and is hosted by IU’s Data to Insight Center and Pervasive Technology Institute, with additional sponsorship by IU International Networking and the IU School of Informatics and Computing. Registration is free and open to all IU faculty and students.
"We are honored to be the first US institution in more than 10 years to host the PRAGMA conference," said Beth Plale, PRAGMA 27 general chair and director of the Data to Insight Center. "IU is well known for its substantial research and innovation in international and national networking, in informatics and computing, and in big data. PRAGMA 27 attendees will no doubt benefit from these assets and find Bloomington to be an ideal setting for discussing their ongoing work."
PRAGMA 27 highlights include:
Pre-workshop activities (open to IU faculty and students)
- Student Expedition Programming Challenge: Graduate and undergraduate informatics and computing students will attempt to solve real-world computing problems in biodiversity and limnology (the study of lakes). Prizes given.
- Networking workshop: Jennifer Schopf, director of international networking at IU, will moderate discussions with a variety of speakers, including Kevin Thompson of the National Science Foundation. These sessions will provide an overview of the test beds available for use by researchers sharing data internationally, and discuss ways they can improve the sharing process.
Keynotes
- Brad Wheeler, IU vice president for information technology and chief information officer, will speak about IU’s Media Digitization and Preservation Initiative.
- Steve Wolff, Internet2 interim vice president and chief technology officer, will speak about Internet2 research and science.
US participation in PRAGMA is supported by the NSF grant, SAVI: Science Across Virtual Institutes. To learn more about PRAGMA 27, see: http://iute.ch/1oyi5Pt
