Rice’s Ken Kennedy Institute to host Oil and Gas HPC Conference March 2-3

MEDIA ADVISORY

David Ruth
713-348-6327
david@rice.edu

Rice’s Ken Kennedy Institute to host Oil and Gas HPC Conference March 2-3

HOUSTON – (Feb. 22, 2016) – Rice University’s Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology will host its ninth annual Oil and Gas High-Performance Computing Conference March 2-3 at Rice’s BioScience Research Collaborative, 6500 Main St.

“The conference brings together the energy industry’s computational scientists, operators of supercomputing facilities, and data center and algorithm development professionals, along with people in the information technology industry, academics and national laboratories,” said Jan Odegard, associate vice president in Rice’s Office of Information Technology and executive director at the Ken Kennedy Institute. “During a time of depressed oil prices, computational computing technology is becoming all the more important for the bottom line and for Houston. This conference focuses on sharing best practices, educating each other about challenges and opportunities and building a community of high-performance-computing practitioners.”

Highlights of the conference are its two keynote addresses: Francois Alabert, vice president of Total’s Geo-Technology Solutions, will discuss “How Is High Performance Computing Reshaping O&G Exploration and Production?” at 1:15 p.m. March 2. Sverre Brandsberg-Dahl, global chief geophysicist for the Imaging and Engineering Division at Petroleum Geo-Services (PGS), will give a talk on “Exploration Seismology and the Return of the Supercomputer” at 8:45 a.m. March 3.

Who:               Gathering of energy industry computing and IT professionals, along with
leading academics in computing. Keynotes by Francois Alabert, Total;
Sverre Brandsberg-Dahl, PGS.

What:             Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology’s ninth annual Oil and
Gas High-Performance Computing Conference.

When:            March 2-3 with events at various times. See the full schedule here.

Where:           Rice University’s BioScience Research Collaborative, 6500 Main St.

The conference grew from 180 attendees in 2008 and peaked at 550 in 2015. It also includes tutorial and plenary sessions. To see the conference’s complete schedule, go here.

The events are free and open to news media covering the conference. For media passes, contact Victoria Langlais at Victoria.Langlais@rice.edu or 713-348-5823. Members of the public and the industry must register for the event here.

For more information, contact David Ruth, director of national and broadcast media at Rice, at david@rice.edu or 713-348-6327.

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