Texas A&M at Qatar hosts third conference on computational science
Published Dec 12, 2019
Computational science and high-performance computing experts from around the world recently gathered in Doha for the third International Computational Science and Engineering Conference (ICSEC19) hosted by Texas A&M University at Qatar.
The two-day event was co-organized by the Texas A&M at Qatar Advanced Scientific Computing Center (TASC) and its partners, the Hamad Bin Khalifa University research institutes, Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) and the Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute (QEERI), and co-sponsored by the Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF) and Qatar Shell Technology and Research Center (QSRTC).
Conference chair and TASC director Dr. Othmane Bouhali said, “This international event proves once again the solid partnership we have with our colleagues in QEERI, QCRI and other institutions. The organizing committee also included colleagues from Qatar University, Qatar Biomedical Research Institute, Hamad Bin Khalifa University and QSRTC. I would like to thank the program chairs, Dr. Fadwa El-Mellouhi and Prof. Ioannis Economou, as well as the local organizing committee.”
First held in 2015 in Doha, the conference brings together researchers, experts and stakeholders to discuss recent research topics in computational science and its role in tackling the most complex problems locally and globally. Keynote speakers came from leading institutions in North America, Europe, India and Qatar. This year’s technical program featured 84 talks in a variety of areas, including computational science applications in oil and gas, biology and medicine, the electric grid and solar photovoltaic technologies, and advanced materials. This year also included special sessions on artificial intelligence and its applications.
Selected papers presented at the conference will be published in a special issue of the Journal of Computational Science.
This year marked the introduction of the Young Investigator Award in computational science sponsored by QEERI in which eight candidates below the age of 35 from institutions across Qatar and abroad competed for three best presentation cash awards. An award judging committee was formed from national and
international computational specialists covering the broad spectrum of disciplines such as ICT, materials science, biology and machine learning. First place went to El Tayeb Bentria from QEERI; second place went to Domenico Marson from University of Trieste, Italy; and third place went to Amro Mohamed from Hamad Bin Khalifa University.
Dr. Fadwa El Mellouhi program research director at QEERI, program chair and co-founder of the ICSEC series, said “On behalf of the QEERI executive director Dr. Marc Vermeersch, I wish to congratulate the awardees for the excellent level of presentations; we are looking forward to continue support excellence in computational sciences both at the national and international levels” she also said: ” I would like to thank Prof Othmane Bouhali from TAMUQ and the local organizing committee for the excellent level of organization, we are also thankful to QNRF for chairing the judging committee composed of from our national and international partners namely Kahramaa, HBKU, University of Utah, USA and Sligo IT, Ireland.”
Wrapping up the conference was a poster competition supervised by the QNRF judging committee Dr. Ahmed Rebai (ICT, manager), Dr. Ali Al-Abouby (ICT, program manager) and Dr. Hind Mamlouk (EE, program manager). Texas A&M at Qatar students Ali Al Malik and Maryam Al Buainain won the best student poster awards.
Texas A&M at Qatar is at the vanguard of high-performance computing (HPC) and in 2020, the branch campus will celebrate 15 years of HPC. Since the branch campus’ research computing group was established, the group has accumulated more than 100 million CPU hours execution time, and more than 120 scientists and researchers across the country using the HPC resources and benefitting from the research computing skills of Texas A&M at Qatar experts.
TASC is the second Doha-based research center of the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES), a research agency of the State of Texas and a member of The Texas A&M University System. The center is a regional and global leader in scientific computing, having developed innovative solutions and using state-of-the-art computational tools to address computational challenges in science, engineering and industry.