From bbm6f at cms.mail.virginia.edu Sun Dec 3 18:54:36 2006 From: bbm6f at cms.mail.virginia.edu (Benjamin Brice Morrison) Date: Sun Dec 3 19:25:07 2006 Subject: [Ugrads07] GameDev Lecture Series: Mythic and Bloomfield Message-ID: Hello everyone, Student Game Developers is pleased to present our first Game Development Lecture Series, 2006. We have two fantasitic speakers giving talks this week as classes end. The information is as follows... MONDAY, DECEMBER 4th, 7:00PM, OLSSON 009 MYTHIC ENTERTAINMENT, Kristen Neal and Ben Cummings A presentation on life in the game development industry, demos of Warhammer, and a question an answer session afterwards. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 5th, 8:00PM (may change!), OLSSON 120 PROFESSOR BLOOMFIELD Giving a lecture on programming and game development. Celebrate the end of classes and come join us! - Ben Morrison P.S. - I've also sent this to the gamers' club and ACM presidents, if you could forward it on to you respective organizations, that would be great. From reynolds at cs.virginia.edu Tue Dec 12 22:15:30 2006 From: reynolds at cs.virginia.edu (Paul Reynolds) Date: Tue Dec 12 22:15:37 2006 Subject: [Ugrads07] CS451 - Grand Challenges in Simulation Message-ID: <457F7052.1080905@cs.virginia.edu> A recent addition (last few days) to the Spring 2007 course offerings in Computer Science is CS451: Grand Challenges in Simulation. This course can count as a CS elective and/or as a CS technical elective for any of you requiring such a course. My course aims to expose you to the challenges that essentially *all* users of simulation face. Whether you're engaged in computational modeling (e.g. combustion modeling, corrosion modeling, chemical interactions) or classical simulation (traffic modeling, social interactions, historical re-creation) these are the kinds of questions and challenges practitioners are facing: Is my simulation any good? Is it valid? What are the possible uncertainties in my simulation and have I captured them well? Can I combine my simulation with others (multi-resolution modeling)? Can I construct a library of simulations for later use (simulation composition)? What's the best approach to modifying my simulation to achieve new objectives? What are the challenges in running simulations in distributed environments (distributed simulation)? What about improving simulation performance using parallelism (parallel simulation)? What are current examples of critical uses of simulation (Yucca Mountain TSPA, EPA studies, epidemic disease spread, global warming)? Failure to appreciate the challenges underlying these questions has led to the deployment of simulations of questionable utility and dangerous proportions in some serious situations. A program manager at EPA recently informed us that uncertainty, as it relates to decisions based on models and simulations, is increasingly important to congress. That's no surprise. In my own experience, largely as a consultant in government sponsored endeavors, I have found a distressing lack of awareness of critical issues among simulation practitioners. My goal in the offered course is to ensure that wherever you go next - an environment that will surely include simulation use - you be aware of opportunities and limitations in the deployment and use of simulations. The best way is to expose you to the literature on the challenges, and goals and practices, in some on-going high visibility uses of simulation, such as the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage question, global warming, pandemics, and the like. The course will begin with about two weeks of overview of simulation and computational modeling. While not meant to be a substitute for the full semester simulation course offered in Systems Engineering, or the more recent addition in CS on computational modeling, it will enable simulation novices to join in the course. After the intro we will branch into articles in the modern literature on technical challenges in simulation and case studies where these challenges arise. Feel free to write or call with inquiries. P. Reynolds Computer Science -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: reynolds.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 315 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://www.cs.Virginia.EDU/pipermail/ugrads07/attachments/20061212/74bc8bba/reynolds.vcf