Presentation Guidelines for
NCSA Blue Waters Symposium
for Petascale Science and Beyond

June 3-6, 2019

Presentation Abstract

  • Length: 150-Words
  • Submit abstracts to: symposium@ncsa.illinois.edu
  • Include title, presenter's name and affiliation
    • If the PI is not the presenter, include a reference to the Project PI

Presentation Guidelines

Presentations will be 20 minutes. This time includes time for Q&A. PI's, or designated presenters will be provided with a specific time for his/her presentation. Times will be assigned in late May.

Presentations should focus on the science teams' work on Blue Waters. Presentations may cover the full scope of the work being done on Blue Waters OR they may focus on a certain aspect (e.g. code scalability, implementation) that would be of interest to others using or preparing to use Blue Waters. We recommend that you not focus on the domain-specific details of your research, but rather the role of Blue Waters in your research. The audience will include people from many different fields, as such, the depth of your talk should target this broad audience. 

Highly recommended topics to include in presentations include:

  • Key Challenges: description of the science/engineering problem being addressed
  • Why it Matters: description of the potential impact of solving this research problem
  • Why Blue Waters: explanation of why you need the unique scale and attributes of Blue Waters to address these challenges
  • Accomplishments: explanation of results you obtained
  • Blue Waters team contributions: explanation of how the Blue Waters team contributed to your research
  • Broader Impact: description of the broader impact that resulted from your work on Blue Waters
  • Shared Data: description of the data shared with others as well as the method of sharing
  • Products: description of the products (e.g. software) that were created as a part of or as a result of your Blue Waters project

The first slide on your presentation should have this sentence: "I use Blue Waters to ... "

In your presentations please consider the following:

  • Avoid equations that only an expert in the field can understand. If needed, the driving equation (Navier-Stokes, Schrdinger, Lattice-Boltzmann, GR, etc) can be shown but the math should be left to the reader.
  • Avoid charts or plots that are overly complex and take too much time to explain. No eye-charts.

A presentation laptop will be provided, but you may also opt to use your own. We recommend using the provided laptops to avoid compatibility issues with AV equipment. As in previous years, presentations will be video recorded. Both a copy of your presentation and the recording will be posted to the Blue Waters website after the symposium. Upon arrival at the symposium, you will be asked to review and sign a Video/Photo/Audio consent form. At the close of each session, moderators will ask you for a copy of your presentation.

Important: Prior to the start of your presentation session, please check with the AV/recording staff in your presentation room to ensure that your presentation will run smoothly.

Specs for provided laptops:

  • Dell E6440
  • DVD/CD burner
  • Windows 10 Professional 64 bit
  • Core i5 2.7 GHz processor
  • 4 GB RAM
  • Integrated graphics card (Intel 4600) with 64 MB dedicated memory, 1696MB total (shared)
  • Office 2016 (with PowerPoint 2016)
  • Adobe Reader XI version 11.0.15
  • Microsoft Edge
  • Either 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratio may be used.