The Intersection of Ethics and HPC will be the guiding topic of SC21’s Science & Beyond plenary, inspired by the event tagline of the same name. The evening event will be moderated by Daniel Reed with panelists Cristin Goodwin, Tony Hey, Ellen Ochoa and Joel Saltz. It will take place Monday, Nov. 15 from 5:30pm – 6:30pm CST at the Ferrara Theatre, America’s Center Convention Complex in St. Louis. The panel will also be accessible via live-stream to all registered attendees and exhibitors.

Writing about the conference tagline “Science & Beyond” earlier this year, SC21 General Chair Bronis de Supinski stated, “We will celebrate the application of HPC in a variety of efforts, from vaccine development to autonomous vehicle design. ‘Science & Beyond’ means HPC can power a range of use cases to tackle the world’s toughest challenges, unlock discoveries, and open up new frontiers – on land, in the depths of the sea, and in outer space.”

Panel abstract from SC21:

Science and ethics have always been intertwined, as scientific practices must be unbiased and held to the highest standards of honesty and integrity.

As we look at the many ways HPC expands beyond scientific and academic communities to inform other industries, addressing ethics in the development, application, and use of technology has never been more critical. The rapid growth of HPC and the intertwined issues of AI shine a light on new moral issues that shape how academics, researchers, and applied scientists conduct their work in building complex multidisciplinary computations.

Five leaders in computational research and technical policy will discuss the ethical responsibilities and obligations that can – and must – guide the future trajectory of HPC. The issues and challenges are many, such as algorithmic bias in machine learning, scientific validation and reproducibility, and the importance of expanding diversity in the scientific community to avoid unintentional consequences.

The panelists will explore these and other thought-provoking topics intended to broaden the awareness of the role of scientific ethics in our fast-growing field.

Moderator

Daniel A. Reed is a computer scientist and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs (Provost) at the University of Utah. As director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), he spearheaded creation of the TeraGrid, which became XSEDE. Dr. Reed also helped shape Microsoft’s vision for technology innovations in cloud computing and its policy engagements with governments and institutions as Corporate Vice President for Technology Policy and Extreme Computing. He is currently a member of the National Science Board (NSB).

Panelists

Cristin Flynn Goodwin is the Assistant General Counsel of the Digital Security Unit in Microsoft’s Customer Security and Trust organization, working with the Threat Context & Analysis and Cybersecurity Legal teams. She leads Microsoft’s efforts to understand nation state attacks against customers and the computing ecosystem and disrupt nation state attacks, working closely with the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC).

Tony Hey is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Association for Computing Machinery, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Currently the Chief Data Scientist at STFC’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Dr. Hey previously served as Corporate Vice President for Technical Computing at Microsoft. At the University of Southampton, his parallel computing research group designed and built one of the first distributed memory message-passing computers using innovative Inmos transputers.

Joel Saltz is a leader in research on advanced information technologies for large-scale data science and biomedical/scientific research. He is the founding chair of three departments of Biomedical Informatics – at Ohio State University, Emory University, and his current institution, SUNY Stony Brook. A fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics, Dr. Saltz has developed several innovative pathology informatics methods and big data innovations.