From October 24th to the 28th, Vancouver was the place to be for computer programmers and IT system engineers from around the world, as the High Energy Physics Unix Information Exchange conference, or HEPiX, took place downtown at SFU’s Harbour Centre. About one hundred specialists convened early on Monday, kicking off a week of symposia, workshops, and networking. The event, jointly hosted by TRIUMF, SFU, and the University or Victoria, was especially significant as it marked the 20th anniversary of the conference.
HEPiX is a semi-annual forum for information technology staff involved in high-energy physics to meet in-person and share their ideas. Delegates may be system administrators, system engineers, or managers from various high-energy particle and nuclear physics laboratories around the world who work with computers and data management. HEPiX 2011 attracted experts from across North America, Europe, and East Asia, from laboratories such as TRIUMF, CERN, DESY, BNL, and more. They arrived with a similar goal: to share and learn about each other’s experiences with scientific computing and data challenges. Particle-physics experiments produce and then analyze huge quantities of data in a globally accessible environment, and such a high-performance, data-intensive field inevitably faces unique challenges.
HEPiX has been the key conference to learn about the advanced computing behind the biggest laboratories in the world since 1991. This year’s workshops, speakers and information sessions in Vancouver were an intensive but very productive week for all involved.
- By Aaron Lao, Communications Assistant