16th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, cloud, and Grid Computing (CCGrid2016) to be held in Cartagena Colombia

After Shenzhen, China, the International Symposium on Cluster, cloud, and Grid Computing (CCGrid) is moving to Cartagena, Colombia. Indeed, CCGrid2016 will be held on the Caribbean Coast in Colombia. Thus, we contacted Professor Carlos Jaime Barrios, general co-chair of CCGrid2016. Professor Barrios coordinates the high performance computing center at the Universidad Industrial de Santander, in Bucaramanga, Colombia. Here are the answers he gave us about the coming CCGrid2016 conference in Colombia.

Q: CCGrid has been evolving during the last years, what are the most relevant topics for the next year and how are they related to the Latin American region?

A: The spirit of CCGRID is to join people of all the world around cluster, cloud, grid computing and distributed systems to show advances and collaborate in interesting projects which can be better the quality of the life (The last conference was in China). If you see the chart of CCGRID, maybe is the only one conference with a wide range of impact, making CCGRIDs in countries of all continents (Not yet Africa, but soon).  For Latin America, from some years, the participation in HPC and large scale computing projects is growing. The Brazilian CCGRID in 2007 in Rio de Janeiro and for the next year CCGRID 2016 in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, are shown as Latin American host. CCGRID 2016 is an interesting space for us, as Latin America HPC community to join more the HPC world wide community, to meet us with our pairs from different countries and welcome guests and participants in our beautiful cities.

Q: It has been over 8 years since the last time the CCGrid conference was held in South America (Brazil 2017), what does this opportunity means for the region?

A: The  CCGRID 2016 in Cartagena de Indias is a recognition of the importance of the region in the HPC and large scale computing world wide community. For the region, is a good opportunity to meet specialists, to show developments and to joint directly more projects than before. Another conferences as ISCA was developed in Latin America and some proposals to develop future workshop and conferences around IPDPS, eScience, HPDC and others are in preparation for different Latin American countries (not only Colombia).

Q: Should we expect a strong presence of Latin American community (students, engineers, researchers) in CCGrid2016?

A: Yes, more than the regular conference and traditional workshops, we will propose different satellite activities: tutorials, LatinAmerica Research and Innovation Workshop in HPC (addressed to Latin American community specifically), the SCALE contest, large scale visualization showcase, and more. On the other hand, Cartagena de Indias is a beautiful city, with the best of the Spanish colonial time, the best of the modern Latin America development and spectacular nature. It's not complicated to go to Cartagena, with a lot of flight options directly to different parts of the world. So, we think in a strong participation not only from the Latin American community, also of the all the world.