Great Computational Science and Applied Mathematics in Hanoi 2018

A conference report

The series of the International Conference on High Performance Scientific Computing, 
HPSC, has been started in 2000 and is held every three years in March in Hanoi. Hence 
this time it was already the 7th HSPC event. I was invited in 2000 as a plenary 
speaker and am on the Scientific Committee ever since. Despite its title it concentrated 
at the beginning more on numerical analysis, mathematical modeling and applied 
mathematics. However the emphasis shifted with the development of high performance 
computers more and more to HPSC and its subtitle "Modeling, Simulation and Optimization 
of Complex Processes". For example this year in a mini-symposia Jonas Sukys of "Eawag: 
Swiss Federal Institute for Aquatic Science and Technology Systems Integrated Assessment 
and Modeling" reported on development of software and its use for numerical simulation 
involving up to one trillion mesh elements and 500’000 cores. This is a strong illustration of 
the efficiency of new methods and machines. In a plenary Adelina Sequeira of the University 
of Lisbon talked on "Cardiovascular Modeling and Simulations: Applications to Patient-Specific Clinical Studies", see pic. (HAI_7595.jpg). The number of participants has increased over the 
years from about 200 at the first conference to about 300 this year. Just compare the group 
pictures from 2000 (Inst. of Math, Vietnam Academy of Science & Technology 2000.jpg) and the one of this year (HAI_7298-Edit.jpg). The number of mini-symposia has more than doubled in the same period. For the list of the plenary speakers and the mini-symposia see the link indicated at the end of the article.

One of the intention of the original conference was to bring the field of applied and computational 
mathematics to Vietnam and to promote the collaboration between Vietnamese and western 
mathematicians. In particular Germany has been and still a very strong driving force. While at the 
first HPSC more than 80% of the participants came from Vietnam in this years conference one still observes a very high percentage of Vietnamese names but the working places are now often outside Vietnam. In general the conference became much more international, participants came from 28 different, the strongest delegations were Vietnam, Germany and USA with 127, 85 and 24 participants. 5 or less delegates came from China, Switzerland, Thailand, South Korea, Canada, Italy, Japan, Myanmar, Norway, Serbia, UK, Australia, Cape Verde, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, South Africa and Taiwan. This list is ordered by the number of participants of each country. ICIAM supported this conference with USD 2000. These funds have been used to support 9 participants from Indonesia, Myanmar, Nepal, South Africa, Thailand. 

This years conference was again a huge success as the whole development of the HSPC series is.  At this point I have to mention the main organizers, Hoang Xuan Phu from the Institute of Mathematics, Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, Hanoi and Georg Bock of the Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing (IWR), Heidelberg University, Germany. 
Another part of the success was the support by the IMU. The secretary general of IMU, Martin Grötschel, 2007 - 2014, motivated all Presidents of IMU which do application oriented work to accepted to be the plenary speakers: John Ball, László Lovász, Ingrid Daubechies. His successor
Helge Holden, 2015 - , gave a lecture in 2015 and attended this years HPSC too.  

The main organizer Phu has fantastic skills. It is due to him and his staff that all speakers in the conference delivered their talks. Only two persons have to be listed as no shows. In addition to Phu one has to mention the meticulous and efficient work done by the conference secretary professor Phan Thanh An from Hanoi and USP in São Carlos, SP, Brazil, see (pic. DSC_0402.jpg) and all
the local staff. More in the background even Phu's wife and her their son helped too. Note that not only the lectures have been extremely well organized but also the busses which brought you from the hotels to the conference site and back or 
to some social events. Due to the increase of participants and number of lectures the venue had to 
be moved from the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology to the building of Ta Quang Buu Library on the campus of Hanoi University of Science and Technology with its large lecture hall, see the group foto.

Last but not least let me mention the social program. On Monday evening tradition has it that one
goes to a Nguyen Van Duc Snake Restaurant. While in the earlier conferences one had the choice between snake or bore but this time now could also choose less exotic options. On Tuesday there is 
always a dinner with traditional music. On Wednesday afternoon there have been two options
for an excursion. One was what I call 'Halong Bay on land'. This is a trip on small boats on a river between towering limestone pillars like the one in Halong Bay. Sometimes the river just has created tunnels through these rocks. The conference dinner has been on Thursday with traditional 
dancing and music. By the way participants had to choose on a website not only which social 
event they wanted to attend but also which meals they would prefer. Collection of participants at
the airport had been organized. A visa to be picked up at arrival coul be ordered easily directly on the 
internet. Of course Hanoi offers also many things to see and to do. Some attended the post conference tour on Halong Bay, some partners took some cooking lessons, .... 

Note that the next conference will be in March 2021.

The whole information on this years conference can be found on the webpage 
http://hpsc.iwr.uni-heidelberg.de/HPSCHanoi2018/. 

To see how it was at earlier conferences just replace in the above link 2018 by the corresponding year of the event. Note that during all these conferences Xuân Sơn was the main photographer.

Maur, Swityerland, 2018 09 30 Rolf Jeltsch