Financial support is provided for the participation of USA-based early career scientists and PhD students at the Householder Symposium XVII on Numerical Linear Algebra. The Symposium is to be held in June 1-6, 2008 in Zeuthen, Germany. Matrix computations, a central topic in numerical linear algebra, plays a central role in scientific computing and is at the heart of many numerical procedures for partial differential equations and optimization. More recently, matrix methods have found their way in computational biology and a host of information science applications. The Householder symposia contribute to the vibrancy of this field by bringing together scholars from all over the world, both young and old, for five days of informal research exchanges. Multicore technologies have placed a premium on methods that scale and so it is no surprise that model reduction, low rank tensor approximation, and data compression, will be recurring themes at the Symposium. Matrix dimensions are so large in certain applications that radically new approaches are required, e.g., matrix factorizations that are based on sampling and data structures that match multilevel memory systems. Attendees of Householder XVII will exit the meeting with a sharpened sense of ``large n'' matrix computations.
There are several reasons why the Symposium is a particularly effective vehicle for ``jump starting'' the careers of its young attendees. There is an emphasis on ongoing research and an invitation process that proactively favors budding researchers. There is a deliberate attempt to build a communal sense of where the field is headed through specific ``forward thinking'', open microphone, panel discussions. Because it is the premier conference in the area, the Symposium attracts the top senior researchers from around the world; it is a ``must attend'' event. The intermingling of established researchers with the fresh PhDs is guaranteed because the conference is modest in size (about 150) and everyone who attends gives a talk. Enabling USA-based early career scientists to attend the Householder Symposium on Numerical Linear Algebra ensures the well being of a field that is critical to American Science and Engineering. Consistent with the goal of broadening participation in computational science.
