He led IBM's efforts to advance supercomputing and now is leading the company's efforts to help businesses and governments utilize its power.

She worked in industry discovering ways to optimize systems through mathematics and now is an academic leading efforts to teach and equip students to do the same.

Bill Pulleyblank, vice-president, Center for Business Optimization, IBM Global Services and former director of IBM's Deep Computing Institute and the Blue Gene Project, and Margaret Wright, chair of the Department of Computer Science at New York University will be the keynote speakers at a public lecture discussing how advances in computational engineering and science are advancing our daily lives.

The public lecture is being held to officially launch the new School of Computational Engineering and Science at McMaster University, the first graduate school of its kind in Canada.

Computational engineering and science is a multidisciplinary area that utilizes mathematics, computer science and the increasing processing power of today's computers to simulate, model and optimize solutions to various problems, and design new products and services. Applications range from understanding pandemics, to predicting weather patterns, to improving the safety of our cars to designing computer chips used in today's electronics.

The lecture will take place on Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2005 in the Information Technology Building, Room 137. A reception and launch ceremony will be held from 6-7 p.m. followed by the public lecture from 7-8 p.m.

All activities are open to the public and free of charge.

For more information, visit http://computational.mcmaster.ca and click “Invitation to Official Launch.”