VEESC: Virtual Execution Environments for Scientific Computing Workshop

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Computer programming languages play a central role in scientificproductivity. They are the interface between domain experts and themachine. The first generation of scientific languages were staticallycompiled computer programming languages such as Fortran, C and C++.Optimized for efficiency they stayed close to the hardware at the cost ofease of use. The languages of choice for scientists are increasinglydynamic ones like Perl, Python, R, Matlab, Mathematica, Maple, andJavaScript. Educational material in Bioinformatics, for example, includesmany textbooks for Perl, Python and R and none for C, C++ or Fortran. Butthe application of cutting-edge scientific methodology is limited by thecapabilities of the system in which it is implemented. While dynamiclanguages start out as glue for native libraries, with time, more and moreof the actual computations is expressed in those languages. But quicklyusers experience limitations of these languages: performance is not adequatefor compute intensive tasks, space overheads preclude manipulating largedatasets, and information security and reproducibility of results must beaddressed. This workshop explores the need for a Scientific Software Innovation Institute (S2I2) centered around Virtual Execution Infrastructures for Next Generation Scientific Programming Languages. There is a needto develop expertise and momentum to encourage development of open source high-performance implementations of productivity-oriented scientificprogramming languages. To this end, the VEESC workshop brings togetherexperts in virtual machines and compilers, designers and implementors ofhigh-level dynamic languages and related systems, and key representativesfrom end-user communities in the sciences.