NCSA partnering with 2016 Pygmalion Festival

Now in its 12th year, the Pygmalion Festival is an independently produced, multi-faceted, week-long celebration of culture.

Originally a music festival, the Pygmalion Festival now includes a growing Tech component—featuring speakers and panels in all subjects—Food, Literature, and Made Festivals, as well. NCSA is proud to partner with one of the country’s up-and-coming festivals hosted right in our own backyard. Check out bands that are rising stars in the music industry and enjoy food from some local award-winning restaurants, but don’t forget about all the programming related to NCSA!

The schedule for Pygmalion has just been released, and NCSA is going to be featured in six different events, giving you six reasons to check it out!

NCSA 30th Anniversary Celebration

Hear from the founder of NCSA on September 16. The Celebration will take place at the NCSA Building, located at 1205 W. Clark St. in Urbana. The event includes guest speakers like founding Director Larry Smarr and current Director Ed Seidel. If it weren’t for Larry Smarr, there would be no NCSA and none of the great innovation we’ve seen from NCSA over the past 30 years, like developing the web browser Mosaic, providing high quality data visualizations, and helping industrial partners with computing and data challenges. The celebration starts at 4:30 p.m., so don’t be late!

Pygmalion Festival + NCSA 30th Anniversary Post-Party: Days of Future Past with Larry Smarr, Donna Cox, and Ed Seidel

Party with the best of them following the Celebration! The Post-Party will be at The Accord Indoor, 51 E. Main St. in downtown Champaign. At this event, you’ll be able to find Donna Cox, director of NCSA’s Advanced Visualization Laboratory (AVL), as well as Smarr and Seidel together on stage as they relive 30 years of NCSA.

Tour of Blue Waters Supercomputer

Ever been curious about our famous Blue Waters supercomputer, the fastest supercomputer on a university campus? Now’s your chance to see it for yourself! On Thursday, Sept. 22, come and check out our open house at the National Petascale Computing Facility (NPCF) from 3-4:30 p.m. The self-guided tours of NPCF are easy to do and provide flexibility for arrival and departure. Plus, we’ll have additional staff located around the building so you can ask any pressing question you may have. Located at 1725 Oak St. in Champaign, NPCF is right across the street from Lot E-14, making it easy to get to by bus. Attendees can also join a bike ride from NPCF to the Krannert Center starting at 4:30, so bring your bike! You should go to Krannert because…

Pygmalion Demo

From 4:30-10 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 22, the lobby of the Krannert Center for Performing Arts will be filled with area tech experts showing off their latest devices and technologies. This includes the HTC Vive Data Exploration Lab demo set up by experts from NCSA, led by Nathan Goldbaum. Stay tuned to the demo schedule for any updates!

Solar Superstorms Screening and AVL Team Discussion

See NCSA’s work firsthand! Our AVL team will be showing their film Solar Superstorms at Staerkel Planetarium (2400 W. Bradley Ave. in Champaign) on Tuesday, September 20 at 7 p.m. and again at 7:30 p.m. Following the two showings, Donna Cox and Bob Patterson will lead a discussion at 8 p.m. Solar Superstorms features one of the most intensive efforts ever made to visualize the inner workings of the sun, including a series of groundbreaking scientific visualizations computed on Blue Waters. This short film has won several awards, and was shown to members of congress on Capitol Hill this summer. Tickets are only $6—you won’t want to miss it!

Virtual Reality and Immersive Technology

Alan Craig, virtual and augmented reality expert at NCSA, will be part of a panel discussion titled “Virtual Reality and Immersive Technology” on Saturday, Sept. 24, 4-5:30 p.m. at Memphis on Main (55 E. Main St., Champaign) in downtown Champaign. Craig will be joined by Anna Yershova from Illinois’ computer science program and Eric Arnold from Volition.

To get the scoop on other sweet events going on as part of the 2016 Pygmalion Festival, check out the full schedule here.

#PygFest | #NCSA30

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