CENTER FOR COMPUTATION & TECHNOLOGY

Business, government and nonprofit leaders have aligned to create the Baton Rouge Area Digital Industries Consortium, a group that will seek to leverage the burgeoning digital entertainment industry into a larger economic driver for the region. The consortium is made of the Mayor-President's Office, the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, the Baton Rouge Area Chamber, and LSU. “All of these organizations came together and said growing the digital media industry in the Baton Rouge area is important to us from an economic development perspective, and we want to work together to make it happen,” said Stacey Simmons, the consortium's first executive director. As LSU's Center for Computation and Technology director for special projects, Simmons was co-creator of the Red Stick International Animation Festival. In the past three years, the festival has lured hundreds of animators and video game developers to Baton Rouge every April. All consortium partners are sponsors of the festival, and members of those groups, looking for more ways to promote digital industry development in Baton Rouge, formed the consortium. “The Consortium is important because it allows us to be a partner in a very vibrant and growing industry,” said East Baton Rouge Parish Mayor-President Melvin “Kip” Holden. “It allows us to showcase this city and parish to let people know not only in the state and the nation, but also around the world, that we have quality here, that we are going forth and we are not willing to take a backseat to anybody.” Members of the consortium will work together to attract more digital media businesses to Baton Rouge, building on the early success of the animation festival and state tax credits targeted to digital media companies that are similar to the film tax credits that have drawn movie production to Louisiana. “Louisiana is one of the only states in the country that has an incentive solely focused on the digital media industry. We want to make the most of our competitive advantage in this area and work to grow this stable, knowledge-based industry in our region,” said Stephen Moret, president of the Baton Rouge Area Chamber. The consortium will promote the area for video game design, animation rendering and all other digital businesses that are sweeping the world with the advance of electronic devices and the Internet. The consortium also plans to develop programs to train people for jobs in the digital industries. Simons feels Baton Rouge is poised for success in the digital industries. Several video game development companies have already located to the city, and the consortium is actively recruiting filmmakers, digital rendering, game publishers and other digital media companies to bring their businesses to Baton Rouge. “Ten years from now, I want Baton Rouge to be a digital media Mecca,” Simmons said. “All these plans are in the works, and I think we are going to be very successful. Baton Rouge is going to be synonymous with digital media.” CCT in the News:

Grid Experts Address Barriers to Distributed Applications
8-20-2007/GRID Today
By: Shantenu Jha, Daniel S. Katz and Omer Rana (Cardiff)
http://www.gridtoday.com/grid/1735208.html

Pats on the Back:

• The journal "Classical and Quantum Gravity" chose the article “A multi-block infrastructure for three-dimensional time-dependent numerical relativity” by Erik Schnetter, Peter Diener, Ernst Nils Dorband and Manuel Tiglio as one of the "Highlights of 2006 and 2007". Highlights are available at: http://www.iop.org/EJ/journal/-page=extra.high0607/0264-9381. • Daniel S. Katz's visit to Universidad Andrés Bello (UNAB) in Bucaramanga, Columbia was featured in the UNAB magazine. The article can be viewed at:http://www2.unab.edu.co/vivir/index.jsp. • Daniel S. Katz gave the keynote address at the Latin American Conference of High-Performance Computing in August. http://eventos.ula.ve/clcar/index.php/English_Version Upcoming Lectures:

• The next all CCT meeting will be Sept. 19 at 3 p.m. in Johnston 338. • Tinsley Oden, Associate Vice President for Research and Director of the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences (ICES) at The University of Texas at Austin, will give a lecture on “Adaptive Multiscale Modeling Of Large-Scale Molecular Systems” at CCT on Wednesday, Sept. 12 at 4 p.m. in the Life Sciences Annex Building. • Dr. Carolina Cruz-Neira, director of ULL's Louisiana Immersive Technologies Enterprise (LITE) center, will be the first CCT Colloquium series speaker this fall. She will give a lecture on “LITE: The Intersection of Academic Research and Economic Development” on Friday, Sept. 7 at 2 p.m. in Johnston 338. • Important: The CCT Colloquium Series has returned and will take place each Friday at 2 p.m. in Johnston 338. Last year, these lectures took place at 3 p.m., but the time has changed to accommodate other meetings. Shantenu Jha is in charge of the speaker line-up. If you have a speaker wish list or concerns with the lecture time change, please send it to Shantenu at sjha@cct.lsu.edu. Please Note:

• If you have any news for the CCT Weekly, please e-mail PR Manager Kristen Sunde directly at ksunde@cct.lsu.edu. Upcoming Grant Deadlines:

NSF Biotechnology Program (BTEC)
September 15 2007 10:15 a.m.
At Least $ 100,000.00 available
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=501024&org=NSF&sel_org=NSF&from=fund

NSF Focused Research Groups in the Mathematical Sciences
NSF FRG
September 21 2007 5:00 pm
A Portion Of $ 12,000,000.00 available
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2006/nsf06580/nsf06580.htm

NSF CreativeIT
September 21 2007 5:00 pm
A Portion Of $ 10,000,000.00 available
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2007/nsf07562/nsf07562.htm

NSF Information Technology and Infrastructure Systems (ITIS)
October 01 2007 5:00 am
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=13352

NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowships (AAPF)
October 10 2007 5:00 am
A Portion Of $ 750,000.00 available
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2007/nsf07572/nsf07572.htm