Uncertainty Quantification Workshop
April 25-26, 2008

sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the Uncertainty Quantification research group

Nature, our societies and institutions, our bodies. These are all complex systems. How do we interpret and synthesize outcomes of these systems? How do we quantify the uncertainty in these interpretations and outcomes? These are challenging problems for scientists and engineers, accustomed to a protocol of hypothesis and proof by overwhelming evidence. These problems are even more challenging for mathematicians who's standard is the theorem.

Traditional science and engineering has few tools to analyze and manipulate compelling evidence and outcomes of complex systems. Yet climate scientists were asked to determine whether the Earth was indeed warming and whether the anthropogenic component was significant. Pharmaceutical companies and medical doctors dispense drugs that can heal, yet our understanding of the human body iand its variability is far from complete.

Perhaps we need to develop a different way to quantify and/or understand complex systems?

In this first of a series of workshops the Uncertainty Quantification Group is bringing together researchers from a variety of disciplines for the more modest first step of exchanging notions about prediction, and, in particular cross-pollinating ideas and techniques within uncertainty quantification, risk analysis, multiscale modeling, machine learning, and statistical mechanics.


The Uncertainty Quantification Group, under the sponsorship of the National Science Foundation, is inviting scientists in
  • climate/meteorology
  • hydrology
  • risk analysis
  • statistical mechanics
  • mathematics/probability
  • computer vision/machine learning
to a 2 day workshop. The workshop will be divided into sections, and each section, corresponding to one of the areas above, will begin with a broad overview, given by a leading practitioner in that field, aimed at introducing the field and its challenges to a general audience. The overview will be followed by more specialized talks. I addition to the talks, there will be plenty of time and opportunity for informal discussions among the participants, including dinner on Friday and a hike on Saturday.


Organizers:
Juan Restrepo
Shankar C. Venkataramani
Kobus Barnard
Kevin Lin
Walter Piegorsch
Darin Comeau


Uncertainty Quantification Group
The University of Arizona
617 N. Santa Rita Ave.
P.O. Box 210089
Tucson, AZ 85721–0089 USA

Voice: (520) 621 4367
Fax: (520) 621-8322
Images taken from the IPCC Report on Global Climate Change, 2007