The Bistro will focus on disaster research, including collaborations with the state of North Carolina on hurricane and storm surge prediction and disaster planning and mitigation.

“The 2008 Atlantic Basin Hurricane Season runs from June 1 through Nov. 30 and it’s forecasted to be an active season for North Carolina,” said Jessica Proud, RENCI meteorologist and featured speaker for the Bistro session. “In the session, we will discuss the basics and potential dangers of hurricanes, why they form and how RENCI helps the state to deal with them effectively.”

The Bistro will run from noon to 1 p.m. in the RENCI at Duke Center in the OIT Telecommunications Building, 390 Science Drive, suite 106, on Duke’s West Campus in Durham. Lunch will be provided on a first-come first-served basis. The session is free and open to the public.

Other topics to be covered in the Bistro include the National Hurricane Center’s role in warning the public of a tropical threat and RENCI’s weather portal program, NC-FIRST, which helps emergency managers decipher weather data, understand weather threats and choose actions that minimize threats to lives and property caused by extreme weather.

For more information or directions go to Renaissance Bistro. To RSVP, contact Jennifer Shelton, training manager, at 919-445-9697 by Sept. 8.

RENCI…Catalyst for Innovation
The Renaissance Computing Institute, a multi-institutional organization, brings together multidisciplinary experts and advanced technological capabilities to address pressing research issues and to find solutions to complex problems that affect the quality of life in North Carolina, our nation and the world. RENCI leverages its expertise and resources in leading edge computing, visualization, networking and data technologies to catalyze new collaborations and find solutions to previously intractable problems. Founded in 2004 as a major collaborative venture of Duke University, North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the state of North Carolina, RENCI is a statewide virtual organization. For more, see www.renci.org.

What could be better than the world’s favorite smart phone?

Imagine this: an iPhone-like, touch-sensitive screen that allows users to interact with data through an almost endless array of touches and gestures and that displays information at six times the resolution of high definition on a screen about 1,500 times larger than an iPhone display.

Look no further than the Renaissance Computing Institute’s (RENCI) new engagement center at Duke University to find this state-of-the-art visualization technology. And while RENCI at Duke’s 13-foot by 5-foot multi-touch wall can’t fit neatly into a pocket, it has the potential to help researchers in science, engineering, the arts and humanities view and interact with data in ways never before possible.