Title:	Scilab: a Free Scientific Software Package www.scilab.org
Date:	November 3, 2005 (Thursday)
Time:	2:30 p.m. - 3:30 p.m.
Venue:	Room 121, 1/F, Ho Sin-hang Engineering Building, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T.
Speaker:	Dr. Claude Gomez Leader, Scilab Development Team INRIA-Rocquencourt France

ABSTRACT:

Scilab is a scientific software package for numerical computations providing a powerful open computing environment for engineering and scientific applications.

Scilab was developed since 1990 by INRIA, the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control, and ENPC, a French school for Engineers. Since 1994 it has been distributed freely along with the source code via the Internet. It is currently used in educational and industrial environments around the world. Scilab is now the responsibility of the Scilab Consortium.

Scilab includes hundreds of mathematical functions with the possibility to add interactively programs from various languages. It has sophisticated data, an interpreter and a high level programming language. Scilab has been conceived to be an open system where the user can define new data types and operations on these data types.

A number of toolboxes are available with the system:
- 2-D and 3-D graphics, animation
- Linear algebra, sparse matrices
- Polynomials and rational functions
- Simulation: explicit and implicit systems of differential equations solvers
- Scicos: hybrid dynamic systems modeler and simulator
- Classic and robust control, LMI optimization
- Differentiable and non-differentiable optimization
- Signal processing
- Graphs and networks
- Parallel Scilab using PVM
- Statistics
- Interface with Computer Algebra (Maple, MuPAD)
- Interface with TCL/TK

Scilab works under Windows 9X/2000/XP, GNU/Linux, and most UNIX systems. Binary versions for these systems are freely available, along with source code.

BIOGRAPHY:

Doctor Claude Gomez was graduated in 1977 from the École Centrale de Paris. He received a Ph. D. degree in numerical analysis in 1980 at the Orsay University (Paris XI). He is a researcher at INRIA Rocquencourt (near Paris) where he is senior scientist. He began to work in numerical analysis of partial differential equations. Then his main topics of interest are the links between Computer Algebra and Numerical Computations. He is involved in the development of Scilab since 1990. He is co-author of a book about Computer Algebra and two books about Scilab. He is currently the Chief Technology Officer of Scilab Consortium and he is in charge of the Scilab team at INRIA Rocquencourt (operational team of Scilab Consortium).

Enquiries: Miss Temmy So at tel 2609 8444

For more information, please refer to http://www.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/seminar