The fifth NIC-Symposium will give an overview of the activities of the John von Neumann Institute for Computing (NIC) and of the results obtained in the last two years by research groups supported by the NIC. The large recent progress in supercomputing is highlighted by the fact that the newly installed Blue Gene/P system in Jülich - with a peak performance of 1 Petaflop/s - currently ranks number four in the TOP500 list. This development opens new dimensions in simulation science for researchers in Germany and Europe.

NIC - a joint foundation of Forschungszentrum Jülich, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) and Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung (GSI) - supports with its members' supercomputer facilities about 130 research groups at universities and national labs working on computer simulations in various fields of science.

Fifteen invited lectures will cover selected topics in the following fields:

* Astrophysics
* Biophysics
* Chemistry
* Elementary Particle Physics
* Condensed Matter
* Materials Science
* Soft Matter Science
* Environmental Research
* Hydrodynamics and turbulence
* Plasma Physics
* Computer Science

The talks are intended to inform a broad audience of scientists and the interested public about the research activities at NIC.

The proceedings of the symposium will cover projects that have been supported by the IBM supercomputers JUMP and IBM Blue Gene/P in Jülich and the APE topical computer at DESY-Zeuthen in an even wider range than the lectures.