MRI: Acquisition of a High Performance Computing Environment for Advancement of Computational Science Research and Education

This project, acquiring a high-performance computing (HPC) cluster covering areas in computational science, aims to support a wide range of current and emerging investigations and educational activities that include: 1. Development and testing of novel approaches for spectral image processing; 2. Realistic simulation of magnetic fluid flows to model magnetic drug targeting and other biomedical applications; 3. Functional genomics analysis of DNA sequence data; 4. Computational identification of ligands bind to proteins; 5. Simulation of chemical reaction pathways important in the chemistry of air pollution; 6. Development of simulated censorship systems as a test bed for censorship circumvention; 7. Automatic machine recognition of idiomatic and deceptive language; 8. Inference of subsurface ocean waves from seismic data; 9. Modeling and simulation shoreline evolution; and 10. Modeling, simulation and control of stochastic dynamics.

As shown by the extent and diversity of the projects, the use of HPC is an integral part of the overall research activity at the institution. The instrumentation is specified to meet the critical computing needs of the participating investigators? research programs and the number and diversity of projects included is expected to ensure full and efficient use of the system to be acquired which includes a set of identical nodes with infiniband connectivity for low-latency, highly parallel computing, as well as a large-memory with a shared file server all organized as a single, integrated system that will serve as a resource and focal point for HPC computational science for faculty, their research students, and collaborators at other institutions. Thus, the HPC capacity acquired will leverage and magnify the merit in each of these respective research programs. The acquisition of computing capacity, not otherwise available, that matches current and future challenges, is expected to be transformative in moving each line of research to the leading-edge of its respective field. Moreover, these advances have applications to partner disciplines and related technological developments. By providing a common focus, the HPC equipment stimulates the coalescence of a cross-cutting, multidisciplinary, and integrated Computational Research Group, composed of researchers from various disciplines (including computer science, mathematical sciences, biological sciences, chemistry, earth and environmental sciences, linguistics, and social sciences) as well as the creation of a computational science learning environment that includes undergraduate and graduate students.