MRI: Acquistion of A Scalable Instrument for Discovery through Computing

Proposal #: CNS 08-21527

PI(s): Raghavan, Padma

Chen, Long-Quing; Hudson, Peter J.; Kandemir, Mahmut T.; Smith, Brian K.

Institution: Pennsylvania State University

University Park, PA 16802-700

Title: MRI/Acq.: Acq.of A Scalable Instrument for Discovery through Computing

MRI Acquisition of a Scalable Instrument for Discovery through Computing

This award from the Major Research Instrumentation Program (MRI)

provides funds for the acquisition of a terascale advanced computing

instrument at the Pennsylvania State University. The instrument

will enable researchers from seven disciplines (biological, materials

and social sciences, computer and information science, engineering,

education, and geosciences), to perform virtual experiments toward

discovery and design through computing. Research projects concern:

predictive network modeling of infectious disease dynamics, designing

new piezoelectric materials, designing next-generation chip

multiprocessors, modeling human interactions to promote learning

in virtual communities, and the development of a critical zone

environmental observatory. Despite their diversity, these projects

share computational scalability challenges to be addressed for

enabling scientific advances that often depend on solving large

problems representing a sufficient level of detail and complexity.

The instrument will form the core of a multidisciplinary collaborative

environment to enable transformative approaches to address the

challenges of scaling at multiple levels. It will support a set of

integrated research, education, training, and outreach activities

to: (i) enable collaborative scaling across projects through the

transfer of scaling approaches from one domain into another, while

addressing algorithmic, system, or instrument scaling challenges

within individual projects, (ii) promote technology-transfer through

industrial partnerships, and (iii) grow and enhance the diversity

of the limited computational science talent pool.