NCSA NEWS

University Consortium Wins $108 Million U.S. Department of Defense Contract

released May 30, 2001

 

Contact
Kathryn Kelley
OSC
kkelley@osc.edu
614.292.6067

COLUMBUS, OH — The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) announced on Friday that a $108 million contract has been awarded to a consortium of institutions led by Dr. Joe Thompson, Distinguished Professor of Aerospace Engineering at Mississippi State University (MSU).

The consortium, which includes thirteen academic institutions and two industrial partners, competed nationally for the contract to provide Programming Environment and Training (PET) support in the DoD High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP).

This award is one of the largest in Defense Department history to support academic research and training for HPCMP.

Contract work will begin on June 1, 2001 with a three-year basic contract and up to five one-year extension options.

Co-principal investigators are Dr. Charlie Bender, Executive Director of OSC (Ohio Supercomputer Center) and Dr. Jay Boisseau, former Associate Director of San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) and current Director of the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at University of Texas at Austin.

"This effort expands the established HPC expertise at MSU's Engineering Research Center (ERC)—the only one of the National Science Foundation ERCs to focus directly on HPC—and Mississippi's position as third among all the states in HPC facilities," commented Dr. Thompson, a member of President George Bush's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC).

Dr. Dick Pritchard, OSC Director of Federal Programs, will be the overall program manager. "This award will continue the team's significant work with the Department of Defense and the federal government," said Pritchard. "With this new contract, Ohio is seeing major returns on the investments it has made in OSC, and the entire university team is making an impact on the nation's defenses."

Boisseau will serve as chair of the Technology Council for this consortium, which will develop new projects to enhance DoD research efforts. "We are excited about the opportunity to continue working with DoD researchers on strategic scientific problems," said Boisseau. "Our team brings world-class expertise to this program in many science and technology areas that will complement DoD researchers' scientific leadership and experience."

The full Department of Defense program is divided into four components. With this award, the MSU team will support DoD researchers around the country in three of these components. The technical content of the work includes structural mechanics, fluid dynamics, environmental modeling, ocean modeling, climate and weather, signal and image processing, integrated modeling and testing, military forces modeling and simulation, and computer science and enabling technologies.

In addition to MSU, OSC, SDSC, and TACCs, other members of the team include The Ohio State University, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Central State University, Jackson State University, Clark Atlanta University, Florida International University, Florida State University, the University of Hawaii, Science Applications International Corporation, and Computer Sciences Corporation.

 

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