News Archive

Tulane University researchers investigate how tiny units of genetic material fold into long fibers—and impact some of our bodies’ most fundamental processes. by J. William Bell The human genome’s three billion base pairs, if stretched into a straight chain, would be about one meter long. Yet, by folding itself up, it fits in only a … Continued

After providing millions of compute hours over six and one half years of faithful service, NCSA’s Mercury cluster retired at the end of March. Described by many as “a true workhorse” of a machine, it was used by scientists studying everything from mesoscale thunderstorms to the most minuscule atoms. And reliable it was, up and … Continued

“Having access to NCSA kept my projects alive!” By Barbara Jewett Although variations of the gratefulness theme are frequently expressed when researchers share information about their work conducted using NCSA resources, Mihaela Bojin’s appreciation goes a little deeper than most. Without access to free supercomputing clusters, she most likely would have abandoned her amino acid … Continued

by Vince Dixon Typically, local clinics send reports of illnesses and symptoms to state and national organizations like the Centers for Disease Control. With this method, “the local people who are collecting the data often don’t see theresults until it is too late to take any action,” says Ian Brooks, creator of INDICATOR and director … Continued

Building the world’s fastest computer for open research also requires developing the applications that will allow researchers to do their science on the machine. Bill Gropp, the chief applications architect for Blue Waters, tells Access’ Barbara Jewett what that work involves and how it feeds into the future of high-performance computing. Let’s start with Blue … Continued

Adapted from a Harvard Medical School article Proteins are the machinery behind cellular processes in living organisms, and much has been learned about how they function in the perception of some external stimuli from their three-dimensional structures. However, little is known about the protein molecules involved in touch and auditory function. Now, a team from … Continued

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and INRIA, the French national computer science institute, formed the Joint Laboratory for Petascale Computing in June 2009. The Joint Laboratory is based at Illinois and includes researchers from INRIA, Illinois’ Center for Extreme-Scale Computation, and NCSA. “The Joint Laboratory is focusing on the software challenges found in complex … Continued

The National Science Foundation has awarded $200,000 to the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) to investigate the use of simulation-based engineering and science in industry and to report on areas where scientific advances are required to achieve gains in simulation capability. This Early-Concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) project will be carried out over … Continued

The National Science Foundation has awarded a grant of almost $3 million to the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) to improve a widely used open-source program for detecting security intrusions. The three-year project is led by Robin Sommer and Vern Paxson at ICSI and Adam Slagell at … Continued

Edison Liu, the executive director of the Genome Institute of Singapore, has spent the summer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, working on collaborative projects and exploring the potential for genomics research and supercomputing to powerfully converge. He recently answered a few questions about his collaboration with the center. What projects have you launched … Continued

During summer 2010, the NCSA cybereducation team supported 8 undergraduate students from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for 9 weeks as part of the REU program of the National Science Foundation. The Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program supports active research participation by undergraduate students in specific areas of research conducted by NCSA and … Continued