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Behind the scenes of NCSA: Blue Waters


To create an incredible resource like the Blue Waters supercomputer takes an incredible team. In addition to the project’s principal and co-principal investigators, project managers, and hardware and software architects, dozens of NCSA staffers work behind the scenes, moving the project forward.

Programmers writing code. Accounting analysts tracking expenditures. Copyeditors crafting professional-looking documents. Assistants keeping the coffee flowing, the shredder emptied, and the meetings organized. Audio-visual technicians ensuring transmission clarity in video meetings and conference calls. Educators developing course curriculum. Webmasters sharing the team’s work with the world. Research scientists applying the analytical skills and innovation that NCSA is known for.

Every day, nearly 60 people at the center use their technical knowledge and expertise to deal with the thousands of minute details involved in a project of this magnitude. Their eyes are on the ultimate goal: providing an incredible computing resource for the nation’s scientists and engineers in 2012.

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