UA Researchers Receive Grants from Ohio Supercomputer Center
Akron, Ohio, March 16, 2001 Three University of Akron research faculty members have been awarded high-performance computing usage grants from the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC), and a fourth faculty member will receive a Sun workstation in addition to OSC access.
The grants, given by the OSC in conjunction with the University, are intended to spur ongoing computationally intensive research at The University of Akron, as exemplified by the work of the selected faculty members. The largest of the usage grants can represent up to 10,000 computational hours on one of OSC's four production supercomputer systems.
"The award marks a unique opportunity for University of Akron faculty and OSC to work together on challenging computational science projects. OSC is very pleased to work with Akron faculty in promoting Ohio's computational research," said Al Stutz, OSC director of high performance computing.
"We're excited about these collaborative arrangements with the OSC, and hope to develop more joint projects," said Dr. George Newkome, UA's vice president for research and dean of the graduate school. "Grants like these, which link world-class researchers to world-class computational facilities, send a clear message to industry, business and government that Ohio is a good place to invest their research dollars."
The grants are --
* 250 OSC Resource Units to Dr. Wieslaw K. Binienda, associate professor of civil engineering, to facilitate his examination of multi-layer hybrid structures for turbine engine blade containment;
* 250 OSC Resource Units to Dr. Jutta Luteemer-Strathmann, assistant professor of physics, to run longer simulations of local dynamics in polymers;
* 500 OSC Resource Units to Dr. Yingcai Xiao, assistant professor of computer science, to facilitate his work in the visualization of database information and to test the performance of his new algorithms in a variety of parallel computing environments; and
* A Sun UltraSPARC 10/440 workstation to Dr. Michelle Hoo Fatt, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, for numerical modeling of impact damage of composite materials. In her research, she will use the workstation and OSC's Cray T94 supercomputer, by way of the University of Akron's high speed Internet-2 connection. In addition to the workstation, Hoo Fatt has been granted 250 OSC Resource Units to facilitate her high-performance computing research. Her grant is the first Sun workstation grant offered by UA.
"The quantity and high quality of the responses was impressive, demonstrating Akron's strong research directions," said Dr. Thomas Gaylord, UA's chief information officer. Gaylord worked with William Yang, OSC's Northeast Ohio project office head, to develop the grant program at UA.
OSC is Ohio's flagship center for high performance computing, networking, educational outreach and information technology. OSC empowers our academic, industrial and government partners to make Ohio the education and technology state of the future.
The OSC Northeast Ohio project brings systems and support expertise for the Center's resources and operational units closer to the researchers who use it. OSC's Northeast Ohio project has been serving the regional higher education and research communities from The University of Akron's main campus since August 2000.