IU joins national research network

The National Science Foundation has awarded IU and Purdue University a $3 million grant to build a supercomputer that will connect IU, Purdue and the IU-Purdue campus in Indianapolis.\nThe grant, part of the NSF's Extensible Terascale Facility "TeraGrid," will create a system within the state, called the IP-Grid, which will enable researchers at the three campuses to collaborate with their colleagues across the nation on advanced high-performance computing projects. \nThe University of Texas, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology are several of the institutions that are already a part of the network. \nThe TeraGrid is a prototype of the NSF's plan for a national research "cyberinfrastructure," a system of supercomputers, massive data storage systems and instruments linked by advanced networking and integrated to enable researchers at the universities to solve the largest and most important scientific problems. \nBrian Voss, executive co-principal investigator on the project and IU associate vice president for telecommunications, said he is very excited about receiving the grant.\n"When it comes to high performance advanced computers, we have been invited to join the all-star team," Voss said. "We are known to be an up and coming force to be dealt with in this area."\nVoss said the NSF grant moves IU into the forefront of supercomputer technology and raises the University's competitiveness among other institutions to receive grants. He said the grants will be used to upgrade two supercomputers already at IU and attain a newer model. \n"The IP-Grid will have a positive effect on the way faculty will teach graduates and undergraduates," Voss said.\nIU is already a leader in information technology education tools, said Christine Fitzpatrick, deputy communications officer for the Vice President for Information Technology . \n"This award is a direct reflection of the University's ever-expanding infrastructure for high speed collaboration and research," Fitzpatrick said. "This is what research relies upon, the leading edge of technology."\nJerry Sheenan, Purdue's associative vice president for strategic planning and operations in Information Technology, also said the joint endeavor with IU will have a positive effective on Indiana's future.\n"We have bought a little bit of a time machine that allows researchers from either campus to jump in the near future and be in the forefront of scientific discovery," Sheenan said. \nHe said the IP-Grid is a great example of the collaboration of leading Indiana institutions to share resources in life sciences and nanotechnology. \n"The IP-Grid is an important synergy that harnesses Indiana's strengths to be a competitor in technology," Sheenan said. "The long-term relationship between IU and Purdue University will help determine the next generation of the Internet and scientific tools to aid research."\nDeborah Crawford, deputy assistant director of NSF's Computer and Information Science and Engineering directorate, said in a news release the new additions to the nationwide network will bring a rich mixture of shared computational resources, analytic tools and data assets that enable research and education at a scope and scale that was previously impossible.\n"The resources and expertise these partners bring to the (network) demonstrate the great promise that a distributed cyber infrastructure has to revolutionize science and engineering research and education in the 21st century," she said.\n-- Contact staff writer Devon Thomas at deothoma@indiana.edu.