IU receives $4.4M grant to wire supercomputers

Newsweek's recent nomination of IU as the "Hottest Big State School" had many criteria to meet, but the one which stood out most was "IU's embrace of the information age."\nOne part of that embrace is shown by a $4.4 million grant from the National Science Foundation for IU's role in the nationwide TeraGrid, a network of supercomputers which gives scientists the ability to better study fields such as genomes, brain function, the diagnosis of diseases, weather forecasting and even how the universe was created.\nVice President for Research and Information Technology Michael McRobbie said TeraGrid does what a powergrid does -- integrating certain portions of a system for the success of the entire grid. The key to success for computers, McRobbie said, is to draw power from multiple resources.\nOther schools in the nation, including Purdue University, the University of Chicago and six others, are participating in this venture, which McRobbie believes will give a glimpse into the future of computers.\n"This is a prototype for what people will use for computing and storage in the future," McRobbie said.\nThe NSF has given $150 million toward the entire project, which will eventually be able to help improve aircraft design.\nMost of the grant money will support the grid staff and infrastructure, said Craig Stewart, acting assistant vice president for research and academic computing. Because of the improvement IU continues to make in the computing fields, the University will be in a better position than ever to compete for technology grants, McRobbie said.\n"Participation in the TeraGrid project is a tremendous opportunity for Indiana University to contribute to cutting edge research, particularly in life sciences and data-intensive computing, and help shape a national computing environment that will enable exciting new possibilities for investigation and collaboration," McRobbie said in a statement.\nCooperation will be the key to the advance in research, Stewart said.\n"The key to the TeraGrid is by linking all these resources together, you can enable research that would not be possible even with the largest single supercomputers in the U.S.," he said.\nIn particular, the TeraGrid project will enhance research in life sciences and data-intensive computing, McRobbie said. IU's grant will allow the University to become an elite member of the TeraGrid network and one of the leaders in information technology throughout the United States.\n"We're not just embracing the information age," Stewart said. "We are helping to create the next steps in the information age."\n-- Campus Editor Rick Newkirk contributed to this report.