Minnesota Supercomputer Institute for Advanced Computational Research

Arlington BioSMART HS Teachers Visit MSI

Teachers from Arlington BioSMART High School in St. Paul visited MSI on September 23. Arlington is a magnet school with a focus in science, math, and technology. Their program, BioSMART (Biology, Science, Math, Academic Rigor, and Technology), introduces students to careers in biotech industries. We hope to be able to provide the school with materials from MSI research that the teachers can use in their classes.

Professor Wentzcovitch Awarded Fellowship

Professor Renata Wentzcovitch, Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and MSI Fellow, has been awarded "The Invitation Fellowship for Research in Japan." The award is presented by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science; Professor Wentzcovitch will be doing research at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Tokyo, Japan from October through December 2008. More information can be found on the CEMS department Web site.

MSI Researcher Awarded Regents Professorship

Professor Steven Ruggles, Minnesota Population Center and a Principal Investigator at MSI, has been elected a University of Minnesota Regents Professor, the University's highest rank. Professor Ruggles specializes in the history of populations, known as historical demography, and he has done considerable research on the American family. He uses MSI core resources to aid in his analyses of population data. More information can be found at the University News site.

New MSI Communications Coordinator

Ms. Cherie Christ joined MSI as Communications Coordinator on September 25. She comes to MSI from Augsburg College, where she has been Director of Electronic Communications. We are very happy to welcome Ms. Christ aboard. She will play a central role in ramping up our communications efforts in conjunction with our new and larger institutional role.

Virtual Reality Demonstration

MSI Principal Investigator Professor Arthur Erdman, Director of the Medical Devices Center, and Dr. H. Birali Runesha, MSI Director of Scientific Computing and Applications, gave a presentation about virtual reality on September 17. The talk was presented to the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA). They reviewed a project for a virtual reality design system to be used for medical devices. More information about the meeting and presentation can be found at the PDMA Web site.

Sticky Nanoparticles

A recent paper by MSI Associate Fellow Professor Traian Dumitrica and his graduate student Mayur Suri has received national attention. The paper publishes the results of computer simulations, performed at MSI, of nanoparticles crashing into a surface at hypersonic speeds. The paper was published in the August issue of Physical Review B (Phys Rev B, 78, 081405). Above speeds of 3,300 miles per hour, nanoparticles stick to the surface instead of bouncing. The computer simulations helped the researchers explain the sticking phenomenon.

MSI to Exhibit at SC08

MSI will have a booth at SC08, the international conference for high-performance computing, networking, storage, and analysis. The conference will be held November 15 - 21, 2008, in Austin, Texas. This is the first year that MSI will be exhibiting at this annual conference. Information about SC08 can be found at their official Web site.

Netfinity Update

The Netfinity interactive node was turned off August 1, 2008. Shortly afterwards, a new directory /home/archive/netfinity/ providing access to Netfinity home directories was made accessible from any MSI lab system and from MSI core system interactive nodes. Data is available only as *_read-only_*. Users are able to read data but not write to it or run jobs from it. MSI is replacing the NetFinity with a new system that is currently being installed and should be available for general use by early Fall 2008.

Similar directories for other retired systems are also available:
/home/archive/sp/
/home/archive/es7000/

Regents Professor Truhlar receives Herschbach Award

Donald G. Truhlar, Regents Professor in the Department of Chemistry, MSI Fellow, and former MSI Director, has received the 2009 Dudley R. Herschbach Award for Excellence in Research in Collision Dynamics. The award, named after Harvard University Emeritus Professor and Nobel Prize winner Dudley R. Herschbach, is awarded for "bold and architectural works inspiring and empowering in the field of the dynamics of molecular collisions."