News

MSI PI Keith Barker (associate professor, Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior; Curator of Genetic Resources Collection, Bell Museum) appeared on a recent edition of WCCO-TV’s regular feature, Good Question. The question was, “How do birds know when to migrate?” Professor Barker explained the internal clocks and local environmental conditions that cause different bird species to migrate.
A 2022 TEDxMinneapolis talk by MSI PI Christy Haynes (professor, Chemistry) has been re-edited and elevated to the main TED website. Professor Haynes’s talk, “How nanoparticles can help solve the global food crisis,” has received over 260,000 views.
James “JJ” Johnson, who worked at MSI as a senior software developer for many years, passed away on March 1, 2024. JJ worked on the University of Minnesota’s Galaxy and Galaxy-P projects. His work was a great help to cancer and informatics researchers at the University and elsewhere. The staff of Research Computing and MSI will miss his humor, kindness, and professional skill.
The International Institute for BioSensing (IIB) encourages U of M graduate students to apply to the PACK international Research Fellowship Program. PACK is an NSF-funded international research fellowship opportunity for graduate students (U.S. citizens and permanent residents only) to conduct research at the University of Kiel, Germany. The fellowship provides support for travel, lab fees, and boarding.
On Wednesday, March 6, 2024, MSI staff will perform scheduled maintenance and upgrades to various MSI systems. During this month’s scheduled maintenance period, primary storage, Mesabi, Mangi, and Agate will be unavailable throughout much of the day. A global system reservation will start at 5:00 a.m. on March 6. Jobs that cannot be completed before 5:00 a.m. on March 6 will be held until after maintenance and then started once the system returns to production status. Systems status is always available on our Status page.
The University of Minnesota annually recognizes faculty members for their outstanding contributions to teaching and learning. Three MSI PIs have received awards for 2023-24.
The Earl E. Bakken Medical Devices Center (MDC) has announced that their next Director will be MSI PI Hubert Lim (professor, Otolaryngology and Biomedical Engineering). The MDC, which is part of the Institute for Engineering in Medicine, supports the advancement of medical device innovation.
Several MSI PIs have been named McKnight Land-Grant Professors for 2024-26. These awards recognize promising junior faculty members.
After nearly a decade of service to researchers at the University of Minnesota, the Mesabi computing cluster will be retired on June 5, 2024 and MSI’s clusters will be reconfigured during Summer 2024. The Mangi nodes, which have been attached to Mesabi, will remain in service and be attached to Agate under the new arrangement. Agate will also be expanded with newly purchased nodes in the late summer of 2024.   Impacts for MSI users   SLURM Partitions:   SLURM Partitions retiring on June 5:
Two MSI PIs from the Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Biophysics, Professor Laura Niedernhofer and Professor Paul Robbins, are featured in an article in the Winter 2024 issue of Minnesota Alumni magazine. Professors Niedernhofer and Robbins oversee the Institute on the Biology of Aging and Metabolism, an interdisciplinary research institute that seeks to answer questions about the fundamental biology of aging.
On Wednesday, February 7, 2024, MSI staff will perform scheduled maintenance and upgrades to various MSI systems. During this month’s scheduled maintenance period, primary storage, Mesabi, Mangi, and Agate will be unavailable throughout much of the day. A global system reservation will start at 5:00 a.m. on February 7, 2024. Jobs that cannot be completed before 5:00 a.m. on February 7, 2024 will be held until after maintenance and then started once the system returns to production status.
MSI PI Jian-Ping Wang (professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering) has received the 2024 IEEE Magnetics Society Achievement Award. This is the highest honor in the field of magnetics and is the latest of a series of awards and honors Professor Wang’s research has achieved. This award will be presented at the 2024 Intermag conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in May.
Four MSI PIs are among the recipients of the 2023 research grants from the Minnesota Partnership for Biotechnology and Medical Genomics. These grants are given to project collaborations between researchers at the U of M and the Mayo Clinic. The projects with MSI PIs are: Minnesota Functional Omics Resources (MNFORce)
An article in the Winter 2024 Minnesota Alumni magazine features MSI PI Tetyana Shippee (professor, Health Policy and Management). Professor Shippee studies nursing homes and assisted living facilities with the goal of improving service to the elderly, especially those in the BIPOC community.
Four MSI PIs have been named to the 2023 class of inductees to the U of M’s Academies for Excellence. This honor recognizes outstanding faculty in scientific research, education scholarship, clinical practice, and team science. The MSI PIs are: Academy for Excellence in Health Research
A research team including MSI PI Christophe Lenglet (associate professor, Radiology; Center for Magnetic Resonance Research) has received grants from the Food and Drug Administration and the State of Minnesota Office of Higher Education to continue research into developing a reliable method of assessing changes in patients with amyotophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in order to evaluate different treatments.
MSI tutorials for Spring 2024 are now available for registration. You can see the complete list of tutorials on the MSI website, either on the Events listing or on the Tutorial Calendar.
MSI PI Zhi-Li Zhang (professor, Computer Science and Engineering; Center for Transportation Studies (CTS)) has received a $4.25 million, five-year grant from the National Science Foundation for a project that aims to advance autonomous-vehicle technology. The work involves an interdisciplinary team including researchers at the U of M, the University of Michigan, the Minnesota Department of Transportation, and several industry partners.
On Wednesday, January 3, 2024, MSI staff will perform scheduled maintenance and upgrades to various MSI systems. During this month’s scheduled maintenance period, primary storage, Mesabi, Mangi, and Agate will be unavailable throughout much of the day. A global system reservation will start at 5:00 a.m. on January 3, 2024. Jobs that cannot be completed before 5:00 a.m. on January 3, 2024 will be held until after maintenance and then started once the system returns to production status.
The National Institutes of Health has awarded MSI PI Samuel Myers, Jr. (professor, Humphrey School of Public Affairs; Director, Roy Wilkins Center for Human Relations and Social Justice) a grant of $417,000 to study racial disparities in deaths from drowning. This project will study whether public policies reduce drowning rates.

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