News

As announced last month, MSI will be retiring its old disk storage hardware that was serving as the global scratch space on Wednesday, August 4. For the last 3+ weeks, this file system has been reachable at /scratch.old in a Read-Only state. You may still access these files before August 4, so you have a small amount of time to copy those files elsewhere if needed.
A treatment for Parkinson’s disease involves the placement of electric leads into specific parts of the brain, a treatment known as deep brain stimulation (DBS). Electric impulses through these leads can result in reduction or elimination of the tremors associated with Parkinson’s.
Three MSI PIs in the College of Biological Sciences are leading a new project to develop a bioreactor that can capture CO2 emissions and convert them to formate, a safely storable and transportable liquid that can be used to create other materials.
A project that developed a technology that improves the fuel efficiency of delivery vehicles has won the 2021 Robert C. Johns Research Partnership Award. MSI PI William Northrop (associate professor, Mechanical Engineering) is the PI of this project, and MSI PI Shashi Shekhar (professor, Computer Science and Engineering) is a co-investigator. The U of M team worked with colleagues from UPS, Workhorse Group, and JKV Engineering.
A recent study by the University of Washington showed a correlation between consumption of sugary drinks and colorectal cancer in young women. MSI PI Emil Lou (associate professor, Medicine; Masonic Cancer Center) was interviewed on tv station KSTP recently about this finding.
The Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) has awarded 2021 Minnesota Futures Grants to two projects. This program offers funding each year to promote research that incorporates new, cross-disciplinary ideas.
In a recent paper published in the journal Nature Physics, three MSI PIs from the School of Physics and Astronomy and their colleagues have published findings about the superconductor niobium diselenide (NbSe2). Researchers from the University of Minnesota led the study team, which also included researchers from several other institutions. The study shows that 2D NbSe2, which is only a few molecules thick, is a more resilient superconductor than thicker sheets of the material.
Five MSI PIs have received awards from the 2021 Research Infrastructure Investment Program. This Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) program is designed to support transdisciplinary research and collaboration across the U of M. OVPR made ten awards this year. Below are the MSI PIs who received awards:
On Wednesday, July 7, 2021, MSI staff will perform scheduled maintenance and upgrades to various MSI systems. Primary Storage, Mesabi, and Mangi will be unavailable throughout much of the day. A global system reservation will start at 5:00 a.m. on July 7. Jobs that cannot be completed before 5:00 a.m. on July 7 will be held until after maintenance and then started once the system returns to production status. July maintenance will include:
MSI PI George Karypis (professor, Computer Science and Engineering) received the Distinguished Contributions Award during the 2021 Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (PAKDD). The PAKDD is one of the longest-established and leading conferences in the areas of data mining and knowledge discovery. The award recognizes Professor Karypis’s outstanding contributions to those fields.

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