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Julie Dickerson receives Blue Waters Supercomputer Allocation

Julie Dickerson, a BCB faculty member in ECPE, was P.I. and Gaurav Kandoi, a PhD BCB student in her lab, was coP.I. on a successful Broadening Participation Allocation which requested computing time and disk storage on the Blue Waters supercomputer.  Theirs was one of 21 successful proposals.

Blue Waters is one of the world's most powerful computing systems. The allocations are for computing resources, i.e. quota for use of the super computer and data storage. They have received 84900 node-hours of computing time and a total of 5.0 TB of on-line disk storage on the system.

From the National Center for Supercomputing Applications which administers the Blue Waters Supercomputer:

To lower the barriers for underrepresented groups and communities for gaining access to leadership-class computing resources, the Blue Waters project at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) recently announced a call for proposals for Broadening Participation allocations. The call invited proposals from computational and data analysis projects with requirements for which the Blue Waters resources are essential to advance their research, and who meet one or more of the following criteria:

  • Affiliated with a Minority Serving Institution or institutions within EPSCoR jurisdictions
  • Women, underrepresented minorities, veterans, or people with disabilities
  • Researchers in humanities, arts, or social sciences

A total of 21 proposals have been awarded access to Blue Waters' computing resources amounting to over 3.7 million node-hours for research covering a broad range of science fields. Included among the Principal Investigators (PIs) are ten females and two underrepresented minorities. In addition, there are four female and eight underrepresented minority colleagues listed as co-PIs. Among the lead institutions, five are Minority Serving Institutions and ten are within EPSCoR jurisdictions.

"We are excited to see the strong response to this new allocation category," said Scott Lathrop, Blue Waters' Program Manager for Education, Outreach, and Training. "These projects are demonstrating a sustainable approach to fostering a diverse community in pursuing computational and data-enabled research."

All awardees will be invited to the annual Blue Waters Symposium in 2019 where they will be able to interact with Blue Waters staff, other users, and present their research findings.

The following is a list of the PIs, their institution, and field of research. A summary of their research plans can be found on the Blue Waters portal.

  • Guillermo Araya, University of Puerto Rico - Mayaguez, Engineering and Fluid, Particulate, and Hydraulic Systems
  • Christoph Brehm, University of Kentucky, Fluid, Particulate, and Hydraulic Systems
  • Oliver Browne, University of Kentucky, Fluid, Particulate, and Hydraulic Systems
  • John Cavazos, University of Delaware, Computer and Information Science and Engineering
  • Colleen Clancy, University of California at Davis, Biophysics
  • Chunyuan Diao, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Biological Sciences
  • Julie Dickerson, Iowa State University, Computational Systems Biology
  • Greer Dolby, Arizona State University, Biological and Earth Sciences
  • Francina Dominguez, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Hydroclimatology
  • Jodi Hadden, University of Delaware, Molecular Biosciences
  • Farzad Mashayek, University of Illinois at Chicago, Computational Fluid Dynamics
  • Molly Peeples, Space Telescope Science Institute, Galaxy Evolution
  • Jane Pratt, Georgia State University, Stellar Astronomy and Astrophysics
  • Nicole Riemer, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Atmospheric Sciences
  • Lela Vuković, University of Texas at El Paso, Materials Research
  • Renata Wentzcovitch, Columbia University, Thermodynamics
  • Zhi Jian Wang, University of Kansas, Fluid, Particulate, and Hydraulic Systems
  • Bin Xu, University of Arkansas, Physics (Magnetic Cycloid)
  • Zhen Xu, University of Michigan, Fluid, Particulate, and Hydraulic Systems
  • Jonghua Yan, Jackson State University, Fluid, Particulate, and Hydraulic Systems
  • Xiangdong Zhang, University of Alaska, Atmospheric Sciences and Climate Dynamics