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<h2 class="homehead" title="MSI News Archive">Archive of MSI News</h2>
		<p>This page archives news about MSI, MSI researchers, and events of interest.</p>
<h3>November 2011</h3>
<h3>People</h3>
<li><strong>Kevin Mohsenian</strong>, a senior in the biomedical engineering department and a researcher in the group of MSI Principal Investigator <strong>Matt Johnson</strong>, recently won the Biomedical Engineering Society's Undergraduate Research Award for 2011. The award was for his simulation work, "Computational Modeling of Pedunculopontine Nucleus Deep Brain Simulation," which is part of the Johnson group's work highlighted in the December Research Spotlight (see sidebar on left of page) and in the <a href="https://www.msi.umn.edu/about/publications/res_highlights.html">MSI Annual Research Highlights 2011</a>. </li>
<li>Recent research by MSI Principal Investigator <strong>David Tilman</strong> (Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior) discusses the possibility that global food demand could double by 2050. This could have serious effects on the environment, but could be avoided by changes in agricultural practices. UMNews has published a <a href="http://www1.umn.edu/news/news-releases/2011/UR_CONTENT_363946.html">news release</a> about this research. Professor Tilman's work is also featured in MSI's <a href="https://www.msi.umn.edu/about/publications/res_highlights.html">Annual Research Highlights 2011</a>. </li>
<li>A <a href="http://www1.umn.edu/news/features/2011/UR_CONTENT_363441.html">UMNews article</a> about the research of MSI Associate Fellow <strong>Nevin D. Young</strong> is featured on the U website. Professor Young and his collaborators recently published a paper in <em>Nature</em> (November 16) concerning their genomic research with legumes. This research increases our knowledge about how legumes produce natural nitrogen fertilizer, which is important to sustainable agriculture.</li>
<li>An interview with MSI Associate Fellow <strong>Gunda Georg</strong> (Director, Institute for Therapeutics Discovery and Development) appears on the <a href="http://giving.umn.edu/news/georg.html">"Giving to the U of M" website</a>. Professor Georg and other researchers at the ITDD use MSI resources for their drug discovery and development projects.</li>
<li>An article about <strong>Karen Gran’s</strong> (Geological Sciences, Duluth) research into river sediment, shown in the November Research Spotlight (see sidebar), appeared in a recent issue of <a href="http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es2019109"><em>Environmental Science and Technology</em></a>. It has also been selected as an <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/334/6054/twil.full#compilation-1-3-article-title-1">Editor’s Choice article</a> by <em>Science</em>.</li>
<li>MSI Principal Investigator <strong>Jon Foley</strong> (Director, Institute on the Environment) has a feature article in <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=can-we-feed-the-world">Scientific American</a>. "Can We Feed the World and Sustain the Planet?” discusses how we can double the amount of food produced by the world’s farmers while also decreasing farming’s adverse effects on the environment. Professor Foley’s MSI research investigates how changes in the Amazon basin affect rainfall patterns.
</li>
<li>MSI Associate Fellow <strong>Kathryn VandenBosch</strong> (Head, Plant Biology) has been selected to be Dean of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at <a href="http://www.news.wisc.edu/releases/16960">UW Madison</a>. Professor VandenBosch has been a Principal Investigator at MSI since 2003 and was named an Associate Fellow in 2010.</li>
<li>On November 4, 2011, the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics held a symposium in honor of Regents Professor Emeritus <strong>Daniel D. Joseph</strong>, MSI Fellow, who passed away on May 24. More information about the symposium can be found on the <a href="http://www.aem.umn.edu/info/JosephMemorial.shtml">AEM website</a>.</li>

<h3>October 2011</h3>
<h3>Visitor Numbers to LMVL at an All-Time High</h3>
<p>
The LMVL hit a milestone in October by logging its 1,000th visitor for the year 2011. Over 100 of these visitors were from businesses and government agencies that are interested in the research being performed at the University and at MSI. We have also been visited by government officials, notably U.S. Senator Al Franken (D-MN) in February and U.S. Representative Erik Paulsen (R-MN) in September. Many of the visitors saw 3D virtual-reality visualizations prepared by researchers at the Medical Devices Center, who are working on new ways of testing such devices as artificial heart valves. Even the University's new president, Eric Kaler, visited the LMVL to see the MDC's work during his tour of the College of Science and Engineering prior to his inauguration. 
</p><p>
In addition to business and government visitors, over 400 students have also toured the lab this year. These have included: elementary-, middle-, and high-school students participating in various camps and programs; prospective University students; and undergraduate and graduate students from the University and other local colleges and universities. Other groups touring the lab and seeing visualization demos included various organizations at the University and visitors from other colleges, universities, and professional organizations. 
</p><p>
Faculty in such fields as astronomy, mechanical engineering, earth sciences, biomedical engineering, computer science, writing studies, and anthropology have used the LMVL to create visualizations that support and extend their research, and several MSI PIs use the lab to present visualizations to visitors to their departments. Finally, four classes taught by MSI PIs during 2011 have used the LMVL for class sessions.</p>
<h3>Wind Energy Research Station</h3>
<p>
The new Wind Energy Research Station at the University's UMore Park hosted a <a href="http://eolos.umn.edu/news/eolos-wind-research-station-commissioning-ceremony">commissioning event</a> on October 25 at the U’s UMore Park. MSI is one of the U units participating in the <a href="http://eolos.umn.edu/">Eolos Wind Energy Consortium</a> with a number of other educational and industry partners.

<h3>September 2011</h3>
<h3>People</h3>
<li>Professor and MSI Fellow <strong>Chris Cramer</strong> (Chemistry) received a 2010-11 Morse Alumni Award for distinguished teaching. Read about this award on the <a href="http://www.minnesotaalumni.org/s/1118/content.aspx?sid=1118&amp;gid=1&amp;pgid=2950#Cramer2">University Alumni Association website</a>. Professor Cramer has been a Fellow of the Institute since 1996.</li>
<li>The cover article of the September 2011 issue of <a href="http://dmd.aspetjournals.org/">Drug Metabolism and Disposition</a> was written by MSI Principal Investigator <strong>Yuk Sham</strong> (Center for Drug Design) and his research group. The article is called "pH-Dependent Transport of Pemetrexed by Breast Cancer Resistance Protein."</li>
<h3>New Storage System on Itasca</h3>
<p>
MSI has installed a new Dell | Terascala HPC Storage System (HSS) on Itasca. The HSS adds 550 TB of disk space and significantly improves Itasca's overall storage performance and capacity. More information is available in our recent <a href="https://www.msi.umn.edu/about/publications/hpc-storage.html">press release</a>.
<h3>Visit by Representative Erik Paulsen</h3>
<p>
U.S. Congressman Erik Paulsen, who represents Minnesota's 3rd District, visited the LCSE-MSI Visualization Laboratory on September 26, 2011. Rep. Paulsen was on campus to meet with officials from the Office of Technology Commercialization and a start-up company spun out of the University to talk about the U's process for moving research innovations from the lab to the marketplace.
</p><p>
At the LMVL, Professor Dan Keefe (MSI Principal Investigator, Computer Science and Engineering) showed a 3D virtual-reality demonstration that was created using MSI's supercomputers and visualization equipment. The demonstration showed blood flow through an artificial heart valve. It is hoped that this kind of visualization will be approved by the FDA as a way to design medical devices. The project includes joint research by Professor Keefe, Professor Fotis Sotiropoulos (MSI Fellow, St. Anthony Falls Laboratory), and Professor Art Erdman (MSI Principal Investigator, Mechanical Engineering). Congressman Paulsen also met with University President Eric Kaler.
</p><p>
Below: Mr. Bill Hellriegel, Assistant to the Director, presents an overview of MSI to Congressman Paulsen (seated, white shirt). 
</p><p>
<img  src="http://www.msi.umn.edu/assets/images/news_images/201109/Paulsen_visit_2_small.jpg">
</p><h3>President Kaler Visits LMVL</h3>
<p>
The University's new President, Eric Kaler, and his wife, Karen Kaler, visited the LSCE-MSI Visualization Lab during their visit to the College of Science and Engineering on September 21. The Kalers saw a 3D virtual-reality demonstration that is part of a medical-device development project headed by MSI Principal Investigators and CSE Professors Fotis Sotiropoulos, Art Erdman, and Dan Keefe. 
<h3>MSI at the Minnesota State Fair</h3>
<p>
MSI participated with the Medical Devices Center (MDC) at the Minnesota State Fair on September 1. We showed off some of the work we do with the MDC. The University of Minnesota Building is at the corner of Dan Patch Avenue and Underwood Street. More information about the U's activities at the Fair, including a daily calendar, can be found at the U's <a href="http://www.statefair.umn.edu/">State Fair website</a>.
<h3>LMVL in Walter Library Video</h3>
<p>
<a href="http://www.tpt.org/">Twin Cities Public Television</a> recently aired a documentary about the architect who designed the building in which MSI resides, Walter Library. An outtake from the show dealing with the <a href="http://www.tpt.org/includes/programs/productions/tabLoader.php?id=47">renovation of Walter</a> (scroll down to "Walter Library Renovation") also shows MSI's <a href="https://www.msi.umn.edu/labs/lmvl/">LMVL</a>. The visualization of Rayleigh-Taylor instability at the end of the video clip is by Professor Paul Woodward (Astronomy, MSI Fellow).

<h3>August 2011</h3>
<h3>People</h3>
<li>MSI Associate Fellow <strong>Elizabeth Amin</strong> (Medicinal Chemistry) has been awarded the Hewlett-Packard Outstanding Junior Faculty Award for 2011 by the American Chemical Society. Professor Amin will receive the award at the <a href="http://portal.acs.org/portal/acs/corg/content?_nfpb=true&amp;_pageLabel=PP_MULTICOLUMN_T5_33&amp;node_id=516&amp;use_sec=false&amp;sec_url_var=region1&amp;__uuid=116e726a-d4a9-4eef-b353-d7505b76ddd7">ACS 2011 National Meeting</a>. She will present her research as part of the Division of Computers in Chemistry poster session.</li>
<h3>Visualization Lab Highlighted by OVPR</h3>
<p>
You can read an article about the <a href="https://www.msi.umn.edu/labs/lmvl/">LMVL</a> on the OVPR <a href="http://researchumn.com/2011/08/25/rd-in-3-d/">Research Blog</a>. The article includes several pictures of the 3-D visualization wall in use.
<h3>July 2011</h3>
<h3>People</h3>
<li>An article by the research group of MSI Fellow <strong>Don Truhlar</strong> (Chemistry) appeared in a recent issue of Chemical and Engineering News. See a description of this research at the <a href="http://www.chem.umn.edu/news/research_news.lasso?serial=249">chemistry department's webpage</a>. </li>
<li>MSI will provide supercomputer time and consulting support to <strong>Lucy Fortson</strong> (Physics and Astronomy) on a project that was recently awarded a <a href="http://www.research.umn.edu/advance/mnfutures-awards.html#research">2011-2013 Minnesota Futures Grant</a>. 
</li>
<h3>MSI Fellow Working With Business Startup</h3>
<p>
MSI Fellow Professor Steven Girshick (Mechanical Engineering) is mentioned in a recent University News Service article about University of Minnesota startup company <a href="http://www1.umn.edu/news/features/2011/UR_CONTENT_342758.html">Rushford Hypersonic</a>. Professor Girshick uses MSI to develop computational models of plasmas used in industrial applications. He is working with Rushford Hypersonic to evaluate hypersonic plasma particle deposition (HPPD) coatings on medical devices.
<h3> 11th National Congress on Computational Mechanics </h3>
<P>
The 11th National Congress on Computational Mechanics was held in Minneapolis on July 25-29, 2011. To get more information, see the <a href="http://www.usnccm.org/">Congress website</a>.

<h3>May 2011</h3>
<h3>People</h3>
<li>Professor Emeritus <strong>Daniel D. Joseph</strong>, Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics, passed away on May 24, 2011. Professor Joseph was an MSI Principal Investigator for many years, and had been an MSI Fellow since 1999. More information can be found on the <a href="http://www.aem.umn.edu/info/spotlight/Prof_Joseph_Passing.shtml">AEM website</a>. The staff of the Institute express their deepest condolences to Professor Joseph's family, friends, and colleagues.</li>
<li>MSI Principal Investigator <strong>Aditya Bhan</strong> (Chemical Engineering and Materials Science) has been named a McKnight Land-Grant Professor. You can read about Professor Bhan in the <a href="http://researchnewsumn.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/profile-of-aditya-bhan-mcknight-land-grant-professor/">OVPR Research News Online</a>. </li>
<li>A recent paper by MSI Fellow <strong>Don Truhlar</strong> (Chemistry) and his group was featured in a YouTube video by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hdVjb2gRgQ">Professor Martyn Poliakoff</a> of the University of Nottingham, UK. The paper, "Kinetic Isotope Effects for the Reactions of Muonic Helium and Muonium With H2," appeared in <em>Science</em> magazine (<em>Science</em> 331, 448-450 (2011)).
</li>
<li>An article about the work of MSI Fellow <strong>Renata Wentzcovitch</strong> (Chemical Engineering and Materials Science) appears in the May 2011 issue of <a href="http://ptonline.aip.org/journals/doc/PHTOAD-ft/vol_64/iss_5/12_1.shtml">Physics Today</a>. </li>

<h3>U of M Economic Impact Study</h3>
<p>
A study of the economic impact of the University on the state economy and society was recently completed. The <a href="http://impact.umn.edu/">results of the study</a> are available.

<h3>ICIS Summer Workshops</h3>
The <a href="http://www.icis.anl.gov/">Institute for Computing in Science</a> hosted <a href="http://www.icis.anl.gov/programs/">eight workshops</a> this summer in Park City, Utah. Each week-long workshop was organized by leaders in computational science, mathematics, and computer science. The goal of ICIS is to build ties between these fields through an annual series of intensive workshops aimed at examining deep questions that lie at the intersection of computation and science. More information can be found on the ICIS website. 

<h3> Courses from Electrical and Computer Engineering </h3>
The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering held a Tech Tune Up course series on several days between May 23 and June 9. This was an opportunity to learn about the latest innovations, to advance your skills, and to network with campus professors. More information can be found on the <a href="http://www.ece.umn.edu/ECETECHTUNEUP.html">ECE website</a>.
<p></p>
<h3>April 2011</h3>
<h3> 2011 MSI Research Exhibition</h3>
Thank you to everyone who participated in the 2011 MSI Research Exhibition on Monday, April 25. Pictures of the poster-competition winners can be seen on the <a href="https://www.msi.umn.edu/events/researchexhibition2011.html">Research Exhibition webpage</a>. Congratulations to our winners!
<h3>People</h3>
<li>In April 2011, the Associated Press released a story concerning tsunami danger to nuclear plants in Asia. The article quotes Professor <strong>Dave Yuen</strong> (Geology and Geophysics; MSI Fellow), whose group uses MSI resources to create computer simulations of tsunami propagation. The article appeared in many news outlets in print and online.</li>
<li>MSI Principal Investigator <strong>Chad Myers</strong> (Computer Science and Engineering) was recently named a McKnight Land-Grant Professor. His research, which involves using computational methods to investigate problems in genetics, is highlighted in the OVPR’s <a href="http://researchnewsumn.wordpress.com/2011/04/06/chad-myers-mcknight-land-grant-professor/">Research News Online</a>.</li>
<li>MSI Associate Fellow <strong>Robert Lysak</strong> (Physics) has been selected as a 2011 Fellow of the American Geophysical Union. See more at the <a href="http://www.physics.umn.edu/">School of Physics and Astronomy website</a>.</li>
<li>MSI Principal Investigator <strong>Cynthia Cattell</strong> (Physics) has won the 2011 George W. Taylor Award for Distinguished Service. See more at the <a href="http://www.physics.umn.edu/">School of Physics and Astronomy website</a>. </li>
<li>MSI Principal Investigator <strong>Robert Reich</strong> (Forest Resources) has been named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. See the <a href="http://www1.umn.edu/news/news-releases/2011/UR_CONTENT_329950.html">College of Food, Agricultural, and Natural Resource Sciences website</a> for more details. </li>
<li>MSI Principal Investigator <strong>Reuben Harris</strong> (Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Biophysics) has been awarded a $10 million grant for his research into the human antiviral protein APOBEC3G, which has potential to treat HIV and other diseases. See more at the <a href="http://www1.umn.edu/news/news-releases/2011/UR_CONTENT_324211.html">UM News website</a>. Professor Harris’s work has also been highlighted in the <a href="https://www.msi.umn.edu/about/publications/res_highlights.html">2008-09 MSI Annual Research Highlights</a> and the <a href="https://www.msi.umn.edu/about/publications/researchbulletin/">Fall 2008 MSI Research Bulletin</a>. </li>
<li>MSI Principal Investigator <strong>Mark Distefano</strong> (Chemistry) has been named a Distinguished McKnight Professor by the University. You can read about Professor Distefano on the <a href="http://cse.umn.edu/admin/comm/newsreleases/2011_4_13_Disting_McKnight.php">College of Science and Engineering website</a>.</li>


<p></p>
<h3>March 2011</h3>
<h3> CSE Prospective Students Visit LMVL </h3>
Prospective students visiting the <a href="http://cse.umn.edu/index.php">College of Science and Engineering (CSE)</a> on March 7 saw a three-dimensional simulation of blood flow on the PowerWall in the LCSE-MSI Visualization Laboratory. Members of Assistant Professor Dan Keefe’s (Computer Science and Engineering and MSI PI) research group showed the visualization, created in a cooperative effort by Computer Science, the Medical Devices Center, and St. Anthony Falls Laboratory, to high-school students and their families. Tours sponsored by the <a href="http://admissio.tc.umn.edu/forms/visit_desc11.html">Office of Admissions</a> allow students to see working laboratories on campus and learn about opportunities at the University. Additional groups of prospective CSE students visited the LMVL on March 21 and 28.

<h3> Midyear Renewal Unnecessary to Maintain MSI Access</h3>
<p>MSI has transitioned to a yearly renewal cycle for most users. Renewals occur in the fall for the following calendar year. All currently active accounts will remain active through 2011, and there is no need to complete the online renewal form to maintain your access. PIs who may need significant SU allocations have already been contacted about requesting them.</p>

<h3>February 2011</h3>
<h3> Senator Al Franken Visits Medical Devices Center and MSI </h3>
On Saturday, Feb. 19, Senator Al Franken (DFL-MN) was at the LCSE-MSI Visualization Lab as part of a visit to the <a href="http://www.mdc.umn.edu/ ">Medical Devices Center (MDC)</a>. Sen. Franken is interested in the U’s contributions to the medical-device industry in Minnesota. An article about the visit can be found at <a href="http://www.minnpost.com/bradallen/2011/02/21/25973/u_center_offers_a_3-d_walk_through_a_heart_seeks_to_accelerate_medical_device_design ">MinnPost.com</a>. The article includes a picture of the Senator using a virtual-reality simulation that MDC researchers developed with technology available through MSI. 

<h3> MSI's New Renewal Schedule </h3>
<p>
MSI is transitioning to a one-year renewal cycle for allocations of 200,000 or fewer service units (SUs) per year. Renewals will be required in the fall for the following calendar year. If your group uses only lab resources or requested fewer than 100,000 SUs for the January through June 2011 period, your accounts will remain active throughout 2011.
</p><p>
Because allocations of greater than 100,000 SUs for the January through June period (greater than 200,000 for the full year) use substantially more MSI resources than the smaller requests, the allocation committee determined that these large users will still need to submit the renewal form every six months. </p>
<h3> Blue Water Proposal Preparation </h3>
William Kramer, Blue Waters Deputy Project Director, NCSA, gave a presentation at MSI on Friday, February 25, 10 am - 12 pm, in 402 Walter Library. The topic of the presentation was the <a href="http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/BlueWaters/system.html">Blue Waters architecture</a> and how to submit a successful PRAC proposal. 
<p></p>
<h3>January 2011</h3>

<h3> MSI at Amantes de la Ciencia </h3>
On Saturday, January 29, MSI staff represented us at the "Amantes de la Ciencia” event at the Science Museum of Minnesota. The event introduces attendees to science and education professionals from the Twin Cities' Latino/a and Hispanic communities. MSI showed how supercomputing plays a valuable role in all research areas at the University of Minnesota, from 3-D visualizations of hemoglobin to circuit boards. Attendees could even "build” their own molecules. See photos from the event <a href="https://www.msi.umn.edu/%7Ecpsosa/ScienceMuseumJan2011.html">here</a>.

<h3> Koronis </h3>
MSI’s newest HPC resource, Koronis, is now operational and we are accepting proposals for its use. See our <a href="https://www.msi.umn.edu/about/publications/Koronis_Release.html">press release</a> for more information about the Koronis system. Koronis users must have NIH funding or be performing research that will lead to an NIH grant proposal. See the <a href="https://www.msi.umn.edu/hardware/koronis/">Koronis webpage</a> for complete proposal instructions. 

<h3> New Assistant Director of HPC Operations </h3>
MSI is pleased to announce that Jeff McDonald is the new MSI Assistant Director of HPC Operations, effective January 26, 2011.
<p></p>

<h3>December 2010</h3>

<h3>MSI Supports Climate-Change Research</h3>
The <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/17730208">December 18 issue of The Economist</a>
highlights the work being done by the not-for-profit Planetary Skin Institute (PSI), created by Cisco
Systems and NASA, on measurement of the extent and health of the world's
forests. Key to that effort has been the data-mining work led by
Professor Vipin Kumar (MSI Fellow, Computer Science and Engineering).
Professor Kumar and his collaborators participated in the United Nations
recent climate change conference in Cancun and gave a joint presentation
there with the PSI and NASA. Other articles about Professor Kumar's work
appear in the <a href="http://static.msi.umn.edu/research_bulletin/2008-24-3.pdf">Fall 2008 MSI Research Bulletin</a> and in the <a href="http://static.msi.umn.edu/about/publications/annualreport/rh_2010.pdf">
2010 Annual Research Highlights</a>.

<h3>MSI Fellow Featured in OVPR's Research News Online</h3>
MSI Principal Investigator and Associate Fellow Elizabeth Amin, Department of Medicinal Chemistry, was highlighted in the OVPR's Research News Online. You can read the article on the <a href="http://bit.ly/fJ1ElL">OVPR website</a>

<h3>MSI Supports the EOLOS Consortium and Wind Energy Research </h3>
The EOLOS consortium led by the University of Minnesota and supported by a US Department of Energy grant has a new website (http://www.eolos.umn.edu/) up. The consortium was established to create collaboration between universities, government organizations, and industry in hopes of learning more about wind powered energy. Members of the consortium have used MSI’s Itasca supercomputer to perform simulations of turbine flow and modeling of the atmosphere. With MSI’s help, the consortium will be able to improve wind energy technology, thus, making it easier to expand wind power across the country. For more information on MSI’s involvement in the EOLOS consortium, please see our "Modeling the Wind” article in our <a href="%20/about/publications/res_highlights.html">2010 Annual Research Highlights</a>.

<p></p>
<h3>November 2010</h3>

<h3> MSI Participates in Math and Science Family Fun Fair</h3>
MSI participated in the College of Science and Engineering’s Math and
Science Family Fun Fair on Saturday, November 13th. More than 200 kids
and their parents came to MSI’s booth at Coffman Union. The families were
able to see first-hand how supercomputers are helping researchers at the
University of Minnesota and beyond by getting to experiment with some
computing equipment and view some of our 3-D visualizations. <a href="%0Ahttps://www.msi.umn.edu/%7Ecpsosa/MathandScienceFairSep2010.html">Pictures from the event</a> are available.

<h3>MSI featured on Global Learning Series</h3></li>
<p>MSI, and more specifically, our Itasca supercomputer, was recently featured on a television program called "The Global Learning Series.”  In the video you will see former MSI Director Tom Jones, as well as University of Minnesota chemistry professor and MSI Fellow, Darrin York,  talk about the development of computers over time, the importance of supercomputing at a research institution and how modern supercomputers work. The program will be used as interstitial programming on a network of 349 public television stations across the country.<p>

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<P>
<h3>October 2010</h3>
<h3>Itasca Already Providing Big Boost to Researchers</h3>
In Summer 2010, MSI made available to its users its newest supercomputer, named Itasca, and Itasca is already making a world of difference to researchers at the university.
</p><p>
Charles Campbell, a University of Minnesota physics and astronomy professor uses MSI to study layered quantum magnets. He says of Itasca, "Our research has benefitted tremendously from being able to use Itasca. Some of our calculations are so intensive that they are simply impracticable without it.”
</p><p>
Brian Ropers-Huilman, Assistant Director for HPC Operations at MSI explains why Itasca has been so successful: "With four times as many cores and better memory bandwidth than anything we were able to offer before, the time it takes for us to earn a solution is considerably less. Time to solution is what our users care about most.”
</p><p>
Chris Cramer, a chemistry professor, couldn’t agree more about the benefits of Itasca: "Itasca added a stunning amount of capacity to MSI's already quite good facilities. As a result, our wait times for initiating jobs are negligible and our productivity has increased several-fold.”
</p><p>
In addition to providing increased productivity, Itasca is allowing users to test code in order to prepare for even more intensive work to be done at national supercomputing centers. Alexander Heger (associate professor of physics) and his graduate student Ken Chen are two of those users. Said Chen, "Itasca has helped us define what simulations we want to run at the National Energy Research Computing Center.”
</p><p>
In a short amount of time, Itasca has already helped the University of Minnesota in its goals to become a top research university. By allowing researchers to perform complex modeling and run intensive simulations more efficiently than ever before, the University of Minnesota is on the forefront of discovery. Campbell again, "Itasca is ideally suited to the nature of our work. Our results are now clearly setting the benchmarks in our field.”
</p>
<h3>September 2010</h3>
<h3>Intel Case Study Spotlights MSI</h3>
<p>Intel has recently released a <a href="http://static.msi.umn.edu/general/miscdocs/IntelCaseStudy.pdf">case study</a> about their Xeon processors and
software-development products that spotlights MSI. The study discusses
our two newest systems, Itasca and Koronis. Koronis will be available to
users later this year.
<p>
<h3>August 2010</h3>
<h3>MSI to Purchase New Supercomputer System</h3>
<p>MSI has recently been awarded an NIH grant to purchase a new SGI Altix
UV 1000 supercomputer, which will be called "Koronis." This machine will
be used by MSI researchers working on a number of NIH-funded projects in
the areas of multi-scale modeling, chemical dynamics, bioinformatics and
computational biology, and biomedical imaging. The Principal
Investigator on the grant is Professor Darrin York (Chemistry, MSI
Fellow). The research groups of professors Jiali Gao (Chemistry, MSI
Fellow), Donald Truhlar (Chemistry, MSI Fellow), George Karypis
(Computer Science and Engineering, MSI Associate Fellow), David
Largaespada (Genetics, Cell Biology, and Development), Kelvin Lim
(Psychiatry), and Bin He (Biomedical Engineering) will also be using
Koronis. More information can be found at the <a href="http://www.sgi.com/company_info/newsroom/press_releases/2010/august/msi.html">SGI website</a>.
<h3>MSI Fellow Vipin Kumar Receives NSF Grant</h3>
<p>Professor and MSI Fellow Vipin Kumar (Computer Science and Engineering)
will be leading an interdisciplinary team from the University of
Minnesota and other universities nationwide in a $10 million NSF project
to study climate change. Professor Kumar's group uses MSI resources to
develop the high-performance data-mining algorithms used in this
research. The supercomputers are necessary because of the huge size of
the datasets involved. The <a href="http://www1.umn.edu/news/news-releases/2010/UR_CONTENT_248087.html">UMNews story</a> has further details.

<h3>MSI Fellow Jiali Gao Receives IBM Award</h3>
<p>Professor and MSI Fellow Jiali Gao of the Department of Chemistry and
the Biomedical Informatics and Computational Biology Program was
recently named winner of the global annual IBM Faculty Award. The award
recognizes Professor Gao's research in the development of quantum
mechanical methods. Some of this research was done using MSI resources.
Professor Gao has been an MSI Fellow since 1998. For more information on
the IBM award, see the <a href="http://cse.umn.edu/admin/comm/newsreleases/2010_07_26_IBM-AWARD-JIALI-GAO.php">College of Science and Engineering website</a>
and the <a href="http://www.r.umn.edu/about-umr/media/news/media-resources/news-releases/UMR_CONTENT_236462.html">University of Minnesota Rochester website</a>.
<p>
<h3>July 2010</h3>
<h3>MSI Interim Director Tom Jones Steps Down</h3>
<p>
On July 31, 2010, Professor Tom Jones, Department of Astronomy and MSI
Fellow, stepped down after serving as MSI Interim Director for two years.
<p>
During his tenure as Interim Director, Professor Jones spearheaded the
purchase of Itasca, a Hewlett-Packard Linux cluster that is the
Institute's newest supercomputer. He also implemented a number of
administrative and technical changes in MSI's management procedures.
Among these is the new online system for renewing user accounts. He also
helped with the international search for the new MSI Director, Professor
Jorge Vinals, who has taken over as of August 1.
<p>
MSI and OVPR staff thanked Professor Jones at a reception on July 15.
<p>
<img src="http://www.msi.umn.edu/assets/images/news_images/201008/TWJ1.jpg">
<img src="http://www.msi.umn.edu/assets/images/news_images/201008/TWJ2.jpg">
<img src="http://www.msi.umn.edu/assets/images/news_images/201008/TWJ3.jpg">
<p>
<h3>New Director for MSI</h3>
<p>
MSI is very happy to report that Jorge Vinals has accepted the offer to
become the next MSI Director. He will also become a professor of
physics. Jorge will assume the directorship on August 1, 2010.
<p>
<img src="http://www.msi.umn.edu/assets/images/news_images/201004/jorge.jpg">
</p><p>
Jorge is currently the director of CLUMEQ, a Canadian Supercomputing
Center led by McGill University with sites in Montreal and Quebec City.
CLUMEQ provides high-performance computation to Canadian academic
institutions. Their newest compute cluster, "Colosse," is located in
Quebec and came in at 63 in the November 2009 TOP500 list. A second,
larger cluster will be commissioned this summer in Montreal. Jorge is
therefore very familiar with many of the opportunities and challenges
encountered in organizations such as MSI.
</p><p>
Jorge has been a professor of physics and Canada Research Chair in
Nonequilibrium Materials at McGill. He joined McGill in 2004 as the
first director of the McGill Institute of Advanced Materials before
becoming the director of CLUMEQ in 2007. Prior to that, he was a Program
Director for Materials Science Research at the School of Computational
Science and Information Technology of Florida State University, and a
staff member in the Supercomputer Computations Research Institute of the
university, a precursor to the School. The Institute operated as a US
DOE National Supercomputing Facility.
</p><p>
His field of specialty is nonlinear science with applications to
nonequilibrium phenomena, materials science, and biophysics. He has also
held a senior NIH fellowship at the Laboratory of Computational Genomics
at the Donald Danforth Center in St. Louis. He has a broad scientific
background, and experience in funding of large, interdisciplinary
research activities.
</p>
<h3>Petascale Computing Summer Courses</h3>
During Summer 2010, MSI hosted two courses for grad students and postdocs in association with the Virtual School of Computational Science and Engineering (VSCSE) of the Center for Computational Science (Miami, Florida). The VSCSE brings together faculty from throughout the country to create courses that focus on petascale computing and petascale-enabled science and engineering. MSI hosted <a href="https://www.msi.umn.edu/events/vscse/">Petascale Programming Environments and Tools</a> (July 6-9, 2010) and <a href="https://www.msi.umn.edu/events/vscse/big_data.html">Big Data for Science</a> (July 26-30, 2010).
<h3>Seventh Graders Introduced to Supercomputing</h3>
On July 1, Brian Ropers-Huilman, MSI Director of Systems Administration
and Technical Operations, spoke to a group of seventh-grade students
about MSI, high-performance computing, and programming for computers.
The students are taking a class in Math and Programming as part of the
<a href="http://www.mity.org">Minnesota Institute for Talented Youth</a>'s "Expand Your Mind" Program. Mr. Ropers-Huilman also took the class and
their teacher on a tour of the MSI machine room to show them the
supercomputers.
<p>
<h3>June 2010</h3>
<h3>U's Solar Car Takes Second in Race</h3>
The University of Minnesota's latest solar car took second in the
biennial American Solar Challenge race. This year's race went from
Tulsa, Oklahoma to Chicago, Illinois on June 19-26, 2010. The vehicle,
named Centaurus II, was designed and built by University of Minnesota
students. Team members used MSI supercomputers for modeling airflow
around the shell of the vehicle. An article about the Solar Vehicle
Project's work appeared in the <a href="http://static.msi.umn.edu/research_bulletin/2009-25-2.pdf">Summer 2009 Research Bulletin</a>. More
information about the 2010 race can be found on the <a href="http://cse.umn.edu/admin/comm/newsreleases/CSE_NEWS_214195.php">College of Science
and Engineering website</a>.
<p>
<h3>MSI Assists in Outreach Program</h3>
<p>
On June 14th, a group of high school students began their week at Exploring Careers in Engineering and Physical Science (ECEPS) summer sessions with an all-day session at the Supercomputing Institute. The seminar, Molecular Modeling with Super(duper)computers, allowed the students to explore some simple, but robust, models that let chemists make predictions about things like sweetness, drug activity, gas pressures, and fuel values, using the software available at MSI. They also found out how the computers themselves work and what makes them useful in a world that is increasingly relying on predictions to streamline research and design.
<p>
During the ECEPS program, the students participate in seminars and workshops led by College of Science and Engineering (formerly the Institute of Technology) engineers and scientists. These workshops can include participating in demonstrations, lectures, tours, and lab experiences that help make engineering, science, and mathematics be seen as viable careers to the high school students.  
<p>
The summer ECEPS sessions are for high school students entering the 10th, 11th, or 12th grades who are interested in engineering, physical science, or mathematics. Each session lasts one week. More information can be found <a href="http://www.it.umn.edu/outreach/eceps/">here</a>.
<p>
<img src="http://www.msi.umn.edu/assets/images/news_images/201006/ECEPS1.jpg"><p>
Dr. Nick Labello (MSI User Support) shows ECEPS participants visualizations on the Powerwall in the LMVL.
<p>
<img src="http://www.msi.umn.edu/assets/images/news_images/201006/ECEPS2.jpg"><p>
Professor Ilja Siepmann (Chemistry, MSI Fellow) explains software at the SDVL to two ECEPS participants.
<p>
<h3>April 2010</h3>
<h3>Research Exhibition prize winners and pictures</h3>
Research Exhibition prize winners and pictures are now linked from the <a href="https://www.msi.umn.edu/events/25th/index.html">MSI 25th Anniversary Research Exhibition page</a>.
<p>
<h3>MSI Researchers Win Awards</h3>
Two MSI Principal Investigators have recently won prestigious awards:
</p><ul>


<li>Regents Professor Ron Phillips (Agronomy and Plant Genetics) has been awarded the ISA 2010 Medal for Science
</li>
<li>Regents Professor David Tilman (Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior) has been awarded the Heineken Prize for Environmental Sciences</li>
</ul>
<p>
More information can be found on the <a href="http://www1.umn.edu/twincities/faculty-staff/people/index.html">University Relations People page</a>.
</p><h3>Using the Blue Waters Supercomputer for Astronomical Research</h3>
Blue Waters, which is expected to be the world’s most powerful supercomputer for open scientific research when it goes online in 2011, is already providing researchers with opportunities for state-of-the-art computing research. Professor and MSI Fellow Paul Woodward (Astronomy) is one of the astrophysicists using Blue Waters. See a brief discussion on <a href="http://www.hpcwire.com/offthewire/Astrophysicists-Cosmologists-to-Tap-Power-of-Blue-Waters-88561002.html">HPCWire</a>.
</p><p>
</p><h3>How Electricity Moves Through Cells</h3>
<p>
Professor and MSI Associate Fellow Carrie Wilmot (Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Biophysics) and her research team recently published an article in Science about a molecular image they have created of a system that moves electronics between proteins in cells. The article appears in the March 12 issue. The University News Service story about this research appears on the <a href="http://www1.umn.edu/news/news-releases/2010/UR_CONTENT_180579.html">UMN website</a>.
</p><p>
</p><h3>BICB Trainee Wins Fellowship</h3>
<p>
A BICB trainee at the University of Minnesota Rochester has won a prestigious IBM Ph.D. Fellowship for work he has done with Blue Gene and MSI on metabolic pathways. MSI provides computational resources to the BICB (Biomedical Informatics and Computational Biology) program and is a partner with the program in a Shared University Research (SUR) Program grant from IBM. 


	<h3>December 2009</h3>

<h3>Wind Energy Research</h3>
                <p>MSI Fellow and Principal Investigator Fotis Sotiropoulos, Director of 
the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory, is leading a team that has recently 
received a $8 million grant from DOE to study wind energy development. 
Professor Sotiropoulos leads a consortium made up of researchers from 
the Institute of Technology, the University of Minnesota Morris, 
Syracuse University, and Dakota County Technical College. The team will 
also collaborate with industry. For more information, see 
<a href="http://blog.lib.umn.edu/itcomm/news/2009/10/university_of_minnesota_to_lea.html">this article
</a>on the Institute of Technology website. 
            </p>


	<h3>NIGMS-NSF webinar on Blue Waters HPC opportunities</h3>        
	<p>The NSF is soliciting proposals for computing time on the Blue
	Waters petascale computing system now under construction at the
	University of Illinois. The National Institute of General Medical
	Sciences at NIH is hosting a virtual workshop and applicant briefing
	on Blue Waters to encourage the development of high-impact community
	proposals for computing time on this new resource.</p>
	<p>The videocast is scheduled for Thursday, Dec. 17, from 1-3 p.m. CST.
	You will be able to access it at <a href="http://videocast.nih.gov/summary.asp?live=8324">http://videocast.nih.gov/summary.asp?live=8324</a>.</p>
	<p>More information can be found here: <a href="https://loop.nigms.nih.gov/index.p
hp/2009/12/03/propose-research-using-the-worlds-most-powerful-supercomputer/">https://loop.nigms.
nih.gov/index.php/2009/12/03/propose-research-using-the-worlds-most-powerful-supercomputer/</a>.
        </p>

        <h3>November 2009</h3>

<h3>MSI Open House</h3>
        <p>MSI held an Open House on Wednesday, November 4. The event was free and 
open to the public. Activities included a panel discussion, talks about 
MSI and supercomputing, software and hardware demonstrations, displays 
of research at MSI, and tours. For more information, please see the 
<a href="events/openhouse2009/">Open House website</a>.
        </p>


<h3 name="itasca">University of Minnesota Supercomputing Institute offers enhanced high
performance computing resources to researchers with new Supercomputer
powered by HP</h3>

<p>Contacts:
</p><ul>

<li>Amy Danielson, Office of the Vice President for Research,
(612) 625-1453, dani0139@umn.edu</li>
<li>Patty Mattern, University News Service,
(612) 624-2801, mattern@umn.edu</li>
</ul>

<strong>MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (11/17/2009) —</strong>
<p>The University of Minnesota Supercomputing Institute for
Advanced Computational Research (MSI) announced today its addition of HP
ProLiant blade servers for a new high performance computing (HPC) system
to support research across a broad range of disciplines. This powerful
new system placed No. 67 on the November 17 TOP500 list of the world's
most powerful supercomputers. The new system will increase MSI's
high-performance computing capacity, improving its ability to support
researchers at the University of Minnesota and across the state. Powered
by 1,083 HP ProLiant BL280 G6 servers with 8,664 computing cores, the
new supercomputer, named "Itasca" by MSI, delivers 97 teraFLOPS of
theoretical computing performance—three times the aggregate theoretical
peak performance of MSI's other core computing resources.
</p>

<p>The HP supercomputer at MSI features 24 gigabytes of RAM per node, a 40
Gb QDR InfiniBand interconnect, and more than 150 terabytes of attached
storage. With a dramatic increase in its number of cores, MSI
anticipates substantially improved capacity for running applications to
resolve research problems.
</p>

<p>More than 4,000 active users across a wide range of disciplines utilize
MSI's diverse computational resources, making MSI a focal point of
collaborative research at the University of Minnesota. MSI currently
supports almost 500 active research groups by providing complete
high-performance computing environments including systems, software,
storage, support, and services. MSI resources have helped these
researchers to be awarded $103.9 million in external funding in the past
year. With the new HP supercomputer, MSI will be well poised to expand
its established role of serving engineering and the physical and life
sciences, and to provide services to many disciplines not traditionally
served by MSI.
</p>

<p>"Today, high-demand computation is absolutely central to a wide array of
important research areas that are vital to putting the University of
Minnesota in a leadership position," said Tom Jones, interim director of
MSI. "This new computing system is a big step above what most other
universities can call on, so our faculty and students are really excited
by the big boost in computational resources they will have to drive the
frontiers of knowledge."
</p>

<p>"To maximize the effectiveness of their new supercomputer, MSI needed
high system performance combined with ease of deployment and energy
efficiency," said Steve Cumings, director of marketing, Scalable
Computing and Infrastructure, HP. "MSI's choice of HP ProLiant BL280c
blade servers for their new system shows its value in a complex HPC
environment, enabling MSI to expand their support and speed of active
research, ultimately driving innovation."
</p>

<p>Top 500 Rankings The TOP500 ranking of supercomputers is released twice
a year by researchers at the University of Tennessee, University of
Mannheim, Germany, and at NERSC Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The list ranks supercomputers worldwide based on the Linpack N*N
Benchmark, a yardstick of performance that is a reflection of processor
speed and scalability.
</p>

<p>About MSI The University of Minnesota Supercomputing Institute for
Advanced Computational Research (MSI) is celebrating its 25th
anniversary as an interdisciplinary research program spanning across all
colleges of the University of Minnesota. MSI has established itself as a
vital resource to the University of Minnesota by facilitating
groundbreaking research, attracting top faculty and students, and
enhancing researchers' competitive advantage in the search for external
funding. For more information, visit www.msi.umn.edu.
</p>

<p>Visit MSI in booth 155 at the SC09 supercomputing conference
in Portland, Oregon, today through Nov. 20 for demonstrations showcasing
research at the University of Minnesota. More information about MSI at
SC09 is available at <a href="https://www.msi.umn.edu/events/sc09/">https://www.msi.umn.edu/events/sc09/</a>.</p>






	<h3>October 2009</h3>

	<h3>MSI Open House</h3>
             <p>MSI is holding an Open House on Wednesday, November 4, 11:30-4. The
event is free and open to the public. Activities include a panel
discussion, talks about MSI and supercomputing, software and hardware
demonstrations, displays of research at MSI, and tours. We will also
have goody bags, food and drinks, and door prizes. For complete
information, please see the <a href="https://www.msi.umn.edu/events/openhouse2009/">Open House website</a>.</p>

	<h3>MSI Researchers Win DOE Grant for Biofuel Research</h3>
        <p>MSI researchers are on a team that was recently awarded a $2.2 million
grant from the Department of Energy for a project investigating using
bacteria to produce biofuel. The lead investigator, Professor Larry
Wackett (BMBB), is an MSI Associate Fellow and Principal Investigator.
Other researchers on this project with MSI ties are Regents Professor
Lanny Schmidt (MSI Associate Fellow) and Assistant Professor Aditya Bahn
(MSI Principal Investigator), both of the Department of Chemical
Engineering and Materials Science. The UM News story about this grant
can be found <a href="http://www1.umn.edu/news/news-releases/2009/UR_CONTENT_144404.html">here</a
>.</p>

	<h3>September 2009</h3>

	<h3>TROPIX Project Featured at CAGrid</h3>
        <p>TROPIX, a joint project between MSI and Mayo’s Bioinformatics group, is
featured on the front page of the <a href="http://cagrid.org">cagrid website</a>. The link to the article is in the top right-hand corner of the page. TROPIX allows collaborators to efficiently share datasets and data-analysis tools. The project was funded by the Minnesota Partnership for Biotechnology and Medical Genomics.
            </p>

	<h3>MSI at Family Fun Fair</h3>
        <p>On September 26, MSI participated in the Math and Science Family Fun
Fair at Coffman Memorial Union. This annual event, organized by the
Institute of Technology’s Office of Diversity and Outreach, allows
children to participate in fun, hands-on activities designed to teach
them about math, science, and engineering. Visitors to the MSI booth
could view 3-D computer graphics of molecules and could touch and
examine the working parts of a computer. 

<img src="http://www.msi.umn.edu/assets/images/news_images/200909/MathSci2009_web1.jpg" alt="Daniel Sosa explains the role of hemoglobin in the blood."></p><p>Daniel Sosa explains the role of hemoglobin in the blood.
</p><p>
<img src="http://www.msi.umn.edu/assets/images/news_images/200909/MathSci2009_web2.jpg" alt="Fair attendees use 3-D glasses to watch a molecule rotate."></p><p>Fair attendees use 3-D glasses to watch a molecule rotate.
</p><p>
<img src="http://www.msi.umn.edu/assets/images/news_images/200909/MathSci2009_web3.jpg" alt="Samantha Thomas amazes children and parents with MSI technology."></p><p>Samantha Thomas amazes children and parents with MSI technology.
<p>


	<h3>June 2009</h3>

    <h3>MSI Researchers Win Awards</h3>
            <p>Professor Jane Davidson (mechanical engineering), MSI Associate
Fellow, has been awarded the Ada Comstock Distinguished Women Scholar
Award for Spring 2009. The award recognizes outstanding women faculty
at the University of Minnesota.</p>

<p>MSI researcher Assistant Professor Tian He (computer science andengineering) has received an NSF Faculty Early Career Development
grant, one of the NSF's most prestigious awards.</p>

        <h3>MSI Researchers Receive McKnight Land-Grant Professorships</h3>        
	<p>Five MSI researchers are among the new McKnight Land-Grant Professors
	for 2009-11 recently announced by the University. They are Arindam
	Banerjee (Department of Computer Science and Engineering), RyanElliott 
	(Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics), Tian He
	(Department of Computer Science and Engineering), Julian Marshall
	(Department of Civil Engineering), and Martin Saar (Department of
	Geology and Geophysics). The awards are intended to advance thecareers of 
	outstanding junior faculty and include a research grant,summer support, 
	and a research leave in the second year. 

        <h3>MSI Hosting Simulia Tutorial</h3>
        <p>MSI is hosting a tutorial by Simulia on June 24 in 402 Walter Library. Simulia makes
        the ABAQUS suite of software. The tutorial, which is free and open to the public, will
        discuss computer clusters and advances in parallel computing. A complete description and
        registration information can be found at the <a href="http://www.simulia.com/events/hpc/minneapolis_hpc_6-24.html">Simulia website</a>.
        </p>

        <h3>Computing Workshops Offered</h3>
        <p>The SC09 Education Program and the National Computational Science
           Institute are offering a number of workshops over the summer and fall.
           Workshops are available in a number of fields related to
           high-performance computing, including parallel and cluster computing,
           biology, chemistry, physics, engineering, and computational thinking.
        </p>

        <p>All costs except travel and lodging are covered. See
        <a href="http://www.computationalscience.org/workshops2009">NCSI's website</a> for complete information.
        </p>

	<h3>May 2009</h3>

            <h3>In Memoriam, Regents Professor H. Ted Davis</h3>
            <p>Regents Professor H. Ted Davis, Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science,
            passed away suddenly on May 17, 2009. Professor Davis had been a Principal Investigator and
            Fellow of the Institute since its very early days. More information can be found at the
            <a href="http://blog.lib.umn.edu/itcomm/news/2009/05/former_institute_of_technology.html">Institute
            of Technology website</a>. MSI's staff and researchers extend their condolences to Professor Davis's
            family, friends, and colleagues.
            </p>

         <h3>MSI Researchers Elected to NAS</h3>
<p>Two MSI Principal Investigators, Regents Professor Donald Truhlar, (Chemistry, MSI Fellow), and Professor David Kohlstedt (Geology and Geophysics) have been awarded membership in the National Academy of Sciences. This is one of the highest honors U.S. scientists can receive, and is given in recognition of excellence in scientific research.  <a href="http://blog.lib.umn.edu/itcomm/news/2009/04/two_professors_receive_nations.html">More information from the Institute of Technology blog.</a></p>

  <h3> MSI at Amantes de la Ciencia 2009</h3>
<p>Attendees at the Amantes de la Ciencia event at the Science Museum in St. Paul got to see how researchers use MSI’s computers to create pictures of molecules. Mr. Yectli Huerta, a Unix Systems Administrator on MSI’s Systems and Operations Staff, showed students three-dimensional visualizations of molecules. Other participants included Dr. Carlos Sosa, an IBM employee who works with MSI, and MSI Principal Investigator Professor Lynda Ellis, Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology. <a href="http://www.msi.umn.edu/%7Ecpsosa/ScienceMuseumApril2009.html">View pictures from the event.</a>
<p>
Amantes de la Ciencia (Lovers of Science) is an annual event that introduces the public to scientists and educators in the Twin Cities’ Latino and Hispanic communities. This year’s event was held on April 25. </p>

	<h3>April 2009</h3>

	<h3>NCAR Provides Supercomputing Resources</h3>
        <p>The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is soliciting
requests for supercomputing allocations from NSF-supported university
researchers in atmospheric, oceanic, and closely related sciences.
Allocations to researchers have more than doubled because of the large
capacity of the new IBM Bluefire at NCAR's Computational and Information
Systems Laboratory. Information about requesting this resource can be
found in the March e-newsletter of the <a href="http://www.ucar.edu/news/update/">University Corporation for
Atmospheric Research</a>.
            </p>

    <h3>Bioinformatics: Building Bridges 2009</h3>
    <p>MSI staff presented several tutorials at the Building Bridges
conference on April 16-17, 2009. The tutorials will cover a variety
of topics concerning bioinformatics tools, software, and programming.
A list of the specific tutorials can be found <a href="http://www.binf.umn.edu/bisymp09/tutorials.html">here</a>.
See the <a href="http://www.binf.umn.edu/bisymp09/">conference website</a>
 for complete information.</p>

<h3>MSI Researcher at SAFL Wins Video Award</h3>

<p>Iman Borazjani, a researcher with the group of Professor Fotis Sotiropoulos at St. Anthony Falls Laboratory, was one of the winners in the prestigious Gallery of Fluid Motion competition held at the American Physical Society Division of Fluid Dynamics meeting last November. Dr. Borazjani uses MSI resources to help create computer images of different types of fluid flow. The winning video was called, <a href="http://www.safl.umn.edu/research_spotlight_archive.html">"Why don't mackerels swim like eels?"</a>. Dr. Borazjani's work was highlighted in the Spring 2008 issue of the <a href="https://www.msi.umn.edu/about/publications/researchbulletin">MSI Research Bulletin</a>.
<p>
Professor Sotiropoulos is the Director of SAFL and is a Fellow of the Supercomputing Institute. <p>

 <h3>February 2009</h3>

<h3>Study of Road Salt and Minnesota Water</h3>
<p>A recent University News Service video features MSI associate fellow Professor Heinz Stefan (St. Anthony Falls Laboratory). Professor Stefan's group has completed a study showing that road salt is increasing the salinity of lake water in Minnesota. You can view the news video <a href="http://www1.umn.edu/urelate/newsservice/Multimedia_Videos/road_salt.htm">here</a>. </p>

<h3>MSI-supported Research at AHC</h3>
<p>MSI is featured in a <a href="http://www.ahc.umn.edu/news/DiabetesAndSuperComputing/">recent article</a> on the Academic Health Center's website. The article highlights diabetes research by Professor Jennifer Hall, Department of Medicine. Professor Hall and her team used MSI laboratories to assist in their analysis of the TCF7L2 gene. </p>

	<h3>January 2009</h3>

        <h3>New MSI Core Resource</h3>
<p>As of January 1, 2009, MSI users have access to a new core resource.This machine, called "Elmo," is a set of six Ethernet-connected Sun Fire X4600 Linux systems, each containing 32 AMD Opteron cores and 128 GB of RAM, for a total of 192 cores and 768 GB of RAM. The eight- core interactive node is named elmo.msi.umn.edu.</p>

<p>Complete information about Elmo can be found at: <a href="http://www.msi.umn.edu/hardware/elmo">www.msi.umn.edu/hardware/elmo/</a>.</p>

       <h3>Computer Imaging of <i>Borrelia burgdorferi</i></h3>
<p>An article by MSI Principal Investigator Stuart Goldstein (Department of Genetics, Cell Biology, and Development) and his research group was featured in the January 2009 issue of the <i><a href="http://jb.asm.org/content/vol191/issue2/">Journal of Bacteriology</a></i>. The researchers analyzed the structure of the Lyme disease spirochete, <i>Borrelia burgdorferi</i>, using electron cryotomography. A computer image of the spirochete appears on the cover of the journal.</p>

        <h3>MSI to Host USENIX Tutorial</h3>
<p>MSI is pleased to host a tutorial from USENIX, the Advanced Computing Systems Association, at the University of Minnesota on January 28.  The tutorial is "Next Generation Storage Networking: Beyond Conventional SAN and NAS" and is intended for system administrators running day-to-day operations and those who set or enforce budgets.</p>

<p>Complete information can be found at at the <a href="http://www.usenix.org/events/cc09/">USENIX Web site</a>. Online registration is also available at this site. The tutorial is free to qualified IT professional, researchers, and students. It will be held in 402 Walter Library on the East Bank campus.</p>

        <h3>New Web Developer Hired</h3>
        <p>MSI's new Web Developer, Brian Hayden, started on January 5, 2009. Brian has worked at the U since 2000,
            most recently in the Office of Information Technology as a software developer; he was the lead on
            the new Gophermail v2 system.</p>

        <p>We are very happy to welcome Brian to our team.</p>

	<h3>November 2008</h3>

        <h3>MSI Exhibits at SC08</h3>
<p>The University of Minnesota's Supercomputing Institute showcased the University's research efforts at this year's <a href="http://sc08.supercomputing.org/">Supercomputing Conference </a> held November 15-21, 2008 in Austin, TX. The SC Conference is the premier international conference for high performance computing (HPC), networking, storage and analysis. This was the first year that MSI hosted a booth at the conference.
</p>
<p><a href="about/publications/sc08.html">Read the full story</a></p>
<p>
View photos of MSI at SC08: <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/christc74/Supercomputing08">Photo Gallery 1</a>, <a href="http://spring.msi.umn.edu/~davey/Austin">Photo Gallery 2</a></p>


	<h3>October 2008</h3>

		<h3>Regents Professor David Tilman Wins International Prize for Biology</h3>
                <p>Regents Professor David Tilman, an MSI Principal Investigator, has been named the 2008 recipient of the International Prize for Biology for his research proving that biodiversity makes ecosystems more productive and resistant to drought, disease, and pests. His research was carried out at <a href="http://www.cedarcreek.umn.edu/">Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve</a>. Tilman and his research group use MSI to host their database and Web page. They also use databases housed at the SDML for organizing decades of data and distributing it to ecology-research communities.</p>

        	<h3>Sticky Nanoparticles</h3>
        	<p>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 <a href="http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&amp;id=PRBMDO000078000008081405000001&amp;idtype=cvips&amp;gifs=yes">the August issue of Physical Review B (Phys Rev B, 78, 081405)</a>.
</p><p>
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. Summaries of the paper have appeared in Physical Review Focus <a href="http://focus.aps.org/story/v22/st7">("Nanoparticles Stick a Perfect Landing," M. Schirber, August 27, 2008)</a> and the New York Times ("If Traveling Very Fast, the Very Small Just Stick," K. Chang, September 2, 2008). The PR Focus article also includes information from Professor Dumitrica's collaborator, MSI Fellow Professor Steven Girshick.
</p>

	<h3>September 2008</h3>

                        <h3>Arlington BioSMART HS Teachers Visit MSI</h3>
                        <p>Teachers from <a href="http://www.arlington.spps.org/home_html.html">Arlington BioSMART High School</a> 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.
<p>
The teachers saw a presentation about MSI and the research being done here and toured the <a href="http://www.msi.umn.edu/labs/lmvl/">LMVL</a> and the machine room. They also gave a presentation to MSI staff members about the school and its programs. MSI staff members are working to establish working relationships with secondary schools in order to reach students and give them an understanding of the kinds of science and technology careers they can prepare for at the University of Minnesota.
<p>

                        <h3>Professor Wentzcovitch Awarded Fellowship</h3>
                        <p>Professor Renata Wentzcovitch, Departmen
t 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 <a href="http://www.cems.umn.edu/activities/news/index.php#a209">CEMS department Web site</a>.</p>


                        <h3>MSI Researcher Awarded Regents Professorship</h3>
                        <p>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 <a href="http://www1.umn.edu/umnnews/Feature_Stories2/Mining_the_census_data.html">University News site</a>.</p>


        <h3>New MSI Communications Coordinator</h3>
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.
<p>


        <h3>Virtual Reality Demonstration</h3>
        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 <a href="http://www.pdma.org/events_detail.cfm?pk_event=147">PDMA Web site</a>.

<p>
        <h3>Regents Professor Truhlar receives Herschbach Award</h3>
                        <p>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."<p>


	<h3>August 2008</h3>

        <h3>National Cancer Institute work by MSI</h3>
                        <p>MSI has created extensions for the National Cancer Institute's caGrid system. caGrid supports caBIG, the National Cancer Institute's Cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid initiative, which links cancer researchers and their data. caGrid provides researchers at different institutions tools that allow them to share and manage this information. The MSI extensions can be found <a href="https://cabig-kc.nci.nih.gov/CaGrid/KC/index.php/University_of_Minnesota">here</a> and <a href="https://cabig-kc.nci.nih.gov/CaGrid/KC/index.php/Community_Projects">here</a>.</p>

        <h3 id="med">MSI Demos at Minnesota State Fair</h3>
<img src="http://www.msi.umn.edu/assets/images/news/Viewing1.jpg">
On August 28, MSI participated in the Medical Devices Center booth in the University of Minnesota building at the 2008 Minnesota State Fair. Nancy Rowe, a Scientific Visualization Consultant on the MSI User Support staff, showed fair-goers three-dimensional visualizations of human skeletal and circulation systems and a fly-through of a human heart.</p>
<p>
<p>
The MDC, a state-of-the-art facility for researchers designing, prototyping, and testing new medical devices, uses MSI resources to achieve its mission. The Center's Director, Professor Arthur Erdman (Department of Mechanical Engineering) is a Principal Investigator at MSI.
<p>
The University News Service has <a href="http://www1.umn.edu/umnnews/Feature_Stories2/New_Medical_Devices_Center_opens.html">an item about the Center's Grand Opening and Open House</a>, including a video. The video includes a clip of a simulation of a "fly-through" of a human heart, which was made using a three-dimensional virtual heart model created at MSI's Scientific Development and Visualization Laboratory. With further processing by User Support staff member Nancy Rowe, the fly-through simulation was created using software in the LCSE-MSI Visualization Laboratory (LMVL).
<p>
Researchers at the Medical Devices Center use software available at MSI and the virtual-reality environment at the LMVL. MSI also assists these researchers in turning MRI scans into three-dimensional virtual models.


	<h3>July 2008</h3>


        <h3>Appointment of MSI Interim Director</h3>
                        <p>On July 14, 2008, Tim Mulcahy, Vice President for Research, announced the appointment of Professor Tom Jones to the position of Interim Director position for MSI. A member of the astronomy department, Tom is familiar with MSI through his use of MSI's services in his research in theoretical and computational astrophysics.</p>
                        <p>We also thank Andrew Odlyzko for agreeing to temporarily postpone his retirement and serve as Interim Director until this decision was made. His willingness to serve in this capacity has allowed MSI to continue to provide services without interruption, and is greatly appreciated.</p>

                        <h3>U's Solar Car</h3>
                        <p class="news">U'S SOLAR VEHICLE PROJECT TEAM FINISHES FIFTH in 2008 North American Solar Challenge, a 10-day, 2,400-mile race. The race began July 13 in Plano, Texas and finished July 22 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The vehicle's development team used MSI supercomputers and visualization labs for computational fluid dynamics modeling to estimate drag, lift, and crosswind effects for their designs.  <p>For more about the vehicle, called Centaurus, see <a href="http://www.svp.umn.edu/index.php">Centaurus</a>. For event photos, see <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/umnsvp/2662193461">Flickr.</a>


        <h3 id="student">Seventh-graders Introduced to Supercomputing</h3>
                        <p class="news"><img src="http://www.msi.umn.edu/assets/images/news/tour1.jpg" alt="photo of Brian Ropers-Huilman leading a tour of the MSI machine room" style="float:left;padding:0.25em 0.5em 0 0;" />On June 26, 2008, Brian Ropers-Huilman, MSI Director of Systems Administration and Technical Operations, spoke to a group of seventh-grade students about MSI, high-performance computing, and programming for supercomputers. The students are taking a class in Math and Programming as part of the <a href="http://www.mity.org/index.php?option=com_content&amp;task=view&amp;id=177&amp;Itemid=110">Minnesota Institute for Talented Youth's "Expand Your Mind" program</a>. Mr. Ropers-Huilman also took the class and their teacher, Scott Greseth, on a tour of the MSI machine room to show them the supercomputers.</p></li>


        <h3><a name="nano"></a>Nanoparticle Film Deposition Research to be Used by Industry</h3>
                <p>Three MSI Principal Investigators featured in a recent <a href="http://www1.umn.edu/umnnews/news_details.php?release=080422_3499&amp;page=UMNN">University News Service story</a> concerning nanoparticle film deposition technologies being used by local company Rushford Hypersonic in their facility in Rushford, Minnesota. The three researchers are: Professor Steven L. Girshick, MSI Fellow; Professor Joachim Heberlein, MSI Associate Fellow; and Professor Peter H. McMurry, MSI Associate Fellow. All three are in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. The research they performed to develop these technologies was made possible in part by resources at the Supercomputing Institute.</p>


        <h3><a name="mcknight"></a>MSI PIs Named Distinguished McKnight University Professors</h3>
                <p>The Office of the Provost and the Graduate School has named the <a href="http://www.grad.umn.edu/faculty-staff/mcknight/distinguished_recipients.html" title="Information regarding the award and the recipients' research">2008 recipients of Distinguished McKnight University Professorships</a>. Two MSI Principal Investigators are on this list:</p>

                <ul class="bullet">
                        <li>Professor Judith Berman (Department of Genetics, Cell Biology, and Development)</li>
                        <li>Professor Jeffrey J. Derby (Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and MSI Fellow)</li>
                </ul>

                <p>These professorships recognize outstanding mid-career faculty members. The recipients receive a monetary grant and the title Distinguished McKnight University Professor, which they will hold as long as they are at the University of Minnesota.</p>


        <h3><a name="landgrant"></a>MSI PIs Named McKnight Land-Grant Professors</h3>
                <p>The Office of the Provost and the Graduate School has named the <a href="http://www.grad.umn.edu/faculty-staff/mcknight/land_grant_recipients.html" title="Information regarding the award and the recipients' research">2008 recipients of McKnight Land-Grant Professorships</a>. Two MSI Principal Investigators are on this list:</p>

                <ul class="bullet">
                        <li>Professor Kirill A. Martemyanov (Department of Pharmacology)</li>
                        <li>Professor Shana J. Sturla (Department of Medicinal Chemistry)</li>
                </ul>

                <p>These professorships are intended to advance the careers of the University?s most promising junior faculty. The award includes a monetary grant and the title McKnight Land-Grant Professor, which they hold for two years.</p>


        <h3><a name="career"></a><abbr title="National Science Foundation">NSF</abbr> <abbr title="Faculty Early Career Development">CAREER</abbr> Grant for Elliott</h3>
                <p>Assistant Professor Ryan S. Elliott (Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics) was recently awarded prestigious <abbr title="National Science Foundation">NSF</abbr> <a href="http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=503214" title="Faculty Early Career Development">CAREER</a> grant partly based on his research using MSI resources. Professor Elliott's MSI research concerns the fundamental understanding of solid-sold Martensitic phase transformations (where the atoms comprising the crystalline material undergo a coordinated rearrangement at the nanoscale), which may provide the ability to search for and discover totally new materials that would not be possible as single-phase materials.</p>


        <h3><a name="agu"></a>Wentzcovitch Elected Fellow of the <abbr title="American Geophysical Union">AGU</abbr></h3>
                <p>Professor Renata Wentzcovitch (Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and MSI Fellow) has been elected as a Fellow of the <a href="http://www.agu.org/" title="American Geophysical Union">AGU</a>. Not more than 0.1% of members receive this award in any given year.</p>

        <h3 id="netfinity">Netfinity Retirement</h3>
                <p class="news">On June 30, 2008, MSI retired the Netfinity Linux cluster that was operational and in use for nearly eight years. During the first half of 2008, User Support has been assisting users to migrate their work off of the Netfinity. All software available on the Netfinity has already been migrated to other systems. The Netfinity is being replaced in the late summer/early fall of 2008 with a new system specifically designated to run loosely coupled parallel or serial jobs.</p>

                <p class="news">For more information about the Netfinity Linux cluster, please see the <a href="about/publications/usersbulletin/5-2.html#art6">June 2008 Users Bulletin</a>.</p>

	
	<h3>June 2008</h3>

	<h3><a name="yuen"></a>Yuen to be Honored at Symposium</h3>
		<p>Professor David A. Yuen (Department of Geology and Geophysics), a long-time MSI Principal Investigator and Fellow, will be honored by an international symposium at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland in June on the occasion of his 60th birthday. The seminar is entitled <a href="http://marina.geo.umn.edu/dave_symposium/index.php" title="More information about the symposium honoring Professor Yuen">Interdisciplinary Constraints on Solid Earth Dynamics From the Crust to the Core</a>.
		
	<h3>May 2008</h3>

	<h3><a name="hammerhead"></a>Hammerhead Ribozyme Research</h3>
		<p>The research of Associate Professor Darrin M. York (Department of Chemistry and MSI Associate Fellow) was featured on the cover of the April 21, 2008 issue of <a href="http://www.chembiol.com/" class="title">Chemistry and Biology</a> (see M. Martick et al.). The article discusses a joint experimental theoretical study of the hammerhead ribozyme.</p>

	<h3><a name="protein"></a>Protein Structure Discovered</h3>
		<p>Assistant Professor Hiroshi Matsuo (Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Biophysics) has published the structure of the deaminase domain of the APOBECC3G protein in the March 6, 2008 issue of <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/" class="title">Nature</a> (see K.-M. Chen et al.). The protein is capable of altering the HIV genome by deaminating cNDA cytosines to uracils. This activity can genetically inactive the virus.</p>

	<h3><a name="celestial"></a>Celestial Tsunamis</h3>
		<p>The research of Professor Cynthia A. Cattell (Department of Physics) and her collaborators was recently published in <a href="http://www.agu.org/journals/gl/gl0801/2007GL032009/" class="title">Geophysical Research Letters</a> (see C. Cattell et al.). The article discusses the researchers' discovery of "celestial tsunamis," highly destructive radio waves in the Van Allen radiation belts. The research is also highlighted by the <a href="http://www1.umn.edu/umnnews/Feature_Stories/Celestial_tsunamis.html">University of Minnesota's News Service</a> and the <a href="http://www.spa.umn.edu/research/spotlight/291/New_physics_from_the_radiation_belt.html?type=spotlight">Department of Physics</a>.</p>

	<h3><a name="compvis"></a>Computer Visualizations</h3>
		<p>Graphics developed by the research group of Professor J. Ilja Siepmann (Department of Chemistry and MSI Fellow) have been featured on the covers of two professional journals:</p>
		<ul class="bullet">
			<li>A figure showing critical clusters with dumbbell and onion architecture as found in the ternary vapor-liquid nucleation of water/1-butanol/n-nonane mixtures was featured on the cover of <a href="http://www.rsc.org/Publishing/Journals/CP/article.asp?Journal=CP5&amp;VolumeYear=20079&amp;Volume=9&amp;JournalCode=CP&amp;MasterJournalCode=CP&amp;SubYear=2007&amp;type=Issue&amp;Issue=22&amp;x=14&amp;y=5" class="title">Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics</a>. An article by Siepmann group researchers appears in the issue (see R. B. Nellas et al.). </li>
			<li>A figure showing the distribution of water around a Coumarin dye was featured on the cover of the March 27, 2008 <a href="http://pubs3.acs.org/acs/journals/cover_art.page?incoden=jpcafh#" class="title">Journal of Physical Chemistry A</a>. The article (see N. P. Wells et al.) appeared in that issue.</li>
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