“The Condensed Matter Theory group at CSI conducts collaborative research in the area of Quantum Phase Transitions by performing parallel Monte Carlo computations at several supercomputers (CSI, ETHZ,UMASS), including the supercomputer at GC. This work resulted in more than two dozen publications in the top-rated scientific journals and attracted external funding from NSF during the last three years. The CUNY grid computational facility is crucial for our current and future work. It also plays an essential educational role by attracting capable and motivated graduate students interested in both top-level physics and state-of-the-art parallel computation. We consider it a top priority to upgrade and maintain the CUNY supercomputing grid.
Professor Anatoly Kuklov, Physics & Engineering, College of Staten Island
“The clusters administered by the Research Computing Group at The Graduate Center have been an invaluable research and teaching tool. My research focuses on combinatorial and algorithmic challenges in computational biology. The work has focused on reconstructing evolutionary trees, analyzing and visualizing large sets of biological data such as phylogenetic trees and biomolecular sequences, and investigating data sufficiency requirements for algorithms for haplotying. We use the clusters in two ways: to test empirically the effectiveness of our algorithms, and to search large data spaces for approximate answers to hard questions. For both of these uses, having many individual processors to devote to the problem reduces the time to get answers.”
Professor Katherine St John, Computer Science, Lehman College.
“We have been modeling biosynthetic processes to uncover clues to the origin of marine secondary metabolites of amazingly complicated chemical architectures. The GC computer cluster has enabled my research group the ability to pursue calculations that would otherwise be prohibitively computationally expensive. The resources provided by the Graduate Center's Research Computing initiative have made possible marine biochemical reactions mechanism prediction.”
Professor Alexander Greer, Chemistry, Brooklyn College
Our research concerns quantum mechanical calculations of molecules involving benzene rings in novel environments. The compounds we study are of interest both in their own right and in the area of nanotechnology. The calculations employ the Gaussian family of programs and require run-times ranging from days to several weeks. The GC cluster is of sufficient power and temporal stability to see these calculations through to completion. It thus fills a critical need in the University for centralized research computing. The upgrade of the system's hardware to 64-bit capability should enhance the through-put of jobs with concommitant reduction of run-times. It is both welcome and encouraging.
Professor Jerome Schulman, Chemistry, Queens College
My research group focuses on molecular orbital calculations involving hydrogen-bonds, particularly those that help define the secondary structures of proteins and peptides as well as those that are involved with synthetic self-assembling materials. We use the Graduate Center Research Computing Cluster as one of our major resources for performing these calculations. The addition of 64-bit computers will be particularly helpful, as some of our calculations involve systems that are too large to be treated with 32-bit computers.
Professor Joseph Dannenberg, Chemistry, Hunter College
