Rosen Center for Advanced Computing
Rosen Center for Advanced Computing provides cyberinfrastructure resources and services to researchers on the West Lafayette campus and partners nationwide. Rosen Center for Advanced Computing consists of these key areas:
High Performance Computing Resources and Services, Resource Planning and Scheduling, and Research and Development
- Provides high performance computing and storage for researchers doing cutting-edge science, engineering, and social science research, allowing researchers to do research rather than worry about maintaining a computer system
- Builds and operates systems, storage, and networks-reliably and securely-for measured and computed data and offers top-quality user and system support
- Provides services and tools that make high performance computing useful to researchers, such as training, consultation on the use of facilities and resources, development of ease-of-use software for large computing projects, and management of large datasets
- Collaborates with researchers on campus to pool research funds targeted for computing hardware, negotiating better purchases on community clusters and other facilities
- Develops partnerships on campus and around the nation to secure funding in support of Purdue's research goals, collaborating with faculty on research proposals and writing descriptions of ITaP resources for proposals
- Works to advance the state of the art in high performance computing with efforts such as lower-power, "green" systems and the world's largest Condor pool for distributed computing, which harnesses unused compute cycles from computers in labs, offices, and elsewhere, on and off campus, for research jobs
Envision Center for Data Perceptualization
- Offers researchers, students, and other users new ways to interact with data by visualizing it as images, animations, and virtual worlds
- Breaks ground in human-computer interfaces such as 3-D virtual reality and haptics (touch and feel) that allow users to feel like they're stepping into and interacting with the world on screen
Purdue Terrestrial Observatory
- Gathers masses of satellite, radar, and other remote sensing data along with information collected from ground-truthing instruments and activities, which allows the data to be mined for knowledge by researchers from an interdisciplinary array of fields
- Makes data available to be employed in Geographic Information Systems by researchers and by decision makers locally, for the state, and nation, as well as in agriculture
Current initiatives and projects
TeraGrid: Provides high performance computing resources from Purdue's supercomputers, clusters, and Condor pool to users on the world's largest network for open scientific research, as well as serving as a conduit to the grid for researchers at Purdue, and also develops software- and Web-based services for use on the grid, such as science gateways designed to make it easier for researchers to get work done
Community Cluster Program: Pools funds from grants, faculty startup packages, and institutional sources to make more computing power available than faculty and campus units could afford individually and installs, administers, and maintains those systems so researchers can concentrate on doing research not running a high performance computing system.
Northwest Indiana Computational Grid: Provides a fast, powerful high performance computing network in Northwest Indiana for cutting-edge research in science and technology, and to enhance economic development in the region, in a partnership with Purdue Calumet and the University of Notre Dame
NCN and nanoHub: Partners with the Network for Computational Nanotechnology to provide a new model for large scientific communities using shared resources in the form of a Web 2.0 and beyond portal for nanotechnology research that puts research-grade software in the hands of users across the globe while gathering them virtually in a supportive online community aimed at making a difference in the future of the field.
CMS Tier 2: Partners with the Purdue Physics Department and international groups for large-scale simulation and data analysis in the Compact Muon Solenoid project, the largest international physics project in history
LARS: Develops techniques for employing remote sensing in early detection and mitigation of natural and manmade disasters in concert with the Purdue Terrestrial Observatory
National Weather Service: Serves as a top-level distributor of Level II Doppler radar data providing real-time distribution of the data feed
Awards and recognition
- Educause Center for Applied Research Case Study 7: Emerging models for supporting research (2005)
- National award for innovation from Campus Technology magazine (2006)
- Envision Center students sweep top awards in Undergraduate Research and Poster Symposium (2007)
- Envision Center leads winning team in the Google 3-D Campus Contest (2007)
- Envision Center graduate student and her team win Computing Research Institute poster competition for weather radar data visualization (2007)