MRI-R2: Acquisition of Data Analysis and Visualization Cyber-Infrastructure for Computational Science and Engineering Applications(DAVinCI)

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This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). We will acquire and operate a new facility, Data Analysis and Visualization Cyber-Infrastructure for Computational Science and Engineering Applications (DAVinCI), that will use hybrid a design that integrates high-throughput serial and tightly-coupled parallel computing as well as General-Purpose Computing on Graphics Processing Units (better known as GPGPUs). DAVinCI is specifically designed for large computations requiring fast I/O on large datasets and will integrate storage and visualization to support a wide array of data-intensive science and engineering applications. In addition, we will establish a center for 3D stereo visualization with active tracking for analysis of large simulations and datasets in order to fulfill researchers? critical need to rapidly view and analyze the results of large computations. DAVinCI will be used by researchers tackling a broad range of science and engineering problems including earth, environmental science and energy research, natural hazards and physical infrastructure research, bioscience and bioengineering research, and physics, space physics and astronomy research. DAVinCI will also serve to interface high-performance computing at Rice with national resources, such as TeraGrid. The machine and visualization center will be available to the entire Rice community and their local and national collaborators. It will therefore promote quantitative research in the social sciences and other divisions of Rice and beyond. DAVinCI will enhance the research training of hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students and post-doctoral fellows in science and engineering. It will directly impact the educational experience for all students as high-performance computing and computational problem solving are included by Rice faculty in courses at all levels. DAVinCI will be a primary research tool for some undergraduate research projects in Rice?s Century Scholars program, and also a critical tool used by the many undergraduates working on NSF funded research. Furthermore, a diverse group of graduate students as well as many undergraduate students from the NSF sponsored Rice Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) program, established to promote the advancement of under-represented minorities in the STEM fields, will benefit from use of these new computational resources in their training. A special summer program to familiarize students with high- performance computing and to teach computational problem solving skills will be organized. The availability of this powerful facility to new faculty will further support the Rice NSF ADVANCE program?s efforts to recruit top women faculty to Rice in science and engineering.