MRI: Acquisition of Hardware for the Enhancement of the ELSA High Performance Computing Cluster to Enable Computational Research at The College of New Jersey

新泽西学院（TCNJ）将获得设备，以显着升级和增强科学与分析电子实验室（ELSA）高性能计算集群。TCNJ是一个主要的本科院校，促进本科生深入参与研究。TCNJ理学院的许多教职员工都在各自领域的计算研究前沿工作，其中包括生物化学/生物物理学、遗传学、生物信息学、天体物理学、机器学习和数学生物学等广泛领域。为了保持多样化和最先进的资源，以满足TCNJ教师和本科生当前和未来的计算需求，当前的ELSA集群需要有针对性的硬件增强。新仪器将(1)提高中国科学院理学院教职员工及其本科研究团队的研究能力和由此产生的科学发现；(2)通过一系列新开发的高性能计算和数据可视化短期课程和研讨会，让更多的本科生和研究人员接触到这个强大的计算基础设施；(3)通过与开放科学网格的新合作，改善传统上在STEM领域代表性不足的学生以及TCNJ以外的研究人员对ELSA集群的访问。该项目将扩展超过13名教师（其中许多是早期职业教师）的研究项目，涵盖TCNJ理学院所有五个系。该项目将支持计算密集型工作，包括各种各样的科学努力，包括毛生物力学研究，细胞信号传导过程的估计，调查密码强度和密码系统安全性的方法，以及提高我们对宇宙中能量最高的物体的理解。目前，TCNJ教师在这些和其他领域的研究计划受到图形处理单元（GPU）资源不足和当前仪器部分缓慢老化的中央处理单元（CPU）服务器的限制。新的ELSA集群将允许TCNJ的教职员工和学生研究人员运行工作流程，从令人尴尬的并行计算，到需要在数百核上进行高水平并行计算、密集GPU计算和远程可视化模拟结果的工作流程。因此，该仪器将确保这些研究项目能够充分发挥其潜力。该项目每年还将使近100名本科生研究人员受益，他们是这些实验室的一部分，并直接在集群上工作。因此，除了提高科学发现的能力外，拟议的收购将帮助TCNJ满足培养大学生劳动力的需求，这些劳动力已准备好在现在和未来的职业生涯中利用日益强大的高性能计算资源。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) will acquire equipment to significantly upgrade and enhance the Electronic Laboratory for Science and Analysis (ELSA) High Performance Computing cluster. TCNJ is a primarily undergraduate institution promoting a deep engagement of undergraduate students in research. Many of TCNJ's School of Science faculty members are working at the cutting edge of computational research in their fields, which include a broad range of areas including biochemistry/biophysics, genetics, bioinformatics, astrophysics, machine learning, and mathematical biology. In order to maintain a diverse and state of the art resource that meets the current and future computational needs of TCNJ's faculty and undergraduate students the current ELSA cluster requires targeted hardware enhancements. The new instrument will (1) enhance the research capacity and resulting scientific discovery of TCNJ's School of Science faculty members and their undergraduate research teams; (2) expose a greater number of undergraduate students and researchers to this powerful computational infrastructure through a series of newly developed High Performance Computing and data visualization short courses and workshops; and (3) improve access to the ELSA cluster for students traditionally underrepresented in STEM, as well as to researchers beyond TCNJ through a new collaboration with Open Science Grid.This project will expand the research programs of more than 13 faculty members (many of whom are early career faculty) spanning all five of TCNJ's School of Science departments. The computationally intensive work that will be supported through this project includes a diverse array of scientific efforts, including studies of pilus biomechanics, estimations of cell signaling processes, methods for investigating the strength of passwords and security of password systems, and improving our understanding of the most energetic objects in the universe. Currently, the research programs of TCNJ faculty members in these and other areas are restricted by inadequate graphic processing unit (GPU) resources and by the slow speed aging central processing unit (CPU) servers part of the current instrumentation. The new ELSA cluster will allow faculty and student researchers at TCNJ to run workflows ranging from embarrassingly parallel computations, to those that necessitate high levels of parallelization over hundreds of cores, intensive GPU computations, and remote visualization of simulation results. The instrument will thus ensure that these research programs are able to reach their full potential. This project will also benefit nearly 100 undergraduate student researchers each year who are part of these labs and work directly on the cluster. As a result, in addition to improving the capacity for scientific discovery, the proposed acquisition will help TCNJ meet the demands of developing an undergraduate workforce that is ready to leverage increasingly powerful High-Performance Computing resources, now and in their future careers.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.