CCR Updates
CCR's Steve Gallo receives Visionary Innovator Award: Steve Gallo, CCR's lead software engineer and database administrator, was honored by UB at this year's Inventors and Entrepreneurs Reception. Steve helped to develop a computer program to enable the rational design of small molecules targeting ribonucleic acid (RNA). RNA is an important potential target for the design of small molecule therapeutics or probes of function. The lack of information about RNA-ligand interactions and the fact that there is no centralized repository of known interactions is significantly hampering developments in the fields of RNA therapeutics and RNA chemical biology. Researchers at UB have developed computational methods to identify druggable RNA targets in genomic sequences and to rationally design small molecule ligands to target them and have licensed their technology to SMaRT Therapeutics. Check out the UB Reporter article for more info.
UB's Supercomputers Get Big Boost: CCR will undergo substantial upgrades during 2010-11 that will significantly increase the Center's computing and storage capacity (about 70 Tflops of compute capacity and over 600 TBytes of storage capacity) as well as introduce several advanced, novel computing architectures, that will be leveraged to support the University's research activities. All upgrades have been funded through external grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the NYS Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA). Click here for more details. The upgrades, along with other high profile grants, are featured in stories in HPWire, the Buffalo News, and the UB Reporter.
More Bang for Less Buck - UB's Supercomputers Go "Green": In the world of supercomputers, practical considerations like energy consumption have traditionally been overshadowed by the emphasis on high performance. But as energy costs have increased, computational scientists at the University at Buffalo's Center for Computational Research (CCR) have found a way to do more cutting edge science while consuming less power. A new energy-efficiency upgrade to the Center for Computational Research, located in UB's New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences, will realize energy savings of approximately $150,000 per year, while boosting the center's total capacity by more than 100% (from 13 Teraflops to 30 Teraflops). The upgrade was made possible by a $795,000 grant from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and a $150,000 investment by UB. For additional details, please click here.
Computer Vision: A research team lead by Professor Jason Corso of the Computer Science and Engineering Department is working to develop mathematical models and computational methods of representing and searching content in images and videos. The ultimate goal is to build a computer system that can perform as well as a human in image-understanding tasks. The research could benefit many disciplines from health care to military intelligence to advanced emergency-response systems. Dr. Corso has been recognized for his work several times in the 3 short years he's been at UB, including receiving a NSF CAREER award in 2009, a UB Innovator Award in 2010, an Army Research Office Young Investigator Award in 2011, and generating $4.5 million in active funding. The UB Reporter recently featured a profile on Dr. Corso and his research. Click here to read the article
Combustion: How rapidly will flames spread through a burning building, and how soon will the temperature and mix of gases become dangerous enough to make various sections deadly to occupants? Fire is a complex phenomenon in which critically important contributions are, unfortunately, not very well understood. The goal of this research in computational fluid dynamics, which is led by Professor Paul DesJardin of the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department and supported through an NSF Career Award, is to develop a better understanding of the turbulent flow for improved predictions of fire intensity and growth. This graphic depicts the turbulent instability dynamics of large fire plumes using Large Eddy Simulation techniques. The simulations were conducted using computers at the University at Buffalo's Center for Computational Research.
Volcanology: UB faculty research inspires an episode of the History Channel's "Mega Disasters" series called "The Next Pompeii?" Professor Michael F. Sheridan, director of UB's Center for Geohazards Studies, recently coauthored a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggesting that the next eruption of Vesuvius might pose a serious threat to Naples, home to more than 3 million people. It wasn't exactly welcome news in Naples, where hazard mitigation plans did not include the possibility that the next eruption of Vesuvius might pose a serious threat to Naples. Dr. Chris S. Renschler, UB associate professor of geography, also is featured in the Mega Disasters episode, which was filmed in part at the Center for Computational Research, along with Dr. Maurizio Trevisan, former dean of UB's School of Public Health and Health Professions. More information about this project...
Additional faculty projects
