Engineering Research Center gets a new name
June 13, 2006
STARKVILLE, Miss.–Mississippi State is changing the name of another major research center to more accurately reflect the collaboration of five multidisciplinary units focused on high-performance computing applications.
The university’s Engineering Research Center, or ERC, now is the High Performance Computing Collaboratory, following recent approval of the name change by the state College Board.
“This is only a unit name change and will not have any impact on budget,” explains Roger King, associate dean of MSU’s Bagley College of Engineering.
It marks the second name change for a major MSU research center since the first of the year made in line with the changing research enterprise within the university. The former Diagnostic Instrumentation and Analysis Laboratory–DIAL–now is the Institute for Clean Energy Technology, or ICET (“ice tea”).
MSU was awarded a National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center for Computational Field Simulation in 1990, and the unit successfully graduated from the NSF program in 2001.
“Earlier this year, the Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems–one of the research units within the new collaboratory–submitted a proposal that was among nine finalists nationwide for a new NSF ERC engineering designation,” said King.
He said the proposed ERC–one of more than 110 competing proposals by other institutions–would have focused on multi-scale virtual design and manufacturing.
“Part of the rationale for the name change is to avoid confusion between MSU’s past NSF Engineering Research Center and another center proposed for the future,” King observed.
“In addition, the number of separate units operating under the banner of ERC has grown to include five multidisciplinary research units with administrative ties to colleges other than engineering,” he added. “The requested name change better reflects the actual function of the unit that has evolved since 1990.”
The five research units that make up the collaboratory are the Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems, Center for Computational Sciences, Center for Department of Defense Programming Environment and Training, Computational Simulation and Design Center, and the GeoResources Institute.
The units are located in two buildings in the Thad Cochran Research, Technology and Economic Development Park, which is immediately north of the Starkville campus. Collectively, they utilize the research skills of 190 MSU faculty and full-time researchers across a wide range of academic disciplines and employ 36 full-time support staff.
The research units also share the university’s high-performing computer capabilities. The collaboratory consistently ranks among the world’s “Top 500 Supercomputing sites,” as listed biannually by the universities of Tennessee and Mannheim (Germany).
“The computing resources at the High Performance Computing Collaboratory are state-of-the-art systems that provide world-class capabilities for our researchers,” said Trey Breckenridge, HPC2 high-performance resources and operations administrator.
“These systems provide our researchers with the tools they need in order to perform the cutting-edge computational science and engineering research for which MSU has become known worldwide,” he added.
Focusing on computational science and engineering, the collaboratory will continue to help businesses and researchers tackle tough questions. It will use its powerful computers for a variety of projects that include computational fluid dynamics, remote sensing, computational physics, aerospace design, and automotive research.
“Our goal is to continue to develop our research capabilities, strengthen our ability to contribute to the economic growth of the state and improve the quality of life for all Mississippians,” said Colin Scanes, MSU research vice president.
NEWS EDITORS/DIRECTORS: For more information, contact Dr. King or Mr. Breckenridge.