The objective of the Computational Core Facility is to provide a resource that greatly facilitates the initial development of neural simulations and that provides the computer power to implement these simulations in biologically meaningful ways. As such, the core will be upgraded to state- of-the-art hardware, including a multiple processor super computer purchased by the university. In addition, two highly qualified individuals will be hired: one to maintain the systems and aid in programming, and another to aid in the development of simulations for participating members of the program. These resources will be augmented by policies that ensure the faculty and students remain at the cutting edge of current ideas in computational neuroscience. Specifically, we have invited four leaders in the field (Andrew Barto, Dan Johnston, Eve Marder and Terrence Sejnowski) to meet with us at least once a year to i) advise us on direction and scope of our work, ii) advise us on training for our graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, and iii) to discuss their work and its implications for improvements in our work and theirs. We have also requested funds to invite three scientists to Houston per year (one week visits) to lead discussions and stimulate ideas and techniques. We have arranged for Joel Keizer and Robert Smith to visit during year one of the Project. We believe this combination of hardware, personnel resources, and scholarly environment is ideal to produce the highest quality computational work and to provide the best training possible for our graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. Core resources will be available to all members of the program, and priorities for allocation and access to resources will be determined by the Principal Investigator (Dr. Byrne) and by the Core Leader (Dr. Baxer). The emphasis in allocation of personnel resources (systems administrator and scientific programmer) will be to aid in the initial design and development of simulations. The expertise made available will be an invaluable resource and time savings for members of the core who are in the initial, time consuming , phase of a project. It is this phase where normally, time and programming expertise limitations can severely constrain the scientific scope and power of a project. The main purpose of the core personnel is to limit these constraints as much as is possible. The main emphases in allocation of computer resources will be i) to provide tools for the development of programs (upgrades to workstation computers), ii) to provide enormous computational power for the execution of biologically realistic programs (super computer purchased by University), and iii) to facilitate graphical analysis and presentation of results.
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