We request funds to purchase 200 parallel computer nodes (each with dual quad-core processors for a total of 1600 compute cores) to support computationally intensive, NIH-funded, biomedical research at Vanderbilt University and Medical Center. The proposed system will provide supercomputer performance at a small fraction of the cost. This system will be built aside our successful 1400-processor parallel computer that was initially established by the School of Engineering and Department of Physics along with a Major Research instrumentation Grant from NIH in 2004. This system, known as the Advanced Computing Center for Research and Education (ACCRE) at Vanderbilt, supports high-performance computing for research from elementary particle investigations using the Large Hadron Collider to model system genetics to human behavioral studies. The Center is managed by three co-directors, one each from the College of Arts and Science, the School of Engineering, and the School of Medicine (of which Dr. Piston is the co-director). ACCRE is a grass-roots organization that was initially created by faculty from throughout the institution and later awarded the strong institutional support it enjoys today. In keeping with the tradition of bottom-up ownership of the Center, policy and procedures are set by the co-directors upon recommendations of the Faculty Advisory Board, which consists of 10 active PI users. Four members of this Board are major users on the current application (Drs. Meiler, Ritchie, Link, and Stewart). All users will have access to the instrument and training through the established infrastructure. The proposed parallel computer will be used directly by more than 30 NIH-funded researcher groups and its impact will reach many more investigators through outreach efforts of centralized facilities such as the Center for Structural Biology, the Center for Human Genetics Research, and the Proteomics Core Laboratory. In this manner, the equipment will support more than 100 NIH grants. The major users of the system have primary appointments in six different departments within the Vanderbilt University College of Arts and Science and the School of Medicine. Research programs include computational studies in bioinformatics, biophysics, biostatistics, genetic epidemiology, genomics, human genetics, proteomics, imaging, and structural biology. This resource will make it possible to carry out computationally intensive biomedical investigations otherwise not feasible thus significantly increasing the rate of scientific discovery in a variety of biomedical disciplines.
High-performance computing has become an indispensible tool for biomedical research, and it is currently used both for analyzing the extremely large data sets that are available from genome sequences and performing ever-more-complicated calculations of biological processes. Such predictive calculations can often guide research down a more efficient pathway that saves resources and effort. The cost-effective super-computer architecture that we are requesting will support key research projects at Vanderbilt in Genetics, Proteomics, Structural Biology, Cancer, Diabetes and Neuroscience.
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| Benninger, Richard K P; Piston, David W (2014) Cellular communication and heterogeneity in pancreatic islet insulin secretion dynamics. Trends Endocrinol Metab 25:399-406 |
