This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
The Marquette University computational grid (MUGrid) brings together a diverse team of investigators from mathematics, statistics, computer science, chemistry, electrical and computer engineering, mechanical engineering, and biomedical engineering to develop and utilize grid computing as an integral tool for computational research.
This project expands the developing MUGrid with the acquisition of a new parallel computing cluster, storage and network infrastructure upgrades which will also provide the cyberinfrastructure for Marquette University's new graduate programs in Computational Sciences. The Computational Sciences program, part of the Department of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science, will serve as the central location for formal training on cyberinfrastructure technologies for research computing. In addition to formal training, an open-access seminar and regularly offered MUGrid ?boot camps? will provide training for students and faculty across campus, including individuals from traditionally under-represented groups in STEM disciplines. MUGrid's success will be evaluated through usage reports, longitudinal tracking of student career progress, and user surveys, which are aimed at monitoring job preparedness and impact on training a diverse workforce.
The new parallel computing cluster and storage infrastructure will also be made available to the broader community through outreach activities. The resource will be part of Southeast Wisconsin High Performance (SeWHiP, www.sewhip.org) computing consortium's developing regional grid that will directly support academic/industry partnerships for healthcare, energy and water research in Southeast Wisconsin, the most diverse region of the state. Summer programs for K-12 teachers and students will provide training and access to MUGrid and SeWHiP resources. Projects developed on MUGrid will be used to promote science and engineering through partnerships with local museums such as Discovery World. Resources will be also made available to the Open Science Grid and TeraGrid. Resource usage tracking, longitudinal studies of impacts on K-12 student career paths, exhibit attendance, and surveys will be used to assess the impact of these outreach programs. Finally, training resources and software developed as a part of this project will be made widely available through the SeWHiP web site.
