This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
Faculty across the College of Science and Mathematics (CSAM) of Montclair State University are pursuing computationally intensive research programs that, together, comprise a diverse array of applications: stochastic metapopulation disease models, leading to improved outbreak prediction and vaccination policies; functional genomics of the maize genome, essential for researchers to fully exploit the maize genome sequence; liquid atomization modeling, leading to new control strategies for specifying droplet size (a need in many industrial processes); magnetic fluid dynamics modeling, leading to improved models of magnetically-driven and directed flows relevant to applications in biomedicine and providing a valuable simulation tool for systems in which experimental observations are difficult and expensive; imaging by inverse scattering, leading to better models for acoustic and elastic wave propagation and tools for imaging structures in the Earth; simulations of Fermi-Pasta-Ulam systems, leading to new examination of the physically fundamental and mathematically rich dynamics nonlinear multicomponent systems; feature extraction in financial data series, leading to fast, accurate algorithms for sophisticated, real-time analysis of large data sets, including rapidly evolving financial data series. The HPC cluster acquired by CSAM is well-suited to the computational tasks for each of these investigations and will enable a transformative increase in the scale and complexity of computations undertaken in support of each research project.
The expansion of research enabled by access to high-performance computing will, in turn, enable the investigators to expand opportunities for student research in leading-edge computational science, in a broad range of disciplines. Undergraduate and Masters? student research opportunities that make use of the HPC facility will provide the highly diverse CSAM student population (including many who are members of groups underrepresented in STEM disciplines) critical computational and mathematical skills, valuable in preparing these students for advanced study and careers in STEM fields that are well represented among New Jersey academic and industrial institutions.
By providing high-performance computing (HPC) capacity that was not previously available to investigators in the College of Science and Mathematics (CSAM) at Montclair State University, the cluster computer obtained with the award has enhanced and accelerated research activity at CSAM in a diverse array of disciplines and applications, including: stochastic metapopulation disease models; functional genomics of the maize genome; imaging by inverse scattering ; high-dimensional nonlinear dynamics; and graph theory. The cluster acquired under this proposal meets the specific computational needs for the initally specified projects and has consequently made a significant increase in the scale and complexity of computations undertaken in support of each research project, thus leveraging the existing expertise of the principal invesitgators and increasing the impact of their work. Results of the ongoing research programs enabled by the HPC have been disseminated widely through publications and presentations by investigators and their students. Moreover, the expansion of research enabled by access to HPC has, in turn, enabled student research and course work in leading-edge computational science. The HPC facility provides the highly diverse CSAM student population (including many who are members of groups underrepresented in STEM disciplines) critical computational and mathematical skills, valuable in preparing these students for advanced study and careers in STEM fields that are well represented among New Jersey academic and industrial institutions.
