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2016: Year in Review

January 31, 2017

Our 10 top news stories from 2016:

BU Researchers Discover How RNA Editing May Promote Tumor Growth

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A Boston University study utilizing computing resources housed at MGHPCC provides insight on the potential role played by RNA (ribonucleic acid) editing in cancer. MORE


Award Winning Innovation in Analytics​

InTp1kc-767x575@2xIOMICS Corp, a member of the C3DDB Biotech Industry Access Program, is named to Drexel and CIO.com Analytics 50 for their FUSION Analytics Platform (TM), a cloud-based software system for prescriptive analytics and rapid prototyping of advanced decision models for use in chemical engineering, medical research, and clinical care. MORE


Holyoke Codes

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Holyoke Codes, the collaborative partnership between MGHPCC, Girls Inc. of Holyoke, local graphic design team Sweet and Fizzy, the Commonwealth Alliance for Information Technology Education (CAITE), and New England Regional Developers (NERDs), continues to hold lots of great classes and events geared towards getting more kids involved in coding, robotics, and technology. MORE


New England’s First experimental, Solar Powered Data Center Opens for Business
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The MGHPCC, its member universities and the City of Holyoke launch the Mass Net Zero Data Center (MassNZ) — an experimental, solar-powered, micro data center that is the first of its kind in New England, with a ribbon cutting in February 2016. MORE


Grass to Gas


University of Massachusetts Amherst computational chemist Scott Auerbach uses computers at the MGHPCC in research that helps him understand and optimize the process of producing fuels such as gasoline from plant biomass instead of petroleum. MORE


From Games to Brains

Screen Shot 2017-01-24 at 11.02.46 AMResearchers at Northeastern University are using computers at the MGHPCC to improve the performance of a popular medical imaging tool which estimates 3D light distribution in biological tissue using GPU technology to simultaneously simulate the paths of large numbers of independent photons. MORE


MGHPCC Expands Capacity

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In June 2016 the MGHPCC announces it will be expanding capacity to meet growing demand for computationally intensive scientific research at the state-of-the-art facility, the first of a series of additions anticipated by the data center’s long-term growth plan. MORE


Up in the Air

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We report work from researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology developing and using complex computer models housed at the MGHPCC to explore how atmospheric aerosols impact climate. MORE


UMASS Dartmouth hosts second annual state wide HPC day

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In May 2016 we get the chance to meet lots of MGHPCC users at the second annual UMass HPC Day hosted by UMass Dartmouth’s Center for Scientific Computing & Visualization Research. MORE


Teaching Computers to Identify Odors

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The Harvard Gazette reports work using computers housed at the MGHPCC to better understand how brains recognize specific smells. MORE


A Selection of 2016 Publications

Andrey Alekseenko, Olga Kononova, Yaroslav Kholodov, Kenneth A. Marx, Valeri Barsegov (2016), SOP-GPU: influence of solvent-induced hydrodynamic interactions on dynamic structural transitions in protein assemblies, Journal of Computational Chemistry,  doi: 10.1002/jcc.24368
M.R.M. Assis and L.F. Bittencourt (2016), A survey on cloud federation architectures: Identifying functional and non-functional propertiesJournal of Network and Computer Applications
Volume 72, Pages 51–71, doi: 10.1016/j.jnca.2016.06.014
Shao-Yu Chen, Thomas Goldstein, Dhandapani Venkataraman, Ashwin Ramasubramaniam, and Jun Yan (2016), Activation of New Raman Modes by Inversion Symmetry Breaking in Type II Weyl Semimetal Candidate T′-MoTe2, Nano. Letters, doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b02666
Moti Fridman, Vlada Artel, Anna Peled, Shir Shahal, Ashwin Ramasubramaniam, Doron Naveh (2016), Realizing Giant Magneto-Optical Effects in 3D Topological Insulators Without Magnetic Fields, arXiv: 1607.04823
Li Guo, Guoyi Zhao, Jin-Rong Xu, H. Corby Kistler, Lixin Gao, Li-Jun Ma (2016), Compartmentalized gene regulatory network of the pathogenic fungusFusarium graminearum, New Phytologist, doi: 10.1111/nph.13912
Julian Gutierrez, Fanny Nina-Paravecino, David Kaeli (2016), A fast level-set segmentation algorithm for image processing designed for parallel architectures, IA^3 ’16 Proceedings of the Sixth Workshop on Irregular Applications: Architectures and Algorithms, pages 66-69, doi: 10.1109/IA3.2016.017
Douglas M. Hall, Isaac R. Bruss, Justin R. Barone & Gregory M. Grason (2016), Morphology selection via geometric frustration in chiral filament bundles, Nature Materials, doi: 10.1038/nmat4598
G.M. Hall and G.M. Grason (2016), How geometric frustration shapes twisted fibers, inside and out: Competing morphologies of chiral filament assembly, arXiv: 1612.02422
Chang-Tsan Lu, Asanka Weerasinghe, Dimitrios Maroudas, and  Ashwin Ramasubramaniam (2016), A Comparison of the Elastic Properties of Graphene- and Fullerene-Reinforced Polymer Composites: The Role of Filler Morphology and SizeScientific Reports 6, Article number: 31735, doi: 10.1038/srep31735
Dimitrios Maroudas, Sophie Blondel, Lin Hu, Karl D Hammond and Brian D Wirth (2016), Helium segregation on surfaces of plasma-exposed tungsten, Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter, Volume 28, Number 6, doi: 10.1088/0953-8984/28/6/064004

Alexander Mathis, Dan Rokni, Vikrant Kapoor, Matthias Bethge, Venkatesh N. Murthy (2016) Reading Out Olfactory Receptors: Feedforward Circuits Detect Odors in Mixtures without Demixing. Neuron, doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2016.08.007

Kien Nguyen and Paul Whitford (2016), Steric interactions lead to collective tilting motion in the ribosome during mRNA–tRNA translocationNature Communications, 7, Article number: 10586,  doi: 10.1038/ncomms10586

Stella S. R. Offner, Michael M. Dunham, Katherine I. Lee, Hector G. Arce, and Drummond B. Fielding (2016), The Turbulent Origin of Outflow and Spin Misalignment in Multiple Stare Systems, arXiv: 1606.08445

Leela S. Panchakarla, Luc Lajaunie, Ashwin Ramasubramaniam, Raul Arenal, and Reshef Tenne (2016), Nanotubes from Oxide-Based Misfit Family: The Case of Calcium Cobalt Oxide, ACS Nano, doi: 10.1021/acsnano.6b02430
Leela S. Panchakarla, Luc Lajaunie, Ashwin Ramasubramaniam , Raul Arenal , and Reshef Tenne (2016), Strontium Cobalt Oxide Misfit Nanotubes, Chem. Mater., 28 (24), pp 9150–9157,
doi: 10.1021/acs.chemmater.6b04396
Patrick Pegus, Benoy Varghese, Tian Guo, David Irwin, Prashant Shenoy, Anirban Mahanti, James Culbert, John Goodhue, Chris Hill (2016), Analyzing the Efficiency of a Green University Data Center, ICPE’16, March 12–18, 2016, Delft, Netherlands, doi: 10.1145/2851553.2851557
Germań Peŕez-Sańchez, Szu-ChiaChien, JoséR.B.Gomes, M.NataĺiaD.S.Cordeiro, Scott M. Auerbach, Peter A. Monson, and Miguel Jorge (2016), Multiscale Model for the Templated Synthesis of Mesoporous Silica: The Essential Role of Silica OligomersChem. Mater., 28, 2715−2727, doi: 10.1021/acs.chemmater.6b00348
Ishan Prasad, Youngmi Seo, Lisa M. Hall, Gregory M. Grason (2016), Intradomain Textures in Block Copolymers: Multizone Alignment and Biaxiality, Soft Condensed Matter, arXiv: 1612.07994
Lawrence A. Renna, Monojit Bag, Timothy S. Gehan, Xu Han, Paul M. Lahti, Dimitrios Maroudas, and D. Venkataraman (2016), Tunable Percolation in Semiconducting Binary Polymer Nanoparticle Glasses, J. Phys. Chem. B, doi: 10.1021/acs.jpcb.5b11716
Michael J. Rynkiewicz, Stefan Fischer, William Lehman (2016), The propensity for tropomyosin twisting in the presence and absence of F-actinArchives of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Volume 609, pp 51–58, doi: 10.1016/j.abb.2016.09.008
Florence R. Sullivan, Kevin Keith, Nocholas C. Wilson (2016), Learning from the Periphery in a Collaborative Robotics Workshop for Girls, Universal Journal of Educational Research 4(12): 2814-2825,  doi: 10.13189/ujer.2016.041215
Thomas Goldstein, Shao-Yu Chen, Di Xiao, Ashwin Ramasubramaniam and Jun Yan (2016), Raman scattering and anomalous Stokes–anti-Stokes ratio in MoTe2 atomic layers, arXiv: 1603.03740
Mark J. Veyette, Philip S. Muirhead, Andrew W. Mann, and Frances Allard (2016),The Physical Mechanism Behind M Dwarf Metallicity Indicators and the Role of C and O Abundancies, arXiv:1605.04904v2
Liye Zhang, Chih-Sheng Yang, Xaralabos Varelas, Stefano Monti (2016), Altered RNA editing in 3′ UTR perturbs microRNA-mediated regulation of oncogenes and tumor-suppressors, Nature, Scientific Reports 6, Article Number: 23226, doi: 10.1038/srep23226
We love to hear what people are using their computers at the MGHPCC to do: Email missing citations or pitch your research to . Happy New Year!

Research projects

A Future of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
Yale Budget Lab
Volcanic Eruptions Impact on Stratospheric Chemistry & Ozone
The Rhode Island Coastal Hazards Analysis, Modeling, and Prediction System
Towards a Whole Brain Cellular Atlas
Tornado Path Detection
The Kempner Institute – Unlocking Intelligence
The Institute for Experiential AI
Taming the Energy Appetite of AI Models
Surface Behavior
Studying Highly Efficient Biological Solar Energy Systems
Software for Unreliable Quantum Computers
Simulating Large Biomolecular Assemblies
SEQer – Sequence Evaluation in Realtime
Revolutionizing Materials Design with Computational Modeling
Remote Sensing of Earth Systems
QuEra at the MGHPCC
Quantum Computing in Renewable Energy Development
Pulling Back the Quantum Curtain on ‘Weyl Fermions’
New Insights on Binary Black Holes
NeuraChip
Network Attached FPGAs in the OCT
Monte Carlo eXtreme (MCX) – a Physically-Accurate Photon Simulator
Modeling Hydrogels and Elastomers
Modeling Breast Cancer Spread
Measuring Neutrino Mass
Investigating Mantle Flow Through Analyses of Earthquake Wave Propagation
Impact of Marine Heatwaves on Coral Diversity
IceCube: Hunting Neutrinos
Genome Forecasting
Global Consequences of Warming-Induced Arctic River Changes
Fuzzing the Linux Kernel
Exact Gravitational Lensing by Rotating Black Holes
Evolution of Viral Infectious Disease
Evaluating Health Benefits of Stricter US Air Quality Standards
Ephemeral Stream Water Contributions to US Drainage Networks
Energy Transport and Ultrafast Spectroscopy Lab
Electron Heating in Kinetic-Alfvén-Wave Turbulence
Discovering Evolution’s Master Switches
Dexterous Robotic Hands
Developing Advanced Materials for a Sustainable Energy Future
Detecting Protein Concentrations in Assays
Denser Environments Cultivate Larger Galaxies
Deciphering Alzheimer’s Disease
Dancing Frog Genomes
Cyber-Physical Communication Network Security
Avoiding Smash Hits
Analyzing the Gut Microbiome
Adaptive Deep Learning Systems Towards Edge Intelligence
Accelerating Rendering Power
ACAS X: A Family of Next-Generation Collision Avoidance Systems
Neurocognition at the Wu Tsai Institute, Yale
Computational Modeling of Biological Systems
Computational Molecular Ecology
Social Capital and Economic Mobility
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Collaborative projects

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Outreach & Education Projects

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