ACADEMIA

Key representatives of the TeraGrid initiative - the world's largest, most comprehensive cyberinfrastructure for open scientific research - will participate at the eighth official Congress of the United States Association for Computational Mechanics (USACM) to better understand how the TeraGrid's high-performance cyberinfrastructure can further advance the particular research needs of computational scientists. Sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the TeraGrid gives scientists a better way to work - seamlessly, collaboratively, across great distances, using advanced computers and accessing vast data stores, remote instruments, and sensor arrays. "It's important for the TeraGrid team to interact with computational scientists to learn how we can tune our systems and services to help them succeed in their research," says Charlie Catlett, director of the TeraGrid project and a Senior Fellow at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory's Computation Institute. "We're also beginning a new phase of the initiative that provides high-end computational and storage resources transparently through a set of Science Gateway partnerships," Catlett continues. "We're working closely with researchers and educators to extend access to TeraGrid capabilities and to provide research tools optimized for their communities through web portals and desktop applications. The Science Gateways program is something that we believe may be of interest to a number of participants at the USACM." The mission of the TeraGrid initiative is to provide services and resources that accelerate the work done by computational scientists, and USACM represents a critical mass of leaders in a variety of disciplines that rely on computational simulation to do their work. The TeraGrid activities at USACM are being organized by the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin, one of eight centers across the nation that provide TeraGrid's computational, storage, and visualization facilities and one of several key providers of TeraGrid software. Other TeraGrid Resource Providers (RPs) are: The University of Chicago/Argonne National Laboratory, Indiana University, the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, Purdue University, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the San Diego Supercomputer Center. "TeraGrid has been fully operational for nearly a year now, but we continue to enhance and strengthen the system, adding new capabilities and features in response to the needs of computational scientists, many of whom will be presenting their work - and their needs - at USACM," Catlett concludes. The conference will be hosted by the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin from July 24 to July 28 in Austin, Texas. Featuring applications in nanotechnology and bioengineering to recent advances in numerical methods and high-performance computing, the technical program will reflect the Congress theme, "Spanning Computational Engineering and Sciences." The Congress covers a wide spectrum of disciplines and applications. Bringing together researchers, developers, and users is a key objective of this conference. TeraGrid will be participating this November at Supercomputing 2005 in Seattle, Washington.