BIOLOGY

U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) said that North Dakota State University now boasts one of the most powerful supercomputing systems between Minneapolis and Seattle, and will keep expanding its capabilities. That expansion, coupled with a new network of high-tech cyber-infrastructure the federal government is helping to fund in the state means North Dakota will continue to attract, at even greater rates, well-paying, high-tech jobs.

Dorgan, a senior member of the Senate’s Appropriations Committee, has secured more than $21 million for North Dakota’s Center for High Performance Computing at NDSU. Because of the large federal investment, the system will soon have the capability to compute 25 trillion functions per second, a twenty-five fold increase from just a few years ago.

“These investments have helped build one of the most powerful computing systems in the Northern Plains,” Dorgan said. “We’ve built the horsepower to make North Dakota a research powerhouse. It’s another example of the world-class, cutting-edge activities happening in the Research Corridor.”

Dorgan has secured $3.25 million in prior funding for NDSU to connect to the Northern Tier Network, a high-tech cyber-infrastructure that can move large amounts of research data. The White House announced last week that another $7.5 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding that Dorgan supported will be released to boost the Northern Tier Network in 13 states, including North Dakota.

“The combination of the big pipes, which is the Northern Tier Network, and the big power, which is our region’s Center for High Performance Computing, will put NDSU, and other North Dakota universities in a stronger position to create cutting-edge labs and build research partnerships on a global level with other universities,” Dorgan said. “This infrastructure is also attracting new industries and new jobs to our state.”

In fact, NDSU plans to use this high-tech hub to assist research partnerships with Argonne and Pacific Northwest National Energy Laboratories that Dorgan helped to forge.

Other examples of current information sharing capabilities include access to Dickinson State University’s massive Theodore Roosevelt Center, neurotransmitter studies at the University of North Dakota, and Knife River Indian Village discoveries in western North Dakota.

“As its research activities continue to grow, NDSU’s Center for High Performance Computing, also known as the Center for Computationally-Assisted Science & Technology, provides scientists the means to expand frontiers in research,” said Dr. Philip Boudjouk, NDSU's Vice President for Research, Creative Activities and Technology Transfer. “Researchers at NDSU use that computing power to make discoveries in nanotechnology, agriculture, computer science, biotechnology and many other fields. Federal funding and additional collaboration allows us to bring robust computing tools to faculty and student researchers.”

“Without the Senator’s vision of what is possible to elevate North Dakota’s role on a national level in science and technology, these advances to provide and connect the technology backbone to carry vast amounts of scientific data would not be possible. The federal support for technology infrastructure has come to fruition with Senator Dorgan’s initiatives at the federal level,” said Bonnie Neas, NDSU’s Vice President for Information Technology.”

Today, Dorgan also led a roundtable discussion at NDSU with Research Corridor business leaders and university officials where he received a briefing on their successful research, development and commercialization initiatives.

Dorgan has directed nearly $700 million in federal funding since he conceived of the Research Corridor initiative in 2002. Much of this funding has been used to boost high-tech activities in the Fargo area.