ORNL and Morehouse College today kicked off the new senior-level course titled High-Performance Scientific Computing.

The class, offered through the Computer Science Department at Morehouse College, focuses on how high performance computers are used to find solutions to scientific and engineering problems. Sixteen students are currently enrolled in the class to study operating systems, programming basics, different model designs and other aspects of supercomputers.

The students will learn from the best. The Cray XT5 supercomputer at ORNL is the fastest open science computer in the world. The system, known as Jaguar, is capable of peak 1.64 "petaflops," or quadrillion calculations per second, and is the world's first petaflop system dedicated to open research.

Amos Johnson, an assistant professor in the computer science department at Morehouse, will teach the course on campus. Robert Whitten of the National Center for Computational Sciences at ORNL and Brian Worley, director, Computational Sciences and Engineering Division, will deliver class lectures from ORNL via telecommunications connection.

Students also will make three trips to ORNL during the course and participate in research applications run on Jaguar.

"This is a monumental opportunity for Morehouse, and we thank Oak Ridge and the U.S. Department of Energy for their assistance and support," said Morehouse President Robert M. Franklin Jr. "We are confident that the course - which focuses on high performance computers -- will give rise to meaningful ideas and solutions to scientific and engineering problems. We are proud to be a part of this groundbreaking endeavor."

This collaborative course is the result of an ORNL-Morehouse mentor-protégé relationship established in 2007. The initiative was the first such agreement between a historically black college or university and a national laboratory supported by the Office of Science within the Department of Energy.

"These students have the potential to be outstanding computational scientists," said Jim Roberto, ORNL Deputy Director for Science and Technology. "By learning on the best tools, with the best people, they will be on a path to become future leaders in the field."

Other schools planning to participate include Knoxville College and Jackson State University in Jackson, Miss. Jackson State and Morehouse are part of ORNL's Mentor-Protege Program.