For more information contact: Michelle Williams (919) 843-5365

May 14, 2004

FOR RELEASE AT WILL

CHAPEL HILL – Four University of North Carolina campuses, in collaboration with eight additional UNC institutions and several N.C. community and private colleges, will receive seed grants totaling $2.3 million over the next two years to jumpstart the development of advanced research and education applications in high-performance computing, information systems, and computational and computer science. The competitive awards will be distributed among multi-institutional partnerships spearheaded by Appalachian State University and UNC Asheville, and UNC-Chapel Hill and UNC Wilmington, who also have agreed to collaborate significantly between their individual projects.

Funding to support these initiatives comes from a legislative appropriation originally earmarked to purchase services provided by the NC Supercomputing Center, a shared resource operated by MCNC that closed last June. To help fill the resource void the Center’s closure created for state researchers and educators, the UNC Office of the President issued a request for proposals to continue support for a stable infrastructure of computational resources for the state’s higher education community.

The request elicited 12 joint proposals, identifying more than 40 collaborating entities across the state. Three expert panels evaluated the submissions in a multi-stage review process and concluded that the four successful proposals best met the stated goals of encouraging the development of advanced problem-solving methods; advancing training, education, and research; creating opportunities for multi-institutional collaboration, developing new economic-growth initiatives; and leveraging the state’s existing and emerging information technology infrastructure.

"With nearly 20 different entities collaborating, these projects will be a boon to all participants and will play an important role in furthering the research and workforce training components of the University’s mission," said Vijay Verma, UNC associate vice president for information resources. "Additionally, the work that will take place over the next two years will provide a boost to the state’s economy by attracting targeted growth industries such as biotechnology, bioinformatics, and genomics. This is indeed a very unique effort undertaken by the University of North Carolina, and we hope that others will follow."

The four proposals funded by the University are summarized below:

Appalachian State University
A Consortium to Promote Computational Science and High Performance Computing
Principal Investigator: Barry Kurtz, ASU Lowe’s Distinguished Professor of Computer Science
Award: $650,000 over two years
Partnering Institutions
North Carolina A & T State University
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
University of North Carolina at Pembroke
Western Carolina University
Elon University
Lenoir-Rhyne College
High Point University

The mission is to provide undergraduate students at comprehensive universities with an opportunity to study computational sciences and high-performance computing at a level comparable to students at Research I universities, to promote faculty research involving undergraduates, and to promote grid computing methodologies throughout North Carolina. The project will pool knowledge resources and courses at the eight collaborating institutions to graduate a large number of students trained in computational sciences, establish a grid network to support research, and export the technology to local IT companies through a summer workshop.

For more information, contact Jane Nicholson, Director of University News, (828) 262-2345, nicholsonrj@appstate.edu

UNC Asheville
Scientific Innovations in Numerical Modeling, Digital Visualization, and High-speed Connectivity in Western North Carolina
Principal Investigator: John G. Stevens, UNCA Chief Research Officer, Director of Sponsored Scholarship and Programs, Director of Mossbauer Effect Data Center, and Professor of Chemistry
Award: $600,000 over two years
Partnering Institutions
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College

The mission is to advance the state-of-the-art digital data base manipulation, modeling, and scientific visualization and to increase regional knowledge-based training and educational programs. The focus is on environmental data modeling using geographical information systems, scientific visualization, and database management systems. The project will develop a real-time numerical weather prediction model for the region, increase high-speed channels of communication between the partners and the Education and Research Services of Western Carolina (ERSWC), and enhance undergraduate and graduate research in modeling and visualization of atmospheric data and two-year degree curricula in computer programming, information systems, and digital media.

For more information, contact Merianne Epstein, Director of Public Information,(828) 251-6676, mepstein@unca.edu

UNC-Chapel Hill
Community Grid Portals for Bioinformatics
Principal Investigator: Daniel A. Reed, UNC-Chapel Hill Kenan Eminent Professor and Director of the Institute for Renaissance Computing
Award: $550,000 over two years
Partnering Institutions
Wake Technical Community College

The mission is to develop and deploy a shared, extensible bioinformatics portal to train North Carolina students and empower researchers. The focus will be the creation of a cyberinfrastructure that leverages investments in high speed networking, cluster computing deployment, and the NC BioGrid and will provide hands-on student training in computing resource management. Lessons developed as a result of the training will be generalized to create electronic training materials for statewide training. The portal will support activities in the collaborative community consisting of educational institutions and bioinformatics research, health related organizations such as biotech firms and hospitals, and data sources including public health data and clinical data. UNCW and UNC-CH have committed to a collaboration which will deploy bioinformatics components developed by the UNCW team as part of the UNC-CH bioinformatics portal using current standards, and will jointly develop education and training activities.

For more information, contact Mike McFarland, Director of University Communications, (919) 962-8593, mike_mcfarland@unc.edu

UNC Wilmington
Fostering Undergraduate Research Partnerships through a Graphical User Environment for the North Carolina Computing Grid
Principal Investigator: Ronald J. Vetter, Professor and Chair, UNCW Computer Science Department
Award: $557,634 over two years
Partnering Institutions
East Carolina University
North Carolina Central University
North Carolina State University
Western Carolina University
Cape Fear Community College

The mission is to develop an easy-to-use interface for grid computing which can be used for a wide range of applications. The interface will provide a view of grid resources, services, and their interactions. Through collaborations of faculty researchers and undergraduate student programmers, a wide range of tools and user library modules will be developed. These tools are commonly needed for computational chemistry, bioinformatics, human-computer interfaces, workflow programming, combinatorics, and e-business applications. The project will move a prototype grid graphical user interface to production. The project will also develop a series of workshops, presentations, and online resources to train students, faculty, and business personnel to use grid computing, in support of the development of the North Carolina Grid initiative. UNCW will share its grid technology developments and offer training and education activities with UNC-Chapel Hill.

For more information, contact Mimi Cunningham, Assistant Vice Chancellor for University Relations, (910) 962-3171, cunninghamm@uncw.edu

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