| NSF Org: |
OAC Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC) |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | September 12, 2023 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | January 16, 2024 |
| Award Number: | 2320244 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Andrey Kanaev
akanaev@nsf.gov (703)292-2841 OAC Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC) CSE Direct For Computer & Info Scie & Enginr |
| Start Date: | September 15, 2023 |
| End Date: | August 31, 2026 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $935,340.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $935,340.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
2000 PENNINGTON RD EWING NJ US 08618-1104 (609)771-3255 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
2000 PENNINGTON RD EWING NJ US 08628-0718 |
| Primary Place of Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | Major Research Instrumentation |
| Primary Program Source: |
01AB2324DB R&RA DRSA DEFC AAB |
| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.070, 47.083 |
ABSTRACT
In this project, The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) will acquire equipment to significantly upgrade and enhance our Electronic Laboratory for Science and Analysis (ELSA) High Performance Computing (HPC) cluster. As a primarily undergraduate institution, TCNJ is nationally recognized for the engagement of undergraduate students in research. School of Science faculty work closely with undergraduates in their laboratories throughout the academic year and during the summer in the Mentored Undergraduate Summer Experience (MUSE), with more than 75% of science graduates from TCNJ obtaining at least a semester of research experience. Over the course of this project, nearly 100 undergraduate student researchers per year will benefit by engaging in faculty-mentored research in labs from all School of Science departments (Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Mathematics and Statistics, and Computer Science) as well as in Civil Engineering. These research experiences are transformative for the students enabling their training in computing as well as facilitating their research in fields that include machine learning, astrophysics, biophysics, mathematical biology, and bioinformatics. Beyond the research laboratory, science faculty incorporate ELSA in their teaching, exposing 800-1000 undergraduates per year to advanced computing. TCNJ is also committed to creating a research-intensive environment for all STEM students by increasing success among underrepresented students and those with high financial need, including those that are transferring to TCNJ from local community colleges. The access to ELSA through collaboration with Open Science Grid is stimulating research programs and fostering alliances for collective impact.
The TCNJ ELSA cluster is a heterogeneous HPC cluster housed in the TCNJ HPC Center. It is a state-of-the-art resource that will continue to meet the current and future computational needs of TCNJ?s science faculty and undergraduate students. The enhancements provided through this award will include the acquisition of high-end GPUs, fast, modern CPUs with fast interconnects and large memory capacities, and high speed network-based storage. The upgrades will directly benefit the research programs of 18 TCNJ faculty members, allowing them to continue to engage undergraduate students in transformative research experiences. The objective in designing a system with both GPU nodes and CPU nodes connected to high speed storage is to enable ELSA to run a diverse set of research workflows that reflect the varied and interdisciplinary computational research carried out by TCNJ faculty. The work of these faculty spans a range of interdisciplinary themes including (1) computational physics, (2) mathematical/computational biology, (3) genomics, (4) machine learning, and other areas. Some of the examples of the diverse scientific efforts that the cluster will support include molecular simulation studies of bacterial pilus biomechanics, assessing the habitability of circumbinary planets, using mathematical models to explore evolutionary tradeoffs in swimming performance across marine invertebrates, employing genomic approaches to characterize novel regulators of plant defenses against pests, and understanding how to reduce training data annotation costs in machine learning. Ultimately, the enhancements to the ELSA cluster in this project will significantly improve capacity for scientific discovery, and help TCNJ faculty prepare undergraduate students to leverage the increasingly powerful HPC resources of the future in their careers.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
Please report errors in award information by writing to: awardsearch@nsf.gov.
