Barbour, Pickering to Speak at Opening of MSU Research Addition

August 29, 2006

University Relations News Bureau
(662) 325-3442 Contact: Phil Hearn
August 25, 2006

STARKVILLE, Miss.--Gov. Haley Barbour and Congressman Chip Pickering, R-Miss., will participate in ribbon-cutting ceremonies Thursday [Aug. 31] for a new $6 million addition to Mississippi State's High Performance Computing Collaboratory.

The 10-11 a.m. grand opening will take place at the site in the Thad Cochran Research, Technology and Economic Development Park, located immediately north and just across Highway 182 from the university campus.

MSU President Robert H. "Doc" Foglesong, Bagley College of Engineering Dean Kirk Schulz and HPC2 operations board chair David Shaw will be among other speakers.

"The 28,000-square-foot expansion of the existing building will house top 500 HPC2 resources that place Mississippi State among the leading universities in the nation in computing resources," said Foglesong.

The collaboratory consistently ranks among the world's "Top 500 Supercomputing Sites," as listed biannually by the universities of Tennessee and Mannheim (Germany).

Informal activities will begin Tuesday evening [the 29th] with a 24-hour "Hawg Cookin'" event behind the new building. A 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. HPC2 colloquium Wednesday [the 30th] will conclude with a 6 p.m. barbecue meal.

Colloquium speakers include state College Board member Roy Estess, a former director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Stennis Space Center, at 10:30 a.m.; and Tom Ballard, director of economic development and partnerships, University of Tennessee-Battelle/Oak Ridge National Laboratory, at 11 a.m.

The collaboratory is an outgrowth of MSU's original National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center for Computational Field Simulation. Established in 1990, the center developed successfully over the years and graduated from the NSF program in 2001.

The HPC2 centers now generate more than $43 million annually from federal agencies and industry. The consortium involves five centers focused on multidisciplinary computational science and engineering research, and education collaboration.

They include the centers for Advanced Vehicular Systems, Computational Sciences and Department of Defense Programming Environment and Training, as well as the Computational Simulation and Design Center and the GeoResouces Institute.

The units, operating in two buildings in the Cochran park, share the university's high-performance computer capabilities. In all, they utilize the research skills of 190 MSU faculty and full-time researchers across a wide range of academic disciplines.

"The computing resources at the High Performance Computing Collaboratory are state-of-the-art systems that provide world-class capabilities for our researchers," said Trey Breckenridge, HPC2 high-performance resources and operations administrator.

NEWS EDITORS/DIRECTORS: For more information, contact Linda White at 662-325-9611 or linda@erc.msstate.edu.