5/24/07 -- The director of UNM's new graduate degree program for nanoscience and microsystems Abhaya Datye has worked with the staff at the Center for High Performance Computing (CHPC) to assemble a supercomputer capable of teraflop calculations. Grants from the National Science Foundation's Integrative Graduate Educations and Research Traineeship (IGERT) and the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) along with money from the Chemistry and Biocomputing Departments at UNM made it possible to acquire this computer.
"This new computer will make it possible for students to play with nanoscale structures even before they synthesize them in the lab," Datye says. "It has already made a big difference to graduate students taking 'Density Functional Theory,' a physics course being taught by Professor Susan Atlas on the computational modeling of nanomaterials. Students used the supercomputer to perform the calculations for individual research projects this spring."
The supercomputer, code named "NANO" is initially being used by students and faculty in the Nanoscience and Microsystems program, but Datye says the machine, located at the CHPC will be managed as a university wide resource.
The supercomputer computer is also available to researchers at other universities in the state who participate in the NSF/EPSCOR program, since one of the goals of the purchase is to enhance statewide capabilities in nanoscience.