Acquisition of a High-Performance Computing Cluster for Big-Data in University of Massachusetts, Geosciences

This high-performance computing (HPC) cluster at the University of Massachusetts (UMass) Amherst will support a wide range of computation-intensive research activities at the Department of Geosciences, especially the recently established Seismology Research Group. Research activities across a wide diversity of UMass Geosciences deal with big datasets, where computation plays an integral role.

This includes research laboratories in seismology, geomechanics, geomorphology, hydrology, sedimentology, geography, and climatology. This overwhelming computation demand is most effectively met with efficient HPC clusters. The HPC cluster will provide cutting-edge, high performance computational power to a wide range of research activities at the UMass Geosciences, including three female and two early-career faculty members as well as their students and postdocs.

The HPC cluster will also be made available to a diversity of other UMass campus users through the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC) and will greatly enrich UMass research infrastructure. The instrumentation will provide hands-on interdisciplinary research training to undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral researchers.

More broadly, the outcome of this project will be integrated into a two-week Summer Seismology Education Workshop, targeting undergraduate students from the Five-College Community.

Strong needs for HPC cluster exist from a large number of researchers across multiple disciplines broadly related to Earth Sciences at UMass. This high-performance computing cluster will meet their research demands. The much-needed shared HPC cluster will support NSF-funded research projects in several areas.

This includes a new NSF/EAR CAREER grant to develop a new understanding of the nature of variation within and along subduction zones with advanced methods of seismic modeling. The cutting-edge full-wave propagation simulation within 3D Earth structures, which relies on high-performance computation, provides us a powerful way to constrain the three-dimensional seismic features of the crust and mantle lithosphere.

The requested HPC cluster will also find immediate applications across a wide range of research activities in Geosciences, including: (1) an NSF CAREER grant to quantify soil erosion rates of the midwestern U.S.; (2) an NSF/EAR grant to simulate fracture propagation with rock material; (3) a NASA-supported graduate fellowship on extreme sea level hazard in the Gulf of Maine; (4) an NSF/EAR grant on continental accretion and lithospheric evolution through geologic time in eastern North America. And (5) two projects to investigate the terrestrially dissolved organic carbon input to the Arctic Ocean and to characterize dynamic socio-environmental flash flood risk.

The HPC cluster will support the career development of an early-career female seismologist as well as the new seismology group at UMass Amherst. Expansion of seismology research and teaching has outstanding potential to attract undergraduate and graduate students at the Five-College Community (including UMass Amherst, Amherst College, Hampshire College, all-female Smith and Mount Holyoke Colleges).

In addition, PI Gao has been a volunteer instructor, offering workshops for underrepresented 8th-12th-grade girls through the Girls Inc. Eureka! Program (a national organization), which is a strong STEM-based collaboration between Girls Inc. of Holyoke, Massachusetts and UMass Amherst.

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.