BLOOMINGTON, Ill.— Illinois Wesleyan University will be able to conduct scientific research on a new supercomputer.
Once built, the computer will be housed at National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) on the campus of The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (U of I), and will be available to all members of the Great Lakes Consortium (GLC). The Consortium, of which IWU is a member, is a collaboration of dozens of universities, colleges, research laboratories and institutes from around the country. The GLC is developing the world’s first sustained “petascale” computational system dedicated to open scientific research.
This unprecedented machine, based on a powerful new system design from IBM, will be called Blue Waters™. Supported by a $208 million grant from the National Science Foundation, it will come online in 2011 at the U of I.
“IWU appreciates how quickly emerging techniques become woven into the technological and educational fabric of our society,” said Rebecca Roesner, chair of the Chemistry Department at Illinois Wesleyan, who noted several faculty members are exploring how the activities of the Great Lakes Consortium might dovetail with their ongoing scholarly efforts.