Tony Mezzacappa, director of the Joint Institute for Computational Sciences (JICS), is continuing campus-wide colloquia at UT this semester to share how anyone who relies on computing for research can benefit from the resources and expertise JICS has to offer.
Previous conferences have taken place in eleven different departments from across the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Engineering, the College of Communication and Information, and the Haslam College of Business since last spring.
So far this semester at least three talks are planned, with six others confirmed for scheduling. A video recording of the first colloquium can be viewed on the Department of Nuclear Engineering website.
Mezzacappa is pleased to have the opportunity to meet people in the various departments.
“This is great for relationship building,” he said. “These colloquia are well attended and are resulting in many new collaborations and accounts on the JICS-managed Darter and Beacon advanced computing resources.”
During the sessions, Mezzacappa will describe how JICS resources can be used for high-performance, large-memory, or high-throughput computing and other applications. He will also present a series of case studies.
“If people are computing and hitting walls they should contact JICS, because we can assist them,” he said. “Users might encounter many different types of impasses that JICS can remedy, such as an inability to find the proper resources, jobs taking too long, an inability to run enough jobs, insufficient memory, or deficiencies in data analyses.”
Mezzacappa said that JICS offers the benefit of those resources through the auspices of its National Institute for Computational Sciences, which is one of five national centers for advanced computing.
To bridge researchers to the machines, he notes, JICS houses computational scientists with domain expertise, knowledge of the most up-to-date applications, and an understanding of the semantics used in different disciplines.
Furthermore, JICS’ Application Acceleration Center of Excellence prepares users for new technologies that are on the horizon, helping them avoid the project disruptions that stem from the need to adopt new technologies.
“Our goal is to dispel the stereotypes that many researchers have and show them that their work is worthy of advanced computing,” Mezzacappa said. “In the course of doing that, we emphasize that JICS is here for them as a very valuable resource or collaborative partner.”
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CONTACT:
Scott Gibson (865-206-6499, wscottgibson@tennessee.edu)