CC* Compute: Compute Cluster for Computational Sciences at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center – New Orleans (LSUHSC-NO)

Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, New Orleans LA

Investigators

Abstract

This project at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center New Orleans (LSUHSC-NO) constructs a scalable 26-node high-performance computing cluster (HPC) named Tigerfish. Tigerfish provides LSUHSC-NO researchers with uninterrupted, local access to HPC resources to enable and accelerate their biomedical research. The project provides training to new and existing HPC users to ease their transition to utilizing both Tigerfish and other nationally available HPC resources to meet increasing computational needs of their research. Tigerfish supports research and education within multiple disciplines at LSUHSC-NO including Bioinformatics, Biostatistics, Computational Biology, Genetics, Computational Genomics, Microbiology, Neurology, and Proteomics. This project has broader impacts for the community including training the next generation of researchers as a part of the Tiger Scholars program which provides high-school students with the opportunity to be exposed to the capabilities of HPC in research. Tigerfish is available as a computing resource supporting a high school, undergraduate, and postbaccalaureate student summer research program that provides summer research experiences to students coming to study at LSUHSC-NO from various parts of the country. Tigerfish provides an essential platform for our outreach to regional historically black colleges and universities which lack their own HPC resources for intensive computing. The recently launched Bioinformatics and Genomics program is able to access Tigerfish as an essential resource for their highly intensive computational needs and serves as a resource for the newly established MS Biomedical Sciences-Bioinformatics Track program. Finally, Tigerfish resources are shared with Open Science Grid for LSUHSC-NO to play its part in making HPC more accessible nationally. 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.