Equipment: MRI: Track 2 Acquisition of a High-Performance Computing Cluster for Boosting Artificial Intelligence Enabled Science, Engineering, and Education in South Carolina

University Of South Carolina At Columbia, Columbia SC

Investigators

Abstract

This Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) project aims to establish a new High-Performance Computing (HPC) instrument with balanced Central Processing Unit (CPU) and Graphics Processing Units (GPU) nodes at the University of South Carolina (USC). This facility will significantly improve the existing HPC resources at USC, which will boost research in diverse fields such as materials science, physics, chemistry, engineering, computer science, bioinformatics, health science and humanities, all enhanced by the HPC, big data and artificial intelligence (AI) tools. Moreover, this instrument will enable access to HPC resources and AI training for students and faculty at over 10 undergraduate institutions in South Carolina (SC), including historically black and minority-serving colleges, creating opportunities for cutting-edge HPC/AI-for-Science research for underrepresented groups in STEM. This project will advance fundamental science, engineering, health sciences and humanities, through collaboration among many partnering institutions across the USC system and SC state, and contribute to national research priorities in energy, climate and national security. The new HPC facility will enable researchers to perform large-scale simulated data acquisition for AI model training. The new instrument will be employed for state-of-the-art analytics, AI algorithms and data visualization. Research efforts centered on ab initio quantum physics and chemistry, molecular dynamics, computational fluid dynamics, multi-universe stochastic models and data-intensive deep learning and graph convolutional neural networks, will advance our knowledge of cyber-physical systems and materials. This knowledge will contribute to the development of innovative applications such as generative design of materials, effective intervention and prevention mechanisms for complex diseases. This project will greatly broaden access to the HPC-AI computing facility in SC and will provide holistic AI and HPC training through technical workshops, undergraduate research scholarships and AI-for-Science projects and high-school summer camps. This instrument will also enhance and promote interdisciplinary collaborations among regional consortium researchers, including scientists and students at Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (PUIs) serving historically underrepresented groups, leading to an organic growth of the research community in SC. Over 3,000 people including 315 faculty, 2,550 graduate and undergraduate students, 90 high school students and 30 departments across USC and 10 PUIs will immediately benefit from this HPC equipment. The project website for public access will be http://ai4science.sc.edu. It will serve as the depository for all research products generated throughout the project, such as data, codes, results, emulators and simulators. The project website will be maintained for at least 5 additional years beyond the project period. This project is jointly funded by the Major Research Instrumentation program and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). 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.