Equipment: MRI: Track 1 Acquisition of a high-performance computer cluster for computational biology

The University Corporation, Northridge, Northridge CA

Investigators

Abstract

This MRI award will enable the acquisition of a high-performance computer cluster for computational biology at California State University, Northridge (CSUN). The award will support the development and growth of research in computational biology, biochemistry, and biophysics at CSUN by enabling the analysis of larger datasets and more complex simulations than previously possible. The goal of this research is to advance our understanding of a diverse range of topics, including heart disease, immune system function, computational drug-design, medical implants, membrane protein structure and function, and the role of microbes in global warming. Students at CSUN, over 50% of whom are from traditionally underserved groups, will be trained through dedicated workshops, hands-on experience in research, a new research-based course in computational biology, and the integration of the cluster into existing courses. Additionally, the PIs and senior personnel will work with local high school teachers in computational/data science, who will, in turn, train local high school students. The cluster, with a balance of high memory graphics processing units (GPUs) and central processing units (CPUs), large-memory, and storage, will allow currently inaccessible problems in life sciences to be addressed and support current as well as new research directions in computational biology. The flexible design of the cluster will allow the PIs and senior personnel to apply the wide range of methods and approaches used in computational biology to characterize the thermodynamics and structural dynamics of G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR) signaling, create new approaches to predict ligand and ion binding to proteins and RNA, develop a multi-scale framework to link protein mutations to cardiac arrhythmias, create detailed models of how T-cell receptor diversity affects immune system, design and test treatments to prevent fibrous tissue growth around medical implants, and use DNA and RNA sequence data to determine how microbial communities in thawing permafrost contribute to climate change. Collectively, these projects will further knowledge in applied and foundational biotechnology and provide new software tools for the scientific community. 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.