MRI: Track 1 Acquisition of a High-Performance Computing System at New Mexico Tech

Progress in modern science and education has become increasingly reliant on advanced software and computer systems to address the most pressing issues facing society today. Such software and systems enable research in the fields of earth and environmental science, materials science and engineering, computational biology and bioinformatics, and cybersecurity, while also providing the resources and infrastructure to train students across all levels in state-of-the-art computational and scientific methods. This project will develop a centralized high-performance computing (HPC) system for the first time at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (New Mexico Tech), providing a foundation for researchers, educators, and students to conduct cutting edge computational research over the coming decades. The development of a high-performance computing system at New Mexico Tech will provide its researchers and students exponentially more computational resources than currently available. Specific research tasks for the project include: deciphering the processes controlling natural hazards such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, the formation of critical minerals for use in renewable energy and industrial applications, technology for addressing climate change, failure mechanisms in new engineering alloys, and the contribution of genetic variation to energy production and elemental metabolism in Mars-like environments. The Broader Impacts of this MRI are two-fold. One, the result of a centralized, more powerful system will be more rapid innovation in the research thrusts and trans-disciplinary computational research will evolve on the New Mexico Tech campus. Second, from an educational perspective, the high-performance computing system developed at NMT will enable educators to freely utilize advanced computational resources and techniques for interactive classroom activities, student-led research projects, and introductions to fundamental methods in system administration, design, and usage. Development of the system will include training a diverse cohort of young, computationally oriented researchers in high performance computing-based research techniques and administration, a vast majority of whom will remain in New Mexico after their educational experience at New Mexico Tech. The principles of open data sharing are part of the spirit of this MRI. All data, methods, code, software, and materials produced on this MRI machine will be made available to the public, in a timely fashion and for the long-term. The proposed HPC system will be used to produce a large number of datasets from a variety of researchers, with myriad data needs. To accommodate data sharing, a public repository for this website is hosted in New Mexico Tech’s Google G Suite for Education, at https://tinyurl.com/NMT-HPC. Within the repository, specific folders for data, software, codes, and results will be organized according to the research thrusts. The repository will be maintained by the project leaders and updated on an annual basis. The target is to maintain availability of the public repository for 10 years after the installation of the HPC machines, so that subsequent publications can direct readers to the data. 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.