News

Professor Aditya Bhan in UMNews
MSI Principal Investigator Aditya Bhan (Chemical Engineering and Materials Science) is highlighted in a UMNews story about a new partnership program between the University and Dow Chemical Co. Dow is collaborating with and providing grants to U researchers in chemical and materials sciences. Another story about this partnership appears on the CSE website.
Community Fund Drive
As a reward for winning the OVPR contest for "highest increase in participation" in the 2011 Community Fund Drive, the MSI staff was treated to a serenade by Vice President for Research Tim Mulcahy on December 1. VP Mulcahy, in appropriate attire, performed a song set to the music "La donna e mobile" from the opera Rigoletto by Verdi.
New GPU System Installed
The Minnesota Supercomputing Institute (MSI) has installed a new graphics processing unit (GPU) system that it hopes will enable researchers to take advantage of this new technology for innovation and improved performance for research.
Biomedical Engineering Society's Undergraduate Research Award
Kevin Mohsenian, a senior in the biomedical engineering department and a researcher in the group of MSI Principal Investigator Matt Johnson, recently won the Biomedical Engineering Society's Undergraduate Research Award for 2011. The award was for his simulation work, "Computational Modeling of Pedunculopontine Nucleus Deep Brain Simulation," which is part of the Johnson group's work highlighted in the December Research Spotlight (see sidebar on left of page) and in the MSI Annual Research Highlights 2011.
Professor David Tilman in UMNews
Recent research by MSI Principal Investigator David Tilman (Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior) discusses the possibility that global food demand could double by 2050. This could have serious effects on the environment, but could be avoided by changes in agricultural practices. UMNews has published a news release about this research. Professor Tilman's work is also featured in MSI's Annual Research Highlights 2011.
Nevin D. Young paper in Nature
A UMNews article about the research of MSI Associate Fellow Nevin D. Young is featured on the U website. Professor Young and his collaborators recently published a paper in Nature (November 16) concerning their genomic research with legumes. This research increases our knowledge about how legumes produce natural nitrogen fertilizer, which is important to sustainable agriculture.
Interview with Professir Gunda Georg
An interview with MSI Associate Fellow Gunda Georg (Director, Institute for Therapeutics Discovery and Development) appears on the "Giving to the U of M" website. Professor Georg and other researchers at the ITDD use MSI resources for their drug discovery and development projects.
Professor Karen Gran in Environmental Science and Technology
An article about Karen Gran’s (Geological Sciences, Duluth) research into river sediment, shown in the November Research Spotlight (see sidebar), appeared in a recent issue of Environmental Science and Technology. It has also been selected as an Editor’s Choice article by Science.
PI Jon Foley article in Scientific American
MSI Principal Investigator Jon Foley (Director, Institute on the Environment) has a feature article in Scientific American. "Can We Feed the World and Sustain the Planet?” discusses how we can double the amount of food produced by the world’s farmers while also decreasing farming’s adverse effects on the environment. Professor Foley’s MSI research investigates how changes in the Amazon basin affect rainfall patterns.
Professor Kathryn VandenBosch selected as Dean
MSI Associate Fellow Kathryn VandenBosch (Head, Plant Biology) has been selected to be Dean of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at UW Madison. Professor VandenBosch has been a Principal Investigator at MSI since 2003 and was named an Associate Fellow in 2010.
Symposium in honor of Regents Professor Emeritus Daniel D. Joseph
On November 4, 2011, the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics held a symposium in honor of Regents Professor Emeritus Daniel D. Joseph, MSI Fellow, who passed away on May 24. More information about the symposium can be found on the AEM website.
Visitor Numbers to LMVL at an All-Time High
 
Wind Energy Research Station
The new Wind Energy Research Station at the University's UMore Park hosted a commissioning event on October 25 at the U’s UMore Park. MSI is one of the U units participating in the Eolos Wind Energy Consortium with a number of other educational and industry partners.
Professor Chris Cramer receives Morse Alumni Award
Professor and MSI Fellow Chris Cramer (Chemistry) received a 2010-11 Morse Alumni Award for distinguished teaching. Read about this award on the University Alumni Association website. Professor Cramer has been a Fellow of the Institute since 1996.
Professor Yuk Sham in Drug Metabolism and Disposition
The cover article of the September 2011 issue of Drug Metabolism and Disposition was written by MSI Principal Investigator Yuk Sham (Center for Drug Design) and his research group. The article is called "pH-Dependent Transport of Pemetrexed by Breast Cancer Resistance Protein."
New Storage System on Itasca
  The Minnesota Supercomputing Institute (MSI) is happy to announce that it has added 550 TB of usable disk space for its flagship Itasca system with the addition of a Dell | Terascala HPC Storage Solution (HSS). This is a complete Lustre appliance including hardware, file system and the Terascala ISIS management solution. The HSS consists of 360 2-TB disk drives configured in Raid 5 storage with small raid sets, three pairs of data movers, and a pair of meta-data servers, all with redundancy and managed failover capabilities.
Visit by Representative Erik Paulsen
  U.S. Congressman Erik Paulsen, who represents Minnesota's 3rd District, visited the LCSE-MSI Visualization Laboratory on September 26, 2011. Rep. Paulsen was on campus to meet with officials from the Office of Technology Commercialization and a start-up company spun out of the University to talk about the U's process for moving research innovations from the lab to the marketplace.
President Kaler Visits LMVL
The University's new President, Eric Kaler, and his wife, Karen Kaler, visited the LSCE-MSI Visualization Lab during their visit to the College of Science and Engineering on September 21. The Kalers saw a 3D virtual-reality demonstration that is part of a medical-device development project headed by MSI Principal Investigators and CSE Professors Fotis Sotiropoulos, Art Erdman, and Dan Keefe.
MSI at the Minnesota State Fair
MSI participated with the Medical Devices Center (MDC) at the Minnesota State Fair on September 1. We showed off some of the work we do with the MDC. The University of Minnesota Building is at the corner of Dan Patch Avenue and Underwood Street. More information about the U's activities at the Fair, including a daily calendar, can be found at the U's State Fair website.
LMVL in Walter Library Video
Twin Cities Public Television recently aired a documentary about the architect who designed the building in which MSI resides, Walter Library. An outtake from the show dealing with the renovation of Walter (scroll down to "Walter Library Renovation") also shows MSI's LMVL. The visualization of Rayleigh-Taylor instability at the end of the video clip is by Professor Paul Woodward (Astronomy, MSI Fellow).

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