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National Cancer Institute work by MSI
MSI has created extensions for the National Cancer Institute's caGrid system. caGrid supports caBIG, the National Cancer Institute's Cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid initiative, which links cancer researchers and their data. caGrid provides researchers at different institutions tools that allow them to share and manage this information. The MSI extensions can be found here and here.
MSI Demos at Minnesota State Fair
On August 28, MSI participated in the Medical Devices Center booth in the University of Minnesota building at the 2008 Minnesota State Fair. Nancy Rowe, a Scientific Visualization Consultant on the MSI User Support staff, showed fair-goers three-dimensional visualizations of human skeletal and circulation systems and a fly-through of a human heart.
Appointment of MSI Interim Director
On July 14, 2008, Tim Mulcahy, Vice President for Research, announced the appointment of Professor Tom Jones to the position of Interim Director position for MSI. A member of the astronomy department, Tom is familiar with MSI through his use of MSI's services in his research in theoretical and computational astrophysics.
U's Solar Car
U'S SOLAR VEHICLE PROJECT TEAM FINISHES FIFTH in 2008 North American Solar Challenge, a 10-day, 2,400-mile race. The race began July 13 in Plano, Texas and finished July 22 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The vehicle's development team used MSI supercomputers and visualization labs for computational fluid dynamics modeling to estimate drag, lift, and crosswind effects for their designs.
Seventh-graders Introduced to Supercomputing
On June 26, 2008, Brian Ropers-Huilman, MSI Director of Systems Administration and Technical Operations, spoke to a group of seventh-grade students about MSI, high-performance computing, and programming for supercomputers. The students are taking a class in Math and Programming as part of the Minnesota Institute for Talented Youth's "Expand Your Mind" program. Mr.
Nanoparticle Film Deposition Research to be Used by Industry
Three MSI Principal Investigators featured in a recent University News Service story concerning nanoparticle film deposition technologies being used by local company Rushford Hypersonic in their facility in Rushford, Minnesota. The three researchers are: Professor Steven L. Girshick, MSI Fellow; Professor Joachim Heberlein, MSI Associate Fellow; and Professor Peter H. McMurry, MSI Associate Fellow. All three are in the Department of Mechanical Engineering.
MSI PIs Named Distinguished McKnight University Professors
The Office of the Provost and the Graduate School has named the 2008 recipients of Distinguished McKnight University Professorships. Two MSI Principal Investigators are on this list:
MSI PIs Named McKnight Land-Grant Professors
The Office of the Provost and the Graduate School has named the 2008 recipients of McKnight Land-Grant Professorships. Two MSI Principal Investigators are on this list:
NSF CAREER Grant for Elliott
Assistant Professor Ryan S. Elliott (Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics) was recently awarded prestigious NSF CAREER grant partly based on his research using MSI resources.
Wentzcovitch Elected Fellow of the AGU
Professor Renata Wentzcovitch (Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and MSI Fellow) has been elected as a Fellow of the AGU. Not more than 0.1% of members receive this award in any given year.
Netfinity Retirement
On June 30, 2008, MSI retired the Netfinity Linux cluster that was operational and in use for nearly eight years. During the first half of 2008, User Support has been assisting users to migrate their work off of the Netfinity. All software available on the Netfinity has already been migrated to other systems. The Netfinity is being replaced in the late summer/early fall of 2008 with a new system specifically designated to run loosely coupled parallel or serial jobs.
Yuen to be Honored at Symposium
Professor David A. Yuen (Department of Geology and Geophysics), a long-time MSI Principal Investigator and Fellow, will be honored by an international symposium at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland in June on the occasion of his 60th birthday. The seminar is entitled Interdisciplinary Constraints on Solid Earth Dynamics From the Crust to the Core.
Hammerhead Ribozyme Research
The research of Associate Professor Darrin M. York (Department of Chemistry and MSI Associate Fellow) was featured on the cover of the April 21, 2008 issue of Chemistry and Biology (see M. Martick et al.). The article discusses a joint experimental theoretical study of the hammerhead ribozyme.
Protein Structure Discovered
Assistant Professor Hiroshi Matsuo (Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Biophysics) has published the structure of the deaminase domain of the APOBECC3G protein in the March 6, 2008 issue of Nature (see K.-M. Chen et al.). The protein is capable of altering the HIV genome by deaminating cNDA cytosines to uracils. This activity can genetically inactive the virus.
Celestial Tsunamis
The research of Professor Cynthia A. Cattell (Department of Physics) and her collaborators was recently published in Geophysical Research Letters (see C. Cattell et al.). The article discusses the researchers' discovery of "celestial tsunamis," highly destructive radio waves in the Van Allen radiation belts.
Computer Visualizations
Graphics developed by the research group of Professor J. Ilja Siepmann (Department of Chemistry and MSI Fellow) have been featured on the covers of two professional journals:

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