News

The Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) has published a list of patents that have been awarded to University researchers during the past few months. Several MSI Principal Investigators, shown below, are on this list. The complete list can be found on the OVPR’s Inquiry blog: Patent roll call, fall 2016.  The PIs' MSI pages are linked from their names (PI names are in bold).

MSI will have an extended downtime period on December 7, 2016. Aside from our usual system maintenance, MSI will be working with a contractor to perform room integrity tests as part of an upgrade to the fire suppression system in our main data center, room B40. The testing will begin at 6am and will require a complete shutdown of all IT equipment in our data center in B40. Most systems should be able to return to service by 5pm. Since all filesystems will be unavailable for much of the day on 7 December, MSI suggests you stage time-critical data as necessary to external systems.

MSI PI Christy Haynes (Chemistry) is on The Analytic Scientist’s 2016 Power List. This list, the magazine’s first to include all women, features 50 scientists who represent analytical sciences. An article appears on the chemistry department’s website.

Professor Samuel Myers (Humphrey School of Public Affairs) is featured in the U’s Fall 2016 Driven to Discover campaign. Professor Myers is part of the “Protect Human Rights” section of the campaign. He has been using MSI’s supercomputers for computer-analysis studies of disparities, discrimination, access, opportunity, and transparency for the New Jersey Department of Transportation.

A three-year grant from the U.S. Department of Energy will be used to fund fundamental research into materials, work that could have implications for technologies such as data storage, superconductors, fuel cells, and electrical power plants. MSI PI Rafael Fernandes (Physics and Astronomy) is a member of the new Center for Quantum Materials, which is an interdisciplinary center that will study complex oxides.

Long-time MSI PI Sean Garrick, a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, is the new Faculty Development Fellow for the Institute of Diversity, Equity, and Advocacy (IDEA) at the University of Minnesota.

Associate Professor Yuqing Ren, an MSI PI from the Department of Information and Decision Sciences, has received a $919,979 grant from the National Science Foundation to develop and test a computational theory of online communities. Professor Ren’s collaborators on the grant are from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Michigan.

MSI PI Erin Carlson (Chemistry) has been selected to receive a 2017 Rising Star Award from the American Chemical Society Women Chemists Committee. This award recognizes early- to mid-career women chemists. An article about Professor Carlson’s work appears on the chemistry department’s website.

MSI PI Laura Gagliardi, a professor in the Department of Chemistry, has been elected to be a Fellow of the American Physical Society. This award recognizes Professor Gagliardi's groundbreaking work in electronic-structure methods. An article about this award appears on the chemistry department's website.