News

MSI Principal Investigators are among the researchers chosen to receive grants from the Institute on the Environment’s Renewable Electricity for Minnesota’s Future program. The projects are cross-disciplinary and include partners from the private sector. The following projects include MSI PIs. PI names are in bold. A complete list of the grant awardees can be found on the IonE website.

In a paper published last month in the journal PLoS One, MSI Principal Investigator Tracy Twine (Soil, Water, and Climate) used computer models to show that rising temperatures and more extreme rain/drought cycles adversely affect corn yields. The study is the first to include the process by which plants interact with soil moisture. A story about the research appears on the SWC department website.

Mice used in research labs live in controlled environments with sheltered immune systems. In a recent study, MSI PIs and their research groups and colleagues show that mice that are exposed to a more unhygienic environment, by being housed with “dirty” pet-store mice, have immune systems that are more like those of humans. This has implications for research, by making mouse models more applicable to humans.

The U was recognized by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) for its contributions to the study of microbiomes. The OSTP announced the National Microbiome Initiative, in which the U is a participant, on May 13. An article appears on the U’s Discover blog. A number MSI Principal Investigators are involved in microbiome research. MSI has featured this research:

Professor Shashi Shekhar, an MSI PI from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, has been recognized by the Springer Publishing Company for his paper, “From GPS and virtual globes to spatial computing – 2020.” It was selected as one of the top articles published in 2015 that “address the world’s most pressing challenges.” The article was published in the journal GeoInformatica in October

Associate Professor Sharon Jansa, an MSI PI from the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, has received the College of Biological Sciences (CBS) Stanley Dagley-Samuel Kirkwood Undergraduate Education Award. This annual award recognizes a CBS faculty member for exceptional contributions to undergraduate education.

MSI PI Theresa Reineke, a professor in the Department of Chemistry, has been elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). She is being recognized for her work in the design and discovery of synthetic polymers for drug and gene delivery. She uses MSI resources for this research. She was inducted into the College of Fellows during the AIMBE Annual Meeting on April 4, 2016. An article about Professor Reineke appears on the chemistry department website. 

On April 26, 2016, MSI held the seventh annual Research Exhibition. This event is a judged poster session with posters from MSI users. Posters compete in one of two categories: Biological and Medical Sciences or Physical Sciences and Engineering. Winners receive travel awards, with a Grand Prize winner and two finalists in each category. This year, the two Grand Prize winners each received a $1,500 travel award and the four Finalists received $1,000 travel awards.

The Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) in association with Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC) will hold the seventh edition of the Programming and tUning Massively Parallel Systems summer school (PUMPS) this summer. PUMPS is aimed at enriching the skills of researchers, graduate students and teachers with cutting-edge technique and hands-on experience in developing applications for many-core processors with massively parallel computing resources like GPU accelerators.