News

The University of Minnesota’s GroupLens Lab has received wide attention recently for a paper about how people can interpret various emoji differently. An article about the research was posted to the lab’s blog. The GroupLens Lab uses MSI for research into recommender systems and social computing. Some of the media outlets that have featured this paper include:

The University of Minnesota is part of a $317 million grant to develop next-generation “smart” fabrics and fibers. Dozens of academic and industry partners are involved in this project. MSI PI David Pui, a professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Center for Filtration Research, is one of the lead project researchers at the U.

Three MSI Principal Investigators have been named Distinguished McKnight University Professors for 2016: William Arnold (Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering), Sarah Hobbie (Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior), and George Karypis (

On Wednesday, April 6, 2016, from 4:00am – 4:00pm CST, MSI staff will perform scheduled maintenance and upgrades to the network and various systems. Maintenance during this period will impact the following systems:

One petabyte of tape storage for under $10,000? Leveraging new advances in tape media, the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute has expanded its storage portfolio to offer easy access to deep archival storage at low cost. MSI currently offers a high-performance storage solution from Panasas (3.2 PB of storage) and a second tier of storage (3.2 PB) available via an S3 interface with lower performing hardware. The demand for storage is rapidly increasing and we are constantly looking for low-cost alternatives for long and medium term storage.

Professor Theresa Reineke, an MSI PI in the Department of Chemistry, has received the College of Science and Engineering (CSE) 2016 George W. Taylor Award for Distinguished Research. This award is given to younger faculty members for outstanding research. An article about the Taylor award can be found on the CSE website.

MSI PI Kelvin Lim, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry, was interviewed last week by local news outlet MinnPost. Professor Lim is an expert in brain disorders and answered questions about traumatic brain injury (TBI). Topics include the long-term effects of TBI and new strategies for treating it.

Two University of Minnesota faculty members, both of whom are MSI PIs, are among the persons named as 2016 Cottrell Scholars named by the Research Corporation of America. The Cottrell Scholar program is designed to support research by early-career professionals in chemistry, physics, and astronomy. Both professors are in the College of Science and Engineering.

Professor Randall Victora (Electrical and Computer Engineering) is among the recipients of the 2016 Awards for Outstanding Contributions to Postbaccalaureate, Graduate, and Professional Education. Professor Victora uses MSI for simulations of light propagation and electronic structure calculations of magnetic damping. The goal of the research is to improve designs for storage/memory media.