HPC for bioinformatics and life sciences in NY

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Computerworld has an article that’s a good read this week on a life sciences supercomputing center in upstate NY:

The Center for Computational Research (CCR) at the State University of New York at Buffalo operates a 1,200-server system that supports about 100 research groups spanning nearly 40 departments at the university, as well as more than 20 companies and institutions in the Buffalo-Niagara region. Among them are the world-renowned Roswell Park Cancer Institute, the Hauptman-Woodward Research Institute and the new New York State Center for Excellence in Bioinformatics & Life Sciences, where the system is housed.

The HPC resources at the CCR are used for everything from bioinformatics and biological pathway analysis to urban planning and visualization.

And evidently they are making the system earn its keep. In addition to booking $200,000 worth of contract visualization work last year the CCR is also in the video production business:

Though CCR’s focus is predominantly on life sciences, many of its compute cycles are expended on commercial and civic endeavors. Hockey fans may not know that the animated imagery before and during games broadcast on the Versus cable TV network is rendered at the CCR on behalf of local animation company IBC Digital.