HPC Gets Boost in Milwaukee with $750,000 WEDC Grant

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milwaukeeIn case you didn’t know, insideHPC President Rich Brueckner has his roots in Wisconsin, and it was great to see this news today that the Milwaukee Institute has received $750K grant to greatly expand its HPC offerings for use by area tech enterprises.

We are grateful for the state’s recognition of the Institute and the important roles technical computing plays in the vitality of Wisconsin’s economy, especially when viewed as a service provider to other WEDC-supported industry clusters in water, manufacturing, food and beverage, energy, healthcare and financial services,” said Dr. Jay Bayne, Institute chairman and executive director.

The Milwaukee Institute will provide hardware, software and training capacity for engineers, entrepreneurs, and researchers seeking to increase their applied technical software engineering skills, enhance creativity and innovation, become more proficient in applied data science, and to collaboratively engage in the engineering of new products, services and tools.The grant will enable the Institute to expand its computational systems and services, including advanced modeling, simulation, visualization and data analytics software, and to offer new training courses on topics related to technical software engineering.

A key goal of these offerings is to support growth of the region’s increasingly technology- oriented industrial clusters, including the Global Water Center, Midwest Energy Research Consortium, BioForward, Food and Beverage Wisconsin, and the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee’s Innovation Accelerator. Additionally, the Institute provides mentoring to incubators/accelerators, including The Commons, WARD4, BREW, GlobalECollective, VETransfer, WERCBench Labs and BizStarts.

Supporting key clusters such as water technology, energy, food and beverage, and bioscience is a key part of WEDC’s long-term strategy of helping businesses grow and create new jobs,” said Reed Hall, secretary and CEO of WEDC, the state’s lead economic development organization. “The enabling technologies, digital expertise and software engineering expertise of the Milwaukee Institute are considered critical to successful execution of that strategy.”This investment will bring even higher returns to the priority industry sectors of the state to raise their competitiveness by utilizing mega-data supercomputing to solve complex product performance problems, model market dynamics and understand the shifting market forces that will shape their business future,” added Lee Swindall, WEDC’s vice president of Business & Industry Development Division. “This unique assistance is transforming Wisconsin companies into agile 21st century competitors faster than they ever thought possible.”

This is the second grant that WEDC has provided to the Milwaukee Institute. WEDC provided $250,000 to help fund a challenge grant program that awarded $50,000 to five Wisconsin companies to speed their commercial research and development programs by providing access to high-performance computer, software, storage and training resources.

Bayne said that to support southeastern Wisconsin’s development of a 21st century technology economy, it is vital to increase the number and skills of engineers in the region, especially in the application of modeling, simulation, visualization and analytics disciplines.

Improving the skills of engineers and ultimately the region’s technology economy requires access to modern software engineering methods and tools and underlying high performance computing systems and analytic software,” Bayne said. “With the help of this grant, the Institute will offer more systems, services and courses aimed at enabling the conception, design and implementation of sophisticated high quality products and services in a range of important industry sectors.”

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