PSC Observes 25 Years of Service and Accomplishment

PITTSBURGH, April 15, 2011 — Over a hundred guests, including students, representatives of government and industry, joined the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) staff today at PSC’s 25th anniversary observance and Discover 11 Open House. Also present were participants from the TeraGrid/Blue Waters Symposium in Data Intensive Analysis, Analytics, and Informatics, held in Pittsburgh, which concluded at noon on April 15.

PSC scientific co-directors Ralph Roskies (left) and Michael Levine (right) with director of special projects James Kasdorf (center)

See the editorial feature in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette by the three founders of PSC.

See an editorial from HPCwire, the computational science news service, that highlights PSC’s 25th anniversary.

See a brief feature from CMU’s homepage about PSC.

The Open House featured demonstrations of PSC research including 3D stereo movies of cellular interactions in a synapse and a zoom-in view of water molecules. PSC’s biomedical group also highlighted the recent “wiring diagram of the brain” research featured on the cover of the March 10 issue of Nature, the prestigious international science journal. The event also included a look back at PSC supercomputers from 1986 until now, and a number of the highlight research projects those computing systems enabled. PSC’s networking group demonstrated Cisco Telepresence, an advanced video conferencing system, that facilitates distance communication with a realistic sense of presence beyond other current systems.

At 1:00 pm officials from universities, industry and government convened for an event that included remarks about PSC:

Introduced by PSC scientific co-director, Michael Levine, Dr. Jared Cohon, president of Carnegie Mellon, congratulated PSC and briefly highlighted, as an example of the range of research the center has supported, several projects that CMU researchers have carried out in collaboration with PSC — including Internet privacy, earthquake modeling, machine learning, particle physics and cosmology to computational chemistry.
PSC scientific co-director Ralph Roskies introduced University of Pittsburgh Chancellor Mark Nordenberg, who spoke about the partnerships that have been important to PSC’s continuing success, in particular the linkages between the two major research universities in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, CMU and Pitt.
Jim Kasdorf, PSC director of special projects, introduced Tom Moser, Manager of Infrastructure, Westinghouse Electric Company, who commented on parallels between the technological innovations of Westinghouse Corporation, now in its 125th years, and PSC, in its 25th year.
Roskies, Levine and Kasdorf thanked the PSC staff for their many contributions to the sustained success of PSC.
Mary Ann Eisenreich, Director, Governor’s Southwest Office (representing the Honorable Tom Corbett, Governor, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania) commented on the importance of PSC’s contribution to southwest Pennsylvania and read comments from Governor Corbett.
The Honorable Mike Doyle, U. S. Representative, 14th Congressional District of Pennsylvania, presented his “heartfelt congratulations” by video.
Dr. Irene Qualters, Program Director, Office of Cyberinfrastructure, National Science Foundation, acknowledged the many human contributions to PSC’s success and brought warm congratulations from the NSF staff, including Ed Siedel, a former PSC researcher, and Irene Lombardo.
Pennsylvania State Representative Joe Markosek presented PSC’s directors with a copy of a Pennsylvania House of Representatives resolution officially commenting upon PSC’s contributions to Pennsylvania.