Message to URI community by President Parlange on October 22nd: 

News regarding our research computing infrastructure
Oct. 22, 2021
 
Today, I am pleased to announce that URI will be making a substantial strategic investment in our research computing infrastructure. Under the leadership of Dr. Gaurav Khanna, we will configure and install a new High-Performance Computing cluster to support digital scholarly work at the University.
 
Scholarly work is increasingly dependent on technology – from the digital humanities through computationally intensive ocean modeling, our work often depends on data analytics, simulation, visualization, and many other digital domains. This investment supports our common goal of continuing to build on our regional, national, and international research profile. It will build on our strong track record of computing investments and position us to help address pressing global issues across the disciplines and colleges.
 
The new equipment will be selected and configured under guidance from the Research Computing Advisory Committee, chaired by Dr. Nancy Eaton with participation by Dr. Steven D’Hondt and Dr. Marta Gomez-Chiarri. During the coming month, the group will reach out to our research community for input to determine the specific configurations to be purchased. We anticipate investing between $1 – $1.5 million in the new system.
 
The new cluster will also represent a significant step in supporting our regional collaborations. It will be housed at the Massachusetts Green High-Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC), the first university research data center to achieve LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum Certification. As the first member outside of Massachusetts, we will be participating in a research computing consortium with Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston University, Northeastern, and the University of Massachusetts system, opening new channels of collaboration with these universities.  
 
Connectivity to this data center is also excellent and supports data transfers of equal or greater throughput as our local data centers. As founding members and full partners of our regional networking organization OSHEAN, we have established 10Gb/sec transfer agreements to support large data transfers into and out of this key facility.
 
Thank you,

Marc Parlange