Pitt’s Unique Tech Resources Power Research
Left to right are Center for Research Computing co-directors Adam Hobaugh and Kim Wong.
Pitt researchers have unparalleled technology resources through the globally recognized Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) and Pitt’s Center for Research Computing. Both centers provide cutting-edge hardware and software and—importantly—experience, training and guidance.
PSC is a pioneering computational research collaboration between Pitt and Carnegie Mellon University, created decades ago to apply unprecedented supercomputing power to solving the largest and most challenging problems in science and medicine. PSC’s recent collaborations include studying genetic mutations in disease, designing advanced materials to reduce pollution and improve industrial processes and digitizing historical documents about regional development.
Since 2011, PSC has been at the heart of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), a global system enabling scientists to share computing resources, data and expertise. The XSEDE program funded and enabled research on a dizzying range of topics, from cancer and COVID-19 to predicting earthquakes and analyzing Twitter.
PSC is poised to play an even more vital role in leading a new generation of democratized computing. In 2022, PSC was tapped to serve as one of the lead institutions in XSEDE’s successor program, Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support. NSF awarded PSC a five-year, $7.5 million award to develop and support infrastructure to make computational time accessible for investigators from fields that have not traditionally used advanced computing, such as the humanities.
PSC is helping to lead a collaboration providing computing, software and data infrastructure as part of the international network in National Institutes of Health’s HuBMAP project to create tools for a cellular Google Maps of the human body.
In addition to having strong relationships with federal agencies, PSC is supported by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and private industry. By any measure, PSC is an excellent return on investment, as it supports more than 900 projects representing approximately $1.5 billion worth of research activity across the country.