LBNL recently celebrated the groundbreaking for its new Computational Research and Theory (CRT) facility. The CRT will be at the forefront of high-performance supercomputing research and be DOE’s most efficient facility of its kind. Numerous members of CITRIS’s Computational Science and Engineering program are involved, working to increase the ability of researchers to harness the power of computational modeling and simulation to advance societal-scale challenges. Participants in the ceremony included Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Berkeley Lab Director Paul Alivisatos, UC President Mark Yudof, Office of Science Director Bill Brinkman, and UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau.
Chancellor Robert Birgeneau spoke at the event and noted that “Between the laboratory and the campus, we have incredible power in the computational sciences, both applied and numerical analysis, etc, and in fields like energy and global climate change, biological environmental research, astrophysical research, and in the fundamental theory of computing.
“As for the educational impact, in 2008 the laboratory and university joined together to create what’s called Computational Science and Engineering. This is a program that trains Ph.D. students in the increasingly important fields of large-scale simulation and the analysis of large data sets. Participating departments are extraordinarily diverse. They include computer science, mathematics, chemistry, mechanical engineering, astronomy, neuroscience, and political science, among others. The reach of computational science now as we’ve already heard from previous speakers, is extraordinary. This facility will have a huge impact on both the lab and the campus and will be an incredible resource for the lab scientists, for our faculty, and especially for both our graduate and undergraduate students.”
More information:
CRT Handout (pdf)
Full video of press conference (YouTube)
Shorter version of press conference (YouTube)