Attendance was impressive for 4 September Open House at The Renaissance Computing Institute at North Carolina State University (RENCI@NCSU) when some 50 members and guests dropped in on RENCI for their IEEE sponsored Open House. Theresa-Marie Rhyne, Director, along with Steve Chall and Sidharth Thakur guided us through a masterful demonstration of RENCI@NCSU capabilities. RENCI@NCSU supports the use of visualization technology and analytical methods to explore engineering, scientific, design and educational challenges. In addition to assisting NC State University faculty, staff and students, RENCI@NCSU also supports Renaissance Computing Institute initiatives funded by the State of North Carolina. RENCI@NCSU officially opened on March 23, 2007. The main facility, located in Partners I Suite 1500 on NC State University's Centennial Campus, features a 14 x 8-foot visualization wall, an access grid for internet based conferencing and editing suite for producing video productions. Recently, a visualization by the RENCI@NCSU team helped RENCI win top honors at the annual meeting of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) program held in Seattle July 13 – 17, 2008. SciDAC held an Electronic Visualization and Poster night July 13 as part of its 2008 meeting. Fifty-two entries took part in the competition, and 10, including the RENCI entry, won OASCR (for Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research) awards. The visualization, a Weather Research Forecast (WRF) model of Hurricane Katrina, depicts the research of Gary Lackmann, an associate professor in NC State’s department of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, and Megan Gentry, a doctoral student and member of Lackmann’s research team. More details on the RENCI SciDAC OASCR award can
be found at: http://www.renci.org/news/scidac_award.php .   Right: Everyone looking back over their shoulder to the not so high resolution screen showing something incredibly interesting :) |
RENCI@NCSU |