Silicon Mechanics Opens Education Cluster Grant Program

By Bio-IT World Staff

December 9, 2015 | Silicon Mechanics has opened its 5th Annual Research Cluster Grant (RCG) program. Two institutions will be selected, and both will be awarded a complete high-performance computing (HPC) cluster. The competition is open to all United States and Canadian qualified post-secondary institutions, university-affiliated research institutions, non-profit research institutions, and researchers at federal labs with university affiliations.

"We designed the Research Cluster Grant program to provide computational and storage technology resources to researchers who may not have been able to keep pace with technology acquisitions through traditional grant-funding programs like those at the National Science Foundation or the National Institute of Health," said Art Mann, Silicon Mechanics' Sr. Director, Life Sciences Practice, in a statement. "With the ever-growing demand for more powerful IT infrastructure to support research, the RCG represents a tremendous opportunity to work with our technology partners and support these research efforts. I'm excited and truly honored to see the RCG program achieve its fifth year."

Silicon Mechanics created the RCG in 2012 as a way of giving back to the educational community, as obtaining needed research funding for technology advancements continues to be challenging and can limit future impact at some educational institutions. In particular, the program is helping to jumpstart research efforts where access to high-performance computing is limited, outdated or was not previously available. The RCG program also provides institutions with an opportunity to showcase how collaboration across departments and researchers by providing cluster technology can positively impact research efforts through the use of cluster technology.

Previous RCG awardees include The City College of New York (CCNY) and Dordt College in 2015, Wayne State University in 2014, Tufts University in 2013 and Saint Louis University in 2012. Silicon Mechanics' partners currently committed to supporting this year's grant include: Intel, NVIDIA, Mellanox, Supermicro, Bright Computing, HGST, Avago, Kingston, Micron, and Seagate.

Submissions for the 2016 RCG will be accepted from December 15, 2015 through March 1, 2016. The grant recipients will be announced April 2016. Submissions will be reviewed for merit and for the potential impact the research may have on the institution's mission. Silicon Mechanics strongly encourages collaboration, within and across departments of a single institution, or across multiple institutions. Details on RCG rules, application requirements, and cluster technical specifications are available at www.researchclustergrant.com.