The National Science Foundation has recognized important scientific research being conducted at Siena College with a Cyber-infrastructure grant (1541001) of $394,715. This grant will provide for the construction of a high-speed research oriented network in the College’s science complex. The network will provide very high-speed connections for the College’s High Performance Computing Cluster (HPCC supercomputer) and the state-of-the-art scientific instrumentation in the Siena College SAInT Center, among other initiatives. The grant will also help the college forge connections to national research and academic networks such as Internet2.
This grant recognizes the important cutting-edge scientific research that Siena College is performing with undergraduate students.
The effort to obtain this grant was led by the College’s Chief Information Officer, Mark Berman and Director for Networks & Systems, Angelo Santabarbara. Critical support was provided by former Dean of Sciences and Physicist, Dr. Allan Weatherwax; Computational Chemist and Director of the HPCC, Dr. George Barnes; Assistant Professor of Physics, Dr. John Moustakas; and Deputy Chief Information Officer, Mary Parlett-Sweeney.
This grant also recognizes Siena College’s strong support for the sciences and the important scientific research being conducted by its faculty. Specific research efforts which will benefit from this grant include, Dr. Barnes work simulating hyperthermal collisions between protonated peptides and organic self-assembled monolayer surfaces; Dr. Graziano Vernizzi’s research into the development of computational tools for solving problems in biophysics, nanoscale science, soft condensed matter, and random matrix theory; Dr. Moustakas’ work in the area of observational and theoretical extragalactic cosmology and galaxy evolution; Dr. Mathew Bellis’s work on the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment using data generated by the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland; as well as work conducted by Dr. Sharon Small and Dr. Larry Medsker at the Siena College Institute for Artificial Intelligence; Dr. Katherine Meierdiercks work in the Environmental Science / Geographic Information Systems Lab; and an initiative by the Siena College Standish Library to provide Data Management Services (DMS) for the preservation and dissemination of the results of research conducted at the College.