Tag: James E. Quick

The power of ManeFrame: SMU’s new supercomputer boosts research capacity

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date March 20, 2014

The enormous capacity of SMU’s new supercomputer ranks it among the largest academic supercomputers in the nation.

ManeFrame, previously known as MANA, was relocated to Dallas from its previous location in Maui, Hawaii. (Courtesy of mauinow.com) — ManeFrame, previously known as MANA, was relocated to Dallas from its former location in Maui, Hawaii. (Courtesy of mauinow.com)

SMU now has a powerful new tool for research – one of the fastest academic supercomputers in the nation – and a new facility to house it.

With a cluster of more than 1,000 Dell servers, the system’s capacity is on par with high-performance computing (HPC) power at much larger universities and at government-owned laboratories. The U.S. Department of Defense awarded the system to SMU in August 2013.

SMU’s Office of Information Technology added the system to the University’s existing – but much smaller – supercomputer. The system is housed in a new facility built at the corner of Mockingbird and Central Expressway. In a contest sponsored by Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Paul W. Ludden, faculty and students chose the name “ManeFrame” to honor the Mustang mascot.

The enormous capacity and speed of HPC expands scientific access to new knowledge around key questions about the universe, disease, human behavior, health, food, water, environment, climate, democracy, poverty, war and peace.

“World-changing discoveries rely on vast computing resources,” says President R. Gerald Turner. “ManeFrame quintuples the University’s supercomputing capacity. Our scientists and students will keep pace with the increasing demand for the ever-expanding computing power that is required to participate in global scientific collaborations. This accelerates our research capabilities exponentially.”

ManeFrame potential
With nearly 11,000 central processing unit cores, ManeFrame boasts 40 terabytes (one terabyte equals a trillion bytes) of memory and more than 1.5 petabytes of storage (a petabyte equals a quadrillion bytes), says Joe Gargiulo, SMU’s chief information officer, who led the installation team.

The sciences and engineering primarily use supercomputers, but that is expanding to include the humanities and the arts. So far, SMU’s heavy users are researchers in physics, math, biology, chemistry and economics.

“This technologically advanced machine will have an impact on shaping our world,” says Thomas M. Hagstrom, chair of the Department of Mathematics in Dedman College and director of SMU’s Center for Scientific Computing. “This makes research that solves problems on a large scale much more accessible. ManeFrame’s theoretical peak would be on the order of 120 Teraflops, which is 120 trillion mathematical operations a second.”

Supercomputers can use sophisticated software and step-by-step procedures for calculations, called algorithms, to solve complex problems that can’t be managed in a researcher’s lab, Hagstrom explains.

“We can’t put the Earth’s climate system or study the evolution of the universe in a physical lab,” he says. “You can only study these and other systems in a comprehensive way using high-performance computing.”

Making SMU competitive
Supercomputing gave University physicists a role in the Higgs Boson research at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland. Joining the collaboration with thousands of scientists around the world, SMU’s team was led by Physics Professor Ryszard Stroynowski. SMU’s physicists tapped the existing HPC on campus to quickly analyze massive amounts of data and deliver results to their international colleagues.

SMU’s team will use ManeFrame to keep pace with an even larger flood of data expected from the Large Hadron Collider.

“ManeFrame makes SMU – which is small by comparison with many of its peer institutions at CERN – nimble and competitive, and that lets us be visible in a big experiment like CERN,” says Stephen Sekula, assistant professor of physics. “So we have to have ideas, motivation and creativity – but having a technical resource like ManeFrame lets us act on those things.”

SMU physicist Pavel Nadolsky has conducted “big data” analyses of subatomic particles on the supercomputer as part of an international physics collaboration. Big data refers to probability distributions that depend on many variables. As users ranging from retailers to the health industry collect multitudes of transactional data every day, requirements for big data analysis are rapidly emerging.

“To keep up in our field, we need resources like ManeFrame,” says Nadolsky, associate professor of physics.

“The world is moving into big-data analysis, whether it’s Google, Facebook or the National Security Administration,” Nadolsky says. “We learn a lot about the world by studying multidimensional distributions: It tells about the origins of the universe; it can win elections by using data mining to analyze voting probabilities over time in specific geographical areas and targeting campaign efforts accordingly; and it can predict what people are doing. To make students competitive they must be trained to use these tools efficiently and ethically.”

ManeFrame will have a high-profile role in the U.S. Department of Energy experiment called NOvA, which studies neutrinos, a little-understood and elusive fundamental particle that may help explain why matter, and not just light, exists in the universe today. SMU will contribute four million processing hours each year to the experiment, says Thomas E. Coan, associate professor of physics and a member of the international team.

“We’re in good company with others providing computing, including California Institute of Technology and Harvard,” Coan says. “It’s one way for SMU to play a prominent role in the experiment. We get a lot of visibility among all the institutions participating in NOvA, which are spread out across five countries.”

Advancing discovery
One of the heaviest users of SMU’s HPC is John Wise, associate professor of biological sciences, who models a key human protein to improve chemotherapy to kill cancer cells. Wise works with the SMU Center for Drug Discovery, Design and Delivery in Dedman College, an interdisciplinary research initiative of the Biology and Chemistry departments and led by Professor of Biological Sciences Pia Vogel.

Within the Mathematics Department, Assistant Professor Daniel R. Reynolds and his team use high-performance computing to run simulations with applications in cosmology and fusion reactors.

Looking to the future, high-performance computing will be increasing in research, business and the arts, according to James Quick, associate vice president for research and dean of graduate studies.

“High-performance computing has emerged as a revolutionary tool that dramatically increases the rates of scientific discovery and product development, enables wise investment decisions and opens new dimensions in artistic creativity,” says Quick, professor of earth sciences. “SMU will use the computational power of ManeFrame to expand research and creativity and develop educational opportunities for students interested in the application of high-performance computing in their fields – be it science, engineering, business or the arts.” – Margaret Allen

Follow SMUResearch.com on twitter at @smuresearch.

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

Tags Daniel R. Reynolds, Dedman College, James E. Quick, Joe Gargiulo, John Wise, ManeFrame, Paul W. Ludden, Pia Vogel, R. Gerald Turner, Ryszard Stroynowski, Thomas E. Coan, Thomas Hagstrom

Earth & Climate Fossils & Ruins Researcher news

SMU dean, earth science professor James Quick elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date November 25, 2013

Award honors SMU volcano expert for scientifically distinguished efforts to advance science and its applications.

Vulcanologist James E. Quick, SMU’s associate vice president for research and dean of Graduate Studies, has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

AAAS is the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science. Quick is the fourth professor at Southern Methodist University recognized with the prestigious honor.

An expert in volcano hazards, Quick is being honored for his distinguished contributions to geologic science and volcano risk assessment, particularly for the study of magmatic systems, and for service to governments in assessing geologic risk.

Quick is a professor in SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.

SMU President R. Gerald Turner said SMU is honored and gratified that the scientists of AAAS have chosen to recognize the research achievements and public service of Dean Quick.

“SMU is an educational institution that prides itself on shaping world changers. It has been strengthened in that goal through Dean Quick’s dedicated vision and achievements as a researcher, an academic leader and a servant to the global community,” Turner said. “We congratulate Dean Quick on this well-deserved recognition from this distinguished organization.”

AAAS Fellows are elected by their peers for distinguished efforts to advance science
Election as a Fellow is an honor bestowed by AAAS members upon their peers. This year AAAS named 388 members as Fellows for their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications.

SMU faculty inducted previously as AAAS Fellows are environmental biochemistry scholar Paul W. Ludden, SMU provost and vice president for academic affairs and a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, who was named a Fellow in 2003; anthropologist David J. Meltzer, Henderson-Morrison Professor of Prehistory in the Department of Anthropology and an expert in the early peoples of North America, who was named a Fellow in 1998; and North American and Middle Eastern stratigraphic and geomorphologic expert James E. Brooks, provost emeritus and professor emeritus in the Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, who was named a Fellow in 1966.

Quick led international team that discovered fossil supervolcano in Italy
Quick joined SMU in 2007. In 2009 he led the international scientific team that discovered a 280-million-year-old fossil supervolcano in the Italian Alps. The supervolcano’s magmatic plumbing system was exposed to an unprecedented depth of 25 kilometers, giving scientists new understanding into the phenomenon of explosive supervolcanos. Italian geologists in 2010 awarded Quick the Capellini Medal to recognize the discovery. In 2013 an area encompassing the supervolcano won designation as the Sesia-Val Grande Geopark by the UNESCO Global Network of National Geoparks. Quick also was named an honorary citizen of the city of Borgosesia, Italy, in recognition of the significance of the discovery to the Sesia Valley.

Quick also leads a team of SMU scientists working with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to monitor volcanoes in the Northern Mariana Islands. The project uses infrasound and conventional seismic monitoring to “listen” for signs that a volcano is about to erupt. The goal is to strengthen monitoring of lava and ash hazards in the Marianas, a U.S. commonwealth near Guam, the primary base for forward deployment of U.S. military forces in the Western Pacific.

Quick’s longtime career with USGS included leading Volcano Hazards Program
Prior to SMU, Quick served a distinguished 25-year scientific career with the USGS, including as program coordinator for the Volcano Hazards Program.

At the USGS Quick performed fundamental research on volcanic processes and was in charge of monitoring the nation’s 169 volcanoes to provide critical early warning of eruptions. Threats from active volcanoes range from the dramatic destruction of life and property to eruption of volcanic-ash clouds that threaten jet aircraft in flight. The budget for this research group was approximately $26 million a year.

Quick’s research has taken him to more than 35 countries, working with the federal government, elected officials and academic institutions. He has published widely in numerous scientific journals during the last 30 years and maintains an active research agenda on magmatic processes.

Quick earned his Ph.D. in geology from the California Institute of Technology; his M.Sc. in petrology from the University of Minnesota; and his B.Sc. in geology from the University of California, Los Angeles.

New AAAS Fellows will be presented an official certificate and a gold and blue rosette pin, representing science and engineering respectively, on Feb. 15 during the 2014 AAAS Annual Meeting in Chicago. — Margaret Allen, AAAS

Follow SMUResearch.com on Twitter.

For more information, www.smuresearch.com.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

Tags Dedman College, James E. Quick, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences

Earth & Climate Energy & Matter Fossils & Ruins Researcher news

Fossil supervolcano discovered in Italy by SMU-led team is now key feature of new UNESCO Geopark

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date November 22, 2013

Piedmont territory in northwest Italy is designated geopark backed by 80 Alpine communities. Area is an important geological and cultural locale that promotes awareness of earth sciences and sustainable use of resources.

“It is a rare event that geology is a catalyst of public cooperation and celebration,” says geologist and volcano expert James E. Quick, Southern Methodist University, Dallas.

The new Sesia-Val Grande Geopark is an example of just that, says Quick, whose international team in 2009 discovered a fossil supervolcano that now sits at the heart of the new geopark. The discovery sparked worldwide scientific interest and a regional geotourism industry.

Recently designated a geopark by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Sesia-Val Grande Geopark encompasses more than 80 communities in the Italian Alps.

The communities joined forces more than two years ago to promote the park’s creation, which UNESCO made official in September. The geopark spans tens of thousands of acres and has at its center the massive, 282 million-year-old fossil supervolcano.

“Sesia Valley is unique,” said Quick. “The base of the Earth’s crust is turned up on edge, exposing the volcano’s plumbing — which normally extends deep into the Earth and out of sight. The uplift was created when Africa and Europe began colliding about 30 million years ago and the crust of Italy was turned on end. We call this fossil the ‘Rosetta Stone’ for supervolcanoes because the depth to which rocks are exposed will aid scientific understanding of one of nature’s most massive and violent events and help us to link the geologic and geophysical data.”

The fossil supervolcano was discovered by Quick’s scientific team, which included scientists from Italy’s University of Trieste. The supervolcano has an unprecedented 15 miles of volcano plumbing exposed from the surface to the source of the magma deep within the Earth. Previously, the discovery record for exposed plumbing was about three miles, said Quick.

Located in the Piedmont region of northwest Italy, the geopark also includes Val Grande National Park, the largest wilderness area in Italy. Sesia Valley and Val Grande are important historical and cultural locales.

Only a handful of locations worldwide are chosen annually for UNESCO’s coveted geopark designation, which supports national geological heritage initiatives.

Geoparks promote awareness of the earth sciences, including natural hazards and sustainable use of resources. Worldwide, there are now 100 geoparks. Sesia-Val Grande is Italy’s ninth.

Sesia-Val Grande area is popular for diverse geology, culture, ecosystems

Community cooperation is new to this part of the Alps, where villages have valued their independence for centuries and residents in adjacent valleys may speak distinct dialects. In the wake of the supervolcano discovery, the communities in Val Sesia and Val Grande joined in an unprecedented partnership to promote tourism, education and a collective identity, then applied to UNESCO for admission to the Global Geopark Network.

Delineated by two neighboring Alpine valleys in northwest Italy, the territory of the geopark is a well-established tourist region that is popular for its wine, cheese, quarried marble, cultural heritage spanning thousands of years, hiking, skiing, rafting, biking and climbing.

The area is about half the size of Rhode Island and has 153,000 residents. Its four environmentally diverse ecosystems are rich in biodiversity and diverse microhabitats, progressing from lowland agricultural prairies to expansive forests to Alpine peaks, the highest of which is 15,203-foot Monte Rosa in one of Europe’s largest ski resorts.

Supervolcano was cataclysmic eruption, set off catastrophic global cooling events

The Sesia Valley supervolcano is a vast rocky expanse, in some places visible in plain sight and in others hidden by forests or under young sedimentary deposits. The supervolcano extends over a third of the Sesia-Val Grande geopark’s territory, said Quick, who previously served as program coordinator for the Volcano Hazards Program of the U.S. Geological Survey.

The supervolcano was active for about 6 million years, beginning about 288 million years ago, Quick said. Its volcanic activity culminated 282 million years ago with an eruption that left an enormous crater measuring more than eight miles in diameter. The cataclysmic eruption released gas from molten rock or “magma,” raining down particles and gases measuring more than 186 cubic miles in volume, Quick has estimated. His team reported the discovery in the scientific journal “Geology” in a 2009 article, “Magmatic plumbing of a large Permian caldera exposed to a depth of 25 km.”

Throughout Earth’s geologic time, supervolcanoes have spread lava and ash vast distances. Scientists believe the fallout may have set off catastrophic global cooling events at different periods in the Earth’s past.

“We want to use this discovery. It can help us understand the fundamental processes that influence eruptions: Where are magmas stored prior to these giant eruptions? From what depth do the eruptions emanate?” Quick said.

Sesia Valley’s unprecedented exposure of magmatic plumbing provides a model for interpreting geophysical profiles and magmatic processes beneath active calderas, he said. The exposure also serves as direct confirmation of the cause-and-effect link between molten rock moving through the Earth’s crust and explosive volcanism.

“It might lead to a better interpretation of monitoring data and improved prediction of eruptions,” said Quick, who is a professor in the SMU Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences and SMU associate vice president for research and dean of graduate studies.

Tags Dedman College, James E. Quick, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences

Earth & Climate Fossils & Ruins Researcher news SMU In The News

National Geographic: Volcano Pictures: First Descent Into a Magma Chamber

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date April 13, 2011

Science journalist Ker Than writes on the April 8 Daily News blog of National Geographic about the first-ever scientific expedition into a volcanic magma chamber, citing analysis from SMU volcanologist James E. Quick, a professor in the Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.

The expedition into Iceland’s dormant Thrihnukagigur volcano in October charts a chamber shaped like a long-necked bottle, with the neck rising up to the surface of the earth and the massive chamber down below.

“Magma chambers supply the molten rock that oozes or bursts onto the Earth’s surface during an eruption,” wrote Than. “The bottom half is about a hundred feet (30 meters) across, while the ‘neck’ that connects to the surface is only about 10 feet (3 meters) wide. The entire chamber is about 450 feet (137 meters), from top to bottom.”

For the story — “Volcano Pictures: First Descent Into a Magma Chamber” — Than interviewed Quick, associate vice president for research, and dean of graduate studies.

Quick, who was not part of the expedition, said the magma channels the team discovered appear to be “beautiful textbook examples of how magma can be transported laterally in the Earth’s surface and stored in shallow chambers.”

Quick’s analysis about the magnitude of the expedition is excerpted below.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

James Quick, a volcanologist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, said the Thrihnukagigur expedition will provide a firsthand look into a part of Earth only roughly known before.

“We knew from geophysical tools what the plumbing system inside of a volcano looked like, but we only knew it in the crudest way,” said Quick, who wasn’t part of the expedition.

While inside the Thrihnukagigur magma chamber, about a hundred miles (160 kilometers) away, the expedition team’s biggest risk was gas poisoning, SMU’s Quick said.

“Whenever you go into magmatic systems like that, you run the risk of exposure to high levels of carbon dioxide” that can well up from Earth’s interior, he said.

The University of Rhode Island’s Sigurdsson — who was prepared for such a scenario — said the thought did occur to him during his descent.

“I sniffed the air as I went down to see if I felt light-headed at all,” he said. “I had a

[gas mask] in my backpack, but we didn’t need it.”
Read the full story.

Tags Dedman College, Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, James E. Quick

Events Researcher news

SMU rises in Carnegie Foundation research classification to ‘high research activity’

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date January 26, 2011

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has raised SMU’s classification among institutions of higher education, reflecting dramatic growth in the University’s research activity since it was last measured in 2005.

SMU is now categorized as a research university with “high research activity,” a significant step up from its last assessment in 2005 as a doctoral/research university. The Carnegie Foundation assigns doctorate-granting institutions to categories based on a measure of research activity occurring at a particular period in time, basing these latest classifications on data from 2008-2009.

“SMU’s rise in the Carnegie classification system is further evidence of the growing quality and research productivity of our faculty. We are building a community of scholars asking and answering important research questions and making an impact on societal issues with their findings,” said SMU President R. Gerald Turner. “In addition to our dedication to outstanding teaching, SMU is becoming increasingly recognized as a vital resource for research in a variety of fields.”

Increased research activity in step with other SMU advances
“The designation of SMU as a ‘high research activity’ university by the Carnegie Foundation is an important step in SMU’s evolution as a strong national university,” said Paul Ludden, provost and vice president for academic affairs. “The faculty, staff, and students at SMU can be proud of this, particularly when paired with our rise in national rankings. The Carnegie Classification recognizes the tremendous efforts by the entire faculty at SMU to expand our research portfolio and address the many questions facing North Texas and the world. Recognition should go to Associate Vice President for Research James Quick and his office for their efforts to support the research activities of our faculty and staff.”

The foundation’s assessment of SMU’s increased research activity occurs as the University is making dramatic advances in other measures of academic progress: U.S. News and World Report magazine gave SMU its highest ranking ever for 2011, placing SMU 56th among 260 “best national universities” — up from 68th in 2010.

Additionally, SMU’s Cox School of Business is one of only a few schools in the nation to have all three of its MBA programs ranked among the top 15, according to Bloomberg Businessweek. Applications to SMU continue to rise, as have average SAT scores for admitted students.

Carnegie finds SMU research activity recorded an increase
The Carnegie Foundation analyzed SMU’s research activity in a category of universities that awarded at least 20 research doctorates in 2008-2009, excluding professional degrees such as those leading to the practice of medicine and law. The analysis examined research and development expenditures in science and engineering as well as in non-science and non-engineering fields; science and engineering research staff (postdoctoral appointees and other non-faculty research staff with doctorates); doctoral conferrals in the humanities, in the social sciences, in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields, and in other areas such as, business, education, public policy and social work.

The Carnegie Foundation classification of U.S. accredited colleges and universities uses nationally available data from the U.S. Office of Postsecondary Education, the National Center for Education Statistics’ Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), the National Science Foundation, and the College Board.

“SMU’s rise in academic rankings and research productivity is a strong return on the investment of our alumni and other donors who provide support for research, endowed chairs, and graduate programs and fellowships,” said SMU Board of Trustees Chair Caren Prothro. “SMU students at all levels are the beneficiaries of this distinction as their faculty enliven the classroom with their research and engage students in the tradition of academic inquiry.”

About the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
Founded by industrialist Andrew Carnegie in 1905 and chartered the following year by an Act of Congress, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching is an independent policy and research center. Its current mission is to support needed transformations in American education. — Kim Cobb

Tags Cox School of Business, Dedman College, James E. Quick, Lyle School of Engineering

The enormous capacity of SMU’s new supercomputer ranks it among the largest academic supercomputers in the nation.

Book a live interview

Related Links

More SMU Research news

Award honors SMU volcano expert for scientifically distinguished efforts to advance science and its applications.

Piedmont territory in northwest Italy is designated geopark backed by 80 Alpine communities. Area is an important geological and cultural locale that promotes awareness of earth sciences and sustainable use of resources.

Book a live interview

Related links

More SMU Research news

Book a live interview

Related Links

More SMU Research news

More SMU Research news