Harvard researchers to receive high-performance computing grants

Seven Harvard-affiliated researchers will receive grants to support collaborative projects in high-performance computing.

The seed grants, awarded by the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC) under construction in Holyoke, Mass., are intended to support projects in computational science that advance basic knowledge, create new practical applications, and accelerate the development of faster and more energy-efficient computing systems.

Seven projects, involving 24 researchers from Harvard, Boston University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Massachusetts (UMass), and Northeastern University, have been selected to receive a total of $600,000.

In one project, Efthimios “Tim” Kaxiras, John Hasbrouck Van Vleck Professor of Pure and Applied Physics at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), will apply computational science to the basic study of materials.

Collaborating with two researchers from Northeastern, Kaxiras will create multiscale models of tiny metal particles to study their dielectric and magnetic properties. Understanding the behavior of metals at this level will assist the development of precisely engineered materials with customized electromagnetic and physical properties.