Big Compute

In 1908, the largest earthquake ever recorded in Europe hit Southern Italy, wiping out the entire coastal town of Messina. Once the shaking had stopped, survivors thought they were safe until a massive tsunami followed minutes later. Even today, the exact cause of the tsunami is debated in the scientific community. In this episode, we talk to Dr. Lauren Schambach from the University of Rhode Island about what her computational simulations of the Messina tsunami have told her, and what that means for people living along the coastlines around the world.

What if that plant on your desk could hold the key to stopping your stuffy nose?  From morphine to chemotherapy drugs, plants have played a vital role in developing pharmaceuticals to treat all kinds of ailments.  We talk to undercover superhero, Jerome Baudry of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, about his computational search through hundreds of thousands of chemical compounds from plants around the world, on the hunt for a therapeutic that can seek out and stop the one hindrance on all of our minds -- the coronavirus.

It’s been months since the infamous coronavirus has crept across the globe, closing schools and workplaces and changing the way we live our lives.  But why is COVID-19 seemingly so good at infecting people?  What makes this virus different than others?  We talk to undercover superhero, Rommie Amaro of the University of California San Diego, about her discoveries through computational simulation of what the virus actually looks like, how it moves, and what that means for each of us.

Welcome to Series #2 of the Big Compute Podcast!  Ever wondered how COVID-19 can spread through the air indoors?  Is 6 feet apart enough distance?  Do plexiglass barriers protect us?  We talk to undercover superhero, Jiarong Hong of the University of Minnesota, about his discoveries from simulating the movement of aerosol particles in different indoor spaces and how it can affect our everyday lives.  We also dive into his revealing research about what musical instruments may be spreading the virus more than others, including whether or not tuba concerts are worth the risk during this pandemic.

Kevin Kelly hosts Christopher Chang,  Computational Scientist and Acting HPC User Program Lead at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. They discuss the incredible capability of scalable high performance computing (HPC), now available securely through FedRAMP.

Gabriel Broner hosts Irene Qualters to discuss her career and the evolution of HPC. Irene, an HPC pioneer, went from being a young female engineer working with Seymour Cray to become president of Cray. She then reinvented herself to work in the pharma space and then at the National Science Foundation. She was awarded the 2018 HPCwire Readers’ Award for Outstanding Leadership in HPC.

Gabriel Broner hosts Mark Borodkin, COO of Bionano Genomics, to discuss how genomics and HPC enable doctors and researchers to diagnose complex diseases and prescribe unique personalized treatments based on individual variations of the DNA.

Gabriel Broner hosts Steve Reinhardt to discuss Quantum Computing. Listen to the conversation covering what are quantum computers, what problems can be solved orders of magnitude faster than with traditional computers, where are we today, and what the future holds.

In this Big Compute Podcast episode, Gabriel Broner hosts Mike Hollenbeck, founder and CTO at Optisys. Optisys is a startup that is changing the antenna industry. Using HPC in the cloud and 3D printing they are able to design customized antennas which are much smaller, lighter and higher performing than traditional antennas.