Science Highlights

Research conducted and supported by PSC computational resources, educational programs, and staff expertise

So You Want to be a Super Computor

PSC Takes Lead in XSEDE Summer Research Experience Program     Young career seekers in the high performance computing (HPC) field often face a familiar problem. You can’t get the job without experience. But another hitch confronts would-be “super computors”...

Roll Out the Beta Barrels

Anton Simulations Reveal How Dangerous Bacteria Install Critical Proteins   Why It’s Important   In an era of diminishing antibiotic effectiveness, it’s no wonder that bacteria, how they live—and what molecular components they can’t live without—are an...

Building a 21st Century Data Highway

PSC Advanced Networking Group Expands Networking Capabilities for Region, World   In the era of “Big Data,” the challenge of moving the vastly expanded data volumes created and needed by today’s researchers has become central. The old network—the equivalent of an...

Shoring up the Weakest Link

PSC Cybersecurity Group Uses Technology, User Savvy,to Guard Supercomputing Resources Nationwide     Luckily, the woman was smart. When a waiter brought her a phone, saying her credit card company was calling her, she smelled a rat. The caller, claiming to...

Cosmic Tug of War

Large Dark Matter Halos Favor Growth of Larger Early Galaxies Nov. 20, 2015 WHY IT’S IMPORTANT Few scientific questions are as fundamental, or fascinating, as the origin of the Universe. And we can see the early Universe. The farthest galaxies from us are so far away...

Breaking out of the Digital Document Graveyard

Blacklight Used to Extract Meaning from Cursive Script, Allowing Scanned Documents to be Searched   Step 1: Correct rotations and reduce smudges and bleeds to produce a spreadsheet-like document with identifiable cells.   Step 2: Create a statistical picture...

From the Directors

Welcome once again to Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center’s biannual report, featuring the pathbreaking projects being pursued by our users, our staff and our students. We’re very pleased in this issue to cover a broad spectrum of work, including research, technical...