Nov. 14 — The Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) is proud to announce two award winning projects in the XSEDE Industry Challenge Competition, a first-year program to generate collaboration between the high-performance computing research resource and privately held business partners.

“We’re thrilled to work with these companies and establish a new model for collaborative research between industry and academia,” said XSEDE Industry Challenge director David Hudak. “Large scale problems in open science are often discovered by trying to solve industrial problems. Attempting to solve these problems requires multi-disciplinary research teams using the fastest computers available. The winning project teams each include industrial and academic researchers. Enabled by XSEDE resources and personnel, I am confident these teams will produce results that have both scientific and economic impact.”

After a review of potential proposals, XSEDE will support teams from the following organizations:

The Procter and Gamble Company

Procter and Gamble is a publicly-traded consumer goods Fortune 500 company with product lines including beauty and grooming (e.g., Braun, Crest, Oral-B) and household care (e.g., Bounce, Charmin, Tide).

In this partnership, Principle Investigator (PI) Peter H. Koenig, The Procter and Gamble Company, Corporate R&D, along with five other co-PIs and participants, will work on predicting the flow properties of surfactant formulations as encountered for instance during manufacturing or dispensing of consumer products. Surfactants assemble into structures as little as a billionth of a meter and as large as a millionth of a meter. XSEDE resources will enable the prediction of the properties observed by consumers to the microscopic world using molecular simulations and rheological models.

Other team members include: co-PI Ronald G. Larson, U. of Michigan; co-PI David M. Eike, The Procter and Gamble Company; faculty participant Greg Beaucage, U. of Cincinnati; researcher participant Greg S. Smith, Oak Ridge National Laboratory; and industrial participant Mike R. Weaver, The Procter and Gamble Company.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is the oldest technological research University in the country, dating back to 1824, located in Troy, NY.

XSEDE will assist the University in developing and demonstrating simulation workflows for companies, including: Corning Inc, ITT Gould Pumps, Pliant Energy Systems and Sikorsky Aircraft. The Department of Economic Development of New York State is the other key participant in the project. The Industry Challenge collaboration aims to impact the product development process of these industrial partners through the development of fully parallel simulation workflows functioning in partnership with industry. Projects have been defined in materials processing, flow control, fluid structure interaction and design methods.

PI Mark S. Shephard, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, will lead the research, with assistance from the following co-PIs: Chris Carothers, John Kolb, Assad Oberai, Onkar Sahni and Cameron Smith, each of whom hold positions with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Various leaders from privately-held companies are also participating: John S. Abbott, Corning Inc.; Simon Bradshaw , ITT; B. Pietro Filardo, Pliant Energy Systems; Steven Makinen, Sikorsky Aircraft; and Michael Ridley, New York State/Empire State Development.

About XSEDE

The Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) is the most advanced, powerful, and robust collection of integrated advanced digital resources and services in the world. It is a single virtual system that scientists can use to interactively share computing resources, data, and expertise. XSEDE accelerates scientific discovery by enhancing the productivity of researchers, engineers, and scholars by deepening and extending the use of XSEDE’s ecosystem of advanced digital services and by advancing and sustaining the XSEDE advanced digital infrastructure. XSEDE is a five-year, $121-million project and is supported by the National Science Foundation.

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Source: XSEDE