Research
Acknowledgement
Research is supported in part by the National Science Foundation through grants MRI #0722625 (Star of Arkansas), MRI-R2 #0959124 (Razor), ARI #0963249, #0918970 (CI-TRAIN), and a grant from the Arkansas Science and Technology Authority, with resources managed by the Arkansas High Performance Computing Center.
Cyberinfrastructure Impacts Undergraduate Education
Collaboration between the NSF-supported Arkansas High Performance Computing Center and the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Arkansas, which manages the NSF-supported Research Experiences for Undergraduates Program in Nanomechanics and Nanomaterials, has facilitated scientific discovery by undergraduate students via high-performance computing. Since 2006, nine undergraduate students from six different universities have performed atomistic simulations of nanoscale material behavior.
Computational Chemistry
Peter Pulay, Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, Tomasz Janowksi, and colleagues use Arkansas high performance computing resources to compute fundamental properties of chemicals. This illustration shows the T-shape configuration of the coronene molecule used in high level ab initio calculations that determine the binding energy of the coronene dimer. Calculations by the Pulay group have application to the development of formulas for new drugs. Bigger systems under investigation involve the study of DNA intercalation and DNA base pair interactions.
Computational Condensed Matter Physics Group (CCMP)
Research by Laurent Bellaiche, Professor of Physics, Sergey Prosandeev, and his colleagues use effective Hamiltonian techniques to investigate the effects of quantum vibrations on materials at the nanoscale level. They have discovered that these vibrations suppress the paraelectric-to-ferrotoriodic transition, or equivalently, wash out the formation of vortex states. These materials have application to the development of new computer memory technology that is 10,000 times more dense than current technologies.
View more information about the Computational Condensed Matter Physics Group.
Computational Electromagnetics Group
Magda El-Shenawee, Professor of Electrical Engineering, researches subsurface sensing of buried objects, in particular breast cancer tumors. Breast cancer cells emit unique electromagnetic signals that can be detected and modeled. The figure depicts the extracellular
biopotential generated by a tumor composed of 1,089 cells at two different stages. The goals of this research is to discover cheap and efficient ways to detect cancer while it is still in the early stages.
View more information about the Computational Electromagnetics Group.
Computational Materials Science
Douglas Spearot, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, studies properties of materials under a range of extreme conditions. This figure shows a simulation model of nanocrystalline Cu-0.5at.%Sb containing 135 grains with average grain diameter of 15 nm. The different colors represent individual grains and the Sb atoms are colored red and placed at the grain boundaries. This research leads to new formulas for alloys that can be used in the manufacture of new metal products such as extra light aerospace components that can withstand extreme temperature and force.
Geospatial Science
Jackson Cothren, Director of the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies, Fred Limp, and colleagues develop new techniques for processing very complex sets of spatial data. Features are extracted from images and matched with features from a variety of sources. Arkansas high performance computing resources will be used to stitch a set of unorganized images into a much larger mosaic.
View more information at the CAST site.