High-Performance Computing for Biomedical Research
From BTRR
Overview
The National Resource for Biomedical Supercomputing (NRBSC) pursues leading-edge research in high performance computing and the life sciences and fosters exchange between Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) expertise in computational science and biomedical researchers nationwide. The resource focus on computational biomedical research and on outreach to the national biomedical community through education and publications. Research at the NRBSC is centered in three areas: microphysiology, volumetric visualization and analysis, and computational structural biology.
Current Research
Current research in microphysiology and volumetric visualization are linked through software development that targets scalable, interactive mesh generation and annotation for spatially realistic cell modeling as well as terabyte-scale interactive volume visualization and analysis based on distributed server technology. The primary software packages under development by the Center for Quantitative Biological Simulation include MCell, PSC_DX, and DReAMM and the PSC Volume Browser. Research applications currently include synaptic physiology, metabolic and signaling networks, and multidimensional volumetric data analysis including cardiac chamber segmentation and volume estimation from high-resolution computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging time series. Structural biology research (www.nrbsc.org/sb/index.htm) includes software development centered on the CHARMM and DYNAMO packages and includes applications focused on computational enzymology using hybrid quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical methods, ion channel kinetics using polarizable molecular mechanics force fields, and structural bioinformatics.
