IACS’ Robert Harrison is Leader in NSF-Funded Institute to Improve Scientific Software

Professor Robert Harrison directs the Institute for Advanced Computational Science (IACS) at Stony Brook.

High-performance computing expert Robert Harrison, director of the Institute for Advanced Computational Science (IACS)at Stony Brook University, is one of the leaders of a new institute that is supported by a five-year $19.4 million award from the National Science Foundation.

The Molecular Sciences Software Institute (MolSSI), located at Virginia Tech and directed by Daniel Crawford, will act as a nexus for science, education and cooperation. It will serve the worldwide community of computational molecular scientists, which is a broad field including biomolecular simulation, quantum chemistry and materials science.

“The award of MolSSI is very exciting, and its community-oriented and multidisciplinary perspectives are very well aligned with our vision for IACS,” said Harrison. “Our team is already heavily engaged with each other to execute the initial planning stage of the project, and we are really looking forward to the next step, which is initiating activities with the community.”

MoISSI will enable computational scientists to tackle problems that are significantly larger and more complex than those currently within reach. Furthermore, the Institute will accelerate the translation of basic science into new technologies essential to the vitality of the economy and the environment.

Harrison is a member of the MolSSI board of directors and will oversee the Institute’s activities for sustainable, forward-looking and standards-oriented approaches to parallel computing, including both hardware and software strategies.

“The Institute will ultimately impact thousands of researchers, making it possible to perform investigations that would otherwise be impossible and expanding the community of scientists able to perform research on the nation’s cyberinfrastructure,” said Rajiv Ramnath, program director in the division of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure at NSF.

In addition to Virginia Tech and Stony Brook, MoISSI will be led by scientists from Iowa State University; Rice University; Rutgers University; Stanford University; University of California, Berkeley; and University of Southern California. The Institute headquarters will host a team of software scientists and a cohort of software fellows across the country.

Read the NSF press release

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