Identifying genetic predispositions to disease and testing airplane aerodynamics might not seem related, but they are linked by a common thread: computational science.

“Whether it’s creating new drugs to inhibit disease-causing genes, predicting climate change, or designing stronger skyscrapers, simulation and computational approaches to solving problems play a huge role in all kinds of research,” says Nick Tsinoremas, founding director of the University’s new Center for Computational Science and former senior director of informatics at Scripps Florida.

The new center will foster research in five areas: physical science, biology and bioinformatics, chemistry, data mining, and visualization. Its state-of-the-art data center will be located on the Miller School campus in a hurricane-hardened garage and chiller plant scheduled for completion in October 2008. There, symmetric multiprocessing units and other hardware will link multiple computers and perform trillions of calculations per second. Additional offices will be located on the Miller School, Rosenstiel School, and Coral Gables campuses.

For additional computing power, the center will be able to share the resources of other grids. UM, for example, is one of 60 institutions in the Southeastern Universities Research Association. It also is a part of the Latin American Grid, an IBM-led project that links computers across the United States, Latin America, and Spain.

Executive Vice President and Provost Thomas J. LeBlanc conceived of the center after several faculty members conveyed their need for more computing power as well as support staff who can do research programming, enabling the faculty to do what they do best.