School of Computational Sciences

Facilities

Computation is recognized as a central feature of the instructional and research programs of SCS. The school, therefore, continues to establish world-class computational facilities. In addition, high-speed Internet connections permit interactive distance learning and access to remote databases.

The Fairfax Campus offers instruction in all areas of the SCS curriculum, and provides state-of-the-art computational laboratories and electronic classrooms for research and interactive instruction. The SCS Graduate Instructional Computational Facility houses 24 Silicon Graphics workstations clustered with a 100 GB RAIDS system. These machines are configured with state-of-the-art software for symbolic manipulation, modeling, simulation, data analysis, database management, and data visualization. Other advanced computing platforms within SCS include a high-performance parallel PC cluster with 134 processors, an SGI Origin 2000 workstation with 16 processors, an SGI Origin 200, an SGI Onyx with infinite reality graphics engine, and an Octane visualization workstation. SCS students are issued computer accounts and access to the SCS instructional facilities. Other computing platforms are available for research by graduate students.

SCS facilities on the Prince William Campus are partially shared with the American Type Culture Collection, the world's largest collection of living biological cultures. Facilities include molecular biology and biochemistry labs, computer labs, cold rooms, and instrument rooms, as well as faculty offices. Available computer facilities include more than 60 SGI workstations, including a four-processor Onyx, 18 Octanes, and more than 40 O2s. An SGI Origin 200 provides more than 65 GB of high-availability RAID disk storage. Other computational resources include SUN SparcStations, Macs, and PCs. All computers are connected via a high-speed (100 MB/sec) Ethernet LAN. Teaching facilities include three computer classrooms equipped with SGI workstations configured with advanced bioinformatics, visualization, and data-mining software. Three wet labs for teaching and training are supported by adjacent computer labs, lecture rooms, prep labs, and equipment labs, including three ABI 377 and two ABI 310 automated DNA analyzers.