Trinanjan Datta and Christian Poppeliers, both assistant professors of physics in the Department of Chemistry and Physics, received a $126,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to buy a 16-node computer cluster.

“The new machine is essentially 16 desktop-sized computers put together in parallel, and a single monitor and keyboard can control the system,” Datta said. “We needed more horsepower for computing our data.”

According to Datta, the setup sounds simple, but it requires very careful electronic engineering, and therefore comes with a hefty price tag. Working closely with the Augusta State University grant office, Datta and Poppeliers spent months preparing the grant paperwork. After more than half a year of waiting, they finally received word that their proposal was accepted.

The 16-node cluster will be the only one of its kind in the CSRA (excepting equipment at the Savannah River Site National Lab), and ramps up the university’s credentials for incoming students. With the recently added pre-engineering program and the expanding set of tools at the disposal of faculty and dedicated students, the science programs help to increase Augusta State’s reputation as an undergraduate school in Georgia.

According to the professors, receiving such a substantial grant is an indication that the NSF has faith in the institution’s potential to produce important scientific results. Recently some of Poppeliers and Datta results were accepted for publication in the scientific journal Geophysical Journal International.

The new machine allows scientists to explore the depths of the physical world.

“It’s simple, my computer can beat up your computer,” Poppeliers said. “The new machine will be used for mathematical work that is so intense and complex that it would fry a single desktop hard drive. The computations just require too much processing power. In this case, more is definitely better.”

Acquiring this instrument was also important for different reasons.

“Being a teaching institution, we often lack the resources to do the kinds of research that we have the ideas for,” Datta said. “We have students and faculty who are interested in pursuing intense research, but lack the tools to make it happen. Having this instrument enables us to offer more opportunities to those students and faculty members.”

Even though they have not had the machine prior to now, research has been done. Poppeliers is currently devoting much of his time to seismic imaging. According to the Center for Public Environmental Oversight, seismic imagers shoot noises down into the earth and then measure the energy and other properties of the echoes that come back. When an earthquake occurs, the energy is measured and can be used in calculations to determine how intense of a earthquake happened, and even what caused it.

Datta is working closely with senior physics majors Phillip Javernick and William Baez on two projects that will also make good use of the new machine when it arrives later this fall. Javernick is working to make sense of a non-linear system. Baez’s focus is on the simulation of magnetic materials. Simply put, Baez and Datta seek to figure out how magnets can be stronger and how they react to certain stimuli.

“Even though we will receive the machine in late 2009, it may be 2011 before results from the new machine are publishable,” Datta said. “This type of research and the many complex computations take a lot of time, which is one thing undergraduate students often run out of.”

For Datta, Poppeliers and the rest of the department, the machine is about bringing to this campus the resources that students and faculty need to excel in the field of physics and engineering. Poppeliers and Datta agree that they are always looking for students who are interested in either writing computing codes or becoming involved in physics research. The department’s website has contact information for each of the faculty members.

“Undergraduate research doesn’t just look great on curriculum vitae or résumés, it prepares students for real work on real problems,” Datta said. “It applies the classroom information to real settings.”

For Baez, the new computer brings a lot to Augusta State.

“It’s a chance to see both theoretical and computational physics at work in a non-classroom setting,” he said. “(For non-science majors) it is a chance to see that computers do more than just e-mail and Facebook.”