The project enabled/created many new HPC users at Iowa State University. The original investigator team was comprised of 17 faculty groups. Over the course of the project, that user base grew to 139! CyEnce (Cyclone Science shortened as CyEnce) enabled substantial growth in the amount and diversity of cutting edge research performed at our institution. The expanding data and computation driven discovery in science led Iowa State University to acquire additional computing machinery using institutional funds to meet the needs of this growing user community.   

A few outcomes of the science enabled by CyEnce are described below.

Biosciences—Bioinformatics and Genomics: ISU has preeminent programs in i) plant sciences research with particular emphasis on biotechnology of important cereal crops such as maize, barley and soybean and ii) systems biology of livestock for effective breeding, improving quality and nutrition of food, and study of diseases that affect livestock. CyEnce’s parallel processing capabilities enabled researchers to process next generation sequencing data for a whole genome level epistatic interaction analysis of millions of gene variants. Researchers developed the first parallel solution for decomposing the metagenomic assembly problem without compromising post-assembly quality. The research result literally could be achieved in 22 minutes using this computing machinery, in contrast to the existing serial solutions that took days of running time.

Multiscale Methods: One of the grand challenges in chemistry is to design new materials for specific applications, e.g., capture of solar energy, study of heterogeneous catalysis, simulation of the processes for biomass conversion to usable energy, and atmospheric phenomena. To address photo-chemistry/physics areas,  important molecular dynamics equilibration and excited state calculations have been carried out for azobenzene and azobenzene derivatives. CyEnce also has advanced the ability of researchers to carry out computationally intensive calculations of the molecular structure of carbohydrates, a group of molecules found in many biological systems including plant and bacterial cell walls and glycoproteins.

Computational Fluid Dynamics Modeling: Multiphase reactive flows are encountered in several energy generation and chemical production processes. Researchers in this area developed new algorithms and methods for improving accuracy in the modeling of fluid-particle flows, which are commonly seen in many fields of engineering and real systems, especially in energy and chemical process equipment. One project, flow sculpting using sequences of micropillars, formulated a computationally efficient framework to design sequences of pillars that result in desired flow deformation. The team developed a basis of four sets of sequence-building concatenations: stacking, recursion, mirroring, and shaping.

Coupling of Land Use Change and Regional Climate Extremes: The ISU climate simulation group is developing first-of-its kind agricultural policy-climate projection systems to address food security and climate change. Multi-decade simulations using CyEnce have revealed that post-World War II transitions in crop type in the central US have reduced the proportion of daily precipitation coming in light rain events and increased the fraction of rain events with over 1.5 inches. Flood management, bridge design, erosion-control, crop breeding, and cropping system changes, to name a few, are examples of critical societal long-term planning activities that must be modified to adapt to ongoing changes in extreme precipitation.

Wind Energy: Simulations of hub-height wind speeds over the central US performed on CyEnce have led to improved methods of representing atmospheric turbulence when the atmosphere changes from convective daytime conditions to nighttime stratified flow. Implementation of these changes has reduced the mean absolute error in wind forecasts by an average of 13%. These advances will provide forecasting firms with tested methods that can be adopted immediately for improving wind efficiency across the US fleet.

Bio-inspired, ultra-quiet propulsion systems: High-fidelity tools are used on CyEnce to understand sound/noise generation due to flow over an owl wing and then adapt the owl plumage to design quiet blades in aerospace applications. Researchers verified their aeroacoustics models against experimental data for a model problem and evaluated a leading edge serration design (inspired by serrations found on owl wings) and observed that up to 6 dB noise reduction is possible. This research suggests that passive methods for noise reduction are possible and it opens up a new paradigm in designing quiet rotor blades for next-gen aircraft and wind turbines.

Process-structure-property in materials: Solvent-based fabrication is a flexible and affordable approach to manufacture polymer thin films. The properties of products made from such films can be tailored by the internal organization (morphology) of the films. The research conducted using CyEnce explored how the molecular distribution of an organic solar cell device affects performance. ISU researchers were able to identify design rules for producing large channels of morphologies and a large set of potential compounds with desired characteristics. The knowledge gained will guide experimental discovery in a large spectrum of applications including clean energy and human welfare (drug delivery membranes).

Last Modified: 09/19/2016
Modified by: Arun K Somani