The Ohio Project

COLUMBUS, Ohio (Sep 9, 1999) — 

The Ohio Project is an effort to raise awareness of the power of computational problem solving by reaching out to potential industrial users of high performance computing (HPC) and networking or computational science methods. It has two goals:

  1. To acquaint potential industrial users with the tools available through HPC and the application of computational science methods to help solve business problems. HPC and computational science methods have made tools such as simulation, rapid prototyping, detection, risk reduction, modeling, mapping, and visualization widely available to the military, advanced healthcare, information/entertainment and other industries or areas.
  2. To get industry input on a long-term research and development agenda for Ohio's computer and computational scientists located at many of its higher education institutions and federal laboratories.

Outline of Process:

The materials science and manufacturing working groups are comprised primarily of industry research and development (R&D) leadership and selected Ohio academic experts with current industrial project experience. Industry participation is being recruited from R&D leadership in Ohio and national firms.

In the first meeting, we will open with a short briefing on using HPC and computational science methods to solve typical problems encountered in this area. A number of companies will provide the group with an introduction to some areas in which they have applied HPC or computational science tools. The group will be asked to suggest some key long-term research/applications challenges facing their industry for which these tools could prove useful.

OSC staff will distribute these suggestions to The Ohio Project's network of computer and computational scientists for their input and observations about:

  • The state of the discipline and its applicability to the problem/challenge suggested
  • The location and status of the "best in class" work in the country now being performed on this problem
  • Particular competencies in Ohio research universities or laboratories on which industry could build to meet this need.

In the second meeting, the results of this survey will be provided to the industry group and discussed. The group will be asked to rank their priority research challenges, in terms of its:

  • Ability to "transform" a particular industry or marketplace
  • Contribution to advances in the academic discipline itself
  • Ability to build on a particular competency area in an Ohio research university or Federal laboratory.

The outcome of this part of the process will be a ranked priority list of "research challenges" for Ohio's computational science community for materials science and manufacturing.

Concrete Outcomes:

  1. Input from these sessions will inform state computer and computational science experts about industry challenges that will require significant advances in similar fundamental research areas. Using The Ohio Project's academic network, we will synthesize the six industry agendas into one, overarching the research agenda with priorities, lead institutions and identified industrial participants.
  2. Industry participants will learn from other companies in their field new ways in which to use HPC in their work environment to perform simulations, rapid prototyping, forecasting and other emerging applications.