John Yellen
$456,742
Jeffrey A Zahratka
Andrew Watkins
Swagata Banik
Baldwin Wallace University
Ohio
Social Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE)
Major Research Instrumentation
The acquisition of a High-Performance Computing Cluster (HPCC) supported by a Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) award significantly leverages the existing research output activities, training, and teaching excellence at Baldwin Wallace (BW) University. The 824-core HPCC consists of a mix of compute nodes with RAM ranging from 256GB to 1.024TB per node, allowing for differential use of the nodes to host and analyze large datasets produced by faculty and students from different academic departments. It also facilitates the complex analysis and modeling of large, national surveys made available by federal agencies, and enhances collaborative efforts with the community partners, healthcare network, and academic institutions in Northeast Ohio and beyond. This critical upgrade to BW’s computing infrastructure is key for advancing research across different STEM disciplines including bioinformatics, computer science, environmental science, mathematics, public health epidemiology, and healthcare management and outcomes research. The PI is an active tobacco researcher and the HPCC facilitates running a complex Bayesian Network Analysis to investigate the prevalence and predictors of electronic cigarettes use among youth in low- and middle-income countries. This project advances tobacco research by applying a rigorous causal methodology approach that is computationally intensive yet has the advantage of easy interpretation and the ability to examine causal relationships among all variables simultaneously. <br/>Two novel bioinformatics projects are made feasible by the acquisition of the HPCC. One project works to identify SARS-CoV-2 (the causative agent of COVID-19) ion channel gating mechanisms while the other examines mutations in pathogenic variants of SARS-CoV-2. Both projects advance the scientific literature of COVID-19 by characterizing the biophysical dynamics of ion channel gating and conductance and a potential to yield robust screening of COVID-19 patients for the early detection of those at risk of severe COVID-19 infection. A computer science project applies Natural Language Processing algorithms to examine personality types for better understanding of consumers’ behaviors and social media profiles for predicting behaviors that facilitate timely actions by law enforcements and therapists. A social public health epidemiology project applies complex simulations to examine trends in health outcomes.<br/> <br/>The HPCC also advances teaching at BW as the HPCC is vital for running simulations and course-based projects in several undergraduate and graduate courses in bioinformatics and genomics, computer science, data science and machine learning, biology, faculty-student collaboration courses, and health informatics and big data analytics. In addition to teaching, BW is committed to training the next generation of data scientists, big data analytics and informatics specialists through a collaborative regional network of healthcare institutions and community-based organizations. Advancing teaching and training at BW is important to prepare a qualified workforce to meet the growing needs of data scientists regionally and nationally and to emphasize BW’s commitment for increasing diversity and inclusiveness in higher education and workforce by providing opportunities for students from underrepresented groups. BW’s undergraduate student body consists of 42% first-generation, 25% minority, and 37% are classified as economically-disadvantaged (Pell-eligible).<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.