The University of California High-Performance AstroComputing Center (UC-HiPACC), based at the

University of California at Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the edge of ...

(UCSC), is a consortium of nine

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Fran ...

campuses and three Department of Energy laboratories (

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), commonly referred to as the Berkeley Lab, is a United States national laboratory that is owned by, and conducts scientific research on behalf of, the United States Department of Energy. Located in ...

Lawrence Livermore Laboratory Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a federal research facility in Livermore, California, United States. The lab was originally established as the University of California Radiation Laboratory, Livermore Branch in 1952 in response ...

, and

Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, i ...

). The consortium's goal is to support and facilitate original research and education in

computational astrophysics Computational astrophysics refers to the methods and computing tools developed and used in astrophysics research. Like computational chemistry or computational physics, it is both a specific branch of theoretical astrophysics and an interdiscipl ...

, and to engage in public outreach and education.

Staff and organization

Joel R. Primack, distinguished Professor of Physics at UCSC, has directed the UC-HiPACC consortium since its inception. The staff includes Senior Write
Trudy E. Bell
Administrator Sue Grasso, Scientific Visualization Coordinator Alex Bogert, and webmaster Steve Zaslaw. The consortium is organized at UCSC under the aegis of the Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics (SCIPP).

Principal activities

The UC-HiPACC consortium, which began operating in January 2010, supports activities to facilitate and encourage excellence, collaboration, and education in astronomy across the University of California system and affiliated DOE National Laboratories. It does not directly fund research or major hardware. Instead, UC-HiPACC sponsors working groups of UC scientists from multiple campuses and labs pursuing joint projects in computational astrophysics; workshops and conferences on topics in computational astrophysics; and an annual advanced summer school on a topic in computational astrophysics.

UC-HiPACC Meetings and Summer Schools 2010 – 2013

Fourteen multi-day meetings and International Summer Schools on AstroComputing (ISSAC) were held from 2010 to 2013. AGORA = Assembling Galaxies of Resolved Anatomy; CAS = California Academy of Sciences; CGE = Center for Galaxy Evolution; ISSAC = International Summer School on AstroComputing; LBNL = Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; NASA = NASA Ames Research Center; NSF = National Science Foundation; SDSC = San Diego Supercomputer Center; UCI = UC Irvine; UCSC = UC Santa Cruz. All participants in the journalism boot camp were professional science journalists.

Future of AstroComputing Workshop (2010)

In December 2010 UC-HiPACC organized a major conference on the Future of AstroComputing at the

San Diego Supercomputer Center The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) is an organized research unit of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). SDSC is located at the UCSD campus' Eleanor Roosevelt College east end, immediately north the Hopkins Parking Structure ...

at the

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...

(SDSC). UC-HiPACC provided partial support for the Enzo workshop at UCSD in spring 2010.

2012 Science Journalism Boot Camp in Computational Astronomy

It organized a journalism “boot camp” on computational astronomy, called “Computational Astronomy: From Planets to Cosmos”.

Santa Cruz Galaxy Workshops

Five-day workshops for galaxy researchers worldwide co-sponsored by UC-HiPACC were held at UCSC in August 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013.

Cosmological simulations

Large cosmological simulations are now the basis for much current research on the structure of the universe and the evolution of galaxies and clusters of galaxies. “Numerical simulations have become one of the most effective tools to study and to solve astrophysical problems.”

Project AGORA

In 2012, the center launched a galaxy supercomputer simulation project called AGORA (Assembling Galaxies of Resolved Anatomy).

Bolshoi Simulation

The

Bolshoi Cosmological Simulation The Bolshoi simulation, a computer model of the universe run in 2010 on the Pleiades supercomputer at the NASA Ames Research Center, was the most accurate cosmological simulation to that date of the evolution of the large-scale structure of the ...

(q.v.) is the most accurate cosmological simulation of the evolution of the large-scale structure of the universe made to date.

Education of public and other outreach

Planetarium shows for which UC-HiPACC members have contributed astronomical computations and images include “Life: A Cosmic Story” in the 75-foot dome of the

Morrison Planetarium The California Academy of Sciences is a research institute and natural history museum in San Francisco, California, that is among the largest museums of natural history in the world, housing over 46 million specimens. The Academy began in 18 ...

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

, and “Deep Space Adventure” in the 71-foot 8000 pixel-across dome of the

Adler Planetarium The Adler Planetarium is a public museum in Chicago, Illinois, dedicated to astronomy and astrophysics. It was founded in 1930 by local businessman Max Adler. Located on the northeastern tip of Northerly Island on Lake Michigan in the city, th ...

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

. A visualization from the Bolshoi Cosmological Simulation was narrated in the National Geographic TV special ''Inside the Milky Way''. UC-HiPACC provided footage from the Bolshoi Simulation to the Icelandic performer

Björk Björk Guðmundsdóttir ( , ; born 21 November 1965), known mononymously as Björk, is an Icelandic singer, songwriter, composer, record producer, and actress. Noted for her distinct three-octave vocal range and eccentric persona, she has de ...

for her musical number “Dark Matter” for her Biophilia concert.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:University of California AstroComputing Center Astronomy institutes and departments University of California, Santa Cruz Supercomputer sites