OU's Research Campus
By Jerri Culpepper
Using an interdisciplinary approach, University of Oklahoma researchers in an array of scientific fields including meteorology, the life sciences and supercomputing, are making impressive forays into frontiers not long ago explored only by mathematicians, philosophers and writers of science fiction.
Cutting-edge research into life science fields ranging from robotics to genomic studies is now taking place in the new Stephenson Research and Technology Center on OU’s 271-acre Research Campus. In spring 2006, the National Weather Center – which will house OU’s academic and research programs in meteorology alongside research, training and operational elements of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – will open. The two buildings anchor OU’s growing research environment on Norman’s south side, which also includes One Partners Place – housing such private companies as Weathernews Americas Inc. and Vieux and Associates as well as several university operations – and will soon add Two Partners Place and a new facility for the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.
“The Research Campus and its buildings will enable and support a true ‘community of ideas’ that reflects the core mission and values of a university, but with a decidedly modern approach that includes academia, government and the private sector,” said Lee Williams, vice president of research and dean of the Graduate College.”
Kelvin Droegemeier, associate vice president for research and director of the Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms and the Sasaki Institute, says the new Research Campus has been dubbed by researchers and students as “connecting the dots,” referring to the campus environment in which government (.gov), academia (.edu) and industry (.com) can develop creative synergies for mutual benefit. As collaborations grow, other groups are expected to be added to the mix to represent participation from the military (.mil) and nonprofit and not-for-profit organizations (.org) as well as other as yet unknown “dots.”
Calling the Research Campus “the portal to 21st-century academia,” Droegemeier explains that the university is creating something unique – different from most research parks associated with other universities. “It is an unparalleled research and learning environment as well as a dynamic framework for stimulating business innovation and growth,” he noted.
What does that mean? For one thing, he says, the Research Campus features numerous laboratories and work spaces that allow students from the freshman to graduate level to get involved in real-world research to complement their classroom experiences. Additionally, Weathernews (and later other private companies as they move to the Research Campus) provide valuable internships and other real-world experience, thus improving students’ marketability upon graduation. Finally, “the Research Campus provides fully redundant, 24/7 power, environmental control, networking and personnel support – capabilities that are essential for private industries of the type we are creating and with which we are developing relationships,” Droegemeier noted.
Through this new environment that promotes creative synergy among organizations having vastly different cultures, the university is meeting OU President David Boren’s vision of a global multicultural campus in its fullest sense, bringing together people and organizations that reflect a diversity of nationalities, ethnicities, organizational and institutional cultures. This positions the campus and its students to move more readily into the areas of technology transfer and economic development.
Another component of the Research Campus is its economic development impact on the city and state. As businesses locate here, not only are more jobs created, but they in turn form spin-off companies. As new technologies are developed, they are quickly commercialized and marketed.
And then, of course, there are the benefits to society, or “science in service to society.” (See accompanying overview.)
“In one place, you have all this intellectual property, access to faculty talent and student thinking,” Droegemeier says. Smiling, he added, “Basically what we’re doing is, we’re connecting the dots.”
“ In one place, you have all this intellectual property, access to faculty talent and student thinking,” Droegemeier says. Smiling, he added,” Basically what we’re doing is, we’re connecting the dots.”
The Stephenson Research and Technology Center is a multi-phase project to support interdisciplinary programs in biosciences, bioengineering and the Supercomputing Center. In addition to the other facilities mentioned, a chilled water/emergency generation plant has been constructed.
The first phase of the Research and Technology Complex is the 94,600-square-foot Stephenson Research and Technology Center. (A second phase will add 100,000 square feet of laboratory and office space and will provide growth space for the university’s chemistry and biochemistry research programs.) In addition to OSCER, the SRTC houses the following:
The 50,000-square-foot One Partners Place is anchored by the privately held Weathernews Americas Inc. and also houses the following university entities: the Office of Technology Development, Integrated Radar Data Services (IRaDs), the Sasaki Institute, the Vice President for Technology Development, and the Center for Wealth Creation.
Sasaki Institute, directed by Kelvin Droegemeier — works in the shared interest of the science and engineering enterprise, “connecting the dots” on the Research Campus to meet individual needs, visions and cultures, with local economic development a key focus.
OSCER
Where Students, Researchers Turn to Get Work Done FAST
When researchers and students need to mine, simulate or visualize phenomena or vast amounts of data, whether it’s for weather forecasting, bioinformatics, high-energy physics, earthquake modeling, molecular modeling, bioengineering, aerospace design, or a plethora of other needs, they turn to OU’s Supercomputing Center for Education and Research, or OSCER.
OSCER, a multidisciplinary center within OU Information Technology, provides supercomputing education, expertise and resources to undergraduate and graduate students, staff and faculty. OSCER serves more than 250 students, staff and faculty in 25 departments in the colleges of Arts and Sciences, Business, Engineering, Geosciences and Medicine. And, notes OSCER director Henry Neeman, some of the most active users are students. In fact, he says, OSCER is the only supercomputing center in the world that focuses on teaching supercomputing to scientists and engineers – from high school students to professors – who don’t have a lot of computing experience.
OU researchers have access to Topdawg – OSCER’s newest supercomputer. When Topdawg debuted at OU last April, it was the 54th-fastest supercomputer in the world. In the fast-moving world of computers, that place will be usurped soon, but it remains the fastest supercomputer in the Big 12 and in Oklahoma history.
Topdawg, a Dell product, runs at a peak speed of 6.5 trillion calculations per second and has 2,000 times as much RAM as a typical PC. Cool? Try using it to simulate physical phenomena, such as tornadoes, earthquakes, galaxies, or atoms. Or to sequence genes. Or to turn a vast sea of data into easy-to-understand pictures. Definitely cool.
Want more information on OU’s Research Campus? Look at photos of the National Weather Center as it is being built? View the labs in the Stephenson Research and Technology Center? Visit http://www.rccc.ou.edu/
Using an interdisciplinary approach, University of Oklahoma researchers in an array of scientific fields including meteorology, the life sciences and supercomputing, are making impressive forays into frontiers not long ago explored only by mathematicians, philosophers and writers of science fiction.
Cutting-edge research into life science fields ranging from robotics to genomic studies is now taking place in the new Stephenson Research and Technology Center on OU’s 271-acre Research Campus. In spring 2006, the National Weather Center – which will house OU’s academic and research programs in meteorology alongside research, training and operational elements of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – will open. The two buildings anchor OU’s growing research environment on Norman’s south side, which also includes One Partners Place – housing such private companies as Weathernews Americas Inc. and Vieux and Associates as well as several university operations – and will soon add Two Partners Place and a new facility for the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.
“The Research Campus and its buildings will enable and support a true ‘community of ideas’ that reflects the core mission and values of a university, but with a decidedly modern approach that includes academia, government and the private sector,” said Lee Williams, vice president of research and dean of the Graduate College.”
Kelvin Droegemeier, associate vice president for research and director of the Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms and the Sasaki Institute, says the new Research Campus has been dubbed by researchers and students as “connecting the dots,” referring to the campus environment in which government (.gov), academia (.edu) and industry (.com) can develop creative synergies for mutual benefit. As collaborations grow, other groups are expected to be added to the mix to represent participation from the military (.mil) and nonprofit and not-for-profit organizations (.org) as well as other as yet unknown “dots.”
Calling the Research Campus “the portal to 21st-century academia,” Droegemeier explains that the university is creating something unique – different from most research parks associated with other universities. “It is an unparalleled research and learning environment as well as a dynamic framework for stimulating business innovation and growth,” he noted.
What does that mean? For one thing, he says, the Research Campus features numerous laboratories and work spaces that allow students from the freshman to graduate level to get involved in real-world research to complement their classroom experiences. Additionally, Weathernews (and later other private companies as they move to the Research Campus) provide valuable internships and other real-world experience, thus improving students’ marketability upon graduation. Finally, “the Research Campus provides fully redundant, 24/7 power, environmental control, networking and personnel support – capabilities that are essential for private industries of the type we are creating and with which we are developing relationships,” Droegemeier noted.
Through this new environment that promotes creative synergy among organizations having vastly different cultures, the university is meeting OU President David Boren’s vision of a global multicultural campus in its fullest sense, bringing together people and organizations that reflect a diversity of nationalities, ethnicities, organizational and institutional cultures. This positions the campus and its students to move more readily into the areas of technology transfer and economic development.
Another component of the Research Campus is its economic development impact on the city and state. As businesses locate here, not only are more jobs created, but they in turn form spin-off companies. As new technologies are developed, they are quickly commercialized and marketed.
And then, of course, there are the benefits to society, or “science in service to society.” (See accompanying overview.)
“In one place, you have all this intellectual property, access to faculty talent and student thinking,” Droegemeier says. Smiling, he added, “Basically what we’re doing is, we’re connecting the dots.”
“ In one place, you have all this intellectual property, access to faculty talent and student thinking,” Droegemeier says. Smiling, he added,” Basically what we’re doing is, we’re connecting the dots.”
The Stephenson Research and Technology Center is a multi-phase project to support interdisciplinary programs in biosciences, bioengineering and the Supercomputing Center. In addition to the other facilities mentioned, a chilled water/emergency generation plant has been constructed.
The first phase of the Research and Technology Complex is the 94,600-square-foot Stephenson Research and Technology Center. (A second phase will add 100,000 square feet of laboratory and office space and will provide growth space for the university’s chemistry and biochemistry research programs.) In addition to OSCER, the SRTC houses the following:
- Robotics, Evolution, Adaptation and Learning Laboratory (REAL), directed by Dean Hougen — Research concentration is the intelligent connection of sensing to action, the essence of modern robotics. Applications include space exploration, military endeavors, and medical and assistive applications.
- OU Microarray and Bioinformatics Core Facilities, directed by Tyrrell Conway — This facility offers the powerful tools of the highly complex technology of functional genomics to OU researchers.
- Advanced Center for Genome Technology, directed by Bruce Roe — A unit of OU’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, the center has been designated as a Genome Center by the National Institutes of Health, National Human Genome Research Institute, since 1990. One of the first three labs involved in the worldwide Human Genome Project, OU researchers have since sequenced the first completed human chromosome, discovering the genes involved in several forms of mental retardation, brain cancer, leukemia and schizophrenia.
- OU Bioengineering Center, directed by Ed O’Rear, David Schmidtke, Peter McFetridge and Uli Nollert — Research includes projects essential to tissue engineering and medical imaging, which impacts the diagnosis of diseases and the monitoring of the various therapies’ effectiveness.
- The Neuroendocrine Developmental Genetics Lab, directed by Randy Hewes — Research focuses on the mechanisms by which cells acquire, maintain and regulate neuropeptides and how changes in neuropeptide signally control animal behavior.
- Zebrafish Development, Genetics and Genomics Lab, directed by Han Wang — Using zebrafish because of their genetic similarity to humans, rapid life cycle and transparent embryos (which make viewing development easier), Wang studies molecular genetics and genomics of circadian rhythmicity (which determines sleep and wake cycles, among other things), embryogenesis, retinal and blood development as well as human diseases.
- Institute for Environmental Genomics, directed by Jizhong Zhou — A distinguished R&D staff scientist in microbial genomics and ecology, Zhou just came to OU from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee to head this institute. With the arrival of Zhou and his research staff, the SRTC is now 100 percent occupied.
The 50,000-square-foot One Partners Place is anchored by the privately held Weathernews Americas Inc. and also houses the following university entities: the Office of Technology Development, Integrated Radar Data Services (IRaDs), the Sasaki Institute, the Vice President for Technology Development, and the Center for Wealth Creation.
Sasaki Institute, directed by Kelvin Droegemeier — works in the shared interest of the science and engineering enterprise, “connecting the dots” on the Research Campus to meet individual needs, visions and cultures, with local economic development a key focus.
OSCER
Where Students, Researchers Turn to Get Work Done FAST
When researchers and students need to mine, simulate or visualize phenomena or vast amounts of data, whether it’s for weather forecasting, bioinformatics, high-energy physics, earthquake modeling, molecular modeling, bioengineering, aerospace design, or a plethora of other needs, they turn to OU’s Supercomputing Center for Education and Research, or OSCER.
OSCER, a multidisciplinary center within OU Information Technology, provides supercomputing education, expertise and resources to undergraduate and graduate students, staff and faculty. OSCER serves more than 250 students, staff and faculty in 25 departments in the colleges of Arts and Sciences, Business, Engineering, Geosciences and Medicine. And, notes OSCER director Henry Neeman, some of the most active users are students. In fact, he says, OSCER is the only supercomputing center in the world that focuses on teaching supercomputing to scientists and engineers – from high school students to professors – who don’t have a lot of computing experience.
OU researchers have access to Topdawg – OSCER’s newest supercomputer. When Topdawg debuted at OU last April, it was the 54th-fastest supercomputer in the world. In the fast-moving world of computers, that place will be usurped soon, but it remains the fastest supercomputer in the Big 12 and in Oklahoma history.
Topdawg, a Dell product, runs at a peak speed of 6.5 trillion calculations per second and has 2,000 times as much RAM as a typical PC. Cool? Try using it to simulate physical phenomena, such as tornadoes, earthquakes, galaxies, or atoms. Or to sequence genes. Or to turn a vast sea of data into easy-to-understand pictures. Definitely cool.
Want more information on OU’s Research Campus? Look at photos of the National Weather Center as it is being built? View the labs in the Stephenson Research and Technology Center? Visit http://www.rccc.ou.edu/
