Research at UMD using High Performance Computing

The University of Maryland is a public research university, and the High Performance Computing resources managed by the Division of Information Technology exists to enhance the University's mission of providing excellence in research and teaching.

This page is an incomplete collection of some of the ways in which the University's High Performance Computing Clusters have assisted researchers on campus in furthering these goals. If you are a researcher and wish to add your research using the University's HPC resources to the list, please add that information to your project using the ColdFront web GUI.

UMD HPC assisted research in popular media
Publications produced with assistance of UMD HPC resources:
UMD courses using HPC resources

University of Maryland HPC assisted research in the popular media

Various newspapers and other media had several articles referring to the University of Maryland's HPC resources and the research performed on them, including:

An episode of the History Channel's "The Universe" series called "The Search for Cosmic Clusters" (Season 4, Episode 7) interviewed research scientist Dr. Peter Teuben about his work using using computational N-body simulations to explore the evolution of the universe, and included some discussion of the Deepthought HPC cluster where much of his computation was performed.
Crunched: Deepthought2's Deep Thoughts: a Washington Post vignette of ten fields of research being enhanced by the new HPC cluster.
U-Md. supercomputer lands on list of top performers: a brief discussion of the new cluster from the Washington Post
UMD supercomputer to boost complex research: an article in The Baltimore Sun announcing the cluster
New Horizon's flyby of Pluto: UMD astronomers publish results from New Horizon's flyby of Pluto.
Queen's guitarist Brian May probes origin of asteroids: An article by the European Space Agency on simulations done on the Bluecrab HPC cluster, including work by UMD's Prof. Derek Richardson.
UMD Researchers Identify Structure of Blue Whirls: Using the Deepthought2 HPC cluster, graduate students and professors have analyzed the structure of these small, spinning blue flames that could potentially be used for low-emission combustion.
UMD Associate Professor Partners with the Dairy Industry to Improve Animal Welfare and Disease Resistance through Genomic Selection: Researchers use a "big data" approach to finding genes that may confer mastitis resistance
UMD Researchers Use Artificial Intelligence Language Tools to Decode Molecular Movements: Using machine learning natural language processing tools, researchers at the University of Maryland created an abstract language to describe and predict the different shapes protein molecules can take.

Courses using UMD HPC resources

Education is the primary mission of the University, and experience with High Performance Computing is a necessary part of a balanced educational experience in many disciplines. As such, the Division of Information Technology makes some HPC cluster resources available for classes offered by the University upon the request of the instructors. If you are an instructor for a class which you believe might benefit from using some of the University's HPC resources, you can request the class gets access to some HPC resources.

Below is a list of some of the standard academic offerings which have used some of the University's HPC resources as part of the class:

List of standard UMD courses making use of the Univerity's HPC resources as a part of the class
Year	Semester	Course Number	Course Description	Instructor
Spring 2025 Semester
2025	Spring	GEMS 397	Gemstone Team TORUS	Johan Larsson
Fall 2024 Semester
2024	Fall	BIOI 611	Analysis of Gene Expression Data	Shaojun Xie
2024	Fall	BMGT 808Y	Machine Learning for Applications in Business Research	Jessica Clark
2024	Fall	CHEM 601	Structure and Bonding of Molecules and Materials	Lawrence Sita
2024	Fall	CMSC 416	Introduction to Parallel Computing	Alan Sussman, Abhinav Bhatele
2024	Fall	DATA/MSML 602 PCS1	Principles of Data Science	Mohammad Teli
2024	Fall	DATA/MSML 602 PCS2	Principles of Data Science	Fardina Alam
2024	Fall	DATA 641/ MSML 641	Natural Language Processing	Shabnam Tafreshi
2024	Fall	GEMS 396	Gemstone Team TORUS	Johan Larsson
2024	Fall	GEMS 496	Gemstone Project Writing Seminar (Dutt)	Avik Dutt
2024	Fall	MSML 642	Robotics	Jerry Wu
Summer 2024 Semester
2024	Summer	DATA 612/ MSML 612	Deep Learning	Yuntao Liu
Spring 2024 Semester
2024	Spring	CMSC 416	Introduction to Parallel Computing	Abhinav Bhatele
2024	Spring	ENEE 439n	Topics in Signal Processing	Sungmin Eum
Fall 2023 Semester
2023	Fall	CMSC 714	High Performance Computing Systems	Alan Sussman
Spring 2023 Semester
2023	Spring	BIOE 658B	Introduction to Medical Image Analysis	Austin Tapp
2023	Spring	CMSC 411	Computer Systems Architecture	Ilchul Yoon
2023	Spring	CMSC 416	Introduction to Parallel Computing	Alan Sussman
2023	Spring	AMSC/CMSC 664	Advanced Scientific Computing II	Abhinav Bhatele and Tobias van Petersdorff
2023	Spring	ENPM 808Z	Advanced Topics in Engineering: Cognitive Robotics	Yantian Zha
2023	Spring	GEMS 497	Team Thesis Defense	Silvina Matysiak
Fall 2022 Semester
2022	Fall	BIOE 464	Introduction to Molecular Bioengineering	Silvina Matysiak
2022	Fall	CMSC 416	Introduction to Parallel Computing	Abhinav Bhatele
2022	Fall	AMSC/CMSC 663	Advanced Scientific Computing I	Abhinav Bhatele and Tobias van Petersdorff
2022	Fall	CMSC 714	High Performance Computing	Alan Sussman
2022	Fall	ENBC 423	Biocomputational Engineering	Joe Chalfoun
2022	Fall	ENMA 400/ ENMA 600	Introduction to Atomistic Modeling in Material Sciences	Yifei Mo
2022	Spring	GEMS 496-0104	High Performance Computing Systems	Silvina Matysiak
Spring 2022 Semester
2022	Spring	CMSC 818x	Introduction to Parallel Computing	Abhinav Bhatele
2022	Spring	GEMS 397-0104	High Performance Computing Systems	Silvina Matysiak
Fall 2021 Semester
2021	Fall	AOSC 614/ CMSC 818x	Numerical Weather Prediction and Data Assimilation	Eugenia Kalnay
2021	Fall	CMSC 416/ CMSC 818x	Introduction to Parallel Computing	Abhinav Bhatele
2021	Fall	GEMS 396-0104	High Performance Computing Systems	Silvina Matysiak
Spring 2021 Semester
2021	Spring	CMSC 433	Programming Language Technologies and Paradigms	Anwar Mamat
2021	Spring	CMSC 714	High Performance Computing Systems	Abhinav Bhatele
2021	Spring	ENMA 490	Materials Design	Aristos Christou
2021	Spring	GEMS 297-0104	High Performance Computing Systems	Silvina Matysiak
2021	Spring	PLCY 798K/AOSC 663	Readings in Public Policy; Integrated Human Earth Systems Modeling and Analysis	Yiyun Cui/Thomas Wild
Fall 2020 Semester
2020	Fall	AOSC 614	Atmospheric and Oceanic Science	Eugenia Kalnay
2020	Fall	BIOE 464	Introduction to Molecular Bioengineering	Silvina Matysiak
2020	Fall	CMSC 433	Programming Language Technologies and Paradigms	Anwar Mamat
2020	Fall	CMSC 498X/ CMSC 818X	Introduction to Parallel Computing	Abhinav Bhatele
2020	Fall	ENAE 481	Aeronautical System Design Vertical Flight Society Rotorcraft Design Competition Dept of Energy Collegiate Wind Challenge	James Baeder
2020	Fall	ENMA 400/ ENMA 600	Introduction to Atomistic Modeling in Material Sciences	Yifei Mo
Spring 2020 Semester
2020	Spring	CMSC 433	Programming Language Technologies and Paradigms	Anwar Mamat
2020	Spring	CMSC 828B	Advanced Topics in Information Processing: Neural Machine Translation	Marine Carpuat
2020	Spring	ENAE482	Aeronautical System Design Vertical Flight Society Rotorcraft Design Competition Dept of Energy Collegiate Wind Challenge	James Baeder
Fall 2019 Semester
2019	Fall	BIOE 464/BIOE 689U	Introduction to Computational Molecular Bioengineering/Computional Molecular Bioengineering	Silvina R. Matysiak
2019	Fall	CMSC 433	Programming Language Technologies and Paradigms	Anwar Mamat, Mike Marsh
2019	Fall	CMSC 714	High Performance Computing Systems	Abhinav Bhatele
Spring 2019 Semester
2019	Spring	CMSC 433	Programming Language Technologies and Paradigms	Anwar Mamat
Fall 2018 Semester
2018	Fall	BIOE 489N/BIOE 689U	Introduction to Computational Molecular Bioengineering/Computional Molecular Bioengineering	Silvina R. Matysiak
2018	Fall	CMSC 433	Programming Language Technologies and Paradigms	Anwar Mammat
2018	Fall	CMSC 498V	Selected Topics in Computer Science; Advanced Topics in Machine Learning	Furong Huang
2018	Fall	CMSC714	High Performance Computing	Alan L. Sussman
2018	Fall	CMSC726	Machine Leanring	Soheil Feiz
Spring 2018 Semester
2018	Spring	CMSC 433	Programming Language Technologies and Paradigms	Anwar Mamat
2018	Spring	ENEE 408G	Capstone Design in Multimedia Signal Processing	KJ Ray Liu
2018	Spring	ENME 808E	Applied Machine Learning for Engineering and Design	Nikhil Chopra
Fall 2017 Semester
2017	Fall	ENMA 400	Introduction to Atomistic Modeling in Material Sciences	Yifei Mo
Spring 2017 Semester
2017	Spring	CMSC 714	High Performance Computing	Alan L. Sussman
Fall 2016 Semester
2016	Fall	BIOE 489N	Special Topics in Bio-Engineering	Silvina R. Matysiak
2016	Fall	CMSC 498E	Selected Topics in Computer Science	Larry S. Davis
2016	Fall	ENMA 489A	Selected Topics in Engineering Materials: Introduction to Computational Material Science	Yifei Mo
Spring 2016 Semester
2016	Spring	AMSC/CMSC 662	Computer Organization and Programming for Scientific Computing	Ramani Duraiswami
Spring 2015 Semester
2015	Spring	CMSC 714	High Performance Computing	Alan L. Sussman
2015	Spring	ENAE 488C	Topics in Aerospace Engineering: Computational Fluid Dynamics	Ashish Nedungadi
2015	Spring	ENMA 489A	Selected Topics in Engineering Materials: Introduction to Computational Material Science	Yifei Mo

There have been a number of conferences, workshops, etc. sponsored by members of the University that also made use of the HPC resources, including:

Year	Month	Name/Description	Organizer/Instructor
2024
2024	Jul 8-19	Brin Mathematics Research Center Summer School: Tracer Mixing in Fluids Across Planetar Scales	Thaddeus Komacek, Vedran Lekic, Jacob Wenegrat
2023	May 21	ISC2024 Tutorial: Distributed Training of Deep Neural Networks	Prof. Abhinav Bhatele, Daniel Nichols
2023
2023	May 21	ISC2023 Tutorial: Distributed Training of Deep Neural Networks	Prof. Abhinav Bhatele, Siddarth Singh
2020
2020	Jan	HPC Programming Bootcamp	Prof. Abhinav Bhatele
2019
2019	Oct	Parallel Computing with MATLAB Workshop	Raymond Norris, MathWorks
2019	Jan	HPC Programming Bootcamp	Prof. Alan Sussman
2018
2018	Aug	HPC Programming Bootcamp	Prof. Alan Sussman
2015
2015	Jun	HPC Programming Bootcamp	Prof. Alan Sussman
2014
2014	Oct	Oct 2014 UMD/Nvidia GPU Summit Conference	Various
2014	Jun	HPC Programming Bootcamp	Prof. Alan Sussman
2013
2013	May	HPC Programming Bootcamp	Dr. Alan Sussman
2011
2011	Aug	HPC Programming Bootcamp	Prof. Alan Sussman
2010
2010	Aug	HPC Programming Bootcamp	Prof. Aaron Bloomfield, UVA