A select group of undergraduate students and chemistry faculty members in the "Molecular Education and Research Consortium in Undergraduate Conceptual Chemistry (MERCURY) now have access to a "supercomputer" or high-performance server that allows them to run calculations they never could run before. George Shields, Ph.D., professor of chemistry at
To further understanding of computational chemistry MERCURY is hosting a conference July 21-23 at
Chris Cramer, "Continuum Solvation Methods," Chemistry Department,
Heather Carlson, "Drug Design,"
Barbara Garrison, "Surface Science," Chemistry Department,
Michael Gilson, "Molecular Recognition," Center for Advanced Research in Biotechnology,
Roberto Gomperts, "Getting the Most out of Gaussian," Principal Scientist Life Sciences, SGI;
Wilma Olson, "DNA Structure and Function," Department of Chemistry,
Harold Scheraga, "Protein Folding," Department of Chemistry,
MERCURY was created by seven institutions with undergraduate research programs in computational chemistry. Funding from the National Science Foundation's Major Research Instrumentation program was used to buy a supercomputer, one 32-processor and one 8-processor SGI® Origin® 300 server that is housed on
"We are delighted to have these high-performance servers to run our applications, said Shields, who authored the NSF grant. "These high-performance servers allow us to run calculations that we never could run before."