In The News:

Sandia Lab News
Ground broken for Sandia’s Computer Science Research Institute
at Science & Technology Park
August 19, 2005 Volume 57, Number 17
By Neal Singer

Ground broken for Sandia’s Computer Science Research Institute at Science & Technology Park High expectations voiced for future of computer simulations: A fifth groundbreaking this year for Sandia – a sign of the vitality of the institution – took place on August 9 for the Computer Science Research Institute. The 34,500-square-foot building, under the direction of David Womble (1410), will be at the far eastern end of the Sandia Science & Technology Park. In an event arranged by Dorothy McCoy (38151) of Sandia protocol for Sandia Science and Technology Park executive director Jackie Kerby Moore (10105), six dignitaries made speeches and shoveled earth to mark the start of a building from which much is expected. Among the participants were Senators Pete Domenici and Jeff Bingaman, Sandia President Tom Hunter, DOE Advanced Simulation and Computing program director Dmitri Kusnezov, City of Albuquerque representative Ed Adams, and Albuquerque developer Scott Whittington. Expectations were broadly stated by Tom Hunter, who summarized for an audience of about 200 the problems that challenge US technical supremacy in the 21st century. He also offered a solution based in part on work expected to emerge from CSRI. “In the past century, this country dominated science and technology,” he said, citing the invention of the transistor, the journey to the moon, the development of the Internet, and the creation of the atomic bomb. Maintaining US technological dominance in 21st century will mean “re-thinking thinking,” or reinventing the way researchers approach problems, he said. “The notion that creative thought can be translated rapidly into something that can be built, and built rapidly… has at its core (the advantages of) computer simulation.”

Computing smarter, not just faster: The point, he went on, is not mere to be very fast computers but to harness their power through very fast computers but to harness their power through efficient programming to help build the best products right the first time, through Sandia centers such as MESA and CINT. “Modeling and simulation is (about…) allowing your mind to do things you can’t do any other way. It’s not about just computing faster, because we’re doing that. It’s really about computing smarter, and that’s what CSRI is about,” Tom said. “It’s about figuring out how to figure out better. It’s about thinking through what a computer can do and doing it in a very efficient, clever way with fundamental mathematics.”

CSRI senior manager David Womble, in an interview with Lab news, said, “We’ll have specially designed office space that can co-locate as many as 55 external scientific collaborators with more than 135 Sandia staff to solve problems in computer science, computational science, and mathematics and to devise new capabilities in modeling and simulation.”

CSRI will bring together researchers from universities and the national laboratories to collaborate in solving problems in national security, David said. The new building will include space especially designed and furnished to facilitate collaborative interactions. This includes high-bandwidth connections and visualizations capabilities, enhanced telecommunications and video conferencing electronic whiteboards, and projection capabilities.

Bingaman said, “If you can’t keep bringing the very best people here, (the US) can’t maintain its (technological) lead. The CSRI facility should help do that for a long time into the future.” “We’ve had the safety of an overload of developed brains,” said Domenici, “but this isn’t going to last.” The CSRI, he said, “is what we’re doing to keep up with the world.”

The building will be constructed and then leased back to Sandia by the real estate development company Avalon Investments, Inc., said Avalon president Scott Whittington, “We hope we can facilitate David Womble’s vision.” The company, says Whittington, owns more than four acres in the research park and hopes to build another 25,000-square-foot building for future tenants. Avalon was selected as developer in a year-long bid process with criteria set by DOE.