News Archives: June, 2020

With funding and support from Kentucky's National Science Foundation (NSF)-sponsored Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), a team from UK and Somerset Community College (SCC) is creating 3D-printed, membrane-filtered face masks that can inactivate the coronavirus. The goal, through passive decontamination, is to not only protect people from breathing in viruses, but to eliminate them on contact.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded $10 million to the Pervasive Technology Institute at Indiana University (IU) in collaboration with University of Hawaiʻi, University of Texas at Austin’s Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), Arizona State University (ASU) and Cornell University to deploy Jetstream 2, a nationwide distributed cloud computing system that supports on-demand research, artificial intelligence (AI) and enhanced large-scale data analysis.

Today, computing experts measure supercomputer performance using benchmarks that measure just a tiny kernel of the supercomputer’s computation power. For leaders at organizations that invest in supercomputers, scientists who use supercomputers, and experts who build new computers, a more comprehensive suite of benchmarks could be a useful tool when making complex, expensive decisions.

In the effort to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus and treat infected patients, special equipment that performs cutting-edge research at Montana State University has been repurposed to help Gallatin County health care providers. Before the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, formally named SARS-CoV-2, a machine in MSU researcher Michelle Flenniken's lab called a qPCR analyzer was used to detect viruses that attack bees and other pollinators around the state. Now it has been temporarily moved to Bozeman Health Deaconess Hospital, where the tool can perform up to 60 much-needed COVID-19 tests per day.

Scientists at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center are part of a national viral genomics consortium to better map SARS-CoV-2 transmission via whole genome sequencing of the virus that causes COVID-19. The SARS-CoV-2 Sequencing for Public Health Emergency Response, Epidemiology and Surveillance (SPHERES) consortium led by the CDC kicked off in May 2020. Dr. Daryl Domman, PhD an Assistant Professor in the Center for Global Heath in the Department of Internal Medicine and Dr. Darrell L. Dinwiddie, PhD an Assistant Professor in the Division of Genetics in the Department of Pediatrics are leading the efforts for the states of New Mexico and Wyoming. They have established partnerships with the New Mexico Department of Health and the Wyoming Public Health Lab to sequence positive cases from those states are also working to join with other public health labs in the Mountain West region.

The Department of Defense has selected six collaborative teams as winners of the Defense Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (DEPSCoR) competition. Each team will receive up to $600,000 over a three-year period of performance to pursue science and engineering research in areas relevant to DOD initiatives supporting the National Defense Strategy.