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Welcome!

The AICT Research Support Group provides high-performance computing and support services to researchers at the University of Alberta and partner institutions across Canada. If you have questions about our services, see the links and information on this page, or contact us by e-mail at research.support@ualberta.ca.

If you are visiting us in person, our offices are located on the third floor of the General Services Building on the University of Alberta campus (see this campus map for details).

Some of the Things We Do

WestGrid:

We are part of the WestGrid high-performance computing alliance. To learn more about the complex of SGI and IBM High Performance machines maintained at the University of Alberta, see our site-specific information page.

General Access Research Machines:

We also maintain the University of Alberta's general-access research computational facilities. The AICT Linux clusters, for instance, are not part of the WestGrid endowment, yet nevertheless offer a powerful solution to many high-performance computing needs. These clusters are the perfect place to run fast scalar jobs or parallel jobs that do not require the large shared-memory space of the WestGrid machines.

Another resource available to all U of A researchers is our numerical and statistical servers We are currently transitioning to a new set of servers. They are five SGI Altix XE250 servers each with two 3GHZ quad core xeon processors. Other servers consist of Intel CORE DUOs, AMD OPTERONs, as well as older IBM RS/6000 pSeries machines. All these machines are geared for both interactive and batch usage, and are loaded with a variety of popular software packages.

License Servers:

AICT operates several license servers. Contact research.support@ualberta.ca if you are interested in making use of this service.

Support Services:

Research Support Group staff are here to help researchers get the most from the U of A's computing resources. For example, we offer assistance with code parallelization and optimization, with the use of WestGrid facilities, and with visualization of data for presentation at conferences or in publications.

If you have questions about our services, please e-mail our analysts.

Group Members (In Alphabetical Order)

Masao Fujinaga, Programmer/Analyst: Masao joined the Research Support Group in October of 2001. He has a Ph.D in Biochemistry from the University of Alberta. Since the 1980's, he has used various vector and parallel machines for work in the fields of macromolecular crystallography and computational chemistry. In the past he has used Linux clusters for a crystallographic application using genetic algorithm with PVM.

Jon Johansson, Programmer/Analyst: Jon specializes in visualization and assists researchers with conversion and preparation of data for interpretation and presentation. Jon has worked on building the Access Grid node for the University of Alberta to enable collaboration amongst researchers at WestGrid institutions. The node is located in General Services Building room 315. Jon organizes our annual High Performance Computing and Visualization Workshop and leads several sessions in the program. Jon has a Ph.D. in Theoretical Nuclear Physics from the University of Alberta.

Maryia Maizlin, Programmer/Analyst: Maryia joined the Research Support Group in September of 2007. Her primary focus is in the area of 3D Visualization, and she is part of the team supporting the AccessGrid. Maryia received a Masters in Computing Science in 2007 from the University of Alberta.

Marc La France, Systems Analyst: Marc La France joined AICT in 1980, and the Research Support Group in 1995. His responsibilities include development and maintenance for all aspects of our scheduling software (PBS, PBS-pro and Maui), and system support for our Linux clusters. Marc received his Computing Science degree from the University of Ottawa. Marc is also the Vice-President of The XFree86 Project Inc., an open-source software project.

Nadine Leenders, Systems Analyst: Nadine joined AICT in 1982 as part of the Graphics Support Group. After working in the field of graphics for a number of years, Nadine changed her focus to system administration. Her current duties include support of the AICT numerical and statistical servers. Nadine received a B.Sc. in Computing Science from the University of Alberta in 1979.

Waldemar Lysz, WestGrid Site Lead: Waldemar joined the University of Alberta in 1986 and has worked with a wide range of computing platforms, from desktops to mainframes to various high-performance computing systems. He became part of the Research Support Group in 1995 as system administrator for the IBM SP2. After the acquisition of WestGrid machines, his focus changed from systems and network administration to Site-Lead for the WestGrid machines at the University of Alberta.

Kamil Marcinkowski, Systems Analyst: Kamil joined the Research Support group in 2005. He is currently the sysadmin for WestGrid complex of IBM and SGI high-performance computing systems and networks here at the UofA. Kamil received his B.Sc. in Computing Science in 2002 from the University of Alberta.

Terry McGuire, Junior Analyst: With a background in audiovisual production and computer system administration, Terry joined AICT in 2009 and operates the Access Grid node, as well as the 3D printer. Terry received his BA in Philosophy from the U of A in 1988.

Ron Senda, Team Leader: Ron came to the University in 1971, joined AICT in 1976, and has been involved in many aspects of client support since that time. Ron received his B.Sc. from the University of Lethbridge, and his M.Sc. and MBA from the University of Alberta. Ron has been the team leader of the Research Support Group since 1995 and was one of the founding members of the team that created the MACI, and then WestGrid collaboratives. Ron's activities over the past few years have included the promotion of high-performance computing locally and nationally.

Edmund Sumbar, Programmer/Analyst: has a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering. He helps to manage the AICT General Purpose Linux Cluster, and supports program development on a variety of high performance computing platforms.

Denise Thornton, Programmer/Analyst: Denise joined AICT in 1981 as part of the Numerical Computing Support Group. Her focus is now on visualization tools and techniques as part of the Research Support Group. Denise received a B.Sc. in Computing Science in 1980 from the University of Alberta and has been working on various aspects of high-performance computing since that time.

Chris Want, Programmer/Analyst: Chris received his M.Sc. in Mathematics from the U of A in 1995 and joined AICT in 1997. He has been with the Research Support group since 2001 and is the lead analyst for AICT's 3D printing and laser scanning services. Chris is also a developer for the open-source 3D Blender program and teaches Blender workshops for AICT.

Please direct all questions about research computing at the University of Alberta to research.support@ualberta.ca.

Revised: August 24, 2009