May 2011 User of the Month: NERSC

We are very pleased to see so many of our users utilizing Globus Online to support their scientific research -- this week I heard one user had moved 6TB of data over the course of 2 days. Other users would benefit from hearing more of these stories, to see what your colleagues are achieving and to give you ideas for your own work. So, we've decided to pick a User of the Month to draw attention to particularly impressive, innovative and/or widely applicable usage scenarios that the entire user community should know about. For our inaugural selection, I'm happy to announce May's User of the Month is NERSC (National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center).

Who they are: I'm sure most of you know that NERSC is a science-focused supercomputing center sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy—in fact, it's the flagship scientific computing facility for the Office of Science in the DOE. Here's some trivia you might not know: NERSC was originally called the "Controlled Thermonuclear Research Computer Center" when first established in 1974. The first-ever Cray 2 (4-proc) supercomputer was installed at NERSC in 1985, and NERSC currently boasts the 2nd largest database in the world behind the World Data Centre for Climate.

Why we picked them: There are 2 main reasons we picked NERSC as our first-ever User of the Month - either of these on its own would justify their selection, from my perspective: 1. Contributions to the technology: No other external party has contributed more to the development of Globus Online. NERSC has helped us identify the features and functionality we need to ensure Globus Online works for even the most advanced HPC facilities and users. 2. Usage: NERSC claims 4 of the top 20 users of Globus Online in terms of amount of data moved (combined total of 15.6 TB). Congratulations NERSC!