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A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter—25,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. At that tiny scale, matter can exhibit some strange, new behaviors. Nanotechnology researchers harness those behaviors to create new devices and materials, and the nanoHUB allows researchers and students to harness simulation tools, educational materials and computing resources necessary to study matter at the nanometer scale.
"The nanoHUB provides access to nanotechnology applications as well as traditional chemistry, semiconductor and circuit design tools through a Web interface," said Sebastien Goasguen from Purdue University. "Since the beginning, our philosophy has been that users shouldn't have to go through the painful process of downloading code, compiling it and installing additional packages to make it run."
The Network for Computational Nanotechnology, which includes Purdue and six other universities, develops, operates and maintains the nanoHUB through a grant from the National Science Foundation. The simulation tools and applications created by NCN researchers and other groups are made available through the hub. Anyone can set up a free account and run simulations using the nanoHUB cyberinfrastructure. NCN and Purdue researchers can access an expanded range of simulation tools, and soon will use grid technology to harness additional computing resources.
Multi-million atom quantum dot simulation.
Image Courtesy G. Klimeck and nanoHUB
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Students and scientists use the hub for education as well as for research—of the roughly 1,000 simulation users of the nanoHUB, about 70 percent are students using it for university coursework. Another 6,000 nanoHUB users take advantage of non-simulation content such as online seminars and workshops.
"Users are very happy with the nanoHUB, and they would like to see more—more applications, more on-line training, more collaboration tools," said Goasguen. "The nanoHUB team is pushing towards this. Our motto used to be "online simulation and more" and now it's "online simulation and much, much more."
The nanoHUB conduit to grid computing resources is made possible by a deployment grant
from the National Science Foundation Middleware Inititative, which allows the hub
to upgrade its middleware. The new In-VIGO middleware, developed at the University of
Florida, is being integrated with Condor software to allow the nanoHUB to act as a
science gateway for the TeraGrid and the resources of the University of Wisconsin's
GLOW infrastructure. The hub is also testing its software within the Open Science Grid,
with the aim of creating a virtual organization in the OSG that would allow other NCN partners
to contribute computing resources.
Learn more at the nanoHUB and Network for Computational Nanotechnology Web sites.
—Katie Yurkewicz
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