A powerful supercomputer worth $280,000 put the Institute for Integrative Genome Biology at the University of California Riverside on the competitive map.

Buying the computer was "required to stay current and competitive," Institute Director Natasha Raikhel said. "Now we can bring in large grants and do effective research."

The supercomputer has made the university more attractive to outsiders, companies and other researchers, Raikhel said.

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Photos By Dan Elliott

Bioinformatic Facility Director Thomas Girke, left, and Natasha Raikhel, director of the Institute for Integrative Genome Biology at UC Riverside.

The Institute for Integrative Genome Biology was established in 2000 to pioneer solutions for hunger, disease and environmental sustainability. It embraces genomics technologies to help develop more nutritious foods, disease- and flood-resistant crops, alternative fuel sources and new medical and pharmaceutical treatments.

The institute embodies the efforts of 120 physical and life scientists, engineers, biologists, computer scientists and statisticians from approximately 20 academic departments, three colleges and one biomedical division. The new computer cuts research and analysis time in half, officials say.

The university hired three faculty members in computational biology: Chia-en Chang, Maxim Bazhenov and Jason Stajich.

Attracting and hiring those faculty members would have been difficult without the new computer, Raikhel said.

The 1,500-pound computer, named "Biocluster," can do 256 days of work in 24 hours. The Linux blade cluster system is the most powerful computer at the university.

UC Riverside bought the computer from San Diego-based Verari Systems. The computer has 256 central processing unit cores, 640 gigabytes of total RAM and 64 gigabytes of usable memory for a single process. The system requires 20,000 watts to run.

The computer can split a large data set into 256 smaller projects for analysis and then recombine that information as a whole package.

"Now we have state-of-the-art technology," Raikhel said. "We can do things faster and we don't have to wait in line anymore."

Researchers at the university used off-campus computers, including one in San Diego. Going off campus meant researchers waited their turn to use a computer, said Chia-en Chang, an assistant professor of chemistry at UC Riverside who came to the university in January after working at UC San Diego as a post-doctorate researcher.

"I was using the National Science Foundation's supercomputers in San Diego and in Illinois," Chang said. "So I had to apply for hours and write a proposal and wait a few days."

Researchers from across the nation use the National Science Foundation computers, which ties up the computer and creates a waiting line, Chang said.

With the new computer in Riverside, Chang need only walk to the data center on campus or log in remotely from her office.

"We're doing some computational work to study protein and drug interactions," Chang said. "We need a lot of computer power that can do parallel computing and if we were using a desktop with one CPU it would take a long time. But the supercomputer has 256 CPUs that can work together. Without this computer, we can't do this kind of research."

The Le Roch lab is using Biocluster to speed its research on treatments for malaria.

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With the new computer, Chia-en Chang, assistant professor of chemistry at the University of California, Riverside, needs only walk to the data center on campus or log in remotely from her office.

The other three supercomputers on campus can communicate with the new computer, Bioinformatic Facility Director Thomas Girke said.

"The beauty of this computer is that we can still use the older computers," he said.

In addition to an older machine at the genome biology institute, UC Riverside has supercomputers in the physics and astronomy and computer science departments.

Girke oversees the computer's use and is responsible for installation services, designing the cluster and software tools and communicating with different labs on campus.

UC Riverside charges a fee to both on-campus and off-campus researchers and labs to use the Biocluster computer. Raikhel declined to disclose the fee.

"We don't make any money on it," she said.

About 40 labs and 120 students, professors and groups use the computer, Girke said.

The institute hopes to expand Biocluster from 256 to 1,000 central processing units.

Raikhel hopes to continue growing the university's technological resources. She recently purchased a $500,000 DNA sequencer from Illumina in San Diego and plans to apply for another in one or two years.

That sequencer can process DNA data overnight.

"Having this computer and these technologies means we can do in-house training for students who can be hands-on," Raikhel said. "Now we're extremely competitive and these days everything is competition. I want to really build something here and reach for the stars."

The University of Caifornia system's economic impact reached $1.1 billion statewide during the 2006-07 academic year.

That's a 22.1% increase from $920 million from the previous year.

The University of California spent $582.3 million on salaries and wages, goods and services and construction, including $332.2 million spent in the Inland Empire.

Enrollment at UC Riverside is set to grow from 17,000 currentlyto 25,000 students by 2020.The school is set to open a four-year medical school and is in the process of expanding its master’s of business administration program.

Construction on the Riverside campus is in full swing. The school is erecting a new Genomics Building on Eucalyptus and Campus drives. That building is set to will house the institute and the Biocluster computer by December.

“When I came here six years ago, we had nothing,” Raikhel said. “Now everything is changing and we have state-of-the-art equipment; I’m very proud of where we are today.”