Working in business development for the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) gives me the amazing opportunity to travel around the Buckeye State and talk to people working in a variety of interesting professions.
I am also fortunate to be able to speak to the membership at area chambers of commerce and regional economic development enterprises to discuss the incredible high performance computing (HPC) assets available to them at OSC.
It’s exciting to talk about the innovative research and product development being performed on our systems, as well as to answer questions about how our staff and associated engineering service provider companies can assist clients with optimizing their computer-aided engineering (CAE) work using HPC. Helping companies grow and gain efficiencies through their work with OSC is a great way to connect people and technology in a truly meaningful way.
One of my mentors in the world of HPC modeling and simulation describes what I do as “planting seeds in the desert and waiting for the rains to come.” It’s an apt analogy for the marketing of a high performance computing services outreach program.
Ohioans are interested to learn about the impressive OSC roster of resources and how they can access these incredible computational tools, but it may be weeks, months, or even longer before they are actually ready to utilize our services.
That’s why knowing about OSC is so important! When academic researchers, product designers, test engineers, and data analysts find their current computational limitations are restricting their work, we want them to remember hearing about OSC at a chamber meeting, a networking event, or an economic development conference. Then it’s simply a matter of connecting with them to explore ways we might be able to help them leverage our HPC in the cloud services.
An account at OSC gives a client a secure, remote connection to our systems that is available 24/7 with a pay-as-you-go fee schedule. But we offer much more than just high-speed computer time.
Our staff of dedicated HPC hardware and software professionals and modeling & simulation engineering specialists can work with companies to get them up and running and to help guide them through to completed projects. OSC can assist companies of any size with engineering simulation work, manufacturing app development, and “cloud bursting” capabilities. Additionally, our HPC systems include more than 100 commercial and open-source software programs, big data nodes, and powerful NVIDIA GPUs.
There are many ways we can power up a client’s CAE efforts, but only if we can get the word out to Ohio businesses that we are available to help. This is why I always appreciate the invitation to speak at any event around the state where there may be an interest in our OSC resources and industrial outreach programs.
These opportunities to educate the public about what we do serve to “plant the seeds,” so when companies are ready for HPC-driven innovation, they know we are here and ready to assist. Please contact me if you know of an event or meeting in Ohio where there may be an interest in learning more about OSC, and visit our websites at osc.edu and awesim.org to learn more!
