The Center for Advanced Computing Research has a history going back to 1983 of providing applications-driven high end computing. The present Center was created in 1995 to ensure that Caltech and JPL are at the forefront of Computational Science & Engineering (CS&E).

Recently CACR has supported Caltech research groups by developing cyberinfrastructure for particular scientific domains such as astronomy, geophysics, and experimental physics. Broadly, cyberinfrastructure is the processing, storage, communications, software, and staff that enables scientific discovery and model-based design. This is described in the report of the NSF's Blue-Ribbon Advisory Panel on Cyberinfrastructure.

One of the best ways for a Caltech research group and CACR to work together is to jointly develop a research program. The research group takes responsibility for the science or engineering, and CACR creates the enabling infrastructure. The infrastructure may, for example, include the development of novel facilities or software.

Center staff can also be used on a consulting basis. CACR staff have expertise in data-intensive scientific discovery, physics based simulation, algorithm development, scientific software engineering, visualization techniques, novel computer architectures, and the design and operation of large-scale computing facilities.

Many CACR projects have a common organizational approach that bridges the gap between scientific research groups and software development.  Typically, a Ph.D. level researcher with strong interests in computation resides at CACR and acts as a systems architect and interface between a particular scientific domain, such as geophysics, and the CACR programming staff.  This person helps translate between the very different languages used in science and software engineering. The developers, after working for a period in a particular domain, often gain an understanding of the science while retaining their connections to the developer community and evolving methods for constructing software systems. They also maintain direct access to CACR's advanced facilities.

Examples of current CACR projects can be found in the Research section of these web pages.

Please contact Mark Stalzer (stalzer at cacr.caltech.edu) for further information.