It would take a person about 30 years to count to 1 billion and 30,000-plus years to count to 1 trillion.
Orion, one of two supercomputers in the Mississippi State University High Performance Computing Collaborative, can complete 5 quadrillion computations per second — 5,000 times a trillion — making it the fourth fastest supercomputer in all academia.
“It’s just a number you can’t even fathom,” Julie Jordan, MSU’s vice president for research and economic development told the Rotary Club of Columbus on Tuesday.
That’s just one of the projects Jordan gets to be around that makes her job the “coolest” on campus.
“I think I’ve got the most fun job (at Mississippi State) because I get to interact with all the researchers and learn about all the cool things they do all over the state and around the world,” she said.
MSU has an estimated economic impact of $1.8 billion on the state, and Jordan said research is key to driving that. In Fiscal Year 2020, she said, the university spent $280 million on research from 20-plus research sites and thousands of acres of agricultural land across the state.
While the bulk of that research focuses on agriculture, another large sector is defense, Jordan said.
On Tuesday at Lion Hills Center, Jordan led Rotarians through a quick survey of MSU’s research initiatives and facilities, from autonomous vehicle research conducted at the Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems to teams at the School of Veterinary Medicine trying to take what they learn about animal diseases and see how it applies to humans to cybersecurity.
MSU’s high performance engineering uses sensors in clothing that measure how athletes and their muscles perform and where the stress levels are in an effort to design better clothes and shoes.
That technology doesn’t just help athletes, Jordan said.
“We call it athletic engineering. So you think about athletes. … We don’t realize sometimes in industry, they’re moving and lifting and taking things. This same technology is being used to help industrial workers.”
The technology also has military applications — such as Columbus Air Force Base using it to improve pilot recovery between flights — among other, more domestic uses.
“It’s also obviously going to be used in a tactical environment for the military and security personnel,” she said. “Also, … there’s ‘at-risk’ (individuals), which is another way of saying you’re older and more likely to fall. So, what happens when we fall? How can we prevent people from falling and how can we anticipate them falling?”
MSU is a Federal Aviation Commission Center for Excellence in unmanned aircraft systems, and researchers have used drones on such projects as mapping delta flooding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Now, Jordan said, they are working to safely integrate large, fixed-wing UAVs into public airspace.
On the business side, Jordan noted MSU also is home to the Center for Entrepreneurship and Outreach, which at any given time is facilitating as many as 100 student groups that are trying to develop a product or start a business. Glo, cofounded by MSU graduate Hagan Walker and based in Starkville, is one of many success stories to come from the E-Center.
“Our goal is to try to help them stay in the region, or at least stay in Mississippi … to try to help these kids find a way to do what they want to do and stay at home,” Jordan said.
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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