Covid-19 Portal Combats Pandemic
Scientists worldwide apply supercomputing resources to save lives and accelerate search for a cure
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the world’s scientific community together in an effort to understand, track, forecast, test for, and find cures for the virus. Tens of thousands of researchers from public, private, and state bodies are working tirelessly to find effective treatment methods.
Supercomputers provide scientists with additional capabilities: allowing them to accomplish in days or weeks the kind of epidemic forecasting and drug design capabilities that typically took months or years.
The University of Texas at Austin’s Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) is home to the most powerful collection of supercomputers at any university in the world. The center is one of the leading providers in the White House-led COVID-19 High Performance Computing (HPC) Consortium, supporting dozens of projects, and thousands of researchers worldwide.
As part of its efforts, TACC launched the COVID-19 Portal to enable scientists worldwide to conduct supercomputer-powered COVID-19 research with priority access to TACC systems.
Researchers can forecast infections, simulate molecular behavior, screen new drugs and vaccines, and visualize and interactively share their data with decision-makers and collaborators to speed progress.
TACC salutes the heroic scientists, health care workers, first responders, and civic leaders at the frontlines, and is proud to enable their important work through the COVID-19 Portal.
Get involved:
To learn more about ongoing research at UT, and through TACC, visit the links below.
An example of the type of research that the COVID-19 Portal will enable.
THERE ARE THREE MAIN WAYS COMPUTATIONAL RESEARCHERS ARE RESPONDING TO THE PANDEMIC:
- Computational epidemiology — modeling the spread of the virus and the impact a pandemic could have on critical social services (police, fire, healthcare, etc.) in communities, regions, and countries.
- Investigations of proteins and molecules — investigating the structure of the virus, and virtually identifying and testing potential antiviral drugs.
- Genomic analysis — supporting vaccine development, predicting which patients are likely to be at high risk, and providing a better understanding of the origin and structure of the virus genome.
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