MESSAGE from the DIRECTOR
Published April 2025
Dear SDSC Collaborators, Partners and All Friends:
As we begin 2025’s second quarter, there are no signs of the momentum I discussed in my last message slowing down. So sit back, buckle up and board this ride through the latest examples of the impacts that SDSC has on our nation’s interests.
The first stop: the launch of the General Atomics and UC San Diego Fusion Data Science and Digital Engineering Center. This homegrown collaboration between GA and the university is designed to strengthen California’s leadership in fusion energy innovation. We will exercise our leadership via the high performance computing and cyberinfrastructure needed to fast-track fusion energy development, and fusion research and innovation in the state. Please read more about this in the article under News Highlights.
Secondly, I want to call your attention to the $20 million grant SDSC received as part of the CloudBank 2 project to provide commercial cloud resources to the nation’s science and engineering researchers and educators. Shava Smallen, our lead developer of the CloudBank Portal, is the principal investigator for this new project, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation. More details about this significant funding award are available under the News Highlights section.
In other big news for SDSC, our CICORE Division, led by Chief Data Science Officer Ilkay Altintas, has merged the WorDS Center with the WIFIRE Lab to create the Societal Computing and Innovation Lab (SCIL). The new lab will be the hub that connects our research to practitioners, such as first responders to emergencies, to provide solutions to real-world problems. For example, during the recent LA fires, the WIFIRE program team within SCIL triangulated the fire’s position and ran the first of many predictive models they would make over the coming days to assist firefighters.
To demonstrate the breadth of the domains we assist, please take a moment to take a look at research news recently published in Nature Immunology. Bob Sinkovits, a senior computational scientist and Expanse co-principal investigator at SDSC, participated in this breakthrough research that offers new opportunities to enhance cancer immunotherapy.
Finally, I want to congratulate SDSC’s Rick Wagner on his election to Project Jupyter’s Executive Council and to Christine Kirkpatrick for her co-authorship of a newly published book titled, The Consortia Century: Aligning for Impact.
There are other news nuggets to find within Innovators this time, as always, so please enjoy the read and accept my sincere thanks for your continued interest in SDSC.
Best wishes,
Frank Würthwein
SDSC Director