1 billion computing core-hours for researchers to tackle huge scientific challenges

Computing is an invaluable resource for advancement of scientific breakthroughs. Today we’re announcing an academic research grant program called Google Exacycle for Visiting Faculty, which provides 1 billion hours of computational core capacity to researchers. That’s orders of magnitude larger than the computational resources most scientists normally have access to.

This program is focused on large-scale, batch computations in research areas such as biomedicine, energy, weather and climate, earth sciences and astronomy. For example, scientists could use massive amounts of computation to simulate how pharmaceuticals interact with proteins in the human body to develop new medicines. Other uses could include simulations to predict weather patterns and analysis of telescope images to understand how the universe changes over time.

Exacycle for Visiting Faculty is part of our University Relations team’s larger efforts to stimulate advances in science and engineering research. If you're a full-time faculty member, we encourage you to apply by May 31, 2011.

In the future, we think this service could also be useful for businesses in various industries, like biotech, financial services, manufacturing and energy. If your business can benefit from hundreds of millions of core-hours to solve complex technical challenges and you want to discuss potential applications, please contact us.

Posted by Alfred Spector, VP of Research and Special Initiatives