Stephen F. Austin State University

Two recent donations to the Stephen F. Austin State University College of Science and Mathematics have greatly expanded research capabilities, according to Dean Anthony Duben.

The first donation came in October from ConocoPhillips Oil Inc., in the form of a high performance computing cluster. "A computer cluster is a group of computers shared together through high-speed network," Duben said. "Large scale clusters have become a key tool across a wide variety of scientific disciplines."

The use of high performance computing methods is essential to maintaining competitive research at SFA, by enabling cross-disciplinary collaboration within the College of Science and Mathematics and supporting collaborations between other colleges and universities, Duben said.

The computer cluster is housed at the Science Research Center (SRC) located at 7308 N. Hwy. 59. Duben said additional electric power is needed to operate the cluster fully, and due to the heat the system generates, additional air conditioning also is needed.

"The cluster will support 250 processors, 250 gigabytes of random access memory and 6 TB of storage," he said.

When the infrastructure is complete, faculty who work in chemistry, geology, physics and biotechnology will be able to conduct significant research projects.

Duben said Greg Harber, director of SFA's computer science lab, became aware that ConocoPhillips was preparing to update their own geophysics system and was willing to donate the cluster of computers to the university. This system is still commercially available today, Duben said, estimating the value of the donation at minimally $250,000.

"Armen Nalian in biotechnology and Jim Dennis of the SRC went and got it and set it up at the Science Research Center," Duben said. "The only thing they had to do was replace some of the hard disks. Now we just have to get on top of the power and heat management issues."

Duben said running just one of the four towers pushes the temperature in the computer room up to about 95 degrees in 30 minutes. While it's not necessarily unusual for a university to have a cluster of computers such as this one, Duben said it is unusual for a university the size of SFA to have one. "We also will have Internet access to this system, which means we'll be able to set up jobs from our desks on campus," he said. "There is still work to be done to get it where we need it to be, but we didn't have to make the capital investment. This was a major donation."

The second donation came a few weeks ago from Chevron Corporation. SFA alumnus Ronald Brown, a geologist with Chevron's Energy Technology Company, arranged the donation of an energy dispersive X-ray spectrometer (EDS) attachment. This piece of equipment will be added to SFA's scanning electron microscope technology capabilities. Brown contacted Dr. Volker Gobel in geology and made the offer.

This piece of equipment is used often in biology and geology, Duben said. By using electrons instead of light to examine objects, the scanning electron microscope allows a view of much smaller things than an optical microscope. The EDS attachment technology allows researchers to determine the exact object composition of many materials, including rock samples.

Geologists use SEM microscopes to examine the intergranular details of the rock fabric, including how individual grains of sand are connected. The empty areas between the sand grains are pores, and that is where the targeted oil is stored. A detailed picture, which includes the rock composition, allows geologists to optimize the amount of oil and gas which can be produced from a given reservoir.

"This spectrometer attachment of the SEM is worth about $80,000," Duben said. "Ronald Brown's initiative is indicative of the loyalty of our alumni, and it speaks highly of the quality of our program. It shows that our alumni become employees who are well-respected in their companies and can make a recommendation such as this."

Duben lamented the fact that earth science is not taught in Texas public high schools anymore, saying that makes it difficult for universities to recruit good students. "But, in spite of the challenges, we continue to have students who are rising to great levels of success," he said.