Projects Using MSI Systems

last updated, 11/11/2025

Over 1,000 MSI PIs and their associated groups are doing research in a wide variety of disciplines. 

Below is a sample list of current projects that use MSI systems. For stories highlighting research by MSI users, see the Research Spotlights section.

Climate and earth sciences

• Vipin Kumar’s group (Computer Science and Engineering) uses machine-learning methods for projects in climate and earth sciences. Current projects are creating models for lake and river modeling and developing ways to monitor land-cover changes due to deforestation, wildfires, drought, and other factors. The computations require the supercomputers and large amounts of storage.
• Jason Hill’s group (Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering) uses MSI supercomputers for atmospheric modeling, primarily to study the air quality effects of food and energy systems. They have done several projects investigating relationships between air quality and economic level.
• MSI researchers use computational chemistry approaches to understanding the behavior of pollutants in natural and engineered water systems.
• MSI researchers are studying wind flow in turbine farms in order to optimize the design of the turbines and the layout of the farms.MSI supercomputers are necessary to do the calculations for this research.

Industrial processes

• Traian Dumitrica’s group (Mechanical Engineering) is using computational modeling combined with experiment to develop new, harder coatings that can be used in extreme conditions such as in reusable launch vehicles, hypersonics vehicles, turbine blades, and thermal barriers.
• Prodomos Daoutidis’s group (Chemical Engineering and Materials Science) is creating simulations of large-scale chemical and engineering systems.
• Paul Dauenhauer’s group (Chemical Engineering and Materials Science) is developing methods for creating sustainable fuels and chemicals.

Medical applications

• Art Edrman’s group (Mechanical Engineering; Medical Devices Center is creating realistic simulation models that can be used for virtual prototyping of medical devices.
• MSI PIs have been studying coronaviruses for many years, including those causing SARS, MERS, COVID-19, and a number of animal diseases. MSI provides computational resources and software for image processing.
• MSI partners with the University of Minnesota Genomics Center, who provide genomics technology and services to researchers and clinicians.
• Numerous MSI PIs are working on projects involving diagnosis and treatment of many kinds of cancer.

The Nutrient Network (NutNet)

• The Nutrient Network, aka NutNet, is a global collaborative research group studying the effects of humans on grassland ecosystems, specifically:
  • Alteration of populations of grazing animals
  • Increase in nutrient such as nitrogen and phosphorus (used in fertilizers)
• To quantify these effects, NutNet scientists are conducting a globally replicated, long-term ecological experiment, which is occurring at over 130 grassland sites over six continents.
• NutNet was co-founded by MSI PIs Professor Eric Seabloom and Professor Elizabeth Borer (both, Ecology, Evolution and Behavior)
• MSI supports NutNet by helping manage and maintain plant, soil, climate, and genomics data collected in the globally distributed NutNet experiment. 

Zooniverse projects

• Zooniverse, which was started as Galaxy Zoo by MSI PI Lucy Fortson (Physics and Astronomy), is a citizen-science platform that provides a way for people to participate in scientific research and discovery.
• Current projects that MSI is helping with:
  • Snapshot Serengeti: Volunteers help identify animals in pictures taken by camera traps in Serengeti. The goal is to investigate animal populations and track results of conservation efforts. This project is based on a previous one, Snapshot Safari, whose results were widely reported in national media, including National Geographic and major US newspapers. The project is run by the U’s Lion Center (PI: Craig Packer (Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior)). MSI provides image-processing capabilities and data storage.
  • Eyes on the Wild: Volunteers help identify animals in pictures taken by camera traps in The Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve (CCESR), a biological field station run by the U’s College of Biological Sciences. Several MSI PIs do research at CCESR. MSI provides image-processing capabilities and data storage.
  • The Fortson group is using computational resources for several deep-learning projects involving huge images of galaxy fields. They are also using computational and storage resources to build new modules for the Zooniverse platform.

Forever Green Initiative projects

• Forever Green is developing and improving winter-hardy annual and perennial crops that can be combined with traditional annual crops to keep the soil covered year-round.
  • This not only makes Minnesota agriculture more efficient and sustainable, it provides farmers with an additional income stream.
• MSI provides software and hardware for bioinformatics analysis and for large-scale data storage.
• Several MSI PIs in the College of Food, Agricultural, and Natural Resource Sciences are part of Forever Green. Some of the crops that MSI has provided resources for include kernza, pennycress, silphium, and varieties of wheat and rye.