Facilities
Teaching and research in the Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Department relies on both local resources and the College of Science Supercomputing Center.
Facilities on the Prince William Campus include bioinformatics computer labs, molecular biology labs, and specialized classrooms. Computer facilities include an Apple Bioinformatics Workgroup Cluster, XServe and SGI file servers, and SGI, OSX and Linux workstations. The Department of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology supports two computer classrooms configured with advanced bioinformatics, visualization, and data-mining software, and a biotechnology wet lab including automated DNA analyzers. High-speed Internet connections permit interactive distance learning and access to remote databases. Mason facilities on the Prince William Campus are partially shared with the American Type Culture Collection, the world's largest collection of living biological cultures.
In 2005, Mason installed a new 64 processor shared memory SGI Altrix cluster, which includes a variety of multiprocessor queues, computer language compilers, and technical support. In two years this installation will grow to a 196-processor high performance computing resource that will provide an unparallel opportunity for Mason faculty and students to perform high-end computing in their research. In addition, the Graduate Instructional Computational Facility in Fairfax houses 24 Linux workstations clustered with a multi-terabyte RAIDS system. These machines are configured with state-of-the-art software for symbolic manipulation, modeling, simulation, data analysis, database management, and data visualization. Other advanced computing platforms include an SGI Origin 2000 workstation with 16 processors, and numerous SGI Octane visualization workstations.