The Department of Physiology & Biophysics maintains a comprehensive and integrated computing environment centered on Linux and UNIX servers, SGI graphics workstations, Linux/UNIX workstations and two Beowulf class clusters. MS-Windows and Macintosh personal computers have access to the servers. All computer-controlled instruments (CD spectrometers, calorimeters, image scanners, NMR spectrometers, x-ray diffraction etc.) are fully integrated into the network.
These systems provide computational resources for crystallographic structure determination and refinement, 2D/3D image processing for electron microscopy, structural NMR, molecular modeling/dynamics, protein and nucleic acid database searching and sequence analysis, and data reduction, analysis and statistics. In addition, the systems support all departmental administrative functions. A dedicated Systems Administrator (Frank Canali) maintains the systems.
The departmental network is integrated into the Boston University wide area network, providing access to the Internet, the Academic Computing Systems general-access Unix cluster, and the super-computing facilities; hosting the massively parallel IBM Blue Gene/L supercomputer, in the Scientific Computing and Visualization Group of the Center for Computational Science on the Charles River Campus as well as the facilities provided by the School of Medicine, Department of Information Technology.