News & Events

SciNet’s neighbours know something is going on inside – they’re just not sure what. From time to time, they see delivery people unloading large boxes of electronic equipment through an unmarked door in their Vaughan, Ont. strip mall. What SciNet’s neighbours don’t know is that they share a parking lot with Canada’s largest supercomputing facility. Funded by federal and provincial government grants and the University of Toronto, the data centre’s location is kept secret for security purposes. Every day, however, researchers from coast to coast remotely access SciNet’s powerful processors for heavy-duty number crunching.

One of those researchers is Seth Dworkin, Ryerson mechanical and industrial engineering professor. Dworkin is harnessing supercomputing to develop clean combustion technologies for the transportation industry. Thanks to a $250,000 grant from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation and Ontario Research Fund, with support from Ryerson, the university purchased and installed 700 state-of-the-art IBM Sandy Bridge processors at SciNet. With access to an additional 1,500 SciNet processors, the acquisition makes Dworkin’s team one of the top supercomputing groups in Canada.

“We’re putting Ryerson into the centre of the supercomputing world,” said Dworkin, noting Ryerson’s renewed membership in supercomputing consortium High Performance Computing Virtual Laboratory.

Dworkin and six of his graduate students are using supercomputing technology to develop complex algorithms and run engine simulations to address global climate change. Through more efficient combustion, they hope to reduce engine emissions leading to smog, a cause of lung disease and arctic thawing, and soot, the second-largest contributor to climate change after carbon dioxide.

By reducing combustion-generated emissions, Dworkin hopes to provide cleaner energy for aircraft and ground vehicles. With rising oil prices and consumer demand for sustainable energy, the transportation industry is hungry for solutions. In fact, a major Canadian automotive manufacturer is sponsoring Dworkin’s next grant application. Other applications of his research include biofuels and cleaner methods of residential and commercial heating.

“Through this research, we’re aiming to provide lasting environmental and health benefits for generations to come,” said Dworkin.

Dworkin’s team will present their research in April at the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics’s International Conference on Numerical Combustion in San Antonio, Texas.