Supercomputers provide scientists who are studying COVID-19 with unique capabilities: they can explore the structure and behavior of the virus at the molecular level while designing drugs and forecasting the spread of the disease much faster than would otherwise be possible.
Published on May 15, 2020 by COVID-19 HPC Consortium
The two virus strains are physically very similar, with the exception of minor variations in the amino acids, including some that bind to the human ACE2 receptor. So when in March the WHO declared the current outbreak a pandemic, some in the scientific community may have assumed we’d be facing a similar threat. They couldn’t have been more mistaken.
As the world prays for the quick discovery of a cure for COVID-19, an international team of computational scientists, medicinal chemists, biochemists, and virologists — led by Texas researchers — have coalesced to rapidly identify drug-like molecules that inhibit SARS-CoV-2 replication.
The computing power of more than a million laptops combined. […] From atomic scale models of the virus' structure, to modeling the spread of the virus in enclosed spaces, these powerful, high-performance resources are helping facilitate COVID-19 research, and possible solutions, faster than ever before!
The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC)'s expert data science team has facilitated social media analysis in the past, and has developed machine learning tools to better pull needles of insight out of the vast haystacks of the Twitterverse.
Published on April 29, 2020 by Technology Networks
Thomas Cheatham -- a professor of medicinal chemistry and director of the Center for High Performance Computing at the University of Utah -- and Rodrigo Galindo -- a research professor in his group -- use powerful supercomputers to predict the characteristics of novel drugs.
The world’s supercomputers are engaged in an urgent scavenger hunt, poring over as many molecules as possible in the hopes of finding one that bonds to COVID-19 effectively enough to be used as a drug. There’s a daunting backlog of molecules that need testing, however – numbering in the billions. Now, researchers at Argonne National Laboratory are leveraging supercomputing-powered AI to fast-track identification of the most promising molecules.
About 100 organizations worldwide have already contributed genomic data to the study of the pandemic, mainly academic labs and genome sequencing facilities. Genomic data is critical because it helps identify how the virus is evolving, which can provide critical clues to how to stop it. A number of these teams have experience with response efforts to rapidly ramp up genome sequencing as has been done in the past with HIV, Ebola, Zika, influenza, and Hepatitis C.
The United States is waiting with bated breath to see its crucial coronavirus curves – daily cases, hospitalizations, and deaths – flatten, peak, and begin to decrease. A number of models have attempted to predict these milestones, most notably a model from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation: the widely cited IHME model. A new study from the University of Texas at Austin, enabled by resources from the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), has differentiated itself from the IHME model in several ways, coming to its own conclusions about the trajectory of peak COVID-19 deaths in the United States.
A leading coronavirus forecasting model — used by the White House — predicted Friday that some states may be able to ease social distancing restrictions and reopen as early as May 4.
With COVID-19’s spread across the globe meeting a strong front of resistance from the world’s governments, the supercomputing community increasingly seems united in a single goal: stopping the pandemic.
Scientific efforts to analyze, map and track the global COVID-19 outbreak are being aided by powerful supercomputers that scientists say may soon help to combat the infectious disease.
The most powerful supercomputer in the world for academic research has established its mission for the coming year.The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) announced that the National Science Foundation has approved allocations of supercomputing time on Frontera to 49 science projects for 2020-2021.
Dan Stanzione, Texas Advanced Computing Center executive director, discusses the use of supercomputers to help curb the spread of COVID-19. He speaks with Bloomberg's Emily Chang.
In early March, when experimental scientists released an important batch of information about the coronavirus, biophysicist Rommie Amaro sent an email to Dan Stanzione at Austin's Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC). She asked for time on Frontera, the fifth most powerful supercomputer in the world.
Research is underway at The University of Texas at El Paso’s School of Pharmacy to develop vaccines and antiviral drugs to combat the novel coronavirus within 15 months to two years.
