How many zeroes in a quadrillion? (Answer 15) Hopefully Rotarians will have some idea why that matters when University of Wyoming Vice President for Research and Economic Development, Dr. William A Gern gives us an update this Wednesday, April 23, on “Yellowstone”, the Wyoming supercomputer housed outside Cheyenne. Yellowstone can perform 1.6 quadrillion computer operations per second. Rotarian and Wyoming native Warren Wilson will introduce Dr. Gern...

 

The NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center (NWSC), operated by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) under the sponsorship of the National Science Foundation, provides advanced computing services to scientists studying a broad range of disciplines, including weather, climate, oceanography, air pollution, space weather, computational science, energy production, and carbon sequestration. The center also houses a landmark data storage and archival facility (with a capacity of 11 petabytes) that will hold, among other scientific data, unique historical climate records. Besides NCAR and NSA, the NWSC is the result of a partnership between the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), the State of Wyoming, the University of Wyoming, Cheyenne LEADS, Wyoming Business Council, and Cheyenne Light, Fuel & Power Company.

Dr Gern received his BA and MA from Western State College (Gunnison, Colorado), his PHD from the University of Colorado, and he did postdoctoral work at Colorado State University. Continuing his northward migration, he is now Professor of Zoology and Physiology at UW, a Cellular, Comparative Endocrinologist, and serves as a president of the EPSCoR States Coalition (Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research) executive board of directors and Chair of the Wyoming State EPSCoR Committee. He is also chair of the University of Wyoming Research Corporation board and serves on the board of the Draper Museum, Buffalo Bill Historical Center, and the Delta Dental of Wyoming board of directors. Dr. Gern was instrumental in the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center and the alignment of the University of Wyoming with National Center for Atmospheric Research. He was recently selected to be a participant in the AAAS Science and Technology Policy Leadership Academy. He and his family live in Laramie.