Contact: Joe Farris
A veteran researcher has been named interim director of Mississippi State's Computational Simulation and Design Center, also known as the SimCenter, which is one component of the nationally recognized Engineering Research Center at MSU.
Mechanical engineer David Marcum, who serves as director of the overall ERC, also will lead the SimCenter, effective July 9. He succeeds aerospace engineer David Whitfield, who is leaving MSU for the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga.
MSU's SimCenter conducts research related to computational simulation that benefits federal government agencies and industry in areas that include design and certification of marine, aerospace, and propulsion systems.
The SimCenter, as one of five research components that make up the ERC, accounts for about 14 percent of overall ERC research expenditures and personnel. All five units are involved with computational related research in areas including ships, aircraft, spacecraft, automobiles, remote sensing, scientific visualization, computational systems, oceanographic, atmospheric, manufacturing, materials, and bio-medicine.
Thanks in large part to supercomputing capabilities of the ERC, MSU recently has moved to No. 10 in the ranks of national supercomputing sites at American universities.
Media reports originating in Chattanooga last week suggested that the SimCenter would leave MSU and be relocated to UT-Chattanooga. MSU officials have stressed that such a move will not and cannot happen.
"The SimCenter is an MSU organization and will remain here," said Interim President J. Charles Lee. "We have investments of millions of dollars worth of high-performance computing equipment and facilities in the SimCenter and a talented staff carrying out research that is contracted to the university and that can't be moved to another institution.
"We appreciate the leadership and service that Dr. Whitfield has provided to the SimCenter and wish him well as he undertakes the challenge of helping to start a new program in his field at UT-Chattanooga," Lee said.
Marcum has been an MSU faculty member since 1991, with teaching and research specialization in the fields of computational fluid dynamics, fluid mechanics, grid generation, and numerical methods. He worked prior to joining the university for Boeing aircraft company and TRW Ross Gear Division. He earned bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in mechanical engineering from Purdue University.
The Engineering Research Center at MSU was founded in 1990 by MSU and the National Science Foundation as the Engineering Research Center for Computational Field Simulation. The ERC has since "graduated" from NSF sponsorship and now is self-sufficient through external funding. Research expenditures have grown from roughly $4 million per year in 1990 to over $24 million a year.
Much of the current funding is in the form of Department of Defense contracts, along with contracts and grants from NASA, NSF, the U.S. Department of Transportation, and industry.
Last year the ERC was awarded a $108 million, eight-year Programming and Environment Training grant that is the largest DoD grant ever awarded to a university. As part of the contract, the MSU ERC leads a team of 15 universities and five companies.
A total of 266 personnel are employed by the MSU ERC, including 26 academic faculty, 30 research faculty, 29 research associates, 18 visiting researchers, 20 support staff, 94 graduate students, and 49 undergraduate students.
Education as well as research is a significant part of the ERC. Undergraduate and graduate students are involved in all aspects of ERC research. In close coordination with faculty participating in the research of the ERC, the College of Engineering offers unique interdisciplinary master's and doctoral degrees in computational engineering.