You have probably never thought about the effects sophisticated supercomputers have on your everyday life, but they are there. Powerful processors crunch incredible numbers that add up to more accurate weather forecasts, safer cars, trucks, and SUVs, and detailed maps for emergency responders. Mississippi State's Trey Breckenridge can tell you all about them.
As operations administrator for the land-grant institution's High Performance Computing Collaboratory (HPC2), the MSU alumnus and Amite County native works to assure that university scientists have the supercomputing tools they need that lead to world-changing discoveries and innovative solutions--all of which have a significant economic impact on the state and region.
"We provide computing resources and support so researchers can do their work," he said. "We want to help them do more research and better science."
As an avid pilot and commander of the local Civil Air Patrol squadron, Breckenridge knows that a change in perspective can be beneficial when trying to understand the bigger picture and to see what's really happening on the ground.
"I give tours of the HPC2 all the time, and visitors from around the world are blown away by what we have at Mississippi State and the research that's being done on our campus," he said. "I'm really proud to be a part of it."