with their internet-connected computers,
tablets, phones, TVs and gaming stations. The
OSHEAN network enables Stonehill College to
meet the growing needs of the entire college
community.
For Anderson, it’s not just the OSHEAN
network that makes the partnership
invaluable for the campus community, but the
above-and-beyond support and guidance from
the OSHEAN staff. For example, about a year
ago the IT team began the process of migrating
an old Avaya PBX phone system to Voice over
IP (VoIP). When the team started looking for
a telecommunications provider, OSHEAN was
right there with a solution.
“OSHEAN had formed a
partnership with Granite
Telecommunications, which
provided the college
substantial savings in time
and money by not having
to individually select and
negotiate with yet another
telecom provider,” said
Anderson. “The Granite
solution ran seamlessly over
the OSHEAN network. The
team at OSHEAN provides
incredible guidance and
support when assisting
Stonehill IT with projects
like VoIP as well as other
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2019 eCURRENT
complicated network and
security matters. Their
efforts always have a
positive impact on our
faculty, staff and students.”
project, “Tracing Oceanic Pathways using High
Resolution Model Output.” This project uses
models of the Regional Ocean Modeling System
(ROMS) to investigate nutrient pathways in the
productive waters of the Gulf of Maine to study
how they are changing as oceanic temperatures
warm. As part of the project, Kristin worked
Looking forward, Anderson is excited to with a mentor from MIT and a facilitator from
explore an expansion of Stonehill’s use of Harvard to get her models running on the
high-performance computing (HPC) to support MGHPCC cluster. She describes the
collaborative scientific research. OSHEAN has collaboration as a “GREAT experience” that
been invaluable in facilitating both technical will help her to elevate her research this year.
and personal connections for Stonehill with
the Massachusetts Green High Performance The support from the team at OSHEAN to
Computing Center (MGHPCC). MGHPCC further extend access and collaborations
provides state-of-the-art HPC infrastructure have been and will continue to be critical to
for computationally intensive research, which advancing collaborative scientific research
is critical to support data-rich research efforts at Stonehill and other small colleges.
initiatives in modern science, engineering
and more. Its computers run millions of virtual
experiments every month, supporting
thousands of researchers in Massachusetts
and around the world.
One recent result of OSHEAN’s impact
involves the Northeast Cyberteam Initiative
at MGHPCC. This initiative is a three-year
#TECHTHROWBACK
Spotlight Year: 2004
In 2004, after ten years of existing only as a strategy game, World of Warcraft became
NSF-funded effort to build a regional pool of available online as a massive multiplayer role-playing game (MMORPG). World of
Research Computing Facilitators to support Warcraft has been a leader in the MMORPG market since its release.
researchers at small and mid-sized institutions
in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire
Facebook, soon to become the leading social media platform, is launched.
and Vermont.
Also, the hacking group Anonymous was formed. The group considers themselves
Kristin Burkholder, Ph.D., an Assistant “hacktivists” and are known for hacking various government agencies as well as
Professor of Environmental Science at the Church of Scientology.
Stonehill, began working with the cyberteam
over the summer of 2019 in support of her
Stronger Together
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