Russ Miller
UB Distinguished Professor

Dept of Computer Science & Engineering
State University of New York at Buffalo

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1999 Media Coverage

  • Dr. Russ Miller was Director of CCR during this period.
  • December 1999: The Shake-and-Bake Algorithm, co-developed by Dr. Russ Miller, is mentioned on the poster "The Top Ten Algorithms of the 20th Century", which was published in Computing in Science & Engineering Magazine, and produced in cooperation with the IEEE and Computer Museum History Center.
  • December 1999: Prentice Hall published Algorithms Sequential and Parallel: A Unified Approach, written by Russ Miller, Director of CCR, and Laurence Boxer, Chair of Computer and Information Sciences at Niagara University.

  • November 23: An article "New UB research center may create products to be made here" appears in the Buffalo News. The article states that the Center for Computational Research is one of the bold new initiatives coming out of UB and has a potential to positively impact the local economy.
  • November 15-18: Russ Miller, Tom Furlani, and Corky Brunskill presented a poster entitled "The Sun Ultra5 Beowulf Cluster" in the Sun Microsystems booth at SC99, Portland, Oregon.
  • November 14: Russ Miller presented a talk, entitled The Buffalo Sun Ultra5 Linux Cluster, at the HPC Consortium Meeting, SC99, Portland, Oregon.
  • November 7: An article appears in the Buffalo News that mentions the October 26 grand opening of the Center for Computational Research.
  • November 2: An article appears in Generation, a student publication at the University at Buffalo, covering Governor Pataki's visit to UB for the CCR Grand Opening.
  • November 1: An article appears Business First that focuses on CCR reaching out to local industry in Western New York.

  • October 28: The Reporter presents an article covering the CCR Grand Opening, which includes a visit from New York Governor George E. Pataki. The article details the proceedings, including Gov. Pataki's opening remarks. It also quotes Dr. Russ Miller as stating that "These are exciting times at UB. The facilities available in the center position UB to significantly enhance research and education in the region. The three supercomputers that we have can be used, not only to train the scientists and engineers of tomorrow, but to serve as a catalyst for economic development in Western New York." The article goes on to state that according to Miller, the center's work focuses primarily on three areas: computational chemistry, part of which involves developing drugs for the pharmaceutical industry; virtual-reality design to help better design factories, automobiles and aircraft, and combustion to aid in the design of aircraft engines and efficient furnaces. Miller noted that the center has begun to develop regional partnerships with Innovative Business Communications, Praxair, Occidental Chemical, M&T Bank, Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute and Eastman Kodak, and added that the center already has developed national relationships with Oak Ridge National Labs and Oregon National Labs.
  • October 27: Three excellent articles appear in The Spectrum, the student newspaper at the University at Buffalo, covering the CCR Grand Opening and surrounding issues.
  • October 27: An article appears in the Buffalo News that mentions the grand opening of the Center for Computational Research, including the attendance by Governor Pataki, his first visit to the UB campus. It reiterates details from the October 26 Buffalo News article listed below.
  • October 27: An article appears in The Buffalo News covering Governor Pataki's visit to Western New York, including his visit and participation in the Grand Opening of CCR.
  • October 27: The local ABC, CBS, and NBC affiliates all cover the Grand Opening of CCR. Stories appear at 5:00p, 6:00p, and 11:00p on various stations.
  • October 26: An article appears in The Buffalo News covering the virtual reality demonstration on the ImmersaDesk planned for Governor Pataki's first visit to UB to participate in the grand opening of the Center for Computational Research. Specifically, the article states that Gov. Pataki's tour will include a three-dimensional presentation for which he will put on special glasses, pick up an electronic wand and navigate a virtual environment devised by researchers at the center and a local computer animation company. "The machine, used by scientists to visualize and walk through everything from molecules to weather systems and construction projects, has been set up "to show off the capabilities of the center," said Ben Porcari, president of IBC Digital . Porcari, who has been a big proponent of the Center and has taken advantage of its capabilities, also does computer animation for Home Box Office. In describing the presentation his company has prepared jointly with CCR for the Governor's visit, Porcari states that "As you click a button, a pillar rises from the floor, and a monitor appears and tells about that topic. There are five of them, each a minute long. When you're done with each one, you go back to the UB seal." The article also states that CCR more than $7 million in equipment, made possible by gifts of more than $1 million each from IBM and Silicon Graphics, $1 million from SUNY, a $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation and more than $400,000 in equipment from Sun Microsystems.
  • October 21: The Reporter presents an article about Governor Pataki's upcoming visit to CCR. This will be Gov. George E. Pataki's first visit to campus. The visit will be to take part in grand-opening of the Center for Computational Research (CCR), one of the nation's leading supercomputing centers. The article gives details of the activities, including the fact that ceremonies will begin at noon, with remarks by Pataki and President William R. Greiner. Russ Miller, professor of computer science and engineering, and director of the CCR, and Richard Hirsh, deputy division director of the National Science Foundation's Division of Advanced Computational Infrastructure and Research, also will speak. Following the ceremonies, Pataki will tour the world-class computational facility, where he will interact with CCR's virtual-reality machine, the Pyramid Systems ImmersaDesk. Scientists use the machine to visualize and "walk through" complex systems in three dimensions, including molecules, meteorological simulations and engineered structures, such as factories and buildings. Miller is quoted in the article as saying that "This is different from what people see when they go to Disney World (because) in those cases, there is a lot of high-end computing used in order to prepare the film. However, what you see (in Disney World) is preprogrammed - the viewer cannot interact with the environment. In this case, the governor and other visitors will be able to wear glasses that are tracked by the system and use a wand to navigate the environment." The article also mentions that CCR's mission is to enable world-class, computationally intensive research at UB, foster industrial partnerships in high-performance computing and visualization, and serve as a focal point for technology transfer of high-performance computing and visualization within Western New York. Finally, the article states that the research facility features more than $7 million in computer equipment, which was made possible by gifts of more than $1 million each from IBM and Silicon Graphics, Inc.; $1 million in funding from the SUNY; a $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, and a gift of more than $400,000 in computer equipment from Sun Microsystems. UB made an initial investment of approximately $1.5 million to create and support the center.
  • October 7: A tour of CCR was included in a visit by a Chinese delegation, which was covered in an article in the Reporter. Presidents and officials of 7 Chinese TV Universities attended the tour, along with a translator.
  • October 8: Drs. Russ Miller and Bruce Pitman presented a talk, entitled Buffalo's Center for Computational Research: Overview and Education, at the fall meeting of the Parallel Computing in Education Consortium, Ohio Supercomputer Center, Columbus, Ohio.
  • October 6-8: Russ Miller presented The Buffalo Sun Ultra5 Cluster, JPC4-5 "Beowulf and Beyond" at the fifth joint DOE/NASA PC Clustered Computing Conference, Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

  • Fall: An article appears in the Fall, 1999 issue of the American Crystallographic Association Newsletter covering the Workshop: Solving Structures with SnB, which took place on May 22 in the Center for Computational Research.
  • Fall: UBtoday presents a very nice 4 page article entitled "The Center for Computational Research puts UB on the supercomputing map". The article starts by tracing the history of the Center back to a Scientific Computing Group formed in 1988 that was led by Profs. Harry King and Russ Miller, which has led to a supercompting center capable of carrying out more than 60 billion operations per second. The article mentions some of the computationally-intensive tasks that are being run on the centers supercomputers and discusses efforts both inside of UB and in Western New York that are benefitting from this Center. The article also discusses the high-end visualization systems in the center, including a Pyramid Systems' ImmersaDesk, which allows for immersive 3D visualization through the use of active goggles. Further, the article mentions thte Sun cluster, designed, developed, and deployed by CCR, as well as the large SGI and IBM systems that have been installed in CCR. The article also details the physical layout of the center and mentions that Dr. Larry Smarr, a member of the White House Advisory Committee for High Performance Computing and Communications, Information Technology and the Next Generation Internet, and director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, is very impressed with the efforts and vision of the Center. Finally, the article mentions that IBC Digital and the Hauptman Woodward Medical Research Institute are using the machines. In particular, the article mentions the expertise of CCR Director Dr. Russ Miller in terms of his vision, insight, expertise, and long track record in high-performance computing, quoting Nobel Laureate Herb Hauptman who praised Miller's computational expertise in developing the Shake-and-Bake algorithm, as well as being key to several major scientific breakthroughs and obtaining several large grants for the molecular structure determination efforts.

  • September 23, 1999: CCR hosted the meeting of the Association of Old Crows, Niagara Frontier Chapter.
  • September 3: The Spectrum, a student publication of the State Univerisity of New York at Buffalo, presents a nice front page article.
  • September: Scientific Computing World presents a technology news article, entitled "Cluster Computing Booms in USA", highlighting the CCR Sun Cluster.

  • August 24-26:An Open House is given for UB Faculty and Staff, including a presentation by CCR Director Dr. Russ Miller.
  • August 17-20: Dr. Russ Miller presented a talk at HPCU99, which was held at SUNY-Stony Brook.

  • July 25: The Sun Cluster achieves basic functionality, with Linux and MPICH installed, and is used to run SnB.
  • July 22: The Reporter presents an article covering the CCR open houses available to UB faculty and staff in August.
  • July 19-20: Russ Miller, Director of CCR, sat on an NSF panel to review the progress of the two national supercomputing partnerships, NPACI and NCSA. The reverse site visit was held in Arlington, Virginia.
  • July 12: UniSci places a story of the CCR "poor man's supercomputer" on their front page.
  • July 2: HPCWire prints a nice article on the Sun Cluster. In the article, Dr. Russ Miller and Corky Brunskill discuss the 64 node cluster of high-end Sun workstations, running the Linux operating system, the first cluster of its kind, which they affectionately refer to as a "Poor Man's Supercomputer". Officials from Sun Microsystem state that this is a very important project to Sun as they move into the HPC arena.
  • July 2: The Buffalo News prints an article covering CCR's High-School Program and quotes a number of students, all of whom are excited to be participating.
  • July 1: The Buffalo News prints an extensive article on the CCR's Sun Cluster.
  • July: Adelphia Cable taped a segment on CCR with Director Russ Miller. The 5 minute segment airs all during July as part of the UB Today series, shown every Sunday at 6:30p and Monday at 9:00p during July.
  • July: The University at Buffalo issues a news release on the high-school summer program in computational chemistry being run in CCR.
  • July: The University at Buffalo issues a news release on the CCR/SENS/Sun cluster project.

  • Summer: The Binghamton Alumni Journal presents an extensive article in the Summer 1999 issue on CCR director Dr. Russ Miller, who received a B.S., M.A., and Ph.D. from SUNY-Binghamton in 1980, '82, and '84, respectively.

  • June 30: SGI delivers the Pyramid Systems Immersadesk R2 high-end virtual reality system. Installation is expected to take place over the next couple of weeks.
  • June 29: Business First prints an article on CCR's "Poor Man's SuperComputer", covering a subset of the material presented in the June 24th piece discussed below.
  • June 24: The Reporter presents a nice article on the Sun/SENS/CCR/CIT/Nortel partnership to produce a Beowulf cluster of Sun workstations. Dr. Russ Miller states that this is the first production-quality project of its kind in terms of creating a computational cluster out of high-end Sun workstations (64 of them to be precise), which were acquired by a grant from Sun Microsystems. The cluster will be used as a single system and not as a set of individual workstations. Miller also noted that such a system is ideal for applications in simulation and modeling that require extensive computations.
  • June 9: The 64 Sun Ultra 5 workstations are delivered. A grant by Sun Microsystems coupled with matching funds provided by UB was used to acquire this system. The machines will be rack-mounted and connected with a Nortel network. Linux and Beowulf will be ported to this network of workstations (NOW) by a combination of SENS and CCR personnel. This will be the first Beowulf/Linux NOW produced based on 64-bit workstations.

  • SGI produced a beautiful 4-page Application Brief entitled State University of New York at Buffalo Teams up with SGI for Next-Level Supercomputing Site: New Facility Brings Exciting Science and Competitive Edge to University.

  • May 20: An article "A super resource for business: UB'S supercomputer center excels at product visualization" appears in the Buffalo News that discusses how local companies can utilize the supercomputing center for computationally-intensive tasks as well as for high-end visualization. The article mentions a number of local companies that are currently working with CCR and some that plan to work with CCR.
  • May 13: Dr. Russ Miller, Director of CCR, presented a talk at Campus2000, an SGI workshop held at Columbia University.

  • April 28, 1999: Dr. Russ Miller, Director of the Center for Computational Research, and Dr. Bruce Pitman, Coordinator of Education for CCR, gave a presentation on CCR, focusing on educational opportunities at SUNY-Geneseo.
  • April 22, 1999: Dr. Russ Miller, Director of the Center for Computational Research, presented an update of CCR to the Dean's Council (SEAS Advisory Council).
  • April 7: An article "UB, Geneseo among top 100 'wired' colleges in U.S." appears in the Buffalo News. The article mentions that CCR probably contributed to UB being named one of the top 100 wired colleges in the U.S.

  • Spring: The UB Buffalo Engineer, Spring 1999 edition, carries two stories on the Center for Computational Research.
  • Spring: An article appears in the Silicon Graphics Education News, Volume 2, Spring 1999.

  • March 30: Dr. Russ Miller, Director of CCR, presented a talk at Campus2000, an SGI workshop held at Boston University.
  • March 22: A large story appeared in the Buffalo News covering the Industrial Open House hosted by CCR for local companies.
  • March 15: A small piece appears in Business First, covering the new appointments of Drs. Russ Miller and Tom Furlani.
  • March 2: A story appeared in the Buffalo News discussing a new west coast grant and its relationship to CCR.
  • March 1: A story appeared in Business First discussing the potential positive impact of CCR on companies in Western New York. The story also appears on-line. The story focuses on Dr. Miller and the University administation's vision in establishing the Center for Computational Research. Heads of local companies praise the decision and discuss opportunities to partner with CCR in terms of economic development. The article discusses the funding that was obtained in order to initiate the Center, both from public and private sources, as well as the vendor partners and their critical contributions. Dr. Miller states clearly that the center will support research and scholarship at UB as well as economic development by working with local industry in Western New York.

  • February 21-23: Dr. Russ Miller, Director of CCR, and Dr. Tom Furlani, Associate Director of CCR, attended the AAAS "National Workshop on Developing Guidance for NSF Advanced Networking Infrastructure Support."
  • February: SGI distributed a very nice article on CCR, including some nice images.
  • February: SGI publishes an article entitled The Great Leap Forward in Molecular Structure Simulation and Modeling, which covers the Shake-and-Bake method of structure determination as implemented in SnB, based on an interview with CCR director and co-developer of Shake-and-Bake and SnB Dr. Russ Miller.
  • February 24: A story on Dr. Russ Miller appeared in the Amherst Bee.
  • February 21: A story on Dr. Russ Miller appeared in the Honor Roll of the Buffalo News. The article mentions that Dr. Miller is the director of the new Center for Computational Research, has appointments in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Structural Biology, and at the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute. It also mentions that his is co-developer of the Shake-and-Bake method of molecular structure determination and that his SnB program is used worldwide to solve difficult and important molecular structures. The article also discusses his academic career, books published, degrees obtained, and so forth.

  • Publicity from January 15 Press Conference Announcing the Formation of the Center for Computational Research (CCR): Dr. Miller's remarks from the press conference were used in numerous print and on-line stories covering the creation of the Center for Computational Research. The information included in these stories, predominantly from interviews with Dr. Miller and a review of his slides that accompanied his opening remarks at the press conference include descriptions of the equipment, staff, partners (Sun, IBM, SGI), mission of and vision for the center, core research activities, and the physical layout of the initial center. News articles covering the announcement of the Center appear in The press conference was covered on the 6:00p news locally by both Channel 4 (CBS) and Channel 7 (ABC) on Friday, Jan. 15.

    The following stories covering the Center for Computational Research appear on line.


    In addition, the Center now appears on the following Yahoo! web sites:


  • January 31:An article in the Buffalo News discusses jobs and the local economy. Dr. Russ Miller discusses potential opportunities both within UB and within local WNY companies.
  • January 16:In an article in the Buffalo News, Dr. Russ Miller discusses those local companies who have already expressed an interest in taking advantge of CCR's supercomputing infrastructure.
  • January 15:In an article in the Buffalo News, "UB to install $7 million supercomputer research center", CCR Director Dr. Russ Miller discusses the opportunities that such a center provides, in addition to discussing some of the vendors and machines that have been acquired.
  • January 15: A Press Conference was held at 10:30am on the 5th floor of Capen Hall to announce the establishment of the Center for Computational Research. A Press Release is available, as are the transparencies used by Dr. Russ Miller, Director of CCR, who presented an overview of the mission and vision of the new Supercomputing Center. Dr. Miller's overview includes a list of initial partners, the position of CCR internationally (top 10 academic supercomputing site in the United States), an overview of research, training and educational programs, discussions of outreach to the Western New York community, the initial funding (vendors, peer-reviewed grants, etc.), and major projects that are already being supported by the Center for Computational Research during its pre-announcement start-up phase.