One of UF’s largest federal awards has helped create one of six predictive science research facilities in the country on campus.
The new Center for Compressible Multiphase Turbulence, located in the Particle Engineering Research Center on campus, celebrated with its donors Wednesday evening at Emerson Alumni Hall.
The center came into existence after a year of planning on March 1 with its $8 million federal grant money, said S. “Bala” Balachandra, the director of the center. The center is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Office of Advance Scientific Simulation and Computing.
The center has been working for the Predictive Science Academic Alliance Program II.
He said the center would be used toward simulation-based predictive science, which would encompass all engineering departments.
“(California Institute of Technology), Stanford, Michigan, Purdue, I mean, we can say we’re among them,” Balachandra said.
Cammy Abernathy, dean of the College of Engineering, said this change will bring in high-quality faculty, Ph.D. students and businesses.
“This center is exactly the kind of collaborative work that UF is ideally suited to pursue,” she said.
Nalini Kumar, a 26-year-old electrical engineering Ph.D. student, said she works at the center in collaboration with many other departments and people.
The center is focused on solving problems through a multidisciplinary approach. Departments attempt to simulate responses to various problems, she said.
“We’re working on developing science,” she said. “Imagine if you had a volcano, and you wanted to predict why it exploded that way.”
David Norton, vice president for research at UF, was one of a handful who spoke at the celebration.
“We want to be the best of the best in the world,” he said.
[A version of this story ran on page 8 on 3/14/2014 under the headline "UF science research center celebrates opening with donors"]
