Use of computers has been an important and ever-expanding part of the life in our department since the mid-1960's. Computers and digital communication touches the four main areas of our endeavors: research, teaching, outreach, and administration. Experimental control, data acquisition, theoretical calculation, modeling, data analysis, word processing, computer-aided drafting, and communication with peers, granting agencies, etc. are but a few computer activities undertaken by the faculty, students, and staff of the department on a wide range of computer hardware. The computer facilities utilized by department members include campus-wide, departmental, individual research groups, and personal equipment, as well as remote computing such as provided by the NSF Supercomputing Centers. The MSU Computer Lab provides computer and communication facilities to the campus in general. The MSU Computer Lab's facilities include an IBM 3090 with vector facility running the VM/CMS operating system, a Convex 240, a SGI multiprocessor system, a SUN multiprocessor system, and two BBN parallel processors. The departmental research and instructional computing facilities include a UNIX cluster of SGI Onyx with 4 processors and 12 Silicon Graphics Indigos, a UNIX cluster of Suns, a cluster of VAX computers running VMS, Macintoshes, and PCs. In addition, a number of departmental instruments have dedicated data systems. Individual research groups have a large variety of equipment that include Sun, Silicon Graphics, HP, VAX, IBM PC, and Macintosh families of computers.
Digital communications are a critical component in modern computing. Most of the computers in our department are connected by Ethernet and communicate using TCP/IP, DECnet, Appletalk, Workgroups for Windows, and other communication protocols. This local network is bridged to a campus-wide network based on FDDI running on fiber, and Ethernet on Broadband Cable that connects most of the buildings on campus. Thus, easy access is provided to machines running in the MSU Computer Lab, Engineering, Cyclotron, and other locations. Access to the external, national and international networks such as Michnet, HEPnet, and Internet is distributed over campus via this campus network.
Technical support for the acquisition, development, and utilization of computer and communication is provided to the department faculty, students, and staff by the Chemistry Computing and Information Technology (CCIT) support group consisting of Tom Atkinson, Paul Reed, John Mireley and Bill Draper. The CCIT group consults with faculty, staff, and graduate students on software and hardware matters including theoretical calculations, visualization, word processing, data bases, and other topics. The department offers graduate courses in electronics and computer- related topics that are taken by most of our graduates and many others from outside the department. The University offers many complete curricula in computer related fields. The extent of a student's involvement should be limited only by his or her interests.
This page last updated November 12, 1997.