Draft issue for review. Yellow highlights are still to be confirmed.
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Stony Brook University · Research Computing & Informatics
RCI Quarterly
Fall 2026 · Issue 1
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In this issue: a note from the CRIO · Open OnDemand training on October 1 · SecureWulf is coming · a researcher spotlight on the Ge and Xiong labs · our new website · cluster news · a Slurm tip · the year in numbers
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From the CRIO Welcome to our first newsletter |
Hi everyone,
Welcome to the first issue of RCI Quarterly, and the first thing we're releasing from our new website, rci.stonybrook.edu. Four times a year we'll share what's new across research computing at Stony Brook: the clusters, the services, and most of all the research you're doing with them.
We rebuilt the site around the questions people actually ask us: where do I store my data, which cluster should I use, how do I get started. It shows live cluster status, has a searchable library of HPC guides, and includes ARIE, an assistant that can point you to the right page. Every issue of this newsletter will live there too, so it's easy to find later or pass along to a colleague. Take a look and tell us what's missing.
As always, if you want to talk through a project, a grant, or just an idea, my calendar is open for coffee.
Dave Cyrille
Assistant Vice President and Chief Research Information Officer
Training · Thursday, October 1
Introduction to Open OnDemand
Want to use SeaWulf and NVwulf without the command line? Join us for a one-hour, hands-on session on Open OnDemand, the browser-based way to run JupyterLab, RStudio, MATLAB, ChimeraX, CryoSPARC and more on our clusters. You'll learn to launch apps, manage files and jobs, and pick the right resources for your work.
| When: Thursday, October 1, 2026, 3:00 to 4:00 PM Where: IACS Seminar Room, or join online Who: students, postdocs, faculty and staff in any field. No experience needed. Pizza and refreshments provided. |
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Details and registration Questions? david.carlson@stonybrook.edu
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Coming Christmas 2026 SecureWulf: secure computing for controlled data |
Arriving by Christmas 2026, SecureWulf is a new secure research computing environment for data that needs extra protection, such as NIH controlled-access datasets and other data held to NIST SP 800-171 requirements.
Each project gets its own encrypted, isolated workspace built on TiCrypt, with access controls and auditing, plus NVIDIA H200 and RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell GPUs for AI and data-intensive work. It sits alongside ClinWulf, which remains the home for PHI.
If a grant or project coming up involves controlled data, talk to us now so we can plan your access for launch.
Researcher spotlight · Fall 2026
Ge and Xiong labs: watching the brain as a mouse explores
In a 17-second clip, a mouse explores a cage full of new objects while a tiny head-mounted microscope records blood flow in its hippocampus at the same moment. It's how the labs of Shaoyu Ge and Qiaojie Xiong in Neurobiology and Behavior study the new neurons the adult brain keeps making.
Their latest paper in Neuron shows that during exploration, nearby astrocytes turn glucose into lactate, and the young neurons need it to survive. All that imaging adds up to a lot of data, which the labs now keep in Box instead of on portable hard drives.
Simulating supernovae on SeaWulf100 billion variables per timestep, following a white dwarf to its explosive end. |
AI for autonomous vehicle safetyTwo AI systems, one that understands crashes and one that generates them, trained on Stony Brook HPC. |
What's new
A new RCI website
Some things worth trying:
| Live system status See how busy each cluster is right now, and any maintenance in progress, before you submit. |
| HPC documentation library 43 guides you can search, or filter to just SeaWulf, NVwulf or ClinWulf. |
| Storage picker and cluster picker Answer a few questions and get pointed to the right place for your data or your jobs. |
| Getting started paths Step-by-step guides for faculty, grad students and postdocs, clinical researchers, and external collaborators. |
| New how-to guides for TriNetX and OnCore Building queries, reviewing cohorts, registering subjects and more. Find them in the A–Z index. |
Cluster news
The clusters are busy, and that's good news
SeaWulf and NVwulf have been running close to full for much of the quarter. If your jobs are waiting longer than usual, the status page shows current load and typical queue waits, and the cluster picker can help you find a better fit.
This quarter we also moved SeaWulf's XM and DG nodes onto a new system image with a rolling update, so most of the cluster stayed available throughout. Thanks for your patience during the summer maintenance windows on SeaWulf, NVwulf and the data center.
Coming up: [planned maintenance or new hardware for next quarter]
Tip of the quarter
Ask for what your job actually uses
Requesting far more memory or time than a job needs makes it wait longer in the queue, and keeps those resources from everyone else. After a job finishes, check what it really used:
sacct -j <jobid> --format=JobID,Elapsed,MaxRSS,ReqMem
Then trim your next request to fit, with a little headroom. More in Good conduct on the RCI clusters.
By the numbers, FY 25/26
$1.04B active awards supported |
1,220 active research projects |
1,817 publications enabled |
4,050+ researchers served |
Learn and connect
More training: the Open OnDemand session above is the first of the season. [next sessions and office hours]
Have a story to share? If RCI helped your research, we'd love to feature it. Tell us about it.
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Research Computing & Informatics · Division of Information Technology · Stony Brook University rci.stonybrook.edu · Past issues · System status |