Construction has begun on a $5.9 million data center for the Biocomplexity Institute of Virginia Tech.

The Institute’s third facility, it will add 36 water-chilled racks and two megawatts of power to the institute’s HPC capabilities, and will include equipment given by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

A different kind of computer virus

“Our current data centers have reached their space and cooling limitations,” Kevin Shinpaugh, director of information technology at the institute, said.

“The new data center will allow us to meet the increasing demands of our computationally based research.”

The Whiting-Turner Contracting Company and Wendel will together on the project, with David Chinn, Virginia Tech capital project manager, saying that it the partnership will enable “the entire project to be completed in less than a year, including the vital commissioning phase after construction is complete.”

Laurie Coble, COO of the Institute, added: “We are extremely excited to work with Whiting-Turner and Wendel on this groundbreaking project. We are looking forward to delivering even more solutions to real-world problems with the answers this data center will generate.”

The Institute will use the new facility to help run simulations on areas including the spread of disease amongst populations, the evolution of RNA structures, and how diet and nutritional factors influence the immune response.

Madhav Marathe, Director of the Network Dynamic Simulation Science Lab at the Biocomplexity Institute, said in a promotional video: “A particular problem that our lab has a lot of interest in, has to do with the spread of infectious diseases. We can actually simulate an entire flu season across the US in about 10 seconds.”

The new system will use three-phase 415-volt power for energy efficiency and include an on-site generator and uninterruptible power supply.