Our faculty and students use approaches across disciplines and their use of computing can be difficult to summarize. Our physical and mathematical science departments are usually recognized for their high-end computational needs. Quantum Theory uses super-computing resources to attack problems. Numerical analysts use specialized tools and libraries of software to construct programs to solve thorny computational problems. Chemists and others control laboratory equipment with computers and use computers to automatically record laboratory results.
Statisticians develop algorithms for exploring properties of test and estimation procedures.
Simulation is common in these disciplines, as are massive data sets. Visualization is emerging as an important tool for understanding complex natural phenomena and mathematical relationships. Image processing is developing as a basic research interest in these disciplines and then applied in such fields as engineering and medicine. Such endeavors require computers with great computational speed and systems with large amounts of disk storage. Such high-end applications may require systems that run continuously for days or weeks, surpassing the reliability requirements of administrative systems.