NCSA also offers training classes for faculty, post doctoral students and graduate and undergraduates on research teams to make effective use of high performance computing resources. Computational science is a field of growing importance for developing and using high performance computing simulation. Sponsored by General Motors and the U.S. Department of Energy, the project provides unparalleled opportunity for students to address real world aerodynamic and engineering problems. A professor at the University of Texas is using supercomputing technology to expand teaching in the field of paleontology. At the University's High Performance Computing Facility in Austin, data from CAT scans of rare dinosaur fossils is converted computationally to high resolution 3-D images.
Students can study the images interactively.
Because original specimens are fragile, such work would be impossible without supercomputing technology. Reproducing large collections of rare fossils on CD-ROM for the purposes of research and teaching is a goal of the project.