The University of Calgary has teamed up with Hewlett-Packard, the Alberta Government and others to create a computing research centre worth nearly $3 million, U of C’s Campus News reported last month. The HP Grid Research Centre will improve the management and effectiveness of grid computing, an emerging field that builds computing power by linking systems for simulations and other complex tasks. Other partners in the research centre include Netera Alliance, BigBangwidth and WestGrid.

The centre’s proponents say it will attract some of the world’s best researchers and play a vital role in furthering the type of research that’s dependent upon high-performance, technical computing technologies.

Campus News also reports in the Feb. 6 issue that WestGrid is already helping biomedical engineering work at the university. Researchers are reducing the time and costs involved in developing new heart-healing drugs and devices, thanks to the elaborate heart simulations run on the grid.