Menu

From Games to Brains

Harnessing the power of GPUs to speed medical imaging, researchers from Northeastern University are using computers at the MGHPCC to improve the performance of a popular medical imaging tool that estimates 3D light distribution in biological tissue using GPU technology to simultaneously simulate the paths of large numbers of independent photons.

The CPU (central processing unit) has long been explained as the brain of the personal computer but over the past decade, that brain has been enhanced by another component – the GPU (graphics processing unit.) The GPU’s advanced capabilities, which rely on parallel processing – where independent calculations are executed simultaneously – were originally used primarily for 3D game rendering. But now those capabilities have been harnessed more broadly to accelerate computational workloads in areas from astronomy and astrophysics to medical imaging.

Fanny Nina-Paravecino:
PhD candidate and member of the Northeastern University Computer Architecture Research Group (NUCAR)

Research projects

Foldit
Dusty With a Chance of Star Formation
Checking the Medicine Cabinet to Interrupt COVID-19 at the Molecular Level
Not Too Hot, Not Too Cold But Still, Is It Just Right?​
Smashing Discoveries​
Microbiome Pattern Hunting
Modeling the Air we Breathe
Exploring Phytoplankton Diversity
The Computer Will See You Now
Computing the Toll of Trapped Diamondback Terrapins
Edging Towards a Greener Future
Physics-driven Drug Discovery
Modeling Plasma-Surface Interactions
Sensing Subduction Zones
Neural Networks & Earthquakes
Small Stars, Smaller Planets, Big Computing
Data Visualization using Climate Reanalyzer
Getting to Grips with Glassy Materials
Modeling Molecular Engines
Forest Mapping: When the Budworms come to Dinner
Exploring Thermoelectric Behavior at the Nanoscale
The Trickiness of Talking to Computers
A Genomic Take on Geobiology
From Grass to Gas
Teaching Computers to Identify Odors
From Games to Brains
The Trouble with Turbulence
A New Twist
A Little Bit of This... A Little Bit of That..
Looking Like an Alien!
Locking Up Computing
Modeling Supernovae
Sound Solution
Lessons in a Virtual Test Tube​
Crack Computing
Automated Real-time Medical Imaging Analysis
Towards a Smarter Greener Grid
Heading Off Head Blight
Organic Light-Harvesting Antennae
Art and AI
Excited by Photons
Tapping into an Ocean of Data
Computing Global Change
Star Power
Engineering the Human Microbiome
Computing Social Capital
Computers Diagnosing Disease
All Research Projects

Collaborative projects

ALL Collaborative PROJECTS

Outreach & Education Projects

See ALL Scholarships
100 Bigelow Street, Holyoke, MA 01040