SciNet is the supercomputer centre at the University of Toronto, hosting Niagara, one of the fastest supercomputers in Canada. SciNet provides Canadian researchers with computational resources and expertise necessary to perform their research on scales not previously possible in Canada.
We help power research from the biomedical sciences and aerospace engineering to astrophysics and climate science. Our free training and education program for students and users helps them obtain advanced computing skills and knowledge needed in their research and in the workplace. SciNet provides resources for the Digital Research Alliance of Canada, and is funded by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED), the Government of Ontario, and the University of Toronto.
The SciNet consortium was established in 2005 through the continuing collaboration of research groups at both the University of Toronto and the ten affiliated hospitals. Read more about our history here.
Contact information
The best way to contact our team is via email at support@scinet.utoronto.ca.
The SciNet offices are located on the 11th floor of the MaRS West Tower at the corner of College Street and University Avenue. The closest subway stop is Queen’s Park, which is just on the corner of the MaRS West Tower, and it has a direct access into the building. The TTC street car also stops at the intersection of College and University.
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University of Toronto
SciNet High Performance Computing Consortium
661 University Ave., Suite 1140
Toronto, ON M5G 1M1
Canada
Phone: (416) 978 2922
Fax: (416) 978 2995
Staff
Joseph Chen, Ph.D.
Associate CTO, Hardware and Operations
Joseph has earned his doctoral degree in computer science magna cum laude at the University of Hamburg, Germany, and worked there as research assistant post-doc fellow for three and a half years. Before becoming Scinet’s Associate CTO for Hardware and Operations, he was a Systems Administrator at SciNet, and the High Performance Parallel Cluster Administrator at the University of Toronto’s Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS).
Alexey Fedoseev
Applications Analyst
Leslie Groer, Ph.D.
Applications Analyst
Leslie leads the Subatomic Physics National Team at the Digital Research Alliance of Canada, overseeing grid computing infrastructure for high-energy physics projects, including the flagship ATLAS experiment. He earned his doctorate in particle physics from Rutgers University, where he conducted research on the top quark at the CDF detector at the Fermilab National Accelerator Laboratory outside Chicago. He furthered his research at the Dzero experiment, also at Fermilab, as a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University. Leslie has over twenty years of experience in supporting distributed computing projects.
Daniel Gruner, Ph.D.
CTO
Daniel has more than twenty years’ experience working with a variety of programming languages, parallel computing, scientific modeling, software architecture, and administration and architecture of large Beowulf clusters and large shared-memory parallel computers. He has a doctorate in chemical physics from the University of Toronto.
Norbert Krawiec
Systems Administrator
Yohai Meiron, Ph.D.
Applications Analyst
Yohai has research expertise in N-body simulations in astrophysics as well as black hole physics. He has extensive experience in GPU computing, Linux and programming in C++ and Python. He is one of the architects of SciNet’s S4H secure enclave.
Bruno Mundim, Ph.D.
Applications Analyst
Bruno obtained his Ph.D. in Physics at the University of British Columbia, and has worked at the Rochester Institute of Technology and the Albert-Einstein-Institut in Germany. His background is in computation astrophysics.
Mike Nolta, Ph.D.
Applications Analyst
Mike received his Ph.D. in Physics from Princeton University, and divides his time between SciNet and the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics. His research experience involved the reduction of massive datasets from microwave telescopes.
Jaime Pinto
Applications Analyst
Jaime has aeronautical engineering, computer science and commerce background. A seasoned professional, he has a history of successful IT engagements, with focus and dedication to customer service and satisfaction, working for organizations such as Spin Productions, IMAX, RIM, and prior to SciNet in a research environment at The Hospital for Sick Children and Mount Sinai Hospital. He has a particular interest on financial models and wealth management strategies.
Marco Saldarriaga
Systems Administrator
Marco has more than four decades of experience with Unix systems. During this time, he has worked with many versions of Unix such as AIX from IBM, HP/UX from Hewlett-Packard,
A/UX from Apple, Solaris from Sun Microsystems (now Oracle), Irix from Silicon Graphics,
Xenix from Microsoft, and SCO Unix. Since the 1990s Marco has been working with the different flavours of Linux, the open source counterpart of Unix, such as Slackware, RedHat (and its derivatives), SuSE, Debian and Ubuntu, among others.
Rampravesh Sharma
Network and Security Administrator
Vladimir Slavnic
Systems Administrator
Erik Spence, Ph.D.
Applications Analyst
Erik received his doctorate in plasma physics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has held postdoctoral positions at ETH Zurich, the University of Toronto, and Princeton University. His research experience in parallel computation focused on fluid dynamics and magnetohydrodynamics, with an emphasis on liquid-metal experiments.
Ramses van Zon, Ph.D.
Applications Analyst
Ramses obtained his Ph.D. in Physics at Utrecht University, and has worked at the Rockefeller University and at the Chemical Physics Theory Group of the University of Toronto. He has extensive experience with shared memory computing, advanced algorithms for molecular dynamics, and bioinformatics computations.
James Willis
Applications Analyst
James graduated from the University of Edinburgh with an MSc in High Performance Computing and a BSc in Astrophysics. He has experience developing astrophysics simulations using N-body and SPH techniques, as well as writing data pipelines for a radio telescope. His expertise includes C/C++, MPI, DDT, and SIMD vectorization.
Shawn Winnington-Ball
Information Systems Security
Ching-Hsing Yu, Ph.D.
Systems Administrator
Ching-Hsing obtained his Ph.D. in Theoretical Chemistry. He has extensive experience in HPC, ab initio calculations, and molecular dynamics simulations.
Cathy Yuzon
Business Officer
Partners
The Digital Research Alliance of Canada serves Canadian researchers, with the objective of advancing Canada’s position as a leader in the knowledge economy on the international stage. By integrating, championing and funding the infrastructure and activities required for advanced research computing (ARC), research data management (RDM) and research software (RS), we provide the platform for the research community to access tools and services faster than ever before.
Compute Ontario is a not-for-profit corporation designed to support advanced computing in Ontario. They develop central strategies, planning, and advocacy for advanced computing assets and investments in Ontario, and aim to facilitate collaboration. They have partnerships with the Ontario academic providers of HPC systems and support: SciNet, SHARCNET, CAC, and HPC4Health.
Partnering with the Department of Physics at the University of Toronto resulted in the creation of the course PHY1610H Scientific Computing for Physicists, designed and taught by Dr. R. van Zon and Dr. M. Ponce, who are also HPC analysts at SciNet.
Partnering with the Institute of Medical Science at the University of Toronto allowed us to create the course MSC1090H Introduction to Computational Biostatistics with R, designed and taught by Dr. M. Ponce, Dr. E. J. Spence and Dr. R. van Zon, who are also HPC analysts at SciNet.
Partnering with the Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences at the University of Toronto Scarborough has been instrumental to create the course EES1137H Quantitative Applications for Data Analysis, designed and taught by Dr. M. Ponce, Dr. E. J. Spence and Dr. A. Fedoseev, who are also HPC analysts at SciNet.