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The University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Research Computing & Data (RCD) team has been awarded $1.1 million from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) over two years to develop a computing system named Harmony to meet UMass’ increasing computational needs while prioritizing energy efficiency. 

To remain sustainable while maximizing computational output per kilowatt, Harmony combines energy-efficient ARM architecture hardware — the same computing architecture underlying smartphones — with software that enables more researchers and students to access its resources simultaneously.

Additionally, Harmony is uniquely suited for AI and machine-learning pipelines, genomics workflows, application hosting, and educational initiatives that require a high degree of interactivity – workflows that typically are not well supported by high-performance computing platforms. 

RCD is a campuswide organization that supports data-intensive research and education by providing scalable solutions for high-performance computing and data management. The Harmony project is led by Principal Investigator Georgia Stuart, lead high-performance computing facilitator in RCD; with Co-PIs Tom Bernardin, director of RCD, and Peter Chien, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology. 

“Harmony is a game-changer,” says Bernardin. “It doesn’t just address traditional research needs — it enables workflows that require constant interaction and real-time computation. From live AI inference to educational tools, Harmony strengthens our computing platforms.”

Harmony will also expand opportunities to share meaningful research with the scientific community and the public. For instance, Richard Peltier, professor of environmental health sciences at UMass Amherst, collects air quality and pollution data from Internet of Things (IoT) sensors installed all over the world to provide real-time information to local partners. The group currently uses the Unity Research Computing Platform for high-performance data processing but hopes to use Harmony to seamlessly share interactive results with community partners through a public-facing application. 

“Providing access to data is really important in engagement activities because it provides a sense of ownership to a participating community and fits within our mission of a community-engaged research institution,” says Peltier.

By reducing technical barriers and providing scalable resources, the cluster allows students and educators to engage in computationally intensive projects that would otherwise be inaccessible. 

“Until the Harmony award, our capacity and capability to support the unique needs of classes and other educational initiatives on Unity has been severely limited,” notes Stuart, RCD’s lead research computing facilitator. “With Harmony, we will be able to lay the foundation for more education projects with research computing resources while designing a sustainable and maintainable strategy for providing UMass instructors with the resources they need to effectively teach computational skills within their fields.” 

Through integration with the Unity Research Computing Platform, Harmony’s reach extends beyond UMass, allowing students, instructors, and researchers from Unity partner institutions to benefit from Harmony’s capabilities. Harmony will contribute 20% of its resources to the national OSG Consortium’s OSPool initiative, which seeks to combine computing capacity in support of open science. The move could amplify Harmony’s impact on scientific discovery across the United States.