Department of the GeoPhysical Sciences

Skip navigation

In the Department

  1. Home
  2. Facilities
  3. In the Department
Skip navigation


Students take a break in the Moyer laboratory.


A demonstration in the Fulz lab.


The ultra clean room of the Origins Lab.

Chicago Center for Cosmochemistry

C3 (Chicago Center for Cosmochemistry) is a joint initiative between the University of Chicago, Argonne National Laboratory, and the Field Museum, and is dedicated to promoting education and research in cosmochemistry. Major projects underway include: (1) measurement of meteoritic stardust grains coupled with nucleosynthesis theory to probe stellar processes and the origin of the elements; (2) isotopic and chemical studies of meteorites and rocks to probe the early history of the solar system, planet formation and early Earth history; (3) studies of the Sun, planets, asteroids and comets through current and future sample return missions and spaceflight instruments; (4) experimental investigations into the chemical and physical processes of the early solar system and planet formation.

Dave Fultz Memorial Laboratory for Hydrodynamics

The Dave Fultz Memorial Laboratory for Hydrodynamics is inspired by the original work of the late Prof. Dave Fultz from our own Department, who pioneered many remarkable experiments that described the essence of fluid motion in the atmosphere and ocean. The lab is used for both instruction and research.
 

PIRE-CIRRUS

The International Partnership for Cirrus Studies (PIRE-CIRRUS) studies one of the coldest and least understood parts of the atmosphere, the tropical tropopause layer (TTL), and is led by Associate Professor Elizabeth Moyer.

Computational Resources

We have a wide range of computational resources within the department, including:

  • Abner: Compute cluster for Fred Ciesla's group. 16 compute nodes with Dual Intel Xeon L5420 CPUs (8 cores total @ 2.50GHz) and 24GB of memory per node, plus one node with dual Ivy Bridge (Intel Xeon E5-2680v2) CPUs (20 cores total @ 2.80 GHz) and 128GB of memory.  Approximately 15TB of shared storage.
  • Berserker: Compute cluster for Dorian Abbot's group. 16 compute nodes with Dual Intel Xeon X5650 CPUs (12 cores total @ 2.66GHz) and 24GB of memory per node.  Approximately 24TB of shared storage.  Uses a fully non-blocking QDR InfiniBand interconnect.
  • Geoflop: Standalone compute server for general use within DoGS.  Dual Ivy Bridge (Intel Xeon E5-2650v2) CPUs with hyperthreading (16 cores, 32 logical threads) @ 2.60 GHz and 128GB of memory.  Roughly 5TB of storage.
  • Geomips: Older standalone compute server for general use within DoGS.  Single quad-core Intel Xeon W3520 with hyperthreading (8 logical threads) @ 2.66 GHz and 12GB of memory.  Roughly 2TB of storage.
  • Hypnotoad: General-purpose compute cluster for use within all of PSD. Mix of compute nodes: (1) with AMD A10 3.8 GHz APU (quad core), 16GB memory, 20Gb Infiniband; (1) AMD FX8350 8-core @ 4 GHz, 16GB memory, 20Gb Infiniband; (6) AMD A8 2.9GHz APU (quad core), 16GB memory, 20Gb Infiniband; (4) Dual AMD Operton 4332HE 3GHz (12 cores), 16 GB memory; (5) AMD A8 2.9GHz APU, 16GB memory, Nvidia GTX 550 GPU.  Roughly 7TB of shared storage
  • Skadi: Standalone compute server for Elisabeth Moyer's group.  Dual Intel Xeon L5420 CPUs (8 cores total @ 2.50GHz) and 8GB of memory.  8.5TB of storage.
  • Squarepants: Standalone compute server for David Archer's group. Dual  Intel Xeon L5420 CPUs (8 cores total @ 2.50GHz) and 8GB of memory.  Roughly 2TB of storage.
  • Winds: Standalone compute server for Noboru Nakamura's group. Dual Sandy Bridge (Intel Xeon E5-2640) CPUs (12 cores total @ 2.50 GHz) and 24GB of memory.  Roughly 9.5TB of storage.