Promoting collaboration among users of high-performance computing.
Virginia Tech faculty and students from many scientific disciplines rely on high-end computing and networking resources in order to address otherwise intractable problems. LASCA seeks to foster collaboration among computer scientists and researchers from various application areas. These collaborations are of mutual benefit: computer science researchers make new technology available to the applications areas, while applications researchers supply challenging problems for testing new algorithms and systems. LASCA's location in the ACITC is particularly strategic for these kinds of collaborations. Closely related ACITC laboratories include the Computing Systems Research Lab, the University Visualization and Animation Group, the Digital Library Research Laboratory, and the Center for Human-Computer Interaction. LASCA participants also include members of numerous departments and research labs from across the Virginia Tech campus.

Educating students.
Graduate and undergraduate students working in LASCA gain valuable experience in a multidisciplinary setting typical of modern computational science and engineering. In this environment, computer science students must understand the problems of real scientific applications, while engineering and natural science students learn how to identify and apply appropriate computing resources and expertise.

A portal to world-class high-performance computing resources and research.
LASCA is working to build a community of users around Virginia Tech's Terascale Computing Facility (TCF). The TCF's System X cluster is currently the world's most powerful university supercomputer, and the third most powerful overall. LASCA faculty and students are actively supporting algorithm and code development for this resource. The laboratory also serves as a contact point between Virginia Tech and computing resources and expertise available at US government laboratories and high performance computing centers. For example, LASCA faculty are involved in collaborations with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), NASA, and NIH. LASCA is also leading Virginia Tech's participation in the emerging computational grid, by helping to implement a campus-wide grid, and by participating in the Global Grid Forum.