The Virtual Laboratory for Earth and Planetary Materials,
VLab,
was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 2004 at the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute,
University of Minnesota. Today, it is supported by the Department of Energy and Columbia University and is
hosted by ACCESS's JetStream2 system at Indiana University.
VLab is a cyberinfrastructure consisting of a fully integrated Web portal, web services, and
databases for ab initio calculations of planetary materials. Affiliated
scientists are interested in different aspects and properties of these materials for modeling the
structure and properties of planetary interiors.
VLab aims to accelerate modeling of planets by
-
addressing materials properties important to planetary sciences
- developing or improving methods to compute such properties
- facilitating the use of ab initio simulation methods by creating friendly Web interfaces to facilitate and
automate time-consuming human tasks
