Pittsburgh, PA-Three Carnegie Mellon University students received APC Fellowships for Data Center Effi ciency Research on March 5 at the Collaborative Innovation Center. The APC ResearchFellowships support Ph.D. students at Carnegie Mellon with a research focus in the broad area of data center effi ciency. In addition, Carnegie Mellon University’s Parallel Data Lab unveiledthe second major installment of APC’s award-winning InfraStruXure architecture and will be giving tours of the facility during the event.

“This is a wonderful opportunity for our students to continue developing systems that improve the effi ciencies of both power and cooling as well as improving the overall energy effi ciency of data centers which is so critical in business today,” said Gregory R. Ganger, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon and director of the Parallel Data Lab.

Luca Parolini, a Ph.D student in electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon and Vijay Vasudevan and James Cipar, both Ph.D students in computer science, will receive fellowships that will cover tuition and stipends (up to $50,000) for each researcher at the department’s standard rates for one year from APC.

“I am extremely grateful for this recognition by APC because there is so much pressure for industry to cut energy consumption, and the award will support the university’s ongoing research into improving data center performance,” said Parolini of Padua, Italy.

Vijay Vasudevan, a Ph.D student in computer science at Carnegie Mellon, said he was both excited and proud of the APC Research Data Center Fellowship award. “This is a wonderful honor and I know it will help with my research,” said Vasudevan of Palo Alto, CA Currently, Vasudevan is building computer clusters that can consume only fi ve to six watts of electricity compared with thecurrent industry-wide standard of 300 to 500 watts. Cipar, who is completing his second year as a Ph.D student in computer science from Acton, MA, is also exploring problems related to controllingoperating costs for data centers.