In 2015, it became clear that Marquette needed to initiate an effort to replace its aging HPC cluster Père (a reference to the university's namesake Père Jacques Marquette). After struggling to obtain funding for several years through both direct funding from the university and grant requests to the National Science Foundation (NSF), in the spring of 2017 Prof. Rajendra "Raj" Rathore volunteered to lead the effort to write the next NSF grant proposal. 

During the fall of 2017, Prof. Rathore became extremely ill, yet despite his worsening health, he continued to work passionately on the grant proposal, which was submitted in early 2018, just one month prior to his untimely and tragic death. 

In summer 2018, NSF announced that Marquette had been awarded the grant, to which the university pledged a significant amount of matching funds. 

Although Prof. Rathore would never know the fruits of his labor, it is our privilege to dedicate this cluster to Raj, not only for his contributions to the HPC community here at Marquette, but also for his contributions to the university through his leadership as the Pfetschinger-Habermann Chair in Chemistry, and his contributions to the global scientific community through pioneering work in the field of organic chemistry as both researcher and professor. 

Raj would be truly humbled and honored to know that the cluster which bears his name will provide so much opportunity for advancing research at Marquette.

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Important Notes On Cluster Use →