NDSU – General Campus Information (use or customize as needed)
North Dakota State University first opened as a public land grant institution of higher education in Fargo, North
Dakota, in 1890, shortly after North Dakota officially became a state in November 1889. Initially known as the
North Dakota Agricultural College, the college’s name was changed to North Dakota State University in 1960.
The North Dakota Agricultural Experiment Station and NDSU Extension Service are integral parts of the
University. NDSU accepted its first graduate students in 1895.
NDSU has enjoyed steady growth, with enrollment now exceeding 14,500 students and more than 700 faculty
members. NDSU offers over 100 undergraduate and approximately 100 graduate programs in a wide variety of
fields, with degrees awarded at the doctoral, master's, professional, and baccalaureate levels. In addition to
their academic studies, students have opportunities to participate in approximately 300 student organizations,
leadership development, civic engagement activities, fine arts, athletics, and study abroad.
There are eight academic colleges plus the Graduate School and Interdisciplinary Studies. The colleges include:
College of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Natural Resources; College of Arts, Humanities, & Social Sciences;
College of Business; College of Engineering; College of Human Development and Education; College of Health
Professions; College of Science and Mathematics; and College of University Studies.
With a fall 2014 enrollment of 2,283 graduate students, NDSU has a diverse and growing graduate student
population. NDSU offers 50 doctoral degrees, 86 master’s degrees, an education specialist degree and 12
certificate programs.
In addition to the main campus academic programs, NDSU has over 70 centers and institutes providing
specialized expertise, research, and services to the public in a wide range of disciplinary areas. NDSU is affiliated
with the Agricultural Experiment Station, Cooperative Extension Service, Northern Crops Institute, NDSU
Research Foundation, NDSU Research and Technology Park, Institute for Business and Industry Development,
Institute for Regional Studies, the State Herbarium, and the Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute, to
name a few. The Agricultural Experiment Station has seven Research Extension Centers located around the
state.
NDSU is notably listed among the top 108 U.S. public and private universities in the Carnegie Commission on
Higher Education’s category of “Research Universities/Very High Research Activity.” NDSU is listed in the Top 100
research universities in the U.S. for R&D in agricultural sciences, chemistry, computer science, physical sciences,
psychology, and social sciences, based on research expenditures reported to the National Science Foundation
for FY2013.
NDSU is part of the North Dakota University System (NDUS) which includes 11 campuses across the state. The
State Board of Higher Education (SBHE) is the policy-setting and governing body for the NDUS. The SBHE is
made up of seven citizen members appointed to four-year terms by the governor, one student appointed by the
governor to serve a one-year term, a non-voting faculty advisor and a non-voting staff advisor. NDSU is headed
by a President, with a Provost who provides administrative leadership for all academic activities, including eight
academic colleges and the graduate school.
NDSU’s mission statement: “With energy and momentum, North Dakota State University addresses the needs
and aspirations of people in a changing world by building on our land-grant foundation.” With its land-grant
mission to provide quality education, leading-edge research and excellent service, NDSU is acknowledged as a
national leader among its peers.
Additional information about specific units at NDSU:
(Information about other units will be added as it is received.)
NDSU Research Foundation
The NDSU Research Foundation (NDSURF) has more than 300 technologies (intellectual property or IP) under
management. Averaging 33+ potentially patentable inventions per year since 2004, the NDSURF has 71 issued
patents, more than 60 pending patent applications, 46 active U.S. Plant Variety Protection (PVP) certificates, 15
foreign Plant Breeders’ Rights (PBR) registrations, 34 registered U.S. trademarks, and 14 foreign registered
trademarks, as of May 31, 2015. With NDSURF IP licensing revenue in excess of $2.5 million from NDSU
developed IP as of May 31, 2015, NDSU discoveries are drivers of innovation. In national statistics available for FY13,
the NDSURF ranked 25th out of 50 land-grant universities (and related foundations) and 6th out of 22 land-grant
universities (and related foundations) without a medical school, when comparing IP licensing and royalty
revenues. The NDSURF has licensed technologies to seven start-up companies in the last five years and has
executed an average of nearly 75 licenses per year during that same period.
High Performance Computing Capabilities
Center for Computationally Assisted Science and Technology (CCAST)
High-performance computing (HPC) cyberinfrastructure at NDSU is managed and operated by the Center for
Computationally Assisted Science and Technology (CCAST). CCAST is a research unit within the Vice President
for Research and Creative Activity Office which (1) provides HPC infrastructure for the entire NDSU Campus (2)
directly engages in pursuing scientific discovery, via use of computational tools, in the areas of energy,
materials, environment, genomics, and in other areas of national priority. Networking at NDSU is managed and
operated by NDSU Information Technology Services (ITS) which participates in broader state and national
initiatives to provide state-of-the-art networking capabilities to the entire upper-Midwest region.
Facilities: CCAST’s computers are housed in a 1215 sq. ft. computer room equipped with Liebert Airflow, 30 ton,
down-flow, Model CCT-30A4 A/C unit, Caterpillar 300 Series 300 kVA UPS unit, and fire-suppression equipment.
The continuity of service is provided by a Caterpillar 3412, SR4B Diesel Engine with 750 kW for 27 hours (if run
at 100%) power capacity and 1,500 gallon fuel capacity. 10GbE connections between CCAST computer rooms
and NDSU backbone are provided by NDSU ITS.
CCAST operates 3 HPC systems:
Cluster2: Theoretical peak performance is 2.7 Teraflops. The cluster consists of 32 compute nodes and a login
node. Each compute node has dual socket quad-core Intel Xeon E5430 2.66 GHz, 32 GB RAM, and is running
CentOS 6. Total aggregate memory size is ~ 1TB. The login node and compute nodes are interconnected through
gigabit Ethernet.
Cluster3: Theoretical peak performance is 10.9 Teraflops. The cluster consists of 128 compute nodes and a login
node. Each compute node has dual socket quad-core Intel Xeon X5550 2.67 GHz, 48 GB RAM, and is running
CentOS 6. Total aggregate memory size is ~ 6.1TB. Interconnect between the compute nodes is the Myri-10G
network.
Storage for Cluster2 and Cluster3: For Cluster2 and Cluster3 CCAST provides permanent storage for /home
directories for users on 45 TB NFS-mounted RAID5 Coraid SRX3200 appliance at ~600MB/sec read/write and 20
Gb/s bandwidth. High-performance shared scratch is provided by a 176 TB GPFS parallel file system mounted in
RAID6 configuration on dual IBM DCS3700 controllers at 3GB/s read/write and 40 Gb/s bandwidth.
Backup for Cluster2 and Cluster3: SpectraLogic T50e with 50 x LTO5 slot (75TB Native, 150TB compressed), 2x
LTO5 drive (~140MB/sec), and 2 x 8Gb/s Fibre Channel connection to backup server. Backup software: Arkeia,
backing up user's /home directories and CCAST’s virtual machines.
Management and services for Cluster2 and Cluster3: 3 x VMware vSphere5, 1x VMware vCenter fully redundant
virtual environment including disaster recovery. Each vSphere server has 2 x 6-core Intel Xeon E5649 2.53GHz,
48GB RAM, 8 x gigabit ethernet port, 2 x Coraid HBA card to connect with a pool of 8 x 512GB SSD in RAID10
configuration on Coraid SRX3200 appliance.
Thunder: Theoretical peak performance is 36 Teraflops (including accelerators). This separate (from Cluster2
and Cluster3) system combines Intel Ivy Bridge CPUs, Intel MIC accelerators, and large-memory nodes in its
~1,500 core (including Phi cores) compute component with tiered storage based on the IBM General Parallel
File System (GPFS) parallel file system fused with near-line tape library through Hierarchical Storage
Management (HSM) module in its storage component (aggregating ~100 TB in tier-1 magnetic disk, ~600 TB in
tier-2 magnetic disk, and ~4 PB in tier-3 tape when fully populated with disks and tapes). Communication layers
include Fourteen Data Rate (FDR) InfiniBand, 10 GigE, and 1 GigE. While the infrastructure is optimized for fast
Input/Output (I/O) targeting efficient operations on high-volume, high-velocity and low-veracity “big-data” it
also serves as a powerful auxiliary modeling and simulation tool. DICRE has modular design for easy on-demand
expansion.