Texas Advanced Computing Center, or TACC, has announced its third expansion in 13 years to accommodate the center's growth and demand for computing systems. TACC sits on The University of Texas’s J.J. Pickle Research Campus at 10100 Burnet Road. It celebrated its third ground breaking Feb. 18 on a new three-story, 38,000-square-foot building adjacent to its existing facility. Construction is expected to be complete in January. The first TACC building opened about 10 years ago. “TACC is one of the crown jewels of the university and has gone from—in 10 years—an incipient center to a truly internationally competitive advanced computing center that carries a full range of computing,” said Juan Sanchez, UT’s vice president for research. “Today’s event is really a milestone and testimony of how much [the center] has grown over the years.” Jarrod Sterzinger, senior associate at O’Connell Robertson—which provided architecture and engineering services for the TACC expansion—said the new building will have an auditorium, teaching space, student area with computers and covered outdoor patio. He said planners' goal is to create a world-class facility. “It’s a fairly nondescript campus," Sterzinger said. "We really wanted to take this opportunity to create this icon, this gem, on the campus so when people come here everyday to do research they understand what’s going on inside the building is pretty magical,” TACC Executive Director Dan Stanzione said the expansion is needed to keep up with TACC's growth. “We’ve really become the place that people at universities around the country look to, for both computing power and for innovation and how to deploy systems and do bigger and better things,” Stanzione said. TACC is able to keep growing because users can tackle more challenging problems in science and engineering and access more types of systems, such as data storage and cloud computing, he said. Users are more diversified because more industries, such as biomedical, realize the usefulness of computing in their fields. Stanzione said in the biomedical field, genomics—the study of genetics and molecular biology—is now a digital science instead of just a lab-based science. “We’re not just the physicists and engineers anymore,” he said. The expansion would not have been possible without a donation of $10 million from the O’Donnell Foundation, Sanchez said. The foundation was created by Peter and Edith O’Donnell for the purpose of enhancing the quality of education. The UT System Board of Regents matched the donation with $10 million. “This is has been [Peter’s] love, and the foundation has committed so much through the years,” said Larry Warder, chief operating officer of the O’Donnell Foundation. “We’re just proud to part of an organization like this.” For more information, visit www.tacc.utexas.edu.