A Legacy of Support for Scientific Innovation
The evolution of the WAVE HPC Center from a visionary concept into Santa Clara University’s premier computational resource has been made possible through the extraordinary generosity of two cornerstone partners: the E. L. Wiegand Foundation and the Fletcher Jones Foundation. Their strategic investments have provided the essential capital, academic programming, and long-term sustainability required to place SCU at the forefront of undergraduate research and interdisciplinary discovery.
The E. L. Wiegand Foundation: Establishing the Infrastructure
The E. L. Wiegand Foundation provided the foundational support that allowed Santa Clara University to launch the WAVE project. Through a transformative $639,000 grant awarded in 2018, the Foundation funded the acquisition of the Center's initial "massively parallel" compute cluster and specialized visualization equipment.
This critical investment addressed a growing need for centralized, high-performance hardware, moving the University away from a patchwork of departmental labs and toward a unified, campus-wide resource. By providing the initial "bricks and mortar" of our computational environment—including high-end GPU nodes, massive data storage, and the networking equipment that connects them—the E. L. Wiegand Foundation created the physical engine that drives our most complex research today.
The Fletcher Jones Foundation: Empowering the Community
While the hardware provided the capacity, the Fletcher Jones Foundation provided the catalyst for broad adoption across the University. In 2023, the Foundation awarded a $1 million grant entitled "Catalyzing Undergraduate Experiences in Advanced Computation and Visualization".
This project was specifically designed to scale the impact of our HPC resources by investing in human capital. The Fletcher Jones grant supports a five-year capacity-building initiative that funds faculty course-redesign stipends, skills-based workshops, and catalytic research grants. Furthermore, the grant established a permanent $250,000 fellowship endowment, ensuring that a cascaded mentorship model—where advanced students support and guide their peers—will remain a permanent fixture of the WAVE HPC Center for generations to come.
Explore Our Foundations
For a detailed look at the transformational impacts of each foundation’s contribution, please visit our dedicated sub-pages:
- [The E. L. Wiegand Foundation]: Learn about the initial 2018 grant and the launch of the WAVE cluster.
- [The Fletcher Jones Foundation]: Discover the ongoing programmatic work and student fellowship opportunities enabled by this $1M investment.