Blog Articles

Massachusetts Miracle

 “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

photo by John Solem / UMass Amherst

This iconic line from Jaws occurred to MIT Senior Scientist Jeremy Kepner ’91 on the day in 2004 when he realized that the modest new data center he and his team were planning to construct in converted lab space in the Boston area wouldn’t be large enough to handle the school’s ever-growing computing needs.

 Roy Scheider’s police chief character never did get that bigger boat. Kepner, though, succeeded in building a much larger data center—specifically, the recently opened Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC), a nine-acre, $100 million supercomputing complex constructed alongside the Connecticut River in Holyoke, Mass.

 Often larger than city blocks, data centers house countless racks of computer servers that handle the exabytes (1 followed by 18 zeros) of data generated by all of our Facebook status updates, tweets, credit card purchases, blog posts, song downloads and the trillions of other data bits that travel the Internet. Tens of thousands of data centers operate around the globe, with the largest using as much electricity as a small city.

 To handle MIT’s long-term computing needs, which involve processing everything from astronomical images and climate data to plant, animal and bacteria DNA sets and particle accelerator data, Kepner realized the university would need a data center 10 times the size of the facility under consideration. A quick calculation of the electrical costs (as much as $20 million per year) and the environmental impact (as much CO2 released per year as is typically emitted by a town of 10,000) forced him to think bigger—and greener. Spending the next year researching different approaches to power generation, Kepner traveled to Western Massachusetts and the post-industrial town of Holyoke, where he chatted with the local hydroelectric plant’s operator and supervisor. He discovered that a hydroelectric dam, once built, has very low costs because turbines last for decades and maintenance costs are minimal. Other benefits Holyoke offered included available land and a dire need for urban renewal. Convinced that hydroelectric was both the greenest and least expensive option, Kepner returned to MIT intent on persuading his fellow committee members to do something unprecedented: locate the university’s new data center in an old mill town 90 miles away.

 What followed was a five-year journey of persuasion and coalition-building that eventually brought together Harvard, Boston University, the University of Massachusetts and Northeastern University, all of which faced similar challenges in handling their ever-growing data processing needs.

 Also on board were Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, who saw the political advantage in locating a data center in economically depressed Holyoke, and corporate sponsors EMC and Cisco Systems. Executive Director John T. Goodhue credits Kepner with both the insight and the persistence that helped make the MCHPCC a reality. “Like many great ideas, the MGHPCC has many fathers—and mothers!,” he says, “but Jeremy was truly there at the beginning, when he made the first scouting visit to Holyoke in 2004 and was part of the original study group that laid out the ideas that led to the creation of the MGHPCC.”

 The 90,000-square-foot building, which was constructed on the site of an old textile mill, officially opened Nov. 16. The center is powered by water from the Connecticut River, while construction materials were culled from buildings that were demolished to make way for the MGHPCC. And while a typical data center consumes nine megawatts of power just to cool the sea of electrical equipment, the MGHPCC will cut that figure to just three megawatts, in part by circulating chilly New England air through the building during winter months.

 At the groundbreaking ceremony, Gov. Patrick said the facility serves as an economic development model for the state and the nation. Kepner, meanwhile, sees the MGHPCC as an example of how scientists can take the lead in working to counteract the potentially devastating impact of climate change.

 “The issues associated with global warming are very technical, which makes it difficult to act decisively as a society,” he says. “… those of us in the supercomputing community who understand the environmental impact of supercomputers need to come up with innovative solutions to those problems and see them implemented.”

 On a personal level, Kepner says the most rewarding moment came during a visit to Western Massachusetts with his wife, Alix Sholl ’90, and 11-year-old daughter Jemma a few weeks before the ribbon cutting. “On the way out of town I suggested to Alix that we go by the site so she could see it for the first time,” he says. “We drove past a warehouse and there it was, shining in the sun between the two canals. Alix was speechless. Eventually she turned to me and said, ‘I’m so proud of you!’ and gave me a big kiss.”

Lena Connor ’13: Ethics and the Environment

A recipient of the Udall Scholarship and a Rhodes and Marshall finalist, Lena Connor ’13 is a double major in environmental analysis and politics, with a minor in religious studies. Connor was among the first group of students awarded fellowships for full-time summer internships, funded by gifts to the Daring Minds campaign. She spent last summer working as a theological researcher for the National Council of Churches, where she put together the first comprehensive database of Protestant ecotheologians in the U.S. Connor, who grew up in Florida and Iowa, is commissioner of environmental affairs for Student Senate, a leader of the Pomona Student Union and a member of Uprising Christian Fellowship and the Pomona College Choir

 Shifting focus

When I first came to Pomona, I was interested in the policy side of the environmental movement. But after I started classes, I shifted my focus. Coming from a very conservative part of the U.S., I saw that a lot of political impasses have deeper roots in people’s cultural and religious ways of viewing resources, and in the way we organize societies and make economic decisions. I became more interested in getting to the roots of some of those problems after taking a class from Professor Char Miller and reading authors like Wendell Berry.

 Finding inspiration

The summer after my sophomore year, I got a Mellon grant to study bauxite mining in Brazil. When I got there, I realized that the most important actors in mediating conflict and advocating for the rural farmers were the Franciscan priests. I had been disenchanted with Christianity’s ability to do much about the environment in the U.S., partly because of apathy and because the issue had been so politicized. Being in Brazil refreshed my spirit and inspired me, because I’d seen a group of Christians who could incorporate ecological and Christian ethics and have their parishioners accept and embrace it.

 From the rainforest to Oxford University

I designed a one-on-one tutorial at Oxford with an emphasis on environmental ethics and spent hours and hours in libraries reading through theological texts. It was one of most emotionally and intellectually fulfilling experiences of my college career, and I decided then I wanted to study the intersection of religion and environmentalism for the rest of my life. The people who suffer from environmental degradation are often the poorest, and there is a link in Christian theology between renewal of the earth and caring for the marginalized.

 Transforming practical experience into a senior thesis

My internship with the National Council of Churches gave me a more nuanced and informed look at how academic theology and nonprofits interrelate, and how you get ecotheological theory from the ivory tower to the pulpit and into the political realm of discourse. I also attended a conference in Pennsylvania, where a Lutheran synod created a task force to study the controversial gas extraction method known as “fracking” and passed a resolution for a moratorium against it. I interviewed the congregants and pastors about the church’s appropriate role, which along with my experience in Brazil, became part of my senior thesis.

 What is really valuable

Pomona, more than anything else, has taught me that this track that we’re on is not just a superficial endeavor about wealth or success or worldly glory. In my time here, I’ve been instructed by people who are grounded in what is really valuable in life. When I leave and go to graduate school and enter into what I would like to do, which is becoming ordained and doing academic ecotheology, I want to carry on what Pomona has given me by focusing on something in a deep and meaningful way.