Milwaukee School of Engineering’s supercomputer has completed 150,000 jobs since 2019, is powered by Silicon Valley technology and has some of the most advanced computing abilities in the state. Its name is Rosie.
Located in a glass-wrapped room like a museum exhibit, the computer is built from Santa Clara, California-based NVIDIA equipment and operates kind of like a mini data center, with machines in surrounding rooms to power its operations and then cool it off.
“If you walk by Rosie in March as final projects come due, it’s humming, it’s loud, it’s a little hot, but that’s great, because that means everything’s being used,” said Dwight Diercks, a MSOE graduate who, along with his wife, donated $34 million for the campus building where Rosie resides. “It’s my favorite time of year.”
Rosie, named for the women who programmed one of the earliest computers during the World War II era, is helping to advance MSOE’s AI education for the next generation.
MSOE recently celebrated five years of Dwight and Dian Diercks Computational Science Hall, where Rosie is located, which leaders say has been instrumental in making the university a leader in computer science and AI education, graduating students that now work at some of the most influential companies in tech.
“It’s been said, the flowers of bloom tomorrow are the seeds you plant today, and today we smell the flowers from the seeds from yesterday,” said Diercks, who is the senior vice president of software engineering at NVIDIA and a MSOE regent.
At 65,536 square feet (which was important to Diercks because it’s a binary number), Diercks Hall is located at the center of MSOE’s downtown Milwaukee campus and has given students, faculty, staff and the university’s corporate partners access to state-of-the-art classrooms and laboratories, as well as the supercomputer, MSOE leaders said.
Since the building opened in 2019, MSOE’s first class of bachelor’s in computer science students graduated in 2022, with 119 students graduating from the program since then. They’ve gone on to work at companies like Amazon Robotics, NVIDIA, Google, Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, SpaceX, Rockwell Automation, Direct Supply and Baird, among others.
In the meantime, the university also has increased its academic offerings for AI-related certificates and curriculum. In 2023, MSOE launched the AI for emerging applications undergraduate certificate and the graduate certificate in advanced business strategy using AI and analytics, and also established the PieperPower endowed chair in AI and started an AI Club.
MSOE is still the only undergraduate program in Wisconsin offering a bachelor’s in computer science that is focused on artificial intelligence.
“(In planning for Diercks Hall) We saw the need for computer science and AI, and for the need to create a program where we could have graduates lean into this upcoming AI revolution that we knew was coming,” Diercks said. “We launched the first of its kind in the nation: an AI heavy curriculum, computer science degree.”
The addition of Diercks Hall and Rosie has helped advance the school’s mission of offering hands-on learning and access to cutting edge learning tools for their students, MSOE leaders said, which is unique at a school like MSOE where a vast majority students are in an undergraduate program, rather than a graduate program.
“At a lot of R1 schools, they’re a research focused university where the faculty’s job is to do research, and all they really do is get grants and churn out publications like it’s going out of style, maybe undergraduates get to do some menial lab work,” said Jeremy Kedziora, the PieperPower endowed chair in AI. “That’s their job. That’s not MSOE. This place is a primarily undergraduate, primarily teaching institution. Our job here as faculty members is to really help mold the undergraduates become their best selves, so that when they’ve done with their time here they can go on the job market and absolutely crush it.”
Having an in-house supercomputer enables faculty and students to increase their research productivity by cutting the time that they’d otherwise spend finding contracts and funding to compute elsewhere, according to Kedziora. This year, he’s been working with students on a project that will help humans better control AI and make sure the technology “doesn’t go off the rails.”
“These are important issues and questions that undergraduates get to explore,” said Kedziora. “My goal for when (students) leave MSOE is that they think of themselves as my peer, my colleague. I think there’s no better way to do that than to struggle together on something new, producing something innovative.”
In addition to supporting existing students, having Rosie and Diercks Hall has helped attract more students to MSOE, according to president John Walz. Enrollment at MSOE has increased year-over-year, even as other universities see enrollment declines. In 2023, MSOE enrolled 2,834 students, a 3% increase from the year before.
“If you ever need an example of how a building can transform a university, you need to look no further than Diercks Hall,” Walz said at an event celebrating the building’s five-year anniversary.
“At NVIDIA, we are able to do our best work because we have the best tools and talent available to us, and the resources available for students in Diercks Hall are the best that the Midwest has to offer,” Diercks said. “MSOE’s hands-on programs and opportunities prepared me to find success in my career, and with cutting-edge technology readily available for students, they too will graduate ready to find their own success.”
