Skip to main content
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
STEM
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • University Statements
  • Syracuse University Impact
  • |
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
Sections
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • University Statements
  • Syracuse University Impact
  • |
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
STEM

ECS Professor Secures Yahoo Donation of Servers for Research Processing

Tuesday, May 15, 2018, By Kathleen Haley
Share
College of Engineering and Computer ScienceResearch and CreativeSTEM
man standing in front of computer servers

Yahoo Labs has made an initial donation of 120 servers, or about 1,000 cores, that have been installed as part of the University’s Research Computing facilities in Machinery Hall. The donation was secured by Reza Zafarani, assistant professor in the College of Engineering and Computer Science and director of the Data Lab.

The search to answer research questions through vast amounts of data requires massive amounts of computer server space. Syracuse University has a healthy number of data servers ready to assist researchers, but a recent donation by Yahoo is adding more resources to the mix.

Yahoo Labs has made an initial donation of 120 servers, or about 1,000 cores—each server has about eight cores as part of its central processing unit. The servers have been installed as part of the University’s Research Computing facilities in Machinery Hall. Another 3,000 cores is forthcoming.

The donation was secured by Reza Zafarani, assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Zafarani is the director of the Data Lab in the College of Engineering and Computer Science.

“Syracuse University’s Research Computing center provides robust resources for high-performance computing, but this donation is a good addition to the clusters we have,” Zafarani says.

Yahoo collaboration

Zafarani had previously collaborated with research scientists at Yahoo and learned about its Academic Partnerships program that provides servers to academic researchers.

The servers were shipped to the University in December, and it took a couple of months to set them up, but they are now operational as part of the Research Computing services.

Zafarani recognized the work of members of the University’s Research Computing team; Eric Sedore, associate CIO for infrastructure services; and Doug Hague, Data Center manager, who set up the units and integrated them with the campus network infrastructure. “These servers consume a lot of power so they have to make sure they have enough,” Zafarani says.

He also noted the work of the ECS technology team members Jim Spoelstra, director of information technology, and Matt Hanley, information technology analyst, who helped set up the operating systems and virtual machines on these servers.

Large-scale networks research

This donation will assist Zafarani—and the work of his lab—in his research looking at large-scale networks and social media sites. Zafarani’s students, mainly Ph.D. students, in the Data Lab are also doing research in this area and regularly use the cluster.

“Most of what I do is look at networks with maybe billions of users and sometimes we have to count or predict things really quickly within these networks to measure specific patterns,” Zafarani says.

For example, if they are looking to determine if a rumor is being spread on a social network, researchers will have to look at a lot of users in real time to see how that piece of information is propagating.

“Basically I do a lot of data collection from social media networks and social media sites and the web, and in general utilize large-scale data sets,” Zafarani says. “I measure things in it, I predict things in it and I model things in it. All of this requires large-scale computing facilities and this helps with that.”

They may look at how the network looks like with different categories of people—maybe for a specific malicious group or people connected through a specific activity.

“The connections of social patterns change over time for different groups so you have to be able to look at these groups at scale, and you have to be able to do it fast so that you can provide timely insights,” he says.

Social network sentiments

Recently, Zafarani’s team looked at how sentiments propagate on social networks. For example, previous smaller-scale psychology and sociology studies say that if you have friends who are happy that may make you happier. Using large-scale networks, Zafarani’s team looked at how these smaller-type studies with smaller groups might be verified using large networks of people.

“We look at a very large-scale network of people, basically one to two million people, with about 25-30 million friendships, and then we looked at sentiments expressed by them over 10 years,” he says.

Researchers can look at specific questions, such as predicting if someone is happy or sad by their network of friends. “We can see the way people become friends with each other,” he says. “The network structure of friendship tells a lot about their emotions.”

The research into greater human understanding involves both engineering and the social sciences.

“In terms of algorithms, analysis and methods, it’s engineering. In terms of how it’s applied, it’s interdisciplinary,” Zafarani says.

  • Author

Kathleen Haley

  • Recent
  • Newhouse Creative Advertising Students Win Big at Sports and Entertainment Clios
    Friday, May 30, 2025, By News Staff
  • Syracuse University Libraries’ Information Literacy Scholars Produce Information Literacy Collab Journal
    Thursday, May 29, 2025, By Cristina Hatem
  • Syracuse Spirit on Display: Limited-Edition Poster Supports Future Generations
    Thursday, May 29, 2025, By News Staff
  • Timur Hammond’s ‘Placing Islam’ Receives Journal’s Honorable Mention
    Tuesday, May 27, 2025, By News Staff
  • Syracuse University, Lockerbie Academy Reimagine Partnership, Strengthen Bond
    Friday, May 23, 2025, By News Staff

More In STEM

University’s Dynamic Sustainability Lab and Ireland’s BiOrbic Sign MOU to Advance Markets for the Biobased Economy

This month at the All Island Bioeconomy Summit held in Co. Meath, Ireland, it was announced that BiOrbic, Research Ireland Centre for Bioeconomy, comprising 12 leading Irish research universities in Ireland, signed a joint memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Dynamic Sustainability…

Professor Bing Dong Named as the Traugott Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

The College of Engineering and Computer Science has named Bing Dong as the Traugott Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. This endowed professorship is made possible by a 1998 gift from the late Fritz Traugott H’98 and his wife, Frances….

Physics Professor Honored for Efforts to Improve Learning, Retention

The Department of Physics in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S) has made some big changes lately. The department just added an astronomy major approved by New York State and recently overhauled the undergraduate curriculum to replace traditional labs with innovative…

ECS Team Takes First Place in American Society of Civil Engineers Competition

Civil and environmental engineering student teams participated in the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Sustainable Solutions and Steel Bridge competitions during the 2025 Upstate New York-Canada Student Symposium, winning first place in the Sustainable Solutions competition. The symposium was…

Chloe Britton Naime Committed to Advocating for Improved Outcomes for Neurodivergent Individuals

Chloe Britton Naime ’25 is about to complete a challenging and rare dual major program in both mechanical engineering from the College of Engineering and Computer Science and neuroscience from the College of Arts and Sciences. Even more impressive? Britton…

Subscribe to SU Today

If you need help with your subscription, contact sunews@syr.edu.

Connect With Us

  • X
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
Social Media Directory

For the Media

Find an Expert Follow @SyracuseUNews
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
  • @SyracuseU
  • @SyracuseUNews
  • Social Media Directory
  • Accessibility
  • Privacy
  • Campus Status
  • Syracuse.edu
© 2025 Syracuse University News. All Rights Reserved.