Help Name Northwestern’s New GPU Cluster

Last month, we shared news about Northwestern IT’s partnership with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) to build a powerful new GPU computing cluster designed to support the growing research needs of the University. Expected to launch in summer 2027, the cluster will significantly expand access to advanced computing resources for artificial intelligence, machine learning, data-intensive research, scientific simulations, and other computationally demanding work.

Now, the project team needs your help with an important next step: giving the new cluster a name. Northwestern faculty, staff, and students are invited to submit name suggestions for the new GPU cluster. The selected name will become the official identity of the service and will be used across the cluster itself, host names, servers, websites, documentation, and communications materials.

Contest Guidelines

To ensure the name works across technical systems and user-facing services, submissions must follow a few guidelines:

• One word only
• Eight characters or fewer
• No special characters
• Not an acronym, trademark, brand name, or copyrighted content
• Two syllables or fewer
• Does not need to be related to Quest
• Open to Northwestern faculty, staff, and students
• Each person may submit up to two names

Whether your inspiration comes from discovery, innovation, Lake Michigan, purple pride, or something entirely unexpected, we encourage you to get creative.

The new cluster represents a major commitment to supporting Northwestern’s research for years to come, providing scalable GPU resources through a partnership with NCSA and creating new opportunities for researchers across disciplines.

Help us give this new resource a name worthy of the groundbreaking work it will support.

How to Submit Ideas

Submit your ideas by Friday, September 11, and help shape the future of research computing at Northwestern.

The Research Computing and Data Services team will then select the top five names and open voting will begin Monday, September 28, and close Friday, October 9. Details on how to vote will be available in the coming weeks. The winning name will be announced in the RCDS newsletter in mid-October.