A nonprofit organization created to fund arts, culture, scientific research, health and human services and education projects throughout the Pacific Northwest, the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust is led by trustees Jeff Grubb, John Castles, and Jeff Pinneo. In regard to education, Murdock Trust has supported numerous institutions, including Portland State University (PSU).
With its grant funding, PSU purchased a high-performance computing cluster to further its computation-intensive research regarding the effects of transportation chokes and pollutants on regional and global atmosphere quality. Utilizing data obtained from their studies, researchers at the school's Center for Climate and Aerosol Research hope to create changes that will help reduce pollutants while, at the same time, allow for the continued efficient movement of goods and people.
The computer, named Gaia in honor of the Greek goddess of Earth, helped the school's research team more effectively analyze methane emissions in Earth's atmosphere that were collected from the Olympic Peninsula as far back as the 1970s. A subsequent study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and highlighted a significant increase in methane emissions between 2000 and 2009 compared to the prior two decades.
