OSC was established by the
Ohio Board of Regents (now the Ohio Department of Higher Education) in 1987 as a statewide resource designated to place Ohio's research universities and private industry in the forefront of computational research. Also in 1987, the OSC networking initiative — known today as
OARnet — provided the first network access to the Center’s first Cray supercomputer. In 1988, OSC launched the Center’s Industrial Interface Program to serve businesses interested in accessing the supercomputer.
Battelle Memorial Institute, located just south of Ohio State, became OSC’s first industrial user. Today, the Center continues to offer HPC services to researcher in industry, primarily through its AweSim industrial engagement program. In the summer of 1989, 20 talented high school students attended the first Governor’s Summer Institute. Today, OSC offers summer STEM education programs through Summer Institute and Young Women's summer Institute, which began in 2000. Later in the fall of 1989, OSC engineers installed a $22 million Cray Y-MP8/864 system, which was deemed the largest and fastest supercomputer in the world for a short time. The seven-ton system was able to calculate 200 times faster than many mainframes at that time.
Directors of the Center: • William McCurdy, Ph.D., OSC Acting Director, 1986–87 • Charles Bender, Ph.D., OSC Executive Director, 1987-2002 • Al Stutz, OSC Acting Director, 2001 •
Russell Pitzer, Ph.D., OSC Interim Director, 2001-2003 • Stanley Ahalt, Ph.D., OSC Executive Director, 2003-2009 • Ashok Krishnamurthy, Ph.D., OSC Interim Co-executive Director, 2009-2012 • Steven Gordon, Ph.D., OSC Interim Co-executive Director, 2009-2012 • Pankaj Shah, OSC Executive Director, 2012-2015 • David Hudak, Ph.D., OSC Interim Executive Director, 2015-2018, Executive Director 2018- == Systems ==