The high speed CANARIE network has announced $4 million more in software research projects involving the crunching of large amounts of data in disciplines ranging from astrophysics to genetics and disaster management.
“These new software tools will enable researchers to access, process, manipulate, visualize, and share immense volumes of digital data and accelerate the progression of this data from collection to discovery and ultimately, to breakthroughs that enrich the lives of Canadians,” the agency said in a statement.
The newly-funded projects will be able to use research platform interfaces developed by other researchers in work funded by the network, which, it is hoped, will speed software development. All RPIs are available free for scientific research.
Established in 19993, CANARIE provides a backbone that connects 12 provincial and territorial research networks like British Columbia’s BCnet and Ontario’s ORION. It also offers cloud computing services to high-tech entrepreneurs for research.
The new projects include
— HEP Data-Intensive Distributed Cloud Computing, led by Dr. Randall Sobie, department of physics and astronomy, University of Victoria. A software platform that expands cloud computing functionality for the globally-distributed facilities supporting the ATLAS high energy physics (HEP) experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider in Europe.
— Web-Enabled Awareness Research Network (WARN); led by Benoit Pirenne of Ocean Networks Canada. The software platform implements very fast detection of on-land and off-shore sensor data to provide key information about impending disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis.
— SKA Global Science Data Delivery Platform, led by professor Russ Taylor, department of physics and astronomy, University of Calgary. It evolves the collaborative global platform for the distribution, delivery and access to astronomical data from the Square Kilometre Array project.
— M+M: Movement + Meaning Middleware, led by Dr. Thecla Schiphorst, School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Simon Fraser University. A novel software platform that represents and visualizes sensor-based human movement for use in entertainment, gaming and quality of life applications.
— Software-as-a-Service for Big Data Analytics, led by Dr. Chris Pritchet, department of physics and astronomy, University of Victoria – A software platform for a seven-country/14-institution collaboration to explore the universe and simulate the origin of stars. A second platform will support advanced image processing from the New Mexico Very Large Array of radio telescopes.
— Research and Education Activities in Laboratory Mechatronics (REALM); led by Dr. Michael Bauer, department of computer science, University of Western Ontario. A software platform that enables a wide array of researchers to observe, control, and collect data from remote experiments, including the use of remote access of robotic devices.
— Genetics and Genomics Analysis Platform (GenAP), led by Dr. Guillaume Bourque, department of human genetics, McGill University. A new software platform that facilitates the distribution and analysis of genetic and genomics data for the life science research community, including a web portal to facilitate data access, visualization, and analysis through distributed high performance computing (HPC) centres.
— CBRAIN for High Performance Computing (CHPC), led by Dr. Alan Evans, Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University – A service that leverages the previously-funded “Canadian Brain Research And Informatics Network” platform to provide the research community with web-based access to powerful supercomputers across Canada and around the world.
— Map-updating Web Service Based on Landsat-8 Imagery for the National Hydrographic Network; led by Dr. Langis Gagnon, Centre de Recherche Informatique de Montreal (CRIM) – A new software service that processes satellite images for semi-automatic updating of lakes and large streams with Landsat-8 imagery.