IU to receive $30 million for research

IU was recently selected to receive $30 million in funding over a five-year period for a University computer that will link to others across the world to increase research productivity. The grant from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science will help expand a large network of computers, called the Open Science Grid. \n"Essentially (the) Open Science Grid makes it possible for IU researchers to use computers at other universities and laboratories in return for IU researchers making their computers available to researchers at those other universities and laboratories," Fred Luehring, a senior scientist for the physics department, said in an e-mail. \nCraig Stewart, associate vice president for research and academic computing, said the grid is primarily a research tool that links a lot of small computers together and attempts to do large amounts of work that normally could not be done. He said by doing this, computers and storage systems can analyze experiment data with ease.\nThe grid has millions of gigabytes of storage space that researchers around the world will be able to access and use for data analysis. The grid location at IU will link computers in Bloomington to the 60 other computing stations throughout the United States, Europe, South America and Asia. \nThe grid is a unique asset that most college campuses do not have and was designed to support research for fields such as physics, biology and chemistry, Stewart said. He added that it is one of the most important federally funded programs in the field. \n"This project brings together a unique ensemble of scientists, software developers and providers of computing resources who share a common goal to stimulate new discoveries by providing scientists with effective access to the OSG, a national distributed computational facility," IU Open Science Grid Site Lead Leigh Grundhoefer said. \nThe grid will not just benefit researching faculty. It also will give undergraduate and graduate students who conduct research more computer power to analyze their data. \n"The students at IU that this is going to effect are going to be those graduate or undergraduate students doing research projects, particularly students in one of the science collaborations," Stewart said. "For graduate students throughout the U.S., it's often the case that research is limited because of limited access." \nIU was selected five years ago by the International Virtual Data Grid Laboratory to become involved in a grid operations program. Since then, researchers have been able to develop the structure necessary to support the Open Science Grid. \n"It is important for IU technology services to create effective cyberinfrastructure that provides to students and faculty the foundations for research and scientific discovery," Grundhoefer said.