Fulbright visit forges life sciences technology partnerships for IU and international collaborators
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- The intersection of high performance computing and the life sciences was the focus of a recent visit to the Technische Universität Dresden made by Indiana University Associate Vice President for Research and Academic Computing Dr. Craig Stewart, who is also the chief operating officer of Pervasive Technology Labs. Stewart was hosted by the Center for Information Services and High Performance Computing (ZIH) as part of a month-long visit funded by the Fulbright Senior Specialists Program.
The Fulbright Senior Specialists Program complements the traditional Fulbright Scholar Program by providing short-term international academic and research opportunities to prominent U.S. faculty and professionals.
Stewart, who also serves as chief information architect for the Indiana Metabolomics and Cytomics Initiative, noted that both Indiana University and the Technische Universität Dresden have identified life sciences and information technology as top research priorities, making the collaboration a benefit to both institutions. "Dresden is a tremendously exciting place that is seeing real advancement in these important areas of research," said Stewart, "It was a real honor to participate in the growth of life science and information technology at the Technische Universität Dresden."
As a result of the Fulbright visit, Stewart, staff of ZIH, and Indiana University researchers completed work on an open source software package that enumerates words - sequences of a particular length - within a genome. The group plans to submit a paper describing the software to a leading academic journal in the coming weeks.
Indiana University also solidified plans to purchase Vampir NG, specialized software developed by the ZIH that will enhance the performance of the university's newly acquired IBM BladeCenter supercomputer. Features of Vampir NG relate to work being done by Pervasive Technology Labs and Stewart noted that the new relationship provides an opportunity for collaboration between the labs and the ZIH developers. Matthias Mueller, chief technology officer of the ZIH, said, "We are looking forward to continuing the work with the experts at Indiana University to improve the performance of important bioinformatics codes. Providing the necessary performance analysis tools is one important part of it."
About the Pervasive Technology Labs
Pervasive Technology Labs at Indiana University (pervasive.iu.edu), established in 1999 by a grant from Lilly Endowment, Inc., performs leading-edge research based on the ubiquity of information technology in today's world, creating new inventions, devices, and software that extend the capabilities of information technology in advanced research and everyday life. Fundamental to its mission are efforts to attract, encourage, educate, and retain Indiana's workforce of tomorrow, and to accelerate economic growth in the State through the commercialization of new inventions and by forming and supporting new start-up companies. In carrying out its mission, Pervasive Technology Labs is helping Indiana University maintain its position of international leadership in information technology research and, as a result, is helping to enhance the prosperity of the entire State of Indiana.
About Life Sciences at Indiana University
Indiana University has recently completed a Life Sciences Strategic Plan, which charts a course for Indiana University's research and development activities in the life sciences. Further information is available at lifesciences.iu.edu/strategic/
About The Center for Information Services and High Performance Computing (ZIH)
ZIH (www.tu-dresden.de/zih) is a central scientific institution of the Technische Universität Dresden. It is an established competence center for parallel computing and software tools, and supports users from industry as well as research institutes with a focus on performance evaluation and optimization. The performance analysis tool Vampir, developed by ZIH is available on most of the current HPC architectures. The center is involved in the following research areas: Software tools for parallel programming, architecture and performance evaluation, and optimization; scheduling and load balancing concepts on parallel systems (homogeneous as well as heterogeneous), innovative methods for computing; algorithms and methods for the modeling of biological processes, and software tools for grid computing.
About the Fulbright Senior Specialists Program
Recipients of Fulbright Scholar awards are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement. For further information about the Fulbright Senior Specialists Program, please contact FULSPEC@cies.iie.org or consult www.cies.org.
