The National Science Foundation awarded University faculty nearly $1 million for a campus-wide project aimed at bringing “big data” computational capabilities to LSU research groups, the University announced in a news release on Thursday.
The project, officially titled “CC-NIE Integration: Bridging, Transferring and Analyzing Big Data over 10Gbps Campus-Wide Software Defined Networks,” will help University researchers develop advanced technology and cyber infrastructure they need to complete genome sequencing research, the news release stated.
Seung-Jong Park, associate professor of computer science with joint appointment in the Center for Computation and Technology, along with co-investigators Joel Tohline, Sean Robbins, Lonnie Leger and K. Gus Kousoulas are just some of the faculty members involved in this new project, the release said.
“Big Data is a very hot term right now,” Park said. “Genome sequencing is one of the major drivers for Big Data research. It is not unusual to produce many terabytes of data in sequencing the human genome, or trillions of digital information bytes. But processing terabytes of data has been a headache for researchers using their own equipment.”
Because genome sequencing requires large amounts of data processing, it requires immense computational power and data storage capabilities, which the grant money will help fund.
Although the University already has multiple powerful supercomputers, they are not adapted for big data, which the project requires.
“But that is set to change. Park and colleagues are building a high-speed intra-campus network that will connect separate lab groups on campus to LSU’s primary supercomputer facility,” the release states.
The network – collaboration with Samsung Electronics – will be similar to cloud computing and will eliminate the need for separate supercomputers because every researcher could be connected on a single network.
“The cyberinfrastructure developed at LSU with this NSF funding can serve as a model for facilitating and promoting biomedical and other research collaborations among all LSU campuses and other institutions in Louisiana in the future,” Kousoulas said.