WASHINGTON (Feb. 26, 2014) — Researchers announced today that scientists running genomic analyses at George Washington University’s Colonial One High Performance Computing Center will pilot ultra high-speed 40 Gigabit per second data transfers from the National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine (NLM) using both organizations' new 100 Gigabit per second links to the Internet2 Network.
“Biomedical researchers need high-bandwidth access to the extremely large data sets used in today’s medical research,” commented Don Preuss, who heads the Systems group at the NLM’s National Center for Biotechnology Information. “Our new 100 Gigabit connection to the Internet2 backbone will provide researchers at GW and other research centers with state-of-the-art connectivity.”
“High speed transfers via Internet2’s Network will enable us to provide our genomic clients with faster results, ultimately hastening discovery and therapeutic decisions," said Raja Mazumder, associate professor of biochemistry and molecular medicine at the GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences and co-developer of the High-performance Integrated Virtual Environment (HIVE) - a genomic analysis platform. Dr. Mazumder developed HIVE in conjunction with Dr. Vahan Simonyan, currently a lead scientist at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Internet2 featured the HIVE genomic analysis platform at the SC13 supercomputing conference in Denver last November as one of the tools to meet the challenge of data-intensive research. HIVE provides a novel approach to computation that greatly speeds up the analysis of genomic data. SC is the largest international conference for high-performance computing, networking, storage and analysis.
“Internet2 is pleased to be part of this public-private collaboration. Our 100 gigabit network enables a high-performance genomics platform like HIVE to realize its full potential by removing external bottlenecks,” said Michael Sullivan, associate director, Internet2.
George Washington University connects to the Internet2 backbone network through its new research network, the Capital Area Advanced Research and Education Network (CAAREN). CAAREN provides high-performance research and education infrastructure to government, education and research organizations, as well as some private-sector organizations, in the Washington, DC area. It will facilitate world-class research, education and knowledge sharing in the nation’s capital.
CAAREN is partnering with DC-Net, a program managed by the DC Office of the Chief Technology Officer, to provide public and private K-12 schools, public libraries, museums, hospitals and independent research organizations with access to Internet2.
CAAREN will enhance collaboration and reduce barriers to research, education and health applications, supporting the national capital region as a center of cutting-edge knowledge.
