Images courtesy of Office of Vice President for Information Technology
Indiana University
The Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute Hub, developed by IU and Purdue University, creates a collaborative virtual community and provides shared resources to support translational medical research across the state of Indiana. Translational medicine strives to convert work done by medical researchers into practical and applied treatments used by doctors and hospitals.
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license an ambient mass spectrometry device that will sharpen scientific, medical, and forensic analysis. Successful technology creation and transfer within Indiana creates jobs and helps grow the state’s economy. IU’s CI is a partner in scientists’ efforts to better understand the natural world. In South Carolina, researchers are using software developed by IU’s Pervasive Technology Institute (PTI) to study the state’s changing coastal environment. In Greenland, IU’s Polar Grid, developed by the PTI Digital Science Center, is a powerful ally in understanding climate change and its effect on the world’s polar ice caps (see Science on Ice, page 8). Using IU’s Big Red supercomputer and Data Capacitor, environmental scientists collaborate to create and manage the abundant digital resources that fuel their research. As a partner in the national TeraGrid, a massive NSF-supported open infrastructure for scientific discovery, IU makes its CI available to scientists nationally. As part of a federal grant, IU provides computation and storage for research collaborations and develops complexity-hiding tools to open the TeraGrid to easier use by many researchers. The newly established Pervasive Technology Institute at Indiana University focuses on research that extends what information technology can do not only in advanced research, but also in improving human life. Supported by a recent award from the Lilly Endowment, the PTI conducts IT research at
the edge, creating new inventions, devices, and software that can help accelerate economic growth in Indiana by commercializing inventions and software, and via collaborations with industry partners. In offering students hand-on opportunities to learn, it helps prepare a 21st-century workforce in Indiana. Many activities related to the PTI are reflected in this issue. The following paragraphs highlight some especially timely projects. Environmental challenges — hurricanes, tornadoes, and severe weather — grab headlines, claim lives, and damage land and property. Timely, accurate weather prediction is a national priority. PTI researchers from the Data to Insight Center are increasing human understanding of weather phenomena with the Linked Environments for Atmospheric Discovery (LEAD). Developed with NSF support, LEAD equips meteorologists and weather researchers with essential weather monitoring, prediction, and visualization tools in a central, user-friendly web environment. Using LEAD, weather researchers harness highly advanced software and powerful supercomputers, without having to learn techniques in high performance computing. Such “gateway” or “portal” technologies developed at PTI free scientists to do what they do best — focus on the research. The PTI is also a participant in the Indiana Life Sciences Initiative, one of the growing strengths of the Indiana economy. The PTI’s Life Sciences group is developing a portal