“
We don’t do science. We enable other people to do great, great science – by creating this environment and infrastructure for them to succeed. That’s the power here. –
”
Parker Antin, Principal Investigator, CyVerse
data sets. With CyVerse, suddenly you can upload unlimited amounts of data, you can process it and share it and point it at data analysis applications.” Next-generation computing resources
In one recent breakthrough, CyVerse enabled UA geneticist Taylor Edwards in his discovery of a new tortoise species in northern Mexico. Edwards was able to easily share his data with collaborators and process the genetic information using the CyVerse platform. Likewise for Fiona McCarthy, a UA associate professor in the School of Animal and Comparative Biomedical Sciences, CyVerse enables work that couldn’t otherwise be done. “This is a real turning point for biologists. This is the first time that we’re able to get more data so rapidly that we actually are lagging behind in understanding what that means,” McCarthy said. McCarthy, who has worked on CyVerse since its inception, studies bird genomes, focusing on bioinformatics and genomics – research that re-
www.BizTucson.com
quires next-generation computing resources. The chicken was the first bird genome to be sequenced, more than 10 years ago. Now there are more than 50 species to be sequenced and part of McCarthy’s research uses comparative modeling to study how birds evolved and are related to each other. “One of the things that’s fundamental is dropping boundaries and developing collaborative links for the researchers,” McCarthy said. “I can put my data on CyVerse and decide who I share it with. I don’t have to mail this hard drive to a collaborator. It’s so easy to share data now with just a couple of clicks.” Science itself is transforming in the era of big data, Antin said. The traditional model of hypothesis-based inquiry is losing ground to what’s called discovery-based science – where the collection and analysis of data can occur without any specific question in mind. “We have a mantra that we enable science. We don’t do science. We enable other people to do great, great science – by creating this envi-
ronment and infrastructure for them to succeed,” Antin said. “That’s the power here. It doesn’t matter if it’s in space, or in biology, if you have a major challenge and you need computing resources, we’re your people. ‘Customers for life’
As CyVerse has grown and expanded, it’s built a reputation in the scientific community as an indispensable resource for investigators across disciplines. “In the beginning we went out and sought users. Now, we have so much going on that we don’t have to do that anymore. People are coming to us. As soon as we solve their data needs, they’re customers for life,” Antin said. CyVerse has changed and adapted over time by staying in close contact with its users, creating and adding new capabilities along the way as users’ needs change. “We have a group of scientific analysts who understand both the cyber infrastructure and the needs of the users. It’s through this interaction we realize and create new capabilities within the infra-
structure,” Antin said. “The capabilities are driven by the users. CyVerse can address users who just point and click – but we can also take users who know how to code and they can build their own applications.” Antin and his co-principal investigators at the UA – Nirav Merchant, director of information technology at Arizona Research Laboratories, and Eric Lyons, assistant professor of plant sciences – lead what’s becoming one of the UA’s most notable scientific attributes. “One of the reasons it started here is we have world-class plant biologists and worldclass computer capability in our faculty,” Antin said. “Having this here is a unique attribute, similar to having the OSIRIS-Rex project or the Biosphere. You can think of this as a unique resource on the scale of those because we can enable so many major projects.”
Biz
Spring 2016 > > > BizTucson 43