Opinion - A round-up of the grid in Chile
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I was lucky enough to be a guest of REUNA in Chile, and make a presentation at their eScience Workshop in Santiago. REUNA is a not-for-profit organization connecting 16 universities in Chile, working to promote and advance grid computing in the region and bring together science and business to exchange ideas. REUNA is the original NREN in Chile, connecting the country to the 20,000 gridified institutions around the world via RedCLARA and the ALICE2 project. The organization has been investigating the state of the art in the region, setting up grid pilot projects in areas such as climate change, bioscience and grid technology, in which they transfer expertise through training and setting up an action plan for the future. Many other areas of research are ripe for grid computing, including astronomy, engineering, education and physics. REUNA has also set up collaboration meetings with individual business sectors that are important for Chile, including copper production, agriculture, viticulture and nanoscience. The Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica, or CONICYT, supported the setting up of REUNA and it is particularly concerned with business relations. Marcela Iglesias of CONICYT reminded us of the barriers to grid adoption, including the fact that business and science often speak different languages (a point that chimed particularly closely with me as one of the few non Spanish speakers at the meeting - I was extremely grateful for the heroic efforts of the translators). CONICYT are working to build bridges between the two, establishing clusters of research centers, registering the particular needs of different sectors and setting up 'brokers' on each side of the divide. |
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Many grid projects We heard from several of the scientists doing pioneering work in these areas, including the UCRAV project, which provides remote instrument operation over the grid. Not every university has access to their own X-ray diffractometer, NMR machine, PCR sequencer or electron microscope and many Chilean companies certainly don't - through the UCRAV scientific instruments grid project, institutions volunteering the use of their instruments can donate time to others for mutual benefit. David Holmes of the Centre for Bioinformatics and Genome Biology at the Fundacion Ciencia para la Vida, or FCV, talked us through some of the exciting work coming from his research team: just 16 PhDs, 26 doctoral students and 15 undergrads are making an impressive impact on research in medicine, fisheries, grapes, copper and trees. As in many other areas of science, the data tsunami is poised to hit the genome research community - as the cost of sequencing genes plummets, the growth in the number of base pairs being sequenced soars literally exponentially. Over 1000 genomes from the elephant, chicken and llama to chimps and Neanderthal man have been sequenced (apparently we now know our distant ancestors' skin and hair color). Holmes' team is also looking at the biorecovery of copper, in which bacterial organisms liberate copper from the crushed ore. Currently under construction in Chile is the world's largest such bioreactor - at 5km long, 3km wide and 120 metrers deep, this giant copper bioleaching lake known as La Mina Escondida would take the Niagara river three days to fill. The FCV will fish out the bacteria munching at the ore and spitting out copper, sequence their genomes and find out exactly what species are in this vast mine and what they are doing, benefiting an industry that still contributes 50% of Chile's GDP. This region is a place that will continue to be the site of new advances in science, as evidenced by the recent announcement of the discovery of the biggest star ever observed, by the Very Large Telescope in Chile. Visiting Chile was an amazing experience and the politeness and helpfulness of my hosts no less than impeccable. I said goodbye to the southern hemisphere with a significant amount of reluctance! -Catherine Gater, EGI. This article originally appeared in GridCast. |
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