Environmental Science Research Enabled by Cloud Computing
Catherine van Ingen (Microsoft Research)
COMPUTER SCIENCE SEMINARDATE: 2010-10-26
TIME: 15:00:00 - 17:00:00
LOCATION: CSIT Seminar Room, N101
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ABSTRACT:
The combination of internet availability of remote sensing, land-based sensors, and other field data with emerging cloud computing technologies is enabling new environmental science research. Data products from satellites such as MODIS or GRACE augment ground based measurements from networks such as Fluxnet or NEON. Cloud computing technologies such as Microsoftas Azure or Amazonas EC2 offer the necessary computational, storage, and networking resources to process these large data. Large scale distributed computational infrastructures such as DryadLINQ and Hadoop reduce the complexity of parallel computations. Workflow systems such as Trident or Taverna can orchestrate, document, and replication the end:end analytical processes. Lastly, the ability to visualize the data deluge along such a processing pipeline remains a fundamental need and active area of research. This talk presents experience from the MODISAzure and TeraPixel projects. MODISAzure supports the Breathing Earth Science Simulator; we have done global scale biogeoscience computations. The TeraPixel image is believe to be the largest, clearest image of the night sky.
BIO:
Dr Catharine van Ingen is a Partner Architect in the eScience Group of Microsoft Research. Her research explores how commercial database and other technologies can transform research in the environmental sciences by enabling synthesis science. She works with both scientists and computer scientist from a number of academic institutions on water-related or carbon-climate analyses. She also works with the PanSTARRS telescope collaboration. Prior to joining Jim Grayas San Francisco lab in 2005, she was the Windows architect focused on storage management. Prior to joining Microsoft in 1997, Catharine was a machine architect for the Alpha 7000 at Digital Equipment Corporation, member of the online software team for large high energy physics detectors, and on the faculty at University of California, Berkeley. She holds a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the California Institute of Technology (1981), Masters of Science in Civil Engineering from University of California Berkeley (1974) and Bachelor of Science cum Laude in Civil Engineering from University of California, Irvine (1973).
