What is eResearch?
From BeSTGRID
[edit] From 'hyphen - connecting KAREN communities' REANNZ our quarterly newsletter
See Issue 2 - hyphen
As the Director of eResearch, Paul is leading the charge in assisting the University of Auckland to develop ways to use eResearch in its activities and to implement eResearch infrastructure. eResearch is research enhanced by advanced Information Technology, particularly data capture and storage, computational processing and simulation, and advanced collaborative tools (such as, multi-point video conferencing and web portals).
‘The aim of eResearch is to do ‘faster, better and different’ research, and KAREN (as New Zealand’s high speed advanced network) is the key infrastructure underpinning this development’, says Paul.
‘Faster’ in that data is able to be exchanged among collaborators quicker; ‘better’ by providing a mechanism to collect, analyse and process much more data than before; and ‘different’ in that it enables greater cross-discipline activity and has spawned the emergence of new disciplines.
‘We must develop eResearch ability and do it with some urgency if our science and technology is to remain competitive in an international context.’
eResearch technologies enabled via KAREN allow researchers to participate in virtual research environments or ‘collaboratories’. Taking advantage of advanced networking technologies, collaboratories (such as NEES – Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation) enable collaboration between researchers distributed by geography and discipline by providing virtual environments (often a web portal) featuring communication tools such as forums and Wikis. They also allow for storage and sharing of data and resources, and collaborative tools such as shared ‘virtual’ whiteboards.
Paul says, ‘This is how many international science and engineering researchers are working now – on large-scale collaborative projects based on global eResearch collaboratories. We have also seen a simultaneous movement in Europe and North America towards funding of collaboratories. We have to participate in and be members of this international community.’
‘Our late entry on the world stage of advanced networking means we have the opportunity to not repeat the same mistakes of other National Research and Education Networks. However, the KAREN network is only a highway. It is now up to us to put cars on the road.’
Paul is an Associate Professor (Mathematics) and was previously Associate Dean for IT in the Faculty of Science before his appointment to the position of Director of eResearch. He has been lecturing at Auckland University since 1994 and has led many High Performance Computing developments there related to his own mathematical research interests.
Paul is also the director of BeSTGRID (www.bestgrid.org) – a TEC funded capability development project involving University of Auckland, University of Canterbury and Massey University which is largely modelled on similar overseas initiatives. BeSTGRID will deliver mechanisms, methods and tools that facilitate cross-institutional collaboration on shared information, sharing of computational resources and online visualisation of instruments and experiments."
