INDIANA UNIVERSITY RESEARCHERS BRIDGE COMMUNITIES AT SC2004

Indiana University unveiled a new display this week at SC2004, the premiere annual international conference on high performance computing and communications. Indiana University's display features highlights of Pervasive Technology Labs' and University Information Technology Services' new inventions and recent accomplishments, and has already been visited by many of the conference's more than 5,000 participants.

New developments from the Pervasive Technologies Labs center around networking and Grid computing. The Advanced Network Management Laboratory is demonstrating, for the first time, its Porcupine wireless network monitoring system (porcupine.iu.edu). The Porcupine has great promise for enhancing wireless network security. Dennis Gannon, Science Director for the Pervasive Technology Laboratories, is demonstrating the LEAD portal -- a sophisticated and easily usable interface to a system for real-time forecasting of tornadoes.

A new aspect of this year's display is IU's status as a participant in the TeraGrid. The TeraGrid, funded by the National Science Foundation, is the nation's premier effort to create a national cyberinfrastructure for research. The TeraGrid, a system of advanced instruments, massive data storage systems, large supercomputers, and visualization systems all linked by high speed networks, will expand the nation's capabilities for advanced research. IU was awarded a grant by the NSF in 2003 to participate in the TeraGrid. After a year of construction, IU joined the eight other TeraGrid participants in putting the TeraGrid into production at the beginning of October 2004. Particularly important parts of IU's contributions to the TeraGrid include life science data sets and portals, such as Gannon's LEAD portal, that will make it much easier for scientists to use the TeraGrid.

New life science computing applications are also featured in Indiana University's display. IU has developed a new program to identify the origin of human genetic diseases through analysis of family trees (funded by the Indiana Genomics Initiative), and is implementing computer services that enable data storage and exchange in support of an international study of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome recently funded by the National Institutes of Health.