BONSAI - NSF grant to boost collaboration among UO researchers
A half-million dollar NSF grant will fund the design and construction of a new dedicated network for scientific computing at UO called BONSAI – "Bridging Open Networks for Scientific Applications and Innovation.
BONSAI will provide interdisciplinary research teams with on-campus access to computational resources, storage space and visualization capabilities, as well as offering 10 Gbps connectivity to Internet2 in support of cross-campus collaborations.
CIS faculty Allen Malony and Reza Rejaie, and Jose Dominguez from Network and Telecommunications Services, led the team which includes UO researchers in physics, biology, and computer science, Kimberly Espy, VP for Research and Innovation, and network architects/engineers from NTS. The grant was awarded from the National Science Foundation’s CC-NIE Program.
BONSAI addresses the need for a dedicated network that can support large-scale, distributed data-driven science by creating a Science DMZ platform to utilize the ultra-high bandwidth. Collaborative scientific research across campus that will benefit from BONSAI include:
- Biology – identifying the mechanisms involved in the switch from pre-cancerous cells to cancerous cells.
- Astrophysics – real time processing of data from digital sky surveys of stellar and galactic evolution.
- Particle Physics – analysis of vast particle datasets from the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva
- Climate Change - hurricane formation modeling and simulation.
- Geology - Cascadia Initiative – real time visualization of offshore seismic activity from the San Juan de Fuca subduction zone.
- Computer Science – development of scientific visualization capabilities for wall-size real-time high resolution displays.
- Computer Science and Network Engineering - investigation into cutting-edge software-defined networking technologies for robust routing of ultra-high speed traffic.
BONSAI follows a strong UO tradition of encouraging interdisciplinary research collaboration of the sort provided by the new Lewis Integrative Science Facility and the Lokey Nanotechnology Lab.
For more information see Around the O.