Cybera News June 2009

 President's Message

The development and deployment of cyberinfrastructure continues to accelerate throughout the world. Advanced computing, communication networking, data storage and mining, experimental instrument and sensor networks, and middleware tools that facilitate research and development using this digital infrastructure are evermore essential in the pursuit of innovation, competitive advantage and economic prosperity.

Cybera continues to inspire, foster, build and directly support the development and application of such cyberinfrastructure, and the knowledge-based innovation that depends on this infrastructure. The core of Cybera’s activities in these endeavors is collaboration, including coordinated joint work with partners and communities of experts within Alberta’s universities, industry and government.

Cybera is currently going through a transition in leadership and a review of its strategies and plans. I am fortunate in having been chosen by Cybera’s Board of Directors to lead this transition and review. As a first step, we have identified four team leaders who will participate in focusing and strengthening our strategies and plans: Karim Teja - Administration and Contracts; Patrick Mann - Infrastructure and Tech Services; Jill Kowalchuk - Project and Partnership Development; and Jana Makar - Communications and Outreach.

Cybera is also in search of a new visionary Chief Executive Officer (CEO) following the resignation of Lynn Sutherland in April. Sutherland led the implementation of Netera’s expanded mandate through the creation of Cybera and the launch of its first major cyberinfrastructure projects, as well as, the initial development of Cybera’s collaboration with Alberta industry. The board thanks Sutherland for her dedication and achievements over the past one-and-a-half years.

In May, Cybera’s International Strategic Advisory Committee (ISAC) held its second meeting in San Diego, hosted by TeraGrid and the San Diego Supercomputer Center. The ISAC provides strategic advice and a diverse international perspective to Cybera, its Board of Directors and the Government of Alberta. As the Chair of ISAC, I was pleased to focus this meeting on energy and environment informatics. Eddy Isaacs, the Executive Director of the Alberta Energy Research Institute, and Lee Kruszewski, the Director of ICT Industries for Alberta Advanced Education and Technology, presented an overview of the current key relevant issues in Alberta’s energy sectors.

During this period of reviewing our organization and plans, we will draw from the ISAC’s insights and recommendations on strengthening Cybera’s focus, its strategies, and a clarification of its business model. Cybera is further aligning its efforts with the Alberta government’s priorities as they relate to research and innovation in energy and the environment, health, forestry and other priority areas. To achieve this, Cybera will continue to develop its access to focused technical expertise, increase its engagement in the private sector, and strive with partners to attract cyberinfrastructure expertise to Alberta.

If, at anytime over the coming months, you have questions or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to contact myself or others within Cybera. Your thoughts and opinions are of great interest to us as we work to facilitate research and innovation within Alberta.

Sincerely,

Brian W. Unger
Interim President and Chief Executive Officer

New Project with MoboVivo

Cybera has started a pilot project with MoboVivo, a Calgary-based media distribution company. The project will enable consumers to more easily access their favourite videos and music from online.

Cybera will partner with the University of Calgary’s Information Technologies department to work with MoboVivo to develop prototypes and middleware for a transcoding service that MoboVivo will commercialize and market. The service will enable users to download web content in a single format usable on any mobile device.

Typically, when downloading content files to a device, such as a cell phone, the files must be encoded in a particular way, and, then, decoded to be compatible with the cell phone. Each device usually requires its own unique encoding, making it complex and expensive for distributors to get their content onto a variety of devices.

“MoboVivo’s transcoding service removes barriers by managing all the different file iterations and simplifying the loading process, from start to finish, to the many different platforms content distributors have to choose from,” says Trevor Doerksen, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of MoboVivo.

MoboVivo is partnering with Cybera to access cyberinfrastructure - such as powerful distributed and virtual or “cloud” computing resources – for testing and incubation purposes of the transcoding prototypes and middleware.

After two-and-a-half years consulting for Cybera as a Business Developer, Doerksen has switched his focus to MoboVivo.

READ FULL MEDIA RELEASE

Synergy Workshop a Success

On April 20 - 22, 2009, CANARIE hosted the NEP-1 Synergy Workshop at the Winnipeg Convention Centre. About 60 people attended, including members from the 10 Network-Enabled Platform (NEP) projects from the first round of funding and CANARIE staff. Two project groups supported by Cybera were among the attendees; the Canadian Space Science Data Portal (CSSDP) and GeoChronos.

The workshop was an opportunity for those discipline specific projects to come together to explain to each other their work and their challenges in order to explore the possibilities for synergy amongst them. Major technical areas of synergy that resulted from the conference were workflow, authentication, architectures, frameworks, virtualization and scheduling.

Presentations were given by each NEP-1 group. View the CSSDP and GeoChronos presentations.

Awaiting News on NEP-2s

CANARIE is expected to announce the participants of the CANARIE Network-Enabled Platforms v2 (NEP-2) program this month. The NEP-2 program encourages collaborative projects that will accelerate the development of, and participation in, national and international cyberinfrastructure and e-research platforms.

Cybera submitted two proposals to the NEP-2 program: the Cloud-Enabled Space Weather Modeling and Data Assimilation Platform (CESWP) project and the Geospatial Cyberinfrastructure for Environmental Sensing (GeoCENS) project.

The CESWP project will simplify researcher access to space weather simulation tools using cloud computing technologies. The project will dramatically improve the sustainability, flexibility and performance of these tools, leading to improvements in researcher productivity and efficiency.

The CESWP integrates complex modeling and simulation functionality into the federated data capabilities of a CANARIE NEP-1 project, the Canadian Space Sciences Data Portal, which is still being completed. The CESWP will develop a versatile platform-as-a-service approach to a space sciences cloud, which responds clearly to a major need of the science community to increase computational capacity while reducing operational complexity and costs.

Space weather has an impact on Canada's and other countries’ communication, power and other distribution systems. Scientists are learning how to forecast space weather events in an effort to avoid interruptions to these vital systems. The project is an opportunity to further enhance Alberta's cyberinfrastructure and to work with partners nationally and internationally.

The GeoCENS project will build an interactive online portal where biogeoscientists can remotely access and control geographically dispersed environment sensors and datasets. The expected result is an innovative multi-dimensional interface that will not only lend new insight into our climate, species and water systems, but also allow scientists to better understand how our biosphere is changing over time.

Large-scale sensor arrays and the vast data sets produced world-wide are utilized, shared and published by a rising number of researchers on an ever-increasing frequency. The increased amount of available data is being driven by sensor nodes, which are monitoring changes in everything from climate to biological species. When used together, this data will lead to new discoveries about the biosphere to enable a better understanding of how it is changing. These discoveries will enable decision-makers to make better choices regarding the Earth’s ecosystem.

Researchers will soon be able to access various data sources both historically and in real-time, and overlay, correlate, remotely control, and analyze related data sources from a specific geographical area. GeoCENS will provide an innovative 2D/3D graphical interface, which will allow scientists to browse, search for and access biogeographical sensors and datasets. This interface will be built upon the NASA World Wind Java Standard Development Kit (SDK). SDK will facilitate the use of best practices and standards in the GeoCENS platform and increase adoption internationally via the virtual organization (VO).

The platform developed for this project will rely on the CANARIE network for the transfer and sharing of the various data sources to all connected participants.

Cybera's Pilot Project Program Expands

As Cybera's Pilot Project Program continues to engage new industry and academic partners, here is a quick look at some of the initiatives currently underway:

Responsive Cyberinfrastructure
A consortium of private-sector partners, led by TRLabs, is collaborating with Cybera to develop an Internet Protocol Multimedia System (IMS) that can respond dynamically and efficiently to peaks and lulls in usage. Typically, IMS systems are used to manage wireless services and simplify the access of multimedia and voice applications from wireless devices, such as iPhones and Blackberries. This project will investigate and develop middleware solutions that allocate network and compute resources intelligently and dynamically in order to deliver more services without expanding additional bandwidth. The middleware will manage and allocate services and resources based on algorithms and use, instead of simple over-provisioning to handle peaks and strains on the cyberinfrastructure. Cybera is contributing to specific middleware, compute, networking and storage requirements for the project.

Virtual Tools Development
Cybera has partnered with DataGardens to implement a project investigating virtual network tools. In November 2008 DataGardens was successful in securing a $600,000 grant from Precarn for the project. Precarn is an independent, not-for-profit company that supports the pre-commercial development of leading-edge technologies. Cybera was brought on as one of the project's partners, enabling DataGardens to use Cybera's high-bandwidth research network - CyberaNet - as a testbed network for the development of virtual network tools.

In addition to the examples above, investigations also continue into pilot projects involving electronic healthcare record infrastructure as well as a provincial water research portal.

Cyberport Connections

On May 4, the Calgary Cyberport was used to connect a group of Calgary elementary, junior and senior high school teachers to the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) Montreal and other teachers from Palliser Regional Schools in southern Alberta. The teachers were taking part in a professional development session for a unique CSA experience to take place this fall.

The Palliser Regional Schools are among a handful of selected school jurisdictions to participate in a downlink with Robert Thirsk, an astronaut with the CSA, who is presently up in the International Space Station. The downlink will occur in the Cultural Recreation Center in the town of Vulcan in September.

During the May 4 videoconference, the teachers were provided with professional development involving three presentations from CSA staff. With this PD behind them, the teachers were able to return to their classrooms and share their new knowledge and experience with their students. The students then created questions, which were mailed to the CSA. Sixteen of these questions will be chosen and their creators will be given the opportunity to ask their questions ‘live’ to Robert Thirsk during the September downlink.

The other three Alberta schools taking part in this unique professional development experience are R.I. Baker Middle School in Coaldale, County Central High School in Vulcan, and Coalhurst High School in Coalhurst.

Summit 09: Registration open

Early bird prices are now available for Summit 09: Partnerships in CI Development, set for October 12-16, 2009 in Banff, AB. Summit 09 is co-hosted by Cybera, CANARIE, Open Grid Forum, IEEE and ACM. This event will explore cloud computing, green IT, Web 2.0, business development, advanced networks, and other emerging cyberinfrastructure.

There is also still time to get invovled in Summit 09. Calls for submissions for sessions are now open.

CSSDP Newsletter

The Canadian Space Science Data Portal (CSSDP) is a Cybera pilot project in collaboration with the University of Alberta, the Canadian Space Agency and the Alberta Science and Research Authority. Click here to view the project's May 2009 newsletter.

WestGrid Annual Report

The WestGrid annual report is at the printers this week! To request a printed copy of the report, please send an email or download an electronic version of the report from the WestGrid website.

Upcoming Events

CCAT - The Future of Nuclear Power
June 17
5:00 - 8:30 pm
Alastair Ross Technology Centre
3553 - 31 Street NW
Calgary, AB
More info

UofC Industry Day - Energy & Environment
June 22
9:30 am - 3:30 pm
University of Calgary, Rozsa Centre
More info

ECAT & ABCtech Annual General Meetings
June 22 and 23
Edmonton and Calgary, AB
More info

WiTec Networking Breakfast and AGM
June 25
7:30 - 9:30 am
Alberta Research Council
Calgary, AB
More info

2009 iCORE Banff Informatics Summit
Aug 20 - 22
The Banff Centre
Banff, AB
More info

Summit 09: Partnerships in CI Development
October 12 - 16
The Banff Centre
Banff, AB
More info

ASTech Awards Gala
November 6
Hyatt Regency Calgary
Calgary, AB
More info