Increase your research competitiveness: collaborate
In a world where many research challenges are too big for a single institution to tackle - and the best facilities attract the best researchers - institutions must collaborate in order to remain competitive.
Digital technologies enable researchers to collaborate in cross-disciplinary, international teams by sharing resources such as data, computing power and software over the internet. Access to very large data sets and enormous computing power allows researchers to tackle challenges that would otherwise be intractable.
We provide much of the digital infrastructure to keep UK institutions competitive in research. This includes the JANET network, which connects researchers globally, and the National Grid Service, which gives them access to far more data, software and computing power than could be available at individual institutions. We’re also supporting the development of online environments specifically for research: these give collaborators anywhere access to the same resources through a common interface.
- We’ve found that such environments (virtual research environments or VREs) improve communication especially within international teams. This can lead to new or faster results as one of our projects found when an international team of scholars overthrew a 100-year-old interpretation of a Latin inscription.. We’ve also found that although each VRE must be custom-designed to suit the needs of individual teams, all share key characteristics and benefit from a similar approach to their construction.
Our sister organisation in the Netherlands, SURF, with whom we share information on VRE development, has recently produced a starter-kit covering issues such as the functions a VRE should offer and how to go about setting one up.
- Research teams spread over sites, or even continents, can hold virtual face- to-face meetings using the video-conferencing service run by JANET. JANET also supports users of the Access Grid, a video-conferencing facility that allows participants to work simultaneously on common tasks, such as the annotation of a document
- Some research requires the transfer of vast amounts of data from one site to another. JANET Lightpath does this avoiding disruption to the main JANET network. Connections with similar point-to-point networks in other countries enable UK researchers to work on major international projects
- The National Grid Service gives researchers access to pooled computational resources, such as computing power, data and software, from their own desktops. It also joins up with national and international supercomputers and other computing grids.
What does the future hold?
Our present and future work on virtual research environments will focus on embedding them in institutions and building communities of practice. The National Grid Service is the UK partner in the
European Grid Initiative (EGI) which will make trans-European research collaboration easier.
Support from JISC Services
Our impact
The network infrastructure we provide along with the tools and technologies to support cross-discipline, transnational, inter-institutional and cross sector research, gives researchers an innovative, flexible and responsive environment for 21st century research.
- The JISC funded JANET network (PDF) enables astronomers in the UK to exchange and use large volumes of internationally collected data via dedicated links without disrupting normal Internet traffic
- As part of the European-wide initiative called the Virtual Physiological Human (PDF) researchers at University College London use the National Grid Service and the JANET Lightpath to generate accurate, high resolution real-time 3D images, which show the unique blood flow patterns in a patient's brain - a vital tool for diagnostics, treatment and surgery
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JANET (PDF) enables UK researchers to participate in what is said to be the largest scientific endeavour in history. The Large Hadron Collider, established to further mankind's understanding of the origins of the universe, generates some 15 Petabytes (15 million Gigabytes) of data annually. JANET Lightpath connects the UK's data processing centre at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory to CERN via the pan-European research and education network GÉANT
- Making it really easy for the next generation of scientists to contribute to a pool of scientific methods, build global communities and form relationships, MyExperiment funded by JISC, is now the largest public repository of scientific workflows; reducing time-to-experiment, enabling sharing of expertise and avoiding reinvention
