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KAREN wiki
KIWI ADVANCED RESEARCH AND EDUCATION NETWORK
Victoria University of Wellington
From KAREN wiki
Contents |
Contacts
Phone
- +64 4 472 1000
KAREN Champion
Our e-research champion is Professor John Hine, Head of School of Engineering and Computer Science. John provides academic and strategic leadership for e-research development at VUW and across the NZ research sector.
John reports directly to the Pro Vice Chancellor Science and also to the Deputy Vice Chancellor Research as required. He chairs VUW’s Information Technology Academic Advisory Group (ITAAG) and contributes a research perspective to the Information Technology Strategy and Oversight Committee (ITSOC). John has researched distributed systems for 20+ years and has been a leader in the adoption in New Zealand of the Internet, KAREN, and e-Research applications like grid computing and the Access Grid.
John is also engaged in capability building in the wider KAREN community. John is Chair of the KAREN Capability Build Advisory Panel, and co-authored the Advanced Network Capability Building Roadmap 2007-2009. In 2007, he ran a series of KAREN workshops for ~100 Crown Research Institute staff across five major centres. He also contributes to the BeSTGRID Steering Committee and the Identity & Access Management Action Group for Education & Research (IMAGER).
John received the KAREN Fellow award in 2007 for his contribution to the KAREN community. Other VUW staff - Peggy Fairbairn-Dunlop, Phil Mansford and Sam Searle - have received KAREN Enabler Awards.
Victoria University of Wellington Project Plan
Number of projects using KAREN
- 5
Additional contacts
E-Research Programming Support
E-research programming support is supplied on an ad hoc basis by programmers from Engineering and Computer Sciences. From September 1st Kevin Buckley has been employed specifically to assist VUW staff with e-Research programming requirements.
Working group
Our work is informed by a small group of academic and general staff with an interest in e-research. Members of the group are:
- Andrew Beaumont, ITS
- Dr Shaun Hendy, MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology
- Dr Marcia Lyons, School of Design
- Dr Brian Opie, School of English, Film, Media and Theatre Studies
Website
Details of Victoria's e-research activities, including KAREN, are available at the website:
E-Research at Victoria: Building Research Capability
Email inquiries should be directed to E-Research Inquiries
KAREN at Victoria
Overview of policy and strategy
The Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research at Victoria has invested strategic funds in e-research development since late 2006. The rationale for this was that the benefit from the University's investment in shared research infrastructure like KAREN could be maximised if staff and students, particularly in the area of research, were made more aware of available tools and services. While the E-Research Champion, John Hine, had provided leadership in this area for many years, it was recognised that practical support for researchers in the form of advocacy, advice, and assistance with programming would also be required.
In June 2008, our IT Strategy and Oversight Committee and Research Committee endorsed in principle an e-research strategy for Victoria:
E-Research at VUW: Capability Building Strategy 2008-2010 - June 2008
This document was informed by the Advanced Network Capability Building Roadmap 2007-2009, which provides a national framework for increasing uptake of KAREN and which we were involved in developing. It has also been informed by and in turn will inform other university planning documents like the IT Strategic Plan, our Investment Plan with the Tertiary Education Commission and the overall VUW Research Strategy.
Other key documents, presentations and conference reports are available on our website:
Projects using KAREN
To read more about these and other e-research projects, see the page on our website:
E-Research Case Studies at VUW
Pacific Studies: uniting NZ Pacific postgraduates using the Access Grid
The Pacific Postgraduate Talanoa Network connects sites in New Zealand for interactive videoconferencing and collaboration sessions using the Access Grid via KAREN.
The Talanoa Network was initiated and co-ordinated by Va'aomanu Pasifika, Victoria's Pacific and Samoa Studies unit, and is the first resource of its type for Pacific students.
Associate Professor Peggy Fairbairn-Dunlop, Director of Va'aomanu Pasifika, says running the Access Grid via KAREN is of immense value to Pacific researchers.
"The Access Grid sessions provide students with a place to both present their research and raise any issues. We have some very lively debates on issues relating to Pacific research methodologies.
"The Network also helps to break down feelings of isolation which many of our small but growing group of Pacific post graduate students may feel, scattered as they are through New Zealand."
The sessions have grown in popularity since a launch in June 2007, with an average of 25-30 people attending the fortnightly online seminar sessions. Tertiary Education Commission and Ministry of Education staff are among the participants and the University of the South Pacific and the National University of Samoa are keen to link to the seminars.
Music: Geophony transforms real-time earthquake data into music
New Zealand School of Music researcher Dugal McKinnon, has collaborated with GNS Science to produce a sound installation, Geophony.
Geophony is a multichannel sound installation based on sonification of multiple real-time seismic data streams provided by GNS Science via the Kiwi Advanced Research and Education Network (KAREN). The installation was the first project at VUW (and possibly in New Zealand) to consciously use KAREN for a project in the arts, and specifically in music.
The project builds on VUW's track record for interdisciplinary collaboration between scientists and artists, including the successful Are Angels OK? initiative between VUW's International Institute of Modern Letters, the physicists of New Zealand, and the Royal Society of New Zealand.
Music: Masterclasses delivered using the Access Grid
In mid-2008, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra cellist Brigid O'Meeghan will be delivering four masterclasses to University of Otago students using the Access Grid. Because the Access Grid uses the high bandwidth provided by the KAREN network, participants can collaborate musically in real-time.
Lico de Ridder, AV Technical Specialist in ITS Teaching Services, is working with participants to find the best setup. "I used a quality cardioid mic, our 3CCD digital video camera, and angled lighting at this end. The setup needs perfecting but the participants were very positive about the trial."
KAREN Usage at VUW
VUW has been connected to KAREN since early February 2007. VUW’s use of KAREN is increasing: our peak usage and overall usage in 2008 is markedly higher than during the first year of operation in 2007.
Graphs of KAREN usage over the past year show that:
- Overall traffic has regularly peaked over 60MB/s and has peaked over 80MB/s, over 100MB/s and over 120MB/s at various times: these levels are much greater than the traffic capable of being routed over VUW’s commodity internet connection.
- Unicast traffic (i.e. that not accounted for by advanced videoconferencing) was steady during 2007, but has exponentially increased since January this year.
- Multicast traffic, which is related to advanced videoconferencing usage, is responsible for some very large peaks, well in excess of what could be achieved with VUW’s commodity internet. In 2007-08, ~1000 hours of support for 400+ Access Grid sessions and videoconferences have been provided by our ITS Teaching Services staff. Most of these sessions have made use of KAREN.
E-research tools and services
Staff at Victoria have access to a range of tools and services, such as:
- Grid computing
- VUW's grid harnesses the processing power of 1,200+ workstations, and can be used by staff and postgraduates for large-scale data processing and analysis tasks.
- Grid usage in 2007-08 has been in a variety of research areas such as statistics, ecological modelling and astrophysics. Researchers in earth sciences are also looking to use to the grid in 2008-09.
- High performance computing
- VUW is a founding partner in the BlueFern, the University of Canterbury Supercomputer. VUW staff and students can access the BlueFern on request, and programming support and training can be arranged..
- Current and future VUW users of the BlueFern supercomputing service (which incorporates the BlueGene as well as earlier IBM technology) include staff and PhD students from Physics, Economics and the MacDiarmid Institute.
- BeSTGRID and the BioPortal
- Work to establish a BeSTGRID gateway at Vic will be underway by September 2008: this will enable VUW’s computational resources to be contributed to BeSTGRID, and VUW researchers will be able to access BeSTGRID resources on an in-kind basis.
- Up to 10 staff and 30 graduate students in SBS want to use the BeSTGRID BioPortal (a toolkit of common bioinformatics tools like BLAST and MrBayes): lead SBS staff started the certification process in July 2008 and will soon be able to use the BioPortal.
- Videoconferencing and Access Grid
- ITS Teaching Services provides videoconferencing and Access Grid services at VUW. These services are used for activities such as meetings, seminars, and postgraduate support and networking.
- Desktop videoconferencing is not supported internally at VUW, however Vic staff can access the EVO service, which is run worldwide by CalTech and is supported in NZ by the University of Auckland.
- More advanced collaboration environments (stereoscopic 3-D immersion) are the topic of a research collaboration between VUW School of Design and HIT Lab Canterbury. Use of advanced collaboration tools may also arise as a result of installation of the high-resolution visualisation lab (see below) in the second half of 2008.
- Virtual research environments (VREs)
- VUW staff can access to the BeSTGRID-hosted Sakai VRE at the University of Auckland. This is currently being used by VUW staff within the Victoria Management School (FRST-funded project on productivity), Information Management (international print history network), the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre (MED-funded digital talking books for the NZ Foundation for the Blind), Earth Sciences (collaborative research with GNS Science) and the Library (Kiwi Research Information Service Governance Group).
- Visualisation lab
- 12 LCD rear-projection screens will be combined in a 4 x 3 display to give a resolution of 10240 x 4800 pixels. MSCS programmers will work with staff to investigate uses of the visualisation lab for research and teaching, using funding from the KAREN Instititutional Capability Fund. Early interest has been shown from staff in Biology, Earth Sciences, the MacDiarmid Institute, and Art History and Classics.
- Large data transfers
- A joint project between ITS and the School of Biological Sciences has built capability in the area of large file transfer (i.e. up to 20GB of data at a time). This service will facilitate data exchange over KAREN between VUW staff and overseas collaborators.
Professional development
- A half-day symposium for Faculties of Science, Architecture and Design, and Engineering was held in June 2008. Sixty research staff and students from Victoria attended, along with colleagues from Crown Research Institutes (CRIs) and government agencies.
- A full-day workshop, KAREN: What An Advanced Research Network Can Do For You!, was held in August 2007. Thirty researchers and IT specialists attended from VUW and CRIs.
- Up to three staff members or PhD students will be presented with Victoria E-Research Professional Development Awards in July 2008, which will enable them to attend an international e-research conference or symposium.
- In 2008, staff induction packs included a leaflet about e-research tools and services.
- A proposal for e-research training has been developed and discussions are being held with the Research Office and other internal and external providers about including e-research activities in training programmes in 2009.
Institutional Capability Build Fund Updates
1. High-resolution visualisation for teaching and research
Introduction
Internal capex funding has been allocated to develop a tiled high-resolution visualisation laboratory The visualisation lab will consist of 12 LCD rear-projection screens (2560 x 1600 pixels each) combined in a 4 x 3 display to give an overall resolution of 10240 x 4800 pixels. In this project, programmers will work with academic staff to investigate uses of the visualisation suite for research and teaching.
Update: 15 July 2008
- Hardware has now been installed.
- Because of the experimental nature of the visualisation lab, and the likelihood that the current location will be temporary, a low-tech approach to mounting the screens has been taken that will be sufficient for the purposes of evaluating the usefulness of visualisation in a number of disciplines, whilst still enabling the visualisation lab to be easily relocated.
- Operating systems are installed, and the screens have been configured to work together as a single screen for the display of still images. The School of Biological Sciences has supplied DIGE gel images from the Biodiscovery Centre as a test for still image displays.
Update: 10 September 2008
- Due to the heat generated by twelve screens and seven computers the computers have been relocated to an adjacent space.
- The facility is currently running Rocks for cluster management and SAGE to manage the graphics display.
- On August 25th the visualisation facility was demonstrated to a group touring VUW's Faculty of Science. The group included the Hon Dr Paul Hutchinson, opposition spokesperson for RS&T, Dr. Di McCarthy, CEO of the RSNZ, Dr. Tricia Harris, Chief Science Advisor, FRST, Dr George Slim, Director Emerging Technologies, MoRST and Jenni Harrison, Advisor e-Research, MoRST. The demonstration included high resolution images from an electron microscope, geophysical velocity data at a depth of 25km and a video showing tornado wind action.
- Our immediate future plans include an open day for VUW researchers and network testing of SAGE with Australian colleagues.
Update: 9 October 2008
Meet VUW's OptIPortal. We will be introducing the OptIPortal to university researchers on Friday afternoon, 17 October. Other people in the Wellington area who are interested are invited to come along. Watch VUW's site as the details of times may change.
Update: 11 December 2008
Researchers at Victoria and from other institutions have started to use the new OptIPortal. We are still very much in an exploratory stage and are currently being hampered by extensive renovation of the Cotton Building around the facility.
Steven Mills from the Geospatial Research Centre at Canterbury has prepared an aerial image of state highway six south of Motueka that uses the full resolution of the OptIPortal. This was the first time that Steven had viewed the entire image at full resolution. Steven has also examined various spatial maps of Christchurch city coloured to represent the altitude above sea level and the expected solar radiation. The large screen enabled the entire highway or city to be viewed at once.
Associate Professor Kate McGrath from the School of Chemical and Physical Sciencs and the MacDiarmid Institute examines an image from the electron microscope. While Steven's images are measured in kilometers Kate's are measured in nanometers. Kate shows how the high resolution enabled details of the surface of materials to be studied.
Dr. Diana Burton, a senior lecturer in Classics demonstrates the use of the OptIPortal in the arts. She has images of a vase held by Classics and an annotated manuscript of the Iliad. Normally she is not able to view more than a small portion of a page of the manuscript and be able to read it. Using the OptIPortal the full page and annotations are visible and the text is sufficiently magnified to be read.
Prof. Denis Sullivan examines images of the sky as seen from Mt John and other telescopes. Denis uses gravitational lensing to locate new objects in the heavens.
Prof. Martha Savage and a group of geophysicists examine a series of images of earthquake events at a Japanese volcano. Rather than using the OptIPortal to display a large image Martha has used it to display multiple images side by side for comparison.
Update: 16 April 2009
On the 26th and 27th of March approximately 100 secondary school careers advisors attended Victoria's annual conference. As part of a tour of science facilities they were given fifteen minutes to look at the capabilities of the OptIPortal.
2. Research as a service – automatic generation of web services
Introduction
Sharing data and analytical tools across KAREN will be best achieved by exposing them as web services, but creating web services is a non-trivial task. This project will make it easier for non-experts to expose application code and data as web services using the Grid Remote Application Virtualisation Infrastructure (gRAVI) tool, which is part of the Globus Incubator programme.
gRAVI was developed at the Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) and the University of Chicago, in collaboration with VUW. Its development has been assisted in part by a 2007 KAREN Travel grant, which enabled VUW and ANL researchers to strengthen existing ties in the area of grid computing research.
gRAVI enables users with little knowledge of grid and web services to automatically create web services from existing applications and data. These can be exposed directly to the research community via a web server, or grid-enabled for submission to a Globus Grid such as BeSTGRID. gRAVI was initially developed for the US-based caBig (cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid™), but is widely applicable to other research areas.
Update: 15 July 2008
- The Senior Research Assistant on this project is currently visiting Argonne National Laboratories at the University of Chicago. The already strong links between VUW and ANL form the basis for this sub-project.
- A talk by Ian Foster at the INGRID 2008 conference included a demonstration of the gRAVI (Grid Remote Application Virtualization Infrastructure) tool that will be worked on and deployed at VUW; the gRAVI tool was described by Ian as “excellent".
Update: 10 September 2008
- Kyle Chard has now returned from Argonne and we are getting this project underway.
Update: 1 April 2009
As part of the Karen Capability Build Fund project Seismograhic Information Service for E-Learning and E-Research, a second year laboratory on earthquake location was moved from the existing paper-based exercise to a computer-based class with online retrieval of the underlying seismic data and subsequent analysis in a Windows environment. The retrieval process involved converting the data from the GeoNet storage format (SEED) to a format required by the analysis tools (SAC).
Conversion of files from SEED format to SAC format is a common operation in seismic analysis. The preferred conversion tool runs on a Unix platform, while modern cross-platform equivalents are still in their infancy. This made the conversion of the data, within a teaching context, a cumbersome process. Making the data, in SAC format, available as a web service is a general solution that can support many researchers and tools.
gRAVI was used to create a WSRF web service supporting URL file transfer and providing an AJAX web interface. Using this service users are able to specify a URI for a SEED file. The data conversion is done transparently on a Unix platform and the output is delivered as a set of files in SAC format.
While this service was created to aid teaching as part of the earthquake location laboratory, it has other applications to seismic analysis. The web service is completely independent and can be deployed anywhere and then discovered by users. It is also well suited for use in workflows which may be used to orchestrate stages in seismic research.
As part of developing this service several new features were added to gRAVI. in particular mechanisms for URL based file transfer have been developed to download files using URLS and HTTP/FTP. This functionality complements the existing mechanisms which use GridFTP, CaGrid Transfer and binary data. The standard gRAVI/AJAX web application was altered to make it session based and was tailored for the earthquake location example.
