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How Network Management Speeds Research at Baylor College of Medicine
2/7/2008
Although the research environment in which he works is highly complex, systems administrator Justin King has an uncomplicated goal for his infrastructure: "To simplify it as much as possible from an end user standpoint."
King works as the sole IT person for the Human Neuroimaging Laboratory at Baylor College of Medicine in the Department of Neuroscience in Houston, TX. This private medical school is one of the few places on earth where scientists can have access to more than a single functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) scanner simultaneously for their research. In fact, in early December, after major reconstruction, the lab actually added three additional scanners to the two that have been in place since 2002.
Installation of one of the scanners
King described the giant fMRI machines this way: "It's a huge, super-conducting magnet. They allow us to look inside a subject's brain by just wiggling the water molecules."
Research topics have been as diverse as understanding how trust in economic exchange works to why people might prefer Coca-Cola over Pepsi.
The brainchild of Dr. P. Read Montague, Jr., a professor of neuroscience, the lab employs about 16 people, King said, including post-doctorate and graduate students, developers, scanner technicians, and administrative staff.
The scanners apply magnetic fields to identify areas and create images of brain activity. "For example, as you listen to music, the region of the brain that processes auditory input will 'light up,'" said King. "Oversimplified, that's what the MRI exploits as we're doing our experiments."
A Piece of the Network
The college has a central enterprise server department that handles services, including the overall network setup and management. "For other stuff, we need to be more flexible than the corporate environment allows," said King. "That's just part of research." The lab--one of the biggest on campus--needs to change its server and storage infrastructure frequently to address the demands of its research projects. Those fast reconfigurations fall into King's job description.
Justin King, systems administrator, Human Neuroimaging Laboratory, Baylor College of Medicine
The lab has about 30 servers, running Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and open source Linux operating system CentOS, primarily on
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