Cyber Indicators are HIGH
Don’t look now: Your campus cyber infrastructure is burgeoning
Cyber infrastructure has taken
hold. If you’re thinking cyber
infrastructure isn’t really that
big at your institution, think
again. Herewith, Krishna P. C.
Madhavan interprets all the
cyber signals
our campuses
are sending us.
Madhavan is a
research scientist
with the
Rosen Center for
Advanced Computing
at Purdue
University (IN). His work centers
on the new and emerging
area of cyber infrastructureenabled
science education. He
is the Education Technology
director for the NSF-funded
Network for Computational
Nanotechnology (NCN), chair
for the Supercomputing 2006
Education Program, and coleader
of the Zecosystem effort
(all at Purdue).
EDITOR’S NOTE: At Campus
Technology 2006,
Madhavan will moderate the
panel, “Cyber Infrastructure
for ‘Immersion’ Learning
Environments.”
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Middleware is everywhere.
- If you have a cell phone, you are a serious middleware user.
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Over the next 10 years, millions—or perhaps billions—of our tax
dollars will go toward ushering in the petascale computational era.
- The National Science Foundation (www.NSF.gov) and the federal government
are working toward the next major leap in the way computation affects big
science, which affects research on campus.
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The gaming boxes that students now use for entertainment have more
computational power than the supercomputers of yesteryear.
- Increased computational power appearing in ever-shrinking form factors is
driving science and learning forward. Remember Moore’s Law [which states
that the number of transistors on a chip doubles about every two years].
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The ‘big data’ orchestra is in full swing (though sometimes not in
complete harmony).
- Research at colleges and universities increasingly relies on large datasets to
solve problems and provide insights into scientific phenomena.
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Nationally funded science gateways to specific cross-disciplinary
domains are supporting increasingly large user databases.
- These gateways provide specific science content, simulation tools, and data
within a single environment.
- They fuel the next generation of learning and discovery.
- 5
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Top-notch models of central IT support for research and learning have
emerged at US universities.
- Centralized consolidation of IT services (such as storage, network, computational
power, software support, and security) is the new paradigm.
- Such central services allow researchers and educators to focus on their institution’s
dual mission of research and education.
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Time and space are now referred to as ‘anytime, anywhere.’
- The maturity of IT services has led to mobility, social networking, and the
ability to contribute to one’s field more easily than ever.
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‘Service-oriented’ cyber infrastructure for education and research will
provide the layer of integration for bridging discovery and learning.
- Integration of cyber services—hardware, middleware, or applications—
provides a competitive edge in science and education.
- 2
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Simulation has emerged as the third leg in the stool of science
and education.
- Theory and experiment are the paradigms of the past century.
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Cyber infrastructure truly affects a substantial part of everyday living.
- More than we realize, cyber infrastructure is all around us.
- In the end, it’s all about relevance to daily life.