News for and about the Internet2 community

[Greg Wood <>]

For Immediate Release
May 26, 2004

NSF Media Contact: David Hart, (703) 292-7737, 


BRAIN DISEASE RESEARCH, PARTICLE PHYSICS MEET IN THE MIDDLE(WARE)
NSF Middleware Initiative proves key for grid-based collaborations in
diverse disciplines

ARLINGTON, Va.-The study of Alzheimer's disease and the analysis
of particle collisions may not appear to have much in common, but
behind the scenes, middleware being developed with support from
the National Science Foundation (NSF) is helping groups of
researchers in neuroscience, physics and other fields to apply
the power of grid-based computational resources.

Spanning 14 universities and 22 research groups, the growing
Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN) is establishing
the cyberinfrastructure, or integrated information technology
configuration, needed to facilitate health care research for
large-scale data sharing and analysis.  The ability to share and
compare massive data sets such as MRI brain scans or high
resolution electron microscopy images is essential to
participants' research into Alzheimer's disease, depression,
schizophrenia, multiple sclerosis and other disorders.

With assembled resources that provide up to 2,000 processors'
worth of computational power, the Grid3 data grid runs seven
different applications-three high-energy physics simulations and
four data-analysis programs for high-energy physics,
biochemistry, astrophysics and astronomy.  The grid-enabled
calculations simulate collisions of subatomic particles,
biological interactions between molecules and protein sequences
important to genome analysis.

Beyond grid computing, NMI middleware also enables many types of
collaborative computing in the research and education community.
Shibboleth, an NMI-EDIT software suite that manages user access
to Web content and services while protecting privacy, has
experienced worldwide adoption in addition to having widespread
national impact.

Since 2002, NMI has issued twice-yearly releases of software,
services and documentation supporting the effective use of
information technology for research and education.  Issued on May
24, NMI Release 5 (NMI-R5) consists of contributions from a wide
range of middleware developers that partner through multi
institutional NMI-funded teams at the GRIDS Center, the EDIT
consortium and the Open Grid Computing Environments consortium.

For the full release, refer to
http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/newsroom/pressrel.cfm .

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NSF Middleware Initiative: www.nsf-middleware.org