Backgrounder

February 5, 2008

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO RECEIVES $8 MILLION TO ENABLE GLOBALLY SIGNIFICANT RESEARCH

Today’s announcement represents the second round of funding under the Ontario Research Fund’s Research Excellence program. In this round, the government is providing $23,353,275 to support four world-class projects at the University of Toronto.

Big Computing For Big Ideas

SciNet: Enabling Future Science Today

Harnessing the research potential of high-performance computing systems

Lead researcher: Dr. W. Richard Peltier
Total project cost: $24,000,000
Provincial funding: $8,000,000

Using world-class high-performance computing systems, a new consortium of scientists will collaborate on groundbreaking research across a wide range of disciplines, including aerospace, biomedical engineering, bioinformatics, climate modeling, cosmology, and genomics.

The SciNet consortium, headed by the University of Toronto, involves 10 affiliated research hospitals. SciNet will be available to researchers anywhere in the province via the Optical Advanced Network of Ontario (ORANO).

Highly skilled technical analysts will work closely with researchers to develop sophisticated algorithms (finite lists of well-defined instructions for accomplishing specific tasks) and implement new techniques to take full advantage of these high-performance computer clusters. Expert systems administrators will ensure that the various computer systems are operated to optimum capacity.

Key facts:

• Project lead, Professor Richard Peltier, is a global expert whose contributions to the fields of geodynamics and climate dynamics are helping us to better understand the implications of climate change.
• Dr. Peltier’s work, which relies heavily on powerful computer modeling, led to an interest in the development of Canadian infrastructure for large-scale computation.
  

• This project will enable other top researchers from across the province to access the high-performance computing tools they need to continue conducting globally significant research. 

Ontario Research Fund – Research Excellence Program

This second round of funding under the Research Excellence program will invest  $114,709,614 to support 19 world-class projects at nine Ontario universities, institutes and hospitals. Funding will be matched by 107 major industry and other partners participating in the projects.

For more information about the Ontario Research Fund, please visit www.ontario.ca/innovation.

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