Microsoft Research and IISc to collaborate Advance Computing and Scientific Research

By siliconindia   |   Friday, 12 October 2007, 19:30 IST
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Bangalore: Microsoft Research announced a sponsored research and collaboration agreement with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore, India, to accelerate the scientific discovery process by increasing computational power in scientific and engineering research. This is the first agreement Microsoft Research has signed in India as part of a global effort to collaborate with leading institutions around advanced computing for science and engineering. Under this agreement, Microsoft Research has committed to provide funding and research expertise to assist with major projects around life sciences research and advanced high-performance computing platforms based on Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 for scientific applications, such as modeling of the Indian Ocean in the coming two to three years. Professor Nagasuma Chandra, on the faculty of the Bioinformatics Centre at IISc, will be the principal investigator collaborating with Microsoft Research India for the biological data mapping project. The goal of the project is to create research tools for integration of various biological data. "Our mission is to conduct state-of-the-art research and apply technology to reduce the time to insights for scientific discovery and drive innovations. We aim to empower scientists by providing them advanced computing technologies across scientific domains," said Tony Hey, Vice President, External Research, Microsoft Research. "This collaboration with the Indian Institute of Science is the first one in India; we are already working with more than 20 leading research institutions and government agencies around the world to positively impact science and engineering research." Microsoft Research and the IISc have identified two research projects under this collaboration- a framework for mapping diverse data across different levels of hierarchy in biological systems and high-performance applications on Windows Clusters for science.