This project, procuring and acquiring a large computing cluster appropriate for Big Data research, aims to enable research in a number of fields of national concern such as bioinformatics, ocean energy, social media mining, environmental and climate modeling, image processing and analysis emergency response, health and medical informatics, national security, infrastructure maintenance and reliability, law enforcement, commerce, and manufacturing. Of particular note are seven projects spanning a wide range of application domains. These include the - Extension of LexisNexis's High Performance Computing Cluster (HPCC) platform to incorporate a Wider Range of Algorithms; - Analysis of Big Data for Bioinformatics; - Use of Machine Condition Monitoring and Prognostic Health Monitoring to Improve Ocean Turbine Reliability; - General Challenges found when Mining Streaming data; - Analysis of Underwater Acoustic Signals for Tasks such as Unexploded Ordinance Detection; - Use of Machine Learning to Improve Video Compression Schemes; and - Challenges of Climate Modeling. All these demand the advanced computation resources under this acquisition. The study of Big Data encompasses the analysis of extremely large datasets, building models which are able to incorporate vast numbers of instances and features in order to make reliable predictions and connections.
Maintaining and promoting the growth of Big Data has become an essential activity to ensure that the problems that now seem insurmountable may be solved tomorrow. Two aspects of this growth are developing and providing courses for students focused on the tools and techniques necessary for Big Data research, and more focused training in these tools for existing researchers whose area of expertise lies in other aspects of research. Best practices will be followed for cultural diversity, involving students and researchers from underrepresented groups.
