Category Archives: Research

Overview The North Carolina Bioportal is a shared, extensible bioinformatics portal for use by students, educators, teachers and bioinformatics researchers in North Carolina. It provides access to many tools and databases commonly used in bioinformatics research and is a tool for distributing and publishing new bioinformatics services and tools. In 2006, the NC Bioportal was […]

Overview The Southeastern Universities Research Association’s (SURA) Southeastern Coastal Ocean Observing and Prediction Program (SCOOP) is creating an open-access network of distributed sensors and a grid environment for the southeastern coastal zone. This initiative supports the national agenda to establish an integrated, sustained ocean observing system. SCOOP’s primary goal is to implement a comprehensive observing […]

Overview Communication and collaboration are key components of successful emergency management. To enhance these components in the North Carolina emergency management community, RENCI is working with the community to roll out three products that make up the Collaborative Workspace Environment for Emergency Managers. These products include NC-FIRST, desktop conferencing software, and a new North Carolina […]

Overview Storm surge, a primary cause of coastal flooding during tropical and extratropical storm systems, occurs when a storm’s winds push water toward land. The water mass encounters shallower water as it moves toward shore and increases in height. Additional factors like a storm’s pressure and the waves generated by storm winds also contribute to […]

Overview RENCI, in collaboration with Ted Zoller, assistant professor, at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at UNC, worked to develop a more sophisticated understanding of the underlying economic activities that lead to the development of technopoles – a term used to describe regions and economic development activities in those regions that favor the development of entrepreneurial […]

Overview Precision agriculture is the science of linking differential global positioning systems with significant computational resources to apply customized quantities of pesticide, seeds, and fertilizer according to a particular field’s specific needs. This project will use data from Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping systems and from moisture sensors connected to farm machinery and inserted into […]

Overview Carolina Launch Pad, a pre-commercial business accelerator, is aimed at aspiring IT entrepreneurs who are part of the University of North Carolina community (faculty, staff and students) and who have not yet developed their business ideas into funded start-ups. Launch Pad is intended to work with up to five entrepreneurs each year beginning in […]

Overview The University of Southern California Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive is a video archive of testimonials from Holocaust survivors, witnesses and liberators. An important historical resource, the archive includes nearly 52,000 video testimonies collected in 32 languages and from 56 countries by the USC Shoah Foundation Institute. In 2006, RENCI took the lead in […]

Overview The RENCI Weather Web program uses research and operational grade weather stations to enable North Carolina educators to teach required meteorology and atmospheric science classes. RENCI provides the weather stations throughout the state in underserved areas that lack the stations needed to provide good quality climate-related data. The weather data retrieved from the stations […]

Overview The Renaissance Bistro is an informational lecture series designed to introduce RENCI to the general public and spotlight RENCI’s project areas and experimental research. Topics include discussions about high performance computing, disaster research, economic development, biological sciences, social sciences and the humanities. The events are free, lunch is served on a first-come first-served basis, […]