Benefits of BEN

Published: February 23, 2011

RENCI’s Breakable Experimental Network means new research opportunities at UNC

CHAPEL HILL–A laboratory can be a physical space—such as the Networking Laboratory in the computer science department at UNC Chapel Hill. Or it can exist in cyberspace, like RENCI’s Breakable Experimental Network (BEN), a regional optical network test bed for experiments with disruptive networking technologies.

Combine BEN with the expert faculty and resourceful students in the aforementioned Networking Lab and you’ve created a recipe for cutting-edge research that could transform the Internet and its ability to transport ever-increasing loads of data. Read more

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RENCI at ECU works to build awareness of coastal issues

Published: February 23, 2011

It’s been almost four years since RENCI established its East Carolina University (ECU) regional engagement center, an effort that links RENCI experts to faculty, staff and students at ECU to address issues important to coastal North Carolina. Read more

OpenFlow switch donation enables research and education

Published: February 17, 2011

CHAPEL HILL, February 18, 2011–With funds from the GENI Project Office (GPO) distributed through Stanford University, RENCI and its Triangle area university partners recently received five OpenFlow-enabled network switches valued at $3,000 per unit. Read more

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Carolina Launch Pad alumni win Small Business Innovation grant

Published: January 25, 2011

Altometrics was founded by Jeff Terrell (above) and Sir Robert Burbridge.

CHAPEL HILL, NC—The founders of Altometrics, Inc., have a goal that sounds simple: make the Internet faster. They want to speed up the performance of your favorite websites, prevent those frustrating slow-downs and enable richer Web services. Read more

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To close or not to close

Published: January 4, 2011

A prototype graphic display of ice storm information lets the user see how much ice will accumulate and what roads will be affected.

A school snow day often leaves kids jumping for joy and their parents scrambling to readjust their work schedules.

But what about the people who make the decision to cancel classes? They are usually school transportation officials, who analyze changing weather conditions and gather information on road conditions, and school district administrators, who make the final decision. Most of the time, they have no training in meteorology or emergency management, yet the safety of thousands rests in their hands during winter weather emergencies. Read more

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iRODS 2011 User Group Meeting announced

Published: December 16, 2010

The Data Intensive Cyber Environments Center (DICE Center) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will hold the third annual User Group Meeting for iRODS, the Integrated Rule-Oriented Data System, on “Sustainable Policy-Based Data Management, Sharing, and Preservation.”

The meeting is cosponsored by RENCI and will be held February 17 – 18, 2011, at RENCI’s Europa Center headquarters in Chapel Hill. Read more

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Two NC State research teams to participate in new campus info viz program

Published: December 16, 2010

Digital Elevation Model (DEM) showing preferred paths of water flow on a tilled field. The project is part of the new Applied and Scientific Visualization Program at RENCI@NC State.

RALEIGH, December 16, 2010—Two North Carolina State University research teams will work with RENCI visual analytics experts through the new RENCI@NC State Faculty Engagement Program in Applied Scientific and Information Visualization.

The program is an effort to expand the use of visualization tools and technologies among NC State researchers.  Each research team will receive up to $12,000 to support their work over the next year and will be expected to develop new research methods, models, applications or prototypes that can lead to larger projects supported by grant money. Read more

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Carolina Launch Pad welcomes Rheomics, Inc.

Published: November 15, 2010

From left to right, Russell Taylor, Ph.D., Richard Spero, Ph.D. and Richard Superfine, Ph.D.

CHAPEL HILL, NC—Carolina Launch Pad, the pre-commercial technology business accelerator located at RENCI (the Renaissance Computing Institute), this month welcomed Rheomics Inc. to the program.

Rheomics builds systems that fuel the mechanical revolution in biology, and will lead to diagnostics of clotting disorders and cancer metastasis. The company’s patented technologies make it possible to pull on blood clots, individual cells, or small particles—the size of a bacterium or smaller—with precise forces. Rheomics sees a market opportunity for this technology in new cancer diagnostics, point-of-care blood clotting analysis, biofluid rheology and lab instruments to advance biological research. Read more

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RENCI partners with DICE at UNC and UCSD to sustain iRODS software

Published: November 10, 2010

CHAPEL HILL, NC, November 10, 2010 – RENCI Director Stan Ahalt announced today the creation of iRODS@RENCI as a major component of an institute-wide effort to establish robust, sustainable software platforms and practices that support scientific research and innovation.

iRODS@RENCI will support expanded development of the Integrated Rule-Oriented Data System (iRODS) as a leading data management system and will work to enhance iRODS as a sustainable software platform for research teams that need to securely manage, share and archive large data sets over the long term. Read more

CI-BER project plans to store billions of electronic records

Published: November 10, 2010

The result of a recent three-way partnership between The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Cyberinfrastructure for Billions of Electronic Records project (CI-BER) held its official kickoff meeting on Thursday, October 28, 2010 in Chapel Hill.

One of the first federally-funded projects of its kind to bring the benefits of social media and public reports of its progress via a blogging format, CI-BER will create master copies of NARA’s Center for Advanced Systems and Technologies’ testbed collections of electronic records and  store them at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Read more