CHAPEL HILL, Dec. 9, 2011–RENCI at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and Duke University in partnership with IBM will lead a new project to build a nationwide test bed for networking and networked cloud computing.

RENCI’s networking research group is part of a team that will design a blueprint for a future version of the Internet.

Sharlini Sankaran, formerly assistant director of the NC Department of Commerce Office of Science and Technology, has been named the first executive director of the Research, Engagement, and Capabilities Hub of North Carolina, or REACH NC.

The RENCI/North Carolina booth will be one of several on the SC11 show floor to participate in a demonstration that will connect booths in the Washington State Convention Center with large data sets in the U.S. and Europe, creating a distributed, high-speed international data grid.

RENCI and its North Carolina partners at Duke and NC State universities will feature their work in an exhibit at SC11, the world’s premier conference for high performance computing, networking, storage and analysis, Nov. 14 – 17.

SEATTLE, Nov. 1, 2011–Scientists studying data or compute-intensive problems require high bandwidth and computational resources, often from heterogeneous systems at different sites. But they don’t need these resources all the time. Ideally, a scientist studying the properties of new materials for producing solar energy, for example, would be able to grab a “slice” of a [...]

To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, change the communication medium and you’ve changed the message.

It’s a concept that’s well understood by the students in Rebecca Nesvet’s English 102, (Writing in the Disciplines) classes at UNC Chapel Hill.

Understanding data often requires understanding the geography associated with it. Hurricane and storm surge models mean little unless tied to a specific location.  Trends in diseases and public health can be spotted and analyzed by comparing data from different counties, regions or states.

Understanding data often requires understanding the geography associated with it. Hurricane and storm surge models mean little unless tied to a specific location.  Trends in diseases and public health can be spotted and analyzed by comparing data from different counties, regions or states.

Experts from American institutions known for their pioneering efforts in Earth systems research, education and evaluation have come together to turn economic literacy education on its ear, and RENCI is part of the effort.