I recently had the great pleasure of visiting with staff at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (opens in new tab) (CAS) in Beijing, China. CAS is China’s leading academic institution and comprehensive research and development center in natural science, technological science, and high-tech innovation. The Asia-Pacific Microsoft Research Connections team has done a terrific job of establishing a relationship with CAS in recent years. That early groundwork paid off in many ways during my visit to the CAS in February.
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Tony Hey, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Research Connections presents
The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery.
There are more than 100 institutes under CAS to focus on specific research areas. I visited the Computer Network Information Center (opens in new tab) (CNIC), which is a public institution that supports networks and information infrastructure for CAS. Professor Tieniu Tan, deputy secretary of CAS, and some researchers from different research institutes that are involved in the eScience program came to CNIC to host my visit. Among the topics we discussed were eScience-related projects and the Academic Cloud Program at Microsoft Research. I found the CAS team very welcoming and ready to share ideas. We will be building on that enthusiasm: as of February, CAS is a key Microsoft Research Connections partner for eScience in China.
In addition to meeting one-on-one with CAS high-level staff, leading researchers, and executives, I had the pleasure of delivering my presentation, The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery. The audience included a diverse student body as well as faculty representing various research fields, such as chemistry, high-energy physics, biotechnology, geography, environment, database, computing, engineering, and automation.
Although I was there to speak, I was also there to listen. One of my hosts, Professor Mingqi Chen, director of the Information Department of the CAS General Office, presented on cyber-infrastructure and eScience applications in CAS in three categories:
- Network (China Science and Technology Network (opens in new tab), China Next Generation Internet (opens in new tab))
- Supercomputing (graphics processing unit (opens in new tab), data grid in China)
- Scientific Data Processing (massive storage system and scientific databases)
The goal of the eScience program in CAS is to build an Open Science Cloud that serves CAS researchers and the broader scientific community. Professor Chen presented some typical eScience applications in CAS, including Galactic Wind Simulation, a real-time prediction of sandstorms system, and ChinaFLUX, which includes a large scientific facility, a field sensor-network real-time data-collection system, and an astronomical virtual laboratory.
My visit ended on a positive note when another of my hosts, Professor Tieniu Tan, approached me to propose that we further our collaboration through a joint eScience workshop. This workshop will take advantage of the eScience experience and resources that both CAS and Microsoft Research have acquired through our past research work. We will meet again soon to work out the details of this next collaborative venture.
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—Tony Hey (opens in new tab), Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Research Connections