eScience and Cloud Computing in Beijing

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I’m in Beijing for the tenth annual Microsoft eScience Workshop (opens in new tab), which runs from October 22 to 25. As in the past, the workshop takes place at the same time and in the same location as the IEEE International Conference on eScience (opens in new tab). No coincidence, of course—why not take advantage of all that collected eScience brain power?

Explore the latest challenges in research and the benefits powered by Windows Azure

This year’s workshop is future-looking. With as many as 100 college students in attendance, the workshop will feature special introductory sessions led by top researchers, giving the students the opportunity to learn about the latest results and challenges in broad areas of scientific investigation. Among the topics the workshop will cover are environmental studies, bioinformatics, climate change, and new results in data modeling. I am particularly excited to see that the burgeoning field of urban computing is on the agenda of this year’s program.

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The workshop is future-looking in another way. Cloud capabilities have matured to the extent that they offer, in some instances, the most effective way for scientists to scale out their computations and collaborate on data and discovery. To better understand these in the context of Microsoft’s cloud, Windows Azure, we have been collecting cloud-based tools to support scientific research and are now prepared to share what we have learned. Following the Microsoft eScience Workshop, we will hold a Windows Azure for Research training class—the first in China—on October 25 and 26.

This two-day course, presented by specially trained Windows Azure experts, is designed to help researchers learn the skills they need to apply cloud computing in their current and future investigations. Attendees will be able to access Windows Azure on their own laptop during this hands-on training, regardless of what operating system that laptop is running, because Windows Azure will be accessed through the Internet browser.

The class is part of the broader Windows Azure for Research Initiative, which is a program designed to help the research community leverage cloud computing to handle the challenges of data-intensive science. As my colleague Dennis Gannon, director of cloud research strategy at Microsoft Research Connections, said just last month:

Science is at an inflection point where the challenges of dealing with massive amounts of data and the growing requirements of distributed multidisciplinary collaborations make moving to the Windows Azure cloud extremely attractive. This is true for the individual researcher who does not want to manage local physical infrastructure and for large teams that need to share their discovery resources and services with the larger research community.

You can find details about the Windows Azure for Research initiative in Dennis’s blog (opens in new tab). As Dennis explains, in addition to the training classes, the initiative includes the Windows Azure for Research Awards Program, which offers sizable grants of Windows Azure resources for individual projects or for community efforts to host scientific data and services. We will be accepting proposals continuously and making awards six times a year. By the way, lest there be any confusion, the Awards Program is open globally, not just in China.

I’m convinced that cloud computing can help resolve the computational and data challenges of today’s research, and I invite you to experiment with “cloud power” at Windows Azure for Research (opens in new tab).

—Tony Hey (opens in new tab), Vice President, Microsoft Research Connections

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