e-Science boost to research

The

(EPSRC) and other funding partners have awarded more than £13 million to study the brain, traffic and nanoscale circuits.

The money will be used to fund e-Science and grid computing to gain more understanding of the brain, map the detailed environmental impact of traffic and design future-generation nanoscale electronic circuits. The three, three- to four-year projects are covered in the third round of the EPSRC's e-Science programme.

e-Science gives researchers access from their own desktops to resources held on widely-dispersed computers. It is enabling research that would have been impossible using one computer alone, even a supercomputer.

One project to benefit from the programme is the £4.5m CARMEN project, led by Professor Colin Ingram at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. It will harness e-Science techniques to enable neuroscientists, working on different aspects of brain function at different labs, to share and integrate their data and models.

Another is the £3.5m PMESG (Pervasive Mobile Environmental Sensor Grids) project, led by Professor John Polak at Imperial College London. It is jointly funded by the EPSRC and the Department for Transport and will archive their traffic data so it can be retrieved and analysed in new ways by others.

The third project is the £5.2m NanoCMOS project, led by Professor Asen Asenov at Glasgow University. It will develop e-Science methodology and tools to allow designers of nanoscale electronic circuits to share models that simulate nanocomponent behaviour and explore the implications for circuit design.