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.