Microsoft Research Delivers Tools to Help Accelerate Scientific Discovery

Workflow technology for scientists connects raw data to computing systems,
facilitating research in oceanography, astronomy, environmental science and
other disciplines.

REDMOND, Wash., July 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Addressing an audience of
prominent academic researchers today at the 10th annual Microsoft Research
Faculty Summit, Microsoft External Research Corporate Vice President Tony Hey
announced that Microsoft Corp. has developed new software tools with the
potential to transform the way much scientific research is done. Project
Trident: A Scientific Workflow Workbench allows scientists to easily work with
large volumes of data, and the specialized new programs Dryad and DryadLINQ
facilitate the use of high-performance computing.

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Created as part of the company's ongoing efforts to advance the state of the
art in science and help address world-scale challenges, the new tools are
designed to make it easier for scientists to ingest and make sense of data,
get answers to questions at a rate not previously possible, and ultimately
accelerate the pace of achieving critical breakthrough discoveries. Scientists
in data-intensive fields such as oceanography, astronomy, environmental
science and medical research can now use these tools to manage, integrate and
visualize volumes of information. The tools are available as no-cost downloads
to academic researchers and scientists at
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/collaboration/tools.

"Today, scientists can collect more data than ever before from the Internet,
satellites, sensors and other resources," Hey said. "That deluge of
information brings amazing research opportunities, but at the same time, our
ability to process that data and make it meaningful has not kept pace. These
tools help simplify the data-intensive end of research, so scientists can
focus on analyzing results and making new discoveries."

Transforming a Discipline
Project Trident is allowing oceanographic researchers to manage the massive
amounts of scientific data coming in from sensors, instruments, moorings,
robots and cameras attached to fiber-optic cables on the ocean floor. The data
will be used to better understand sediment flows, changes in temperature and
salinity, earthquakes, undersea volcanoes, extreme life forms associated with
seafloor hydrothermal vents, and what data is needed to predict tsunamis.

Project Trident is currently being used by oceanographers at the University of
Washington to support the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), a
seafloor-based research network sponsored by the National Science Foundation
with thousands of sensors in the oceans of the Western Hemisphere. The amount
of data coming in from these sensors is roughly equal to two simultaneous
high-definition TV broadcasts going around the clock.

Project Trident is also being used by oceanographers at the Monterey Bay
Aquarium Research Institute to support a data portal for a program funded by
the Office of Naval Research designed to better understand typhoon
intensification.

"In the ocean sciences we routinely work with complex multidisciplinary data
sets, and the investigator often spends more time on the mechanics of finding
and manipulating data than on the process of understanding what the data
means," said James G. Bellingham, chief technologist, Monterey Bay Aquarium
Research Institute. "Trident's workflow framework provides a graphical
environment that hides much of the complexity from the user, letting
scientists focus their intellectual energy on the data rather than the
software."

In addition, astronomers at Johns Hopkins University are using Project Trident
to support the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System
(Pan-STARRS) project, which helps detect objects in the solar system that
might pose a threat to Earth. The Pan-STARRS project uses an array of very
powerful digital cameras to observe the entire night sky several times each
month. Each of the cameras captures 1.4 gigapixels -- 200 times the resolution
of a 7-megapixel consumer camera.

"This is an amount of raw data so large it's difficult to comprehend, much
less work with," said Alex Szalay, Alumni Centennial Professor at Johns
Hopkins University. "With Project Trident, we can essentially digest that
tremendous data source directly into our supercomputers customized for
data-intensive science, process it interactively and create complex
statistical analyses to help us better understand what's going on in the
universe."

Harnessing Technology for Science
Project Trident was developed by Microsoft Research's External Research
Division specifically to support the scientific community. Project Trident is
implemented on top of Microsoft's Windows Workflow Foundation, using the
existing functionality of a commercial workflow engine based on Microsoft SQL
Server and Windows HPC Server cluster technologies. DryadLINQ is a combination
of the Dryad infrastructure for running parallel systems, developed in the
Microsoft Research Silicon Valley lab, and the Language-Integrated Query
(LINQ) extensions to the C# programming language. Dryad was designed to
simplify the task of implementing distributed applications on clusters of
Windows-based computers. DryadLINQ is an abstraction layer, which simplifies
the process of implementing Dryad-based applications.

The DryadLINQ system automatically and transparently translates and executes
the queries on large compute clusters using the Dryad execution engine. A
DryadLINQ program can be written and debugged using standard .NET development
tools, and it makes distributed computing on large clusters simple for most
programmers.

Reducing Research Overhead
Project Trident combines gaming graphics with workflow technologies to create
a powerful visualization tool that makes large-scale, complex scientific data
not only easy to review and analyze, but also easy to manage, reproduce and
share. It enables researchers to build experiments that formerly required
heavy involvement from computer scientists. To give the solution enough
"horsepower" to process very large data sets, Dryad and DryadLINQ allow
Project Trident to be run on distributed systems or large compute clusters.

"With the addition of DryadLINQ, our ability to interpret data has finally
caught up with our ability to collect it," said Roger Barga, a Microsoft
researcher and principal architect for the new tools. "While it is not
necessary to couple Project Trident with Dryad, the combination provides a
powerful system for processing very large volumes of data."

The marriage of visualization and workflow technologies allows data analysis
experiments to be developed visually as "workflows," similar to process
workflows used in the business world. Whereas building such a system has
traditionally required custom coding and weeks or months of development time,
with Project Trident, senior researchers can do much of that upfront
programming themselves in just hours or days.

About Microsoft External Research
The External Research Division of Microsoft Research builds relationships
between academia, industry and government to help advance research in fields
that rely heavily upon advanced computing. Microsoft Research provides the
tools, technologies, resources and interoperability needed to accelerate
research and advance human potential and the well-being of the planet.

About Microsoft Research
Founded in 1991, Microsoft Research is dedicated to conducting both basic and
applied research in computer science and software engineering. Its goals are
to enhance the user experience on computing devices, reduce the cost of
writing and maintaining software, and invent novel computing technologies.
Researchers focus on more than 55 areas of computing and collaborate with
leading academic, government and industry researchers to advance the state of
the art in such areas as graphics, speech recognition, user-interface
research, natural language processing, programming tools and methodologies,
operating systems and networking, and the mathematical sciences. Microsoft
Research currently employs more than 850 people in six labs located in
Redmond, Wash.; Cambridge, Mass.; Silicon Valley, Calif.; Cambridge, England;
Beijing, China; and Bangalore, India. Microsoft Research collaborates openly
with colleges and universities worldwide to enhance the teaching and learning
experience, inspire technological innovation, and broadly advance the field of
computer science. More information can be found at
http://research.microsoft.com.

About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is the worldwide leader in software,
services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full
potential.

SOURCE Microsoft Corp.

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