Cycle Computing Announces BigScience Challenge Winner
3.13.12 | HPC wire | Original Publication
New York, March 13 -- Cycle Computing announced today that Victor Ruotti, computational biologist, Morgridge Institute for Research, won the 2011 CycleCloud BigScience Challenge . Ruotti will be awarded $10,000 of computation time, the equivalent of eight hours on a 30,000-core cluster. The contest was open to all applicants working on behalf of non-profit organizations to further humanity and state of the art research using utility supercomputing.
Ruotti’s submission detailed the construction of a knowledgebase indexing system for Human Embryonic Stem Cells and their derivatives via utility supercomputing power. To harness the therapeutic potential of human embryonic stem cells (hES), induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) and their cellular derivatives, researchers must first perform a series of analyses, which require hours of computational time and consist of obtaining a genetic finger print or profile of the cell type of interest.
“The high throughput computing power of CycleCloud will enable the classification of currently uncharacterized cell types, including hES cells and iPS cells from our laboratory,” said Victor Ruotti, computational biologist, Morgridge Institute for Research. “The transcript profiles from each cell type will be analyzed and compared by aligning billions of sequencing reads in combinatorial pair wise steps. By doing so, we will create the first read level index to yield classified cellular derivatives along with methods to produce these cell types in a laboratory setting which could become potential therapies of the future.”
Alan Aspuru-Guzik, from the Harvard Clean Energy Project, also received honorable mention around his work with carbon-based, organic, solar cells as an alternative energy sources against commercially available solar cells. Aspuru-Guzik, along with all finalists was awarded both the original $500 credit from Cycle Computing and an additional $1,000 credit from Amazon Web Services (AWS). Additionally, Aspuru-Guzik will receive access to idle capacity from testing infrastructure used as Cycle develops its products.
Finalists were selected based on their proposal’s long-term benefit to humanity, originality, creativity and suitability to run on CycleCloud clusters launched within AWS. The grand prize, which includes an original $10,000 in credit from Cycle Computing and four hours of CycleCloud engineering support, will also include an additional $2,500 of credit from AWS. Entrants included Aspire to Advance Parkinson’s and Diabetes Research, Create Stem Cell Knowledgebase, Improve Organic Photovoltaics for SolarCells and Map Genomic Diversity. The finalists were judged by Jason Stowe, CEO, Cycle Computing, and a panel of industry luminaries, including Kevin Davies, editor-in-chief, Bio-IT World, Matt Wood, technology evangelist for Amazon Web Services, and Peter S. Shenkin, vice president, Schrödinger.
“Victor’s project truly stood out to all the judges as his aspirations to help the stem cell research could truly have a significant impact on future treatments in a short timeframe,” said Jason Stowe, founder and CEO, Cycle Computing. “We wanted researchers to ask questions they didn’t think they could before and push the boundaries of what’s available to not only the life science industry, but all seeking computing power formerly reserved for larger enterprises. With utility supercomputing, we enable researchers to do Big Science easily, without abandoning the compute-intensive, big questions that could change the world and move humanity forward.”
About Cycle Computing
Cycle Computing is the leader in Utility Supercomputing software. As a bootstrapped, profitable software company, Cycle delivers proven, secure and flexible high performance computing (HPC) and data solutions since 2005. Cycle helps clients maximize existing infrastructure and speed computations on servers, VMs, and on-demand in the cloud. Our products help clients maximize internal infrastructure and increase power as research demands, like the 10000-core cluster for Genentech and the 30000+ core cluster for a Top 5 Pharma that were covered in Wired, TheRegister, BusinessWeek, Bio-IT World, and Forbes. Starting with three initial Fortune 100 clients, Cycle has grown to deploy proven implementations at Fortune 500s, SMBs and government and academic institutions including JP Morgan Chase, Purdue University, Pfizer and Lockheed Martin.
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Source: Cycle Computing
