Community-Based Research Through
Open Exchanges
A New York University Strategic Perspective
ASREN e-AGE 2014 Conference, December 10th, 2014
Thomas A. Delaney, P.E
V.P. & Chief Global Technology Officer
New York University
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NYU Has Evolved Into a Global University in Past 5 Years
6 Continents
13 Study Away Sites
3 Degree-Granting Portals
(New York, Abu Dhabi, Shanghai)
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With NYU Sites Established, Demand for
Intra-University Connectivity Spiked
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NYU's research community indicated that it wished to collaborate with
the other research universities in our regions; not just with NYU
schools and sites.
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A global community of practice followed, developed largely through the
cooperation of universities and the national research networks
throughout the world.
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Global Universities and Research Networks
are Driving Connectivity
GNU Announced:
Middle East Campus
Internet2
International SIG
Established
NYUAD Opens, Along with
Berlin and New Academics for London
2009
September 2010
NYU Shanghai and NYUAD
Campus Construction
NYU Shanghai
Far East Co-location Site
‘Above Ground’
Portal Announced
10 GB Beijing-LA Circuit Launched Opened In Singapore
March 2011
April 2012
Spring 2013
Arabian Global Open Education
Exchange Announced
India MOU Discussions
Spring 2014
November 2007
What Role Do R&E Open Exchange Facilities Play?
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The Research Networks of the World are Interconnecting
Through an Emerging Open Exchange Architecture
European
R&E
Open
Exchange
North
American
R&E
Open
Exchange
Arabian R&E
Open
Exchange
Far East R&E
Open
Exchange
ManLan – North American R&E Open Exchange
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Colocated at (ManLan) North American Open Exchange
Universities & Non-Profit Organizations
Carriers
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American Museum of Natural History
City University of New York
Columbia University
Cornell University
Fordham University
Mount Sinai School of Medicine
New York Presbyterian Hospital
New York University
NYSERNet
The New School
The Rockefeller University
Stony Brook University
Syracuse University
Weill Medical College
CA*net
ESNet
GÉANT
Internet2
Ankabut
NORDUnet
MAGPI/NOAA
MAN LAN
GLIF
National Lambda Rail
SINet
TWAREN
USLHCnet/CERN
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Cost / Benefit Considerations
Redundancy
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Equipment
Power
Egress
Alternate Remote Exchange Points
Alternate Nearby Exchange Points
Predictable design and features among exchange points
Flexibility to respond to changing market conditions
Commitment to sustain space for the long haul
Make cost structure simple and transparent
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Service Requirements for International Co-Location
Highest Priority
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Path diversity
Customs/import policy and procurement
Dedicated connectivity
Academic freedom ("Full Participation")
Shared values
Flexibility to respond to changing market/carrier conditions
High Priority
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Multi-lingual support
Scalability
Explicit cost or quality benefits
Common management ("Coalition")
Enabling mobility
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Exchange Point Guiding Principles
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Locate near many major carriers
Open to the R&E community and their service providers
Aggressively low pricing but sustainable
Equal treatment of all members
Commitment to sustain space for the long haul
Maximize flexibility for users of the space
Maintain partnership relationship with the building owners
No dominance by any carrier
User voice to influence running of the exchange
Coordination among the exchanges
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The Research Networks of the World are Interconnecting
Through an Emerging Open Exchange Architecture
European
R&E
Open
Exchange
North
American
R&E
Open
Exchange
Arabian R&E
Open
Exchange
Far East R&E
Open
Exchange
Far East Co-location Site in Singapore:
a 2013 Partnership Success Story
Open Exchange
• Scarrier diversity, maintains agility in the marketplace, and reduces
dependence on expensive private circuits
Co-Location Partnerships
• Internet2 and partner universities including Duke, Florida
International, Georgetown, NYU, and University of Chicago
Global Network Infrastructure
• Intelligently matches service needs with carrier SLAs and cost
profiles over a mix of circuit types – Internet, NREN, and private
carrier services
• Connects the university tenants to private/public cloud offerings,
supports regional survivability of sites, and maintains performance
and availability of key services
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The Research Networks of the World are Interconnecting
Through an Emerging Open Exchange Architecture
European
R&E
Open
Exchange
North
American
R&E
Open
Exchange
Arabian R&E
Open
Exchange
Far East R&E
Open
Exchange
Arabian Global Education Open Exchange:
Our Next Opportunity
• Recently, Abu Dhabi declared a “free zone” for international commerce
“The Fujairah Smart Hub” run by Etisalat.
• Through the work of Ankabut, Internet2, and NYU, we have carved out an Arabian
Global Education Open Exchange within the Smart Hub in Fujairah
(Fujairah is a UAE port city, 250 km from Abu Dhabi).
• During the establishment of the Arabian Global Educational Open Exchange, we
intend to address the Middle East – Far East chasm by establishing a link between
the Arabian exchange and the exchange in the Far East.
The Arabian Global Education Open Exchange
offers NYU and other regional institutions
access to carrier competition, a key element
to sustain the growth of NYUAD’s participation
in the Global Network University Pathways
Program.
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Tools on the Network / High-Performance Computing
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Butinah, the largest high-performance computer in the UAE, supports computational research in astrophysics,
climate modeling, and genomics through numerical modeling, simulation, and numerical analyses.
Faculty in the areas of biology, chemistry, engineering, physics, and psychology use the supercomputer.
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The supercomputer is the fastest in the UAE, and was ranked in the June 2012 listing of the top 500, an
industry ranking of the top 500 supercomputers around the world. The state-of-the-art resource was built by
Hewlett-Packard, and is currently maintained at the Injazat headquarters in Abu Dhabi.
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BuTinah runs at approximately 70 teraflops (the general measure of computational power, which equates to
one trillion floating point operations per second), and consists of 512 super-dense compute nodes, each of
which has a memory capacity of at least 48 gigabytes. Additional memory nodes supply 192 gigabytes of RAM
with an additional terabyte node dedicated for NYUAD’s Center for Genomics and Systems Biology. Graphics
processing units and visualization nodes included in the system are used for specialized functions, such as the
translation of data into images.
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BuTinah will not only provide a vital resource for NYUAD research centers and faculty members, it will also
enable greater research collaboration between NYUAD and other institutions across the UAE and the region.
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Outcomes
The R&E community is now beginning to connect across borders
• Universities are working together
• National boundaries are being overcome through open connectivity
• Networks and high-performance computing capacity are being leveraged collaboratively
The results in the past five years are amazing
A few success stories in the following areas:
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Medicine
Genomics
Chemistry
Energy
Climate
Cyber security
Physics
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Advances in Medicine
ICTBioMed, ACTREC
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ICTBioMed is an international consortium bound together by R&E networks that provides
collaboration and cloud facilities for biomedical researchers in India, Poland, Sweden,
and the US.
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For example, ICTBioMed allows Dr. Amin Dutt, who was trained in the US and now
carries out his research in his home country at the Advanced Centre for Treatment,
Research, and Education in Cancer (ACTREC) in Navi Mumbai, to collaborate with his
peers and former colleagues at the Broad Institute. Sites on the ICTBioMed network are
repositories of widely used biomedical research data and have significant HPC facilities
as well.
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There was a session on ICTBioMed at the Internet2 2014 Technology Exchange.
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Advances in Medicine
Oregon H&S University, University of Pittsburgh, Internet2
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Internet2-based videoconferencing was used to expand the educational opportunities of
medical informatics students at Oregon Health & Science University and the University of
Pittsburgh. Students and faculty in both programs shared extra-curricular research
conferences and journal club meetings. A course in Information Retrieval was made
available to students in both programs (2002).
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Advances in Genomics
New York University Abu Dhabi – Butinah HPC
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Comparison of samples from next generation sequencing
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Networks and protein function and structure
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Computational methods for analyzing the interactions of microRNAs (miRNAs) with their
mRNA targets in atomic detail
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The 100 Date Palm Project -- uncovers the origins of date palms through sequencing the
DNA of 100 varieties of date palms
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Advances in Genomics
Indiana University, CERNET and Internet2
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Twenty-four GB of genomic data, a collaboration of Indiana University, CERNET, and
Internet2 (2012).
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Advances in Chemistry
New York University Abu Dhabi, University of Georgia
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Medicinal chemists perform rigid and flexible docking experiments and do analysis and
visualization of docking results
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Rigid and flexible docking against a bacterial Ras, converting enzyme protease
(MmRce1p), and calculated models of human Rce1p (HsRce1p) using the HsRce1p
inhibitors discovered by Dore (NYUAD) and Schmidt Labs (UGA)
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Mechanically responsive materials using quantum mechanical density functional theory
(DFT) calculations and successfully modeling the structural as well as spectral property of
the molecule
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Advances in Energy
General Atomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, CENIC, CSTNET
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Fusion  Collaborative Tokamak research is carried out by scientists at General Atomics
in California together with researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences over R&E
networks in the US (CENIC) and in China (CSTNET).
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Advances in Climate Change Research
NYU Center for Global Sea-Level Change Research (CSLC), NYU-AD
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The Center for Global Sea-level Change (CSLC) at NYU Abu Dhabi published a paper in Nature
that found one of the most sensitive and critical areas of the Earth’s ice in West Antarctica is
being affected by changes in the North and Tropical Atlantic, and has been warming for over 30
years. They are doing research that will develop the capability to project sea-level change for the
next century and beyond. Significant sea-level change in the next century could have a huge
impact on low-lying coastal areas.
Oceanic boundary conditions for Jakobshavn Glacier
Variability and renewal of Ilulissat Icefjord Waters
Provenance and sources of variability of Disko Bay
The Centre for Prototype Climate Modeling (CPCM) uses Butinah
for projects such as Indian Summer Monsoon Studies
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Affects Of Climate On Coral Growth
NYU-AD
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A study of the corals in the Arabian/Persian Gulf that survive extreme sea temperatures (summer
mean: >34 C). It is unclear whether these corals have genetically adapted or physiologically
acclimated to these conditions. The study will compare corals on reefs within the thermallyextreme Persian/Arabian Gulf with those in the neighboring Gulf of Oman.
“Although the Gulf is relatively isolated, it is a
young reef. In ecology, there is the concept that
genetic specialization takes time. The older the
reef, the more specialized the genes become. This
is because as cells pass on their DNA in a given
area, the genes best suited to that area persist and
amplify in a species.
So while the reef is isolated (promoting
specialization), it is young (making specialization
less likely). These two factors make it unclear if
genetic specialization as happened.”
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Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in
Security and Privacy Abu Dhabi
Mission
• Help create a world-class cyber security research center by partnering with key, local
universities, industry, and government agencies
• A trusted “go-to” place for the region
Vision
• Help build education and research capacity and be a catalyst for high-impact research
programs in cyber security
• Help in developing workforce in cyber security
• Engage with the broader community and become a valuable source of expertise and thought
leadership for government and industry
Successfully developed multiple research thrusts Threat Understanding, Response,
and Forensics
• Trusted platforms and services
• Usable security
Cyber Security Awareness, Outreach and Human Capital
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Government agencies, industry, and academia
Workshops and roundtables
“Security Days”
High school activity
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Advances in Physics
CERN, GÉANT, Esnet, Internet2
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Data generated at the Large Hadron Collider in CERN is distributed to more than 170
universities and other laboratories for analysis by R&E networks in Europe (GÉANT)
and the US (ESnet and Internet2).
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Summary
Network costs can be reduced by:
• Entering Open Exchange Points where
carriers compete for network services
• Developing Co-location Partnerships
with other universities and research
networks to build a sustainable
business model
• Establishing a Global Network
Infrastructure
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Mix/match network services with
the most cost-effective carriers in
a quick, agile, and inexpensive
manner
We have adopted our successful co-location model of the NYU South-Data Center in the
Far East (Singapore). Other strategic exchange points will follow.
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Summary: Benefits of the Emerging
Educational Open Exchanges
Local Context
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Promotes competitive choice of
international private and university-owned
research network
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Fosters in-country partnerships
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Promotes stronger partnerships with
universities within each region
Global Context
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Completes first ever global-research ring
providing cost-effective connectivity
between the Middle East and the Far East
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