Information Technology Services ITS – Research

The Bio21 Molecular Science and Biotechnology Institute or simply Bio21 Institute (www.bio21.org) is a multidisciplinary research centre, specialising in medical, agricultural and environmental biotechnology. The Institute conducts innovative research in biotechnology and related areas, driven by multidisciplinary research and dynamic interactions with industry. The Bio21 Institute accommodates more than 500 research scientists, students and industry participants and is one of the largest biotechnology research centres in Australia.

The Bio21 Institute is currently utilising ITS SToR service (5TB) as a general research data storage solution for its members of researcher as well as projects related to Metabolomics Australia.

The SToR storage share is provisioned to the Bio21 IT team as a whole via the central UniMelb Windows Active Directory (AD) Security Group and then assigned by the local IT administrators to individual researcher within the institute according the internal arrangements.

Figure 1. Use Case Diagram of Bio21 Institute

The University of Melbourne Histopathology and Organ Pathology Service (HOPS) operated in Professor John Furness’ Histopathology Laboratory (www.apn-histopathology.unimelb.edu.au) provides researchers across Australia with access to high quality histology, mouse pathology expertise, digital imaging, and data on genetically modified mice used as models of human disease created through Australian Phenomics Network (APN).

HOPS utilises Mirax Digital Slide Scanner for scanning the standard stained histological slides in high resolution. The scanned images are initially stored on the local server before being migrated nightly, via a mounted network drive (CIFS), to the ITS storage servers located in Noble Park Data Centre. These images (currently around 5TB in size with a projected increase to 23TB by 2014) can then be interrogated by local UniMelb researchers or authorised external users via the Mirax Viewer software.

An ITS Virtual Machine (VM) is also provided to APN software developers for establishing a seamless connection (via SSH/SFTP using public/private key authentication) between the local SToR storage servers and the external Phenomics Ontology Driven Data (PODD) repository so users are able to access these very same images via PODD’s web interface which is being hosted externally.

Figure 2. Component Diagram of HOPS

The ARC funded Knowledge Building in Schooling and Higher Education research project (www.education.unimelb.edu.au/kbp/), which is led by Professor Lyn Yates, aims to shed new light on strategies of knowledge-building and on agendas for future policies and practice in Australian educational institutions.

Researchers in this project conduct a series of interviews and collect the recorded audio files, audio transcripts, relevant literature as well as metadata regarding the interviewee. These interviews are mostly being done independently at remote locations in three states (Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland) therefore the need of consolidating the collected interview data quickly while out “on the field” prove to be crucial for the success of this project. This is so to ensure other project members can begin studying these data, using analytical software such as NVivo etc..

An ITS SToR storage share was created for the project where each project member can access, both on-site and off-site, via the mounted network drive (CIFS) from their mobile computers. The storage share has been organised by the project members themselves and the data are being back up regularly by the central ITS SToR service.

Figure 3. Use Case Diagram of Knowledge Building Project

The University Digitisation Service (digitisation.unimelb.edu.au) provides a range of digitisation services to the University community; these include the digitising books, film, documents, etc.. UDS currently employs two high-end scanners, namely the Zeutschel OS 14000 A1 scanner and the ATIZ A2 book-cradle scanner. The Zeutschel OS 14000 A1 scanner is capable of performing genuine 600dpi scanning and produces images of up to 700MB.

The current UDS’ digitisation workflow is built around Filemaker Pro software and takes advantage of Filemaker’s integrated database features.

UDS is currently storing its archive image collections in ITS SToR storage via the CIFS connection. It is utilising 2TB at the moment with a projected increase to 5.5TB by 2011 and a potential annual production of 5.3TB from 2012.

Figure 4. Component Diagram of UDS