Synergies

The Virtual Observatory:

It is common use in astronomy that the data observed at the major observatories is stored in data archives. The data stored here is generally available to the whole world after a proprietary period of about a year, and can be used by many astronomers to produce useful science. There have been considerable efforts worldwide to make sure that software is available that can access archives all over the world, read the various formats, and make sure that the data documentation can be understood automatically. The potential gains are enormous, since research can be done with much larger observed samples, using observations at many different wavelength regions, without having to do the tedious job of understanding different formats, etc. Since building an instrument nowadays often includes making a professional data archive accessible by VO-software, the University of Groningen, with instrument-building groups as well as groups that are able to analyze large amounts of data, is in an excellent position. Applying the expertise acquired during the development of the Virtual Observatory in other fields, such as particle physics and biology, might be a very important area in the future.

Large data handling:

In the area of Large-data handling and computing related to instrumentation, new opportunities for collaboration between ALICE and ENTEG arise in large-scale robot and environment simulations, robustness of autonomous systems with uncertain resources (data, compute power), and ‘graceful degradation’ of complex systems.

Data management and workflows:

New collaborations are foreseen with GRIP on data management systems for I/O- and CPU-intensive data processing workflows for mass spectrometry; infrastructure for integrated ‘multi-omics projects’; handling of the RUG pharmacy IADB.nl prescription database (80 million records, 800 million variables); and integration of proteomics and metabolomics data with genetics (connection to LifeLines). Connections with the Van Swinderen Institute exists on storage, sharing, and analysis tools for high-energy physics.