The Telescience Project emerged from the early efforts of researchers at the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research (NCMIR) to remotely control bio-imaging instruments. In 1992, NCMIR researcher demonstrated the first system to control an electron microscope over the Internet from the S IGGraph conference in Chicago. This proof-of-concept system enabled conference attendees to interactively acquire and view images via remote control of one of the intermediate voltage electron microscopes (IVEM) at NCMIR.

In 1999, web-based Telemicroscopy was released and researchers were able to effectively, use the remote interface to acquire data. It became clear, however, for a complete remote research scenario, the ability to remotely acquire data must be closely coupled to data computation and storage resources. The Telescience Project was developed to address this issue. Telescience, provides a Grid-based architecture to combine the use of Telemicroscopy with tools for parallel distributed computation, distributed data management and archival, and interactive integrated visualization tools to provide an end-to-end solutio n for high throughput microscopy. The Telescience Project methodology is to merges technologies for remote control, Grid computing, and federated digital libraries of multi-scal e, cell-structure data. The objective of the Telescience Project is to increase the throughput of data acquisition and processing and ultimately improve the accuracy of the final data product.

Selected highlights of the Telescience Project during its 12+ years of federally funded research include:

Successful completion of the NSF Grand Challenge Award (1995-1999)

This award resulted in the creation of the Collaboratory for Microscopic Digital Anatomy (CMDA). CMDA was the first project to show both automated and feed-back driven control of a high-performance imaging instruments. CMDA directly lead to the production of a stable Telemicroscopy system.

Alpha Project for NSF funded National Partnership for Advanced Computing Infrastructure (1999 - 2004)

As one of only 5 alpha projects for NPACI, Telescience was organized to develop integrated IT infrastructure for national research communities. The mission of the alpha project was integrate PACI research efforts in metacomputing (and subsequently Grid computing), data federation, remote instrument control, and visualization. Research under NPACI lead to the development of the Telescience software architecture, a testbed Telescience Grid (global infrastructure spanning 4 countries including the US, Taiwan, Japan, and Korea), and the Telescience Portal interface.

Telescience achieves 4Q NASA Level 1 Congressional Milestone (2001)

Telescience infrastructure is deployed to demonstrate the use of Grid services for remote connectivity to high data-rate instruments and distributed real-time access to instrument data via the NASA Information Power Grid (IPG).

Telescience earns multiple awards at Supercomputing Conferences

Supercomputing is the world's leading conference on high performa nce computing, networking, and data storage. The annual High Performance Bandwi dth Challenge at Supercomputing is an international competition for leading-edge network applications, developed by teams of researchers from around the world, to showcase technologies and researchers driving the use of networking capabilities crucial to supercomputing. Telescience has won the Bandwidth Challenge three separate times (2000, 2001, 2003), including twice for "Best Application".

Telescience as an Applications Model

In addition to the awards/highlights listed above, Telescience has become a driving model for many new Grid projects that have recently emerged, including BIRN, KBSI e-science, NCHC eco-grid, and PRAGMA.

Contact Us

PI: Mark H. Ellisman

Lu Dai
Stephan Lamont
Abel W. Lin
Tomas Molina
Steve Peltier
Erik Peterson
George Yang

National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research (NCMIR)
Basic Science Building, Room 1000
University of California, San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive
Dept. Code 0608
La Jolla, CA 92093-0608
USA
Voice: (858) 534-0276
Fax: (858) 534-7497

CRBS   •   NCMIR   •   The Telescience Project   •   CCDB

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of Health (NIH)

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