Emblem Sub Level Top APPLICATIONS: Advanced Applications
Emblem Sub Level Logo Large Scale eScience Networking
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A key focus for the StarLight Consortium and its research partners is developing communication services, exchange services, and networks for large-scale, high performance e-Science applications, which have always been key drivers of next generation technologies. These highly distributed, resource intensive initiatives often encounter technology barriers years before they are recognized by other communities.

Many eScience applications are data, bandwidth, compute, and storage intensive. Research science communities employ large scale resources distributed world-wide, including instrumentation (e.g., synchrotrons, radio telescopes, sensors observatories), data repositories, HPC (supercomputing for computational science), and analytic sites (e.g., AI/ML/DP) sites, that have to be interconnected into common ecosystems that can support high capacity, high performance workflows. Such research communities include those investigating topics in high energy physics, astrophysics, bioinformatics, computational biology, genomics, fusion energy, computational chemistry, nanotechnology, data mining, digital engineering, geosciences, oceanographic and atmospheric studies, space exploration, medical imaging, materials science, and advanced digital media, including ultra-high resolution visualization, specialized virtual-reality, mixed reality, tele-immersion, 3D, and 8k media.

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  • High Energy Physics (HEP)
    For many years, the StarLight Consortium has been engaged in multiple cooperative initiatives with the world-wide high energy physics research (HEP) community. These project focus on problems related to managing, transporting, and storing extremely large amounts of HEP data. HEP research investigates complex topics related to the fundamental nature of matter, especially the attributes and behavior of the smallest elemental particles. These scientific investigations are undertaken by collaborative research communities around the world that use highly sophisticated instrumentation to gather extremely large amounts of data, which then is distributed for analysis world-wide. Primary HEP reference projects include the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, which generates more data than any other science project in the world. This data is transported to compute sites world-wide, including primary sites (Tier 1) and secondary (Tier 2 and Tier 3), on two major international networks, the Large Hadron Collider Optical Private Network (LHCOPN) and the Large Hadron Collider Open Network Environment, which have core nodes at the StarLight Facility. the StarLight Consortium has supported the development of these networks including core nodes at the StarLight facility, which provides interconnections to national and international networks and a metro area network connecting StarLight to local national laboratories. Key partners for the StarLight Consortium HEP initiatives Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory. The StarLight Consortium is also participating in current CERN initiatives that include grand challenge data moving planning for the forthcoming High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC), developing a Network for the Transport of Experimental Data (NOTED) based on AI techniques, and developing a method for optimizing workflows with a packet marking technique (Scitags).
  • Astrophysics With its research partners, the StarLight Consortium is participating in a number of projects that are addressing infrastructure requirements of astrophysics, especially high performance networking, including capabilities for supporting specialized research instruments and techniques over international multi-domain reseach networks. For example, the StarLight Consortium collaborating with the international networking research community to prepare for providing communication services for the Square Kilometer Array (SKA), which will have radio telescope sites in Western Australian and South Africa and will generate more data that the LHC, which will have to be distributed world-wide. the StarLight Consortium is also assisting with plans for the Pierre Auger Observatory’s Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), which is being implemented on a mountain in Chile and interconnected by high capacity international networks. the StarLight Consortium also has assisted in developing networking capabilities to support the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which produces 3D digital astronomical maps. Another project was an international collaboration established to develop a space geometric technique - very long baseline interferometry (VLBI), which allows for precise measures of the motions of the Earth. VLBI measures the earth's orientation by placing it within an inertial reference frame. VLBI is based on radio telescopes. By placing antenna in different locations around the globe, collecting radio waves from distant quasars, and measuring differences in arrival times (with picosecond precision), VLBI methods can measure various movements of the Earth. VLBI techniques require the gathering and distribution of large amounts of data. In addition, the StarLight Consortium has also been developing new methods for implementing astrophysical modeling and simulation (on distributed infrastructure based on L1/L2 communication paths on optical fiber) using techniques such as adaptive mesh refinement (AMR).
  • BioInformatics With multiple national and international partners, the StarLight Consortium has been involved in multiple BioInformatics projects, including one that created a Bioinformatics Software Defined Network Exchange (SDX) or BioSDX, which was been designed, deployed, and demonstrated by a multi-organizational research consortium to enable bioinformatics knowledge discovery supported by dynamic networking services. This BioSDX uses precision networking to support precision medicine. The BioSDX is based on recent technical developments in infrastructure abstraction that enables new types of tools and services utilizing programmable network infrastructure through high levels of resource virtualization. Combined with close integration of programmable cloud computing facilities, the BioSDX prototype is an important advance in supporting the new paradigm of data intensive bioinformatics across multiple disciplines, including computational genomics and precision medicine. those related to advanced medical imaging and high performance optical networking. Also, as a participant in the OptIPuter project, the StarLight Consortium developed new techniques for supporting the BioInformatics Research Network project (BIRN), which is sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). These techniques allow scientists that are generating multi-gigabyte data objects at diverse locations to be able to locate, correlate, analyze, and visualize them.
  • Computational Genomics The StarLight Consortium also has been participating in multiple projects related to BioInformatics that are developing high performance computational and communications infrastructure for Structural Genomics, including those supported by the Open Science Data Cloud (OSDC), a multi-petabyte science cloud that serves the research community by co-locating a multidisciplinary data commons containing many TB of rapidly increasing scientific data with cloud based computing, high performance data transport services, virtual machine images, and shareable snapshots containing common data analysis pipelines and tools. The OSDC has been designed to provide a long term persistent facility for scientific data, as well as a platform for data intensive science allowing new types of data intensive algorithms to be developed, tested, implemented, and used over large sets of heterogeneous scientific data. the StarLight Consortium has also supported the development of data transport from the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory to sites world-wide.
  • Materials Science In partnership with Argonne National Laboratory’s Advanced Photon Source, the StarLight Consortium designed and developed technologies to support high performance data transfers from APS sectors, including one that streams directly to HPC memory.
  • Nanotechnology Nanotechnology is the science and technology of precisely controlling the structure of matter at the molecular level. This discipline, which is often regarded as a particularly significant technological frontier, studies materials and devices at a nanoscale (a nanometer is one billionth of one meter). Several StarLight Consortium initiatives have involved investigations into technologies required to transport nanotechnology research data.
  • Medical Imaging The StarLight Consortium has been engaged in partnerships that explore new mechanisms to used advanced digital media techniques, including imaging, for biomedical applications, in cooperation with research universities, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), the Metropolitan Research and Education Network (MREN), national research and education networks, and various international networks. The StarLight Consortium and MREN have provided advanced networking capabilities to the annual RSNA conference Chicago at the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority's McCormick Place, which has enabled new techniques in medical imaging to be showcased. With Northwestern's Medical School, RSNA, NIH, and the MPEA, the StarLight Consortium supported the production of international multicast events on the topics of image interpretation. The StarLight Consortium also supported professional associations broadcasts of surgical techniques.
  • BioInformatics The StarLight Consortium has been involved in multiple bioInformatics projects, primarily those related to advanced medical imaging and high performance optical networking. As one of the partner institutions in the OptIPuter project, the StarLight Consortium developed new techniques for supporting the BioInformatics Research Network project (BIRN), which is sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The OptIPuter project, led by Cal-IT2at UCSD and EVL at UIC, was a five-year, National Science Foundation funded project that is interconnecting distributed storage, computing and visualization resources using photonic networks. These techniques allow scientists that are generating multi-gigabyte data objects at diverse locations to be able to locate, correlate, analyze, and visualize them. BIRN began as a multiscale brain imaging federated repository. However, the project was expanded to include other organs.
  • GeoSciences The StarLight Consortium has participated in several projects related to developing advanced optical networking techniques for supporting GeoSciences, which also requires utilization of large-scale, highly distributed 3D objects. One project for which techniques were developed is the NSF's Earthscope, which involves the acquisition, processing, and scientific interpretation of satellite-derived remote sensing, near-real-time environmental data, and active source data. Another project measured layers of the Earth’s upper atmosphere. A related project developed techniques for oceanography. The StarLight consortium has established ongoing high performance networking research projects with the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center focused on atmospheric sciences, geophysical sciences, and space exploration.
  • Fusion Energy With its research partners, the StarLight Consortium has developed international testbeds to model data flows related to fusion energy research based on tokamaks reactors, including the ITER (Latin for “the way”) the largest experimental fusion reactor currently in operation. A key goal of fusion reactor development is proving fusion reactions can produce significantly more energy than that provided to initiate the reaction process — producing a positive power. Tokamaks integrate heating processes, powerful magnets, and round reactor containers to spin charged particles and generate extremely hot plasmas to provide energy energy-releasing fusion reactions in extremely heat intensive plasmas. Designing and operating tokamaks requires high capacity, high performance international networks.
  • Advanced Digital Media The StarLight Consortium established multiple research and development projects in advanced digital media. Digital media has become an important driver application for the next-generation networking technology design and creation. the StarLight Consortium and its research partners have been advancing digital media technology through multiple initiatives that are bringing capabilities supporting high quality, high performance digital media over wide area networks, including internationally. the StarLight Consortium has undertaken projects related to multiple ultra high resolution digital media modalities: 3D scientific visualization; digital-media-on-demand, interactive access to repositories of digital video and related digital objects, which can be directly streamed for immediate viewing or scheduled to be transferred at specified times; Digital media streaming, direct transfer, for live transfer of digital or streaming from archived video allowing for interactivity such as pause, forward, and reverse; digital media conferencing, multi-way interactive high quality video and audio for collaboration among multiple sites, along with supplemental capabilities for additional transmitted materials, such as projected 3D objects; and immersive virtual reality spaces projected over thousands of miles. In addition, the Center has developed access methods, such as the Digital Video Portal, a research project focused on interactive, network-based digital media. the StarLight Consortium also supports networking for the Amart Amplified Group Environment Scalable (SAGE) project at the Electronic Visualization Lab of the Uinversity of Illinois Chicago. The StarLight Consortium also participated in a consortium that developed an international, flexible large scale digital media network, based on dedicated lightpath channels within global optical fiber. For many years, this High Performance Digital Media Network (HPDMnet) provided for exceptional quality services world-wide.
  • Ultra Large Science Data With multiple partners, the StarLight Consortium has investigated new methods of using advanced optical networks to support extremely large collections of digital information, especially for science communities. These research projects have examined new methods of using new lightpath network architecture to support extremely high performance data streaming from among multiple large scale data repositories.
  • Photonic Empowered Applications The StarLight Consortium's advanced networking infrastructure design and development projects are directed at a new class of applications based on extremely high performance optical communications - Photonic Empowered Applications. The term "Photonic-Empowered Applications" refers to multiple, global, next-generation applications that are being designed and developed to utilize highly distributed facilities (including those based on resources at sites world-wide). These are resource intensive applications - e.g., computationally intensive, bandwidth intensive, storage system intensive, et al. However, in addition, they are distinguished also by their utilization of advanced data communications based on dynamic multi-wavelength lightpath provisioning and supported by more flexible DWDM-based networking technology than that which is implemented in today's static point-to-point optical networks. These techniques can transport large amounts of data directly on lightpaths over global fabrics. They are also optical network "aware" - that is, they have a capability for directly discovering and signaling for use of the networking resources that they require, including signaling for the provisioning of lightpaths. In addition, some of these types of applications may be highly periodic and transient (e.g., they may exist only for a few moments at different times throughout a month or throughout a day). Consequently, they may transition instantaneously from a state requiring little or no network utilization to one requiring enormous network resources for days, hours, minutes, or moments, or even milliseconds. Many of these types of applications require close integration of core and edge resources. Within this type emerging new infrastructure, the boundaries between applications, computers, and networks truly dissolve.