KU Bioinformatics Computing Facility Core Renovation and Improvement

描述（由申请人提供）：堪萨斯大学劳伦斯校区要求资金翻新和扩建尼科尔斯大厅3646总平方英尺（gsf），指定为生物信息学计算设施核心（BCF）。翻新后的空间将支持跨大学许多部门和KU医学中心的生物和生物医学科学的计算密集型多学科和综合研究项目。BCF支持40多个NIH项目，两个NCRR COBRE拨款，一个NIGMS化学方法和图书馆发展（CMLD）项目，一个MLI专业化学中心和10个核心服务实验室。这些实验室为大学的生物和生物医学科学研究人员提供分析仪器和技术服务，如分子审讯、高通量筛选、显微镜和生物分子测序。拟议的计算公地将是一个可持续的、节能的数据中心，用于托管现有和未来专门用于生物和生物医学计算的资产。计算机正在成为生物学和生物医学研究中不可或缺的组成部分。生物医学相关计算由三个因素驱动：来自生物分子测序仪、质谱仪、x射线晶体学和高通量筛选系统等仪器的巨大且不断增长的数据量；模拟旨在通过发展和整合更复杂的模型，在许多尺度上理解生命的基本过程；还有大量的新问题来自于仪器数据的可用性，而这些数据的答案依赖于建模和计算。这恰恰反映了我们的经验，我们已经看到需要高性能计算和大规模数据存储的生物和生物医学科学项目的数量大幅增加。这些因素，再加上快速扩展的计算和存储硬件基础已经超出了现有设施的规模，使得满足活跃的生物医学计算社区当前和未来的需求变得困难，如果不是不可能的话。拟议的改造将提供托管计算和存储资源所需的能力，这些资源能够通过扩展的计算公地解决生物医学研究中的这些新挑战。该项目将改造3646平方英尺，其中Nichols Hall一楼1232平方英尺作为现有BCF的主要机房，另外2414平方英尺作为支持空间。这个翻新的空间，加上额外的电力、冷却和网络带宽，将支持比目前BCF用户可用的高密度计算能力高出20倍的高度可持续和节能设计。拟议的改造还将改善该设施与校园其他部分之间的网络连接，增加大学内外计算资源的可访问性。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The University of Kansas Lawrence campus requests funding to renovate and expand 3646 gross square feet (gsf) in Nichols Hall designated as the Bioinformatics Computing Facility core (BCF). The renovated space will support computationally intensive multidisciplinary and integrative research projects in the biological and biomedical sciences across many departments of the University and at the KU Medical Center. The BCF supports four dozen NIH projects, two NCRR COBRE grants, a NIGMS Chemical Methodologies and Library Development (CMLD) project, a MLI Specialized Chemistry Center, and ten core service laboratories. These laboratories provide analytical instrumentation and technical services such as molecular interrogation, high throughput screening, microscopy, and biomolecular sequencing to the University's biological and biomedical sciences researchers. The proposed computational commons will be a sustainable, energy efficient data center for hosting existing and future assets dedicated to biological and biomedical computing. Computing is becoming an indispensible component in the biological and biomedical research. Biomedical related computation is driven by three factors: huge and growing amounts of data from instruments such as biomolecular sequencers, mass spectrometry, X-ray crystallography and high throughput screening systems; simulation aimed at understanding the fundamental processes of life at many scales through the development and integration of models of ever greater complexity; and a flood of new questions arising from the availability of data from instruments whose answers depend on modeling and computation. This precisely mirrors our experiences, we have seen a large increase in the number of biological and biomedical science projects that require high performance computing and large scale storage of data. These factors, along with a rapidly expanding computing and storage hardware base that has outgrown the existing facility makes meeting current and future demands of an active biomedical computing community difficult, if not impossible. The proposed renovation will provide the capacity needed to host the computing and storage resources capable of addressing these new challenges in biomedical research through an expanded computing commons. The project will renovate 3646 gsf, including 1232 gsf on the first floor of Nichols Hall as the primary machine room for the existing BCF and additional 2414 gsf as support space. This renovated space, along with additional power, cooling and network bandwidth, will support a high-density computing capacity twenty times greater than what is currently available to BCF users in a highly sustainable and energy efficient design. The proposed renovations will also improve network connectivity between this facility and the rest of the campus, increasing the accessibility of computational resources within and outside the university.