e-Research

VeRSI Projects

VeRSI is a five-year, $10M, State Government funded Program to provide a coordinated approach to accelerating the uptake of e-Research by Victorian researchers.

VeRSI is a collaboration between the University of Melbourne, Monash University, La Trobe University and the Department of Primary Industries. Working together, these organisations will provide real examples of how e-Research can enhance research in all disciplines.

The VeRSI grant supports La Trobe University in three research areas: Eco-informatics (specifically around climate change), development of a “capability hub”, including virtual access to the synchrotron and genomics/bioinformatics development.

Two significant additional gains from joining VeRSI are: funding to join a Storage Grid among Monash, Melbourne and La Trobe universities, and La Trobe having the first remote virtual beam line for the Synchrotron;

The Storage Grid will allow seamless movement of data from the Synchrotron and other experiments conducted by researchers at any of the respective universities.

The Virtual Beam Line (VBL),which will be funded internally, will allow remote monitoring and use of the Synchrotron from a central point on the La Trobe campus, thus alleviating travel and data handling difficulties.

A demonstration of the VBL was given at La Trobe University on 30th May 2008. Chris Myers from VeRSI showed how researchers can manipulate samples via motor controls, acquire data, transfer data between storage and compute resources and collaborate using voice, video and shared applications.