What is CyVerse UK?
CyVerse UK is a major collaboration between scientists at the University of Arizona, the Texas Advanced Computing Center, the University of Warwick, the University of Liverpool, the University of Nottingham, and The Genome Analysis Centre (TGAC) to setup a UK based node for The CyVerse Collaborative.
The UK CyVerse node can potentially support a large proportion of the UK biological sciences community’s data requirements, from genomics to phenomics. It will enable UK researchers to access extensive data storage/back-up, local and global compute power, and structured, integrated analysis applications and workflows. It will also allow BBSRC-funded tools to become available globally and will help build a common international biological science platform that prevents duplication of effort and funding. In doing so, rational and supported reuse of data, applications and resources is encouraged. CyVerse UK will also democratise UK science so that research groups lacking capacity to build close working relationships with experts from other disciplines can work on large datasets using publicly available workflows in a single online location with consistent rules, formatting and required skills level. In establishing the first CyVerse mirror outside the US, CyVerse UK will help spread the reliability and cost associated with CyVerse in the long term. It will also help share knowledge and best practice between the US and UK, and will acts a flagship projects for other national CyVerse nodes in the future.
The computational hardware infrastructure for CyVerse UK will be set up at The Genome Analysis Centre (TGAC) in Norwich. TGAC provides the National Capability for computational infrastructure, and as such is perfectly situated to provide the foundations for the CyVerse UK node. Software tools developed for specific plant science sequencing, systems biology and image analysis projects at the Universities of Warwick, Liverpool and Nottingham, will be adapted by a dedicated team of programmers so that they can be integrated into CyVerse UK. These will then be made freely and openly available for the wider plant science community to use. A detailed information on the various projects being developed for CyVerse UK can be found here.