An Elon faculty member has been awarded storage space on a selective, federally funded computer server where scientists conduct research that requires vast amounts of electronic file space and computing capability.
Through Web spider programs that crawl the Internet, Conklin will collect data on software bugs, computer languages used to write the software, names of the people developing the programs and other information. The massive amounts of data she collects will be open to researchers worldwide.
The TeraGrid is funded by the National Science Foundation and, according to its Web site, is “the world’s largest, most comprehensive distributed cyberinfrastructure for open scientific research.”
Access to the TeraGrid involves peer review, Conklin said, much like publishing a journal article or making a paper presentation.
“Being on the TeraGrid is good because we get a centralized place to store data that we don’t have to administer,” she said. “And it puts our name with a lot of really distinguished projects out there.”