When it comes to transferring vital scientific data from various research labs to and from collaborating labs and cloud computing resources, how can that happen rapidly, privately, and securely without bottlenecks? It is often cumbersome for research and information technology communities to address these issues that require significant hardware and software investments. With university research labs that transfer large amounts of scientific data for research collaboration there are many complexities presented in maintaining firewalls and security zones.
A team of University of Houston College of Technology researchers will confront universal collaboration challenges faced by university researchers and scientists with funding support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) award. Deniz Gurkan, associate professor of engineering technology in the University of Houston College of Technology, is the principal investigator for the $500,000 award and Nicholas Bastin, research assistant professor, is the co-principal investigator.
The proposed research will create ways to isolate networks with for research labs to create an environment that eliminates data sharing problems. The benefit? Accelerated innovation, without operational constraints. The network design and planning group in the UH Information Technology Department has been providing support.
The researchers envision the capability to simplify computer traffic steering and leverage an automated network function instance that allows end-users to opt-in, on-demand with customized connections to researcher labs under prescribed security and data sharing policies.
Dr. Gurkan said that the team plans to implement the pilot version at UH and extend it into the Lonestar Education and Research Network (LEARN) by fall 2016.