The Galactic RainCloudS project, developed by the Faculty of Physics, the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the UB (ICCUB), and the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC), obtained the first position in the Cloud Funding for Research call of the European network Open Clouds for Research Environments (OCRE).
The project was completed with 27 proposals from 12 different countries in various research disciplines. Xavier Luri, director of the ICCUB, pointed out to EFE that “the Galactic RainCloudS project is a pioneer in Europe in using commercial infrastructures in the cloud for research in astronomy and was born to demonstrate the benefits of using cloud resources for the scientific community.”
Galactic RainCloudS will use Google Cloud to store its data and run the applications to do some astronomical calculations. For this, the project will partner with Pervasive Technologies, a company specializing in cloud computing and Artificial Intelligence. “At Pervasive Technologies, we are very happy to be able to contribute our knowledge in artificial intelligence and cloud computing to a pioneering project in the field of research. We will work to get the most out of cloud infrastructures and artificial intelligence for this project,” said Rodolfo Lomascolo, executive director of Pervasive Technologies.
A Massive Infrastructure
For its development, the Galactic RainCloudS project must have massive data infrastructures, among other factors, to successfully achieve its objectives. In this sense, Roger Mor, a scientific analyst at Pervasive Technologies and external collaborator of the ICCUB, explained that “the data from the Gaia satellite hides the answer to many of the questions that we want to solve, but we need the right tools to extract them. The big data platforms available in commercial cloud services and artificial intelligence are fundamental tools to discover, for example, if the interaction of Sagittarius with the Milky Way caused the reignition of star formation in our galaxy between 5,000 and 7,000 years ago. million years, as some studies point out.” Spain’s Telefónica will work with the UB throughout the process to guarantee the success of implementing the project with teams specialized in Google Cloud services and technology.
The project was launched this May and will last a year. Xavier Luri declared that “Galactic RainCloudS is a necessary step in the transition of the research world towards the efficient use of computing resources in the cloud. In this sense, we are pioneers in its use at the University of Barcelona, and we hope that our experience will serve to encourage its use. Research teams have more and more specific needs. We will strive so that this project can open the doors of commercial cloud computing in several future projects for all research disciplines”.
