Grant creates science demilitarized zone at SDSU

The National Science Foundation has awarded funding of nearly $500,000 for the construction of a network designed to support data-intensive research in engineering and sciences at San Diego State University.

With the funding, faculty and staff will design and build a Science demilitarized zone (DMZ) separate from the campus network with an independent connection to the Internet for maximum speed of data exchange.

"The Science DMZ will generate new research partnerships for SDSU," said Jose Castillo, Ph.D., principal investigator for the grant and director of the Computational Science Research Center, which draws participation from science and engineering departments on campus.

"It will allow our researchers to generate and rapidly exchange large datasets and deploy web-based science and engineering applications on SDSU-hosted servers," Castillo said.

Free from general campus internet traffic and from firewalls or traffic shapers than hinder transmission speed, the Science DMZ will provide dedicated, high-speed connectivity between SDSU and research partners such as national labs and supercomputing centers.

Exchange of large-scale data is necessary for research involving the numerical simulation of earthquake rupture and wave propagation, coastal ocean modeling, pulse detonation engine modeling and research in the fields of proteomics, bioinformatics and microbial metagenomics.

The Science DMZ will directly impact faculty and students at the Computational Science Research Center by promoting remote use of computing resources at SDSU while simultaneously establishing new research partnerships and fostering mentorship opportunities for students from the undergraduate through the postdoctoral level.

Rich Pickett, SDSU's chief information officer, and Christopher Paolini, operating systems analyst for the College of Engineering, are co-principal investigators for the project.

Provided by San Diego State University