I have been working as a Project Development Officer for almost 2 years. I've been doing a wide arrange of tasks and this includes writing articles about collaborations between the project I'm part of and research institutions.
Not everything I write gets published in our website though. But I'm sharing you an article I wrote like a year ago. I hope that this enlightens you about the significant work we do for the nation.
For context, the Computing and Archiving Research Environment (CoARE) Project is an initiative of the Philippines's Department of Science and Technology - Advanced Science and Technology Institute. CoARE offers free High-performance Computing, Storage, and Science Cloud services to research, academe, and non-government institutions in the Philippines. The catch is that you should not use the services for commercial purposes or in any way that violates laws.
CoARE is collaborating with different local agencies such as the National Operational Assessment of Hazards (NOAH), Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) and many more.
But CoARE's largest user of HPC is IRRI. Please read below as CoARE's collaboration with IRRI is the focus of the write-up. Happy reading!
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
For more info about what IRRI does, you can visit their website: www.irri.org
ASTI- IRRI Collab Expands
The Department of Science and Technology – Advanced Science and Technology Institute (DOST-ASTI) and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) have expanded their collaboration through connecting ASTI to other IRRI projects that will pave way for a cheaper but better rice research.
Rice is a staple food in Asia and every hectare of rice fields can feed an estimate of 27 people. Due to rapid growth of population, a hectare should feed approximately 43 people by the year 2050. The demand for food increases and IRRI aims to help meet it. IRRI is an international research institution which mission is to make an impact in improving food security through advanced rice research.
ASTI’s role, through the Computing and Archiving Research Environment (CoARE), is to provide IRRI compute sources to help them with their big data problem. ASTI has been collaborating with IRRI’s 3,000 Rice Genomes Project (3KRG) and Grain Quality and Nutrition Center (GQNC).
At present, ASTI is going to collaborate with two more IRRI projects: C4 Rice and Genotyping for Rice (G4R). C4 Rice Project's goal is to optimize rice production up to 50 % by using the C4 photosynthesis through rice genome sequencing. On the other hand, G4R is an offshoot project of the Breeding for Rice (B4R) Project. G4R was established to lessen the time and cost of breeding rice which usually takes eight (8) to ten (10) years before releasing a variety.
ASTI aims to aid these kind of projects to help solve issues like food security. ASTI works as a research collaborator for it offers free service so the local science community can take advantage of it. It is investing in organizations like IRRI to produce high-impact publications that are expected to have investment in research and development industry in the Philippines. “DOST - ASTI aims to be a hub for local scientists,” says ASTI Director Joel Joseph Marciano during the ASTI - IRRI collaboration meeting last July 13.