News Archive

If you think you don't need a high performance computing facility to assist your research ... have a chat with Jenni Harrison, and prepare to be surprised.

Professor Harrison is UWA's eResearch program leader, based in the Interactive Virtual Environments Centre (iVEC) in the Physics Building.

She is keen to explain how access to high end computing facilities, such as visualisation, can be of huge benefits to researchers in all areas. "Lots of people think they don't need high powered computing, but they might not realise the benefits, especially in creative areas," Professor Harrison said.

"Of course, we (iVEC) do a lot of work with ICRAR, with astronomy and crystallography, who use enormous amounts of data, but data is used extensively in the creative industries, for example in movies and re-creations of fine art, which can benefit from using high performance technology."

She is currently working with the Institute of Advanced Studies on ways that iVEC can increase the support for digital humanities researchers at UWA.

The iVEC program is a joint venture between the public universities in WA and the CSIRO . "High performance computing is very expensive and needs to be refreshed every couple of years, so it is cost-effective to share facilities," she said.

iVEC provides specialised support to all partner organisations in areas including eResearch, industry engagement and education. Professor Harrison is based at UW A, but supports eResearch at all the iVEC partner institutions; she has colleagues located at Edith Cowan and Curtin Universities who provide industry engagement and education support respectively.

"eResearch is much wider than just using the supercomputer," she said. "One project I supported used multipoint video conferencing so a Improve your performance group of geographically dispersed musicians could play together. Such technologies allow people to actively participate, collaborate or learn, which is especially beneficial to individuals living in remote locations.

"Another project I am presently working on with colleagues across Australia will develop a sharable online tool which aggregates marine data collected by researchers; the resultant information will be used by the marine community to ‘map' changes in Australia's oceans.

"These are the sorts of creative results we have the power to achieve."

One of the biggest challenges of her work is the wide range of awareness of technology among university staff. "Everybody is at a different level and it certainly keeps us on our toes."

From a background as a chemist and 10 years working in biosciences, Professor Harrison was most recently with the National Health Service in Edinburgh. She was designing and delivering online training for health professionals throughout Scotland, including the creation of 3D anatomy and virtual patients.

"Access to education in some rural communities is challenging, so this was a great solution," she said. "I learn so much about the disciplines in which I work. In the health area, there are issues of intellectual property rights such as copyright, consent, confidentiality, privacy and data security, all of which apply to many other disciplines."

Professor Harrison is finishing a Masters in e-Learning from Edinburgh University. And computers have become part of her comfort zone in her private life too. She enjoys shopping on-line and gets most of her news on-line rather than from newspapers.

"I was quite a subscriber to the paper book, until I was given a Kindle for Christmas!" she said.

For information on eResearch, go to ivec.uwa.edu.au/ and click on services. You will find contact information and how to access iVEC's Twitter feed, which tweets news, coming events and conferences.

Published in UWA News , 19 March 2012