Complex In-Silico Experiments in Integrative Biology (myIB)
Partners: Oxford and Manchester Universities, IT Innovation at Southampton University and CCLRC
The aim of this 1-year project, funded under the EPSRC e-Science Best Practice Programme, is to transfer and extend the excellent work on workflow support and information models developed in the myGrid project to support the requirements of in silico experimentation in Integrative Biology.
The myGrid project has developed new technology for specifying and executing complex workflows. This is being extended to incorporate submission of the large scale HPC simulations required for heart modelling and management of the associated input and output datasets. The workflows will include provision for dynamically modifying the composition of the workflow and for real time computational steering of simulation experiments guided by interactively visualising results as they emerge.
The myGrid information model provides a framework for recording provenance and other relevant information and this is being extended to hold the information about workflows, simulation experiments and experimental data required to support Integrative Biology. This structured approach to information management is required because of the extensive range of complex simulations, involving many initial configurations and output datasets, which will be needed to thoroughly test the behaviour of new heart and eventually cancer models against experimental and clinical results.
By exploiting and extending these best practice developments from myGrid within the demanding context of Integrative Biology, more robust solutions will emerge which are likely to have widespread applicability.