Stem Cell Project Wins Cloud Computing Competition

By Matthew Dublin

Cycle Computing has named Victor Ruotti, a computational biologist at the Morgridge Institute for Research, as the 2011 CycleCloud BigScience Challenge.

Finalists' proposals were selected based on their benefit to humanity, originality, creativity and suitability. Entrants submitted projects that focus Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, organic photovoltaics, genomic diversity mapping. The finalists were judged by Jason Stowe, CEO, Cycle Computing, as well as Matt Wood, technology evangelist for Amazon Web Services, and Peter Shenkin, vice president at Schrödinger.

Ruotti will be awarded $10,000 of time — the equivalent of eight hours on a 30,000-core cluster — on their cloud. In his submission for the contest, Ruotti proposed a knowledgebase indexing system for Human Embryonic Stem Cells and their derivatives, which usually requires hours of computational times.

“The high throughput computing power of CycleCloud will enable the
classification of currently uncharacterized cell types, including hES cells and iPS cells from our laboratory,” says Ruotti. “The transcript profiles from each cell type will be analyzed and compared by aligning billions of sequencing reads in combinatorial pair wise steps. By doing so, we will create the first read level index to yield classified cellular derivatives along with methods to produce these cell types in a laboratory setting which could become potential therapies of the future.”