New NSF Middleware Release Used by Expanding Biomedical Informatics Research Network

NEW YORK, May 31(GenomeWeb News) -The US National Science Foundation has recently issued a new batch of middleware, in order to facilitate the expansion of its grid-based "cyberinfrastructure" for large-scale data sharing and analysis, the NSF said this week.

This new software NMI Release 5, or NMI-R5, was released May 24. It includes contributions from numerous middleware developers, which have been brought together by teams at the GRIDS Center, the EDIT consortium and the Open Grid Computing Environments consortium. This release is part of the NSF Middleware Initiative, which receives NSF funding.

This new NMI release will be used by the Biomedical Informatics Research Network, which is building the integrated configuration of informatics infrastructure to facilitate the large-scale analysis. The labs are connected by the Internet2 high-performance network. So far, 14 universities and 22 research groups have signed on to participate in the BIRN, according to the NSF.

"The BIRN has great promise to provide a collaborative working environment that promotes the growth of interdisciplinary science as well as an advanced biomedical cyberinfrastructure," said BIRN Coordinating Center Director Mark Ellisman, in a statement. "The NMI middleware layer is essential to providing many of the underlying mechanisms critical to achieving this integrated environment."

The BIRN is sponsored by the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Research Resources.