Microsoft and FAPESP present collaborative research in eScience

International workshop demonstrated data management and interpretation tools that apply to research studies in several fields.

By Diego Freire

Agência FAPESP – The increasingly frequent opportunities for interaction between researchers from all fields of knowledge and technologies related to eScience, or science oriented by data, were discussed at a workshop sponsored by Microsoft Research in partnership with FAPESP in Guarujá, on the coast of São Paulo, in October.

eScience Workshop 2014 was held in conjunction with the IEEE International Conference on eScience, organized by the Computer Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a professional organization of electrical and electronics engineers founded in the United States.

During project presentations, poster sessions and Microsoft technology training, participants in the joint program – who were researchers and students from several countries – discussed the strategic importance of eScience in developing research studies that involve large amounts of data.

“The complexity of the questions posed by the various sciences, such as climate change, problems of big cities, the urgent need for cures and the growing demand for food, among other things, is generating an enormous amount of data that demands multidisciplinary and collaborative work to be processed and transformed into knowledge,” said Harold Javid, Director of the Microsoft Research Connections Regional Programs for North America, Latin America and Australia/New Zealand, in comments to Agência FAPESP.

During the workshop, FAPESP Scientific Director Carlos Henrique de Brito Cruz described the opportunities offered by the Foundation in this field, and particularly the FAPESP Research Program on eScience, which combines computer modeling with data and research infrastructure in various fields.

“It is a movement that, together with the scientific community, has been presenting demands that can be met through eScience initiatives. This collaboration is establishing dialogs that are changing the way that science is conducted, overcoming the historical distances between researchers from different fields, such as exact and human sciences,” Brito said.

This year’s discussions highlighted the need to promote eScience initiatives, particularly in the humanities, which, for Jason Rhody, Senior Program Officer in the Office of Digital Humanities of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in the United States, has great potential to be explored.

“These are fields of research that are as rich in data as human complexity itself and that are often not adequately explored due to a lack of knowledge about the tools and approaches that are capable of handling this information in a fast and efficient manner,” he said. 

Rhody presented successful initiatives, such as Stanford University’s Mapping the Republic of Letters project, which uses the collaborative, free software Gephi, maintained by a consortium headquartered in France, to study the formation of a network of correspondence between European intellectuals in the 17th and 18th centuries.

“There are over 50,000 letters exchanged by 6,400 correspondents gathered in a database that, thanks to collaborative work among researchers from various fields of the human sciences and computer scientists, is visible on an electronic platform,” he explained.

eScience in Brazil

According to Daron Green, Senior Regional Manager of Microsoft Research Outreach, which is responsible for global investments in research, Brazil is already benefiting from the resources of eScience, but there are still many opportunities available.

“Given the country’s magnitude in a variety of aspects, Brazil faces great challenges in handling extensive volumes of data related to its population, the wealth of its ecosystems and the complexity of its economy,” he said.

Green coordinated the presentation of Brazilian projects carried out under the scope of the Microsoft Research-FAPESP Institute for IT Research cooperation agreement between the institutions, which use eScience tools.

Patricia Morellato, a professor at the Biosciences Institute of the State University of São Paulo (Unesp) in Rio Claro, presented the project “Combining new technologies to monitor phenology from leaves to ecosystems,” which is on e-phenology, a field that combines new technologies to monitor plant phenology.

“It refers to knowledge that has gained relevancy as a simple and reliable indicator of the effects of climate change on plants and animals. The scarcity of monitoring systems in tropical regions, particularly in South America, is a challenge that we’ve been able to overcome with eScience. We work in an integrated way by combining research studies in computing and phenology to solve practical and theoretical problems in using new technologies to remotely observe phenology,” she explained.

The research studies use digital and hyperspectral image-monitoring systems at three spatial scales, or on the ground, near the surface, and near space, using unmanned aerial vehicles. “This allows us to enhance monitoring capabilities, from leaves to ecosystems, with drones improving the information that can be derived and applied to the entire landscape. The software developed allows the establishment of a database, image processing, and management, integration and analysis of phenology data at various scales.”

Some of the research findings were published in the journal Ecological Informatics.

Also presented were the projects “Advances in Computer Science Towards an Understanding of Tipping Points within Tropical South American Biomes,” by Ricardo da Silva Torres, a professor at the Computer Institute of the University of Campinas (Unicamp), and “Making Sense of Environmental Data in a Cloud Forest,” by Antonio Alfredo Ferreira Loureiro, a professor in the Computer Sciences Department of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG).

In addition to showcasing successful experiences in eScience, the workshop included presentations of Microsoft technologies that can help scientists to carry out projects involving data more quickly and efficiently.

More information is available at research.microsoft.com/en-US/events/escience2014.