The Super Science Initiatives

The Super Science initiatives, announced as part of the Commonwealth Government's budget on 12 May, will provide a substantial boost to Australia's national research infrastructure, comprising a total commitment of $1.1 Billion.

The Super Science investments will provide Australian researchers with early access to the research tools of the 21st century and allow them to participate in national and international research endeavours: how best to live with climate, ecology and environmental change, and how best to develop the new materials, new energy solutions, and the new medicine on which our future depends.

The eResearch components of the Super Science initiative will support fundamental research, high quality research and international research.

They will:

• enhance collaboration
• improve networks
• manage massive data assets
• support more sharing of more data, with faster analysis and better modeling
• provide super-computing enabled 21st Century analysis tools

so that we can tackle the complex, national and global issues confronting us. They will enable our best researchers to seek out and collaborate with the best, wherever they are, working easily across the nation and around the globe to solve our hardest problems.

The specific measures that comprise this eResearch infrastructure investment include:

Super Science: Space and Astronomy ( see the budget fact sheet )

• Australian National Centre of SKA Science - $80 million
  • The proposed new Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio astronomy project represents a $2 billion opportunity for Australia. Over fifty times more powerful than the world’s largest existing telescope, the SKA will be one of the largest and most ambitious international science projects ever devised. It will help to answer fundamental questions about the evolution of the universe.
  • An Australian National Centre of SKA Science will be established in Perth to host new high performance computing (HPC) facilities and other expertise to support the SKA and high-end science in Western Australia.
  • This initiative will be established as part of iVEC, a joint venture between CSIRO, Curtin University of Technology, Edith Cowan University, Murdoch University and The University of Western Australia and supported by the Western Australian State Government.

Super Science: Marine and Climate ( see the budget fact sheet )

• Climate High Performance Computing Centre - $50 million
  • Australia's peak High Performance Computing capacity will be upgraded. This new high end computing infrastructure will be used by the Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO, ANU and others to address climate change, earth systems science and national water management issues. A next generation building and machine room will be required to house the upgraded system

Super Science: Future Industries ( see the budget fact sheet )

• Data Storage and Collaboration Tools - $97 million
  • Today’s scientific instruments generate terabytes of data and the capacity to store this data, in a format that is accessible to other researchers for discovery and re-use, is of increasing importance. Researchers require access to increased data storage capacity to support collaborative use of research data and re-use of data for different purposes over time.
  • The project will build a national network of research data storage and collaboration infrastructure consisting of: regional data infrastructure for data retention and data access management; physical, IT and middleware infrastructure to enable data to be retained in regional data centres operated by participant institutions; physical, IT and middleware infrastructure to allow genuine and authorised researchers to access the regional data

• Data Commons - $48 million
  • An Australian research data commons is required to support the discovery of, and access to, research data held in Australian universities, publicly funded research agencies and government organisations for the use of research.
  • This investment will enable the construction of a range of ICT utilities to capitalise on and ensure greater use and re-use of existing data resources, as well as better management of new data generated in Australian research.

• The National Research Network - $37 million
  • The Australian Research and Education Network (AREN) forms the backbone of all Australian collaboration infrastructure and is essential for the transfer of large data sets between sites. Access to a high bandwidth research network makes collaboration between Australian and overseas researchers possible.
  • AREN will be extended and upgraded to connect regional research data centres with each other, with new and existing HPC centres, and all other high volume sources of primary research data.

In total, the Commonwealth Government has committed to spending $312 million over the next four years to support essential eResearch infrastructure, as described in the Strategic Roadmap for Australian Research Infrastructure released last year.

Building a national super-computing and research data storage backbone will also create valuable construction and technical jobs across Australia and the enhanced access and collaboration infrastructure that results will support the on-going creation of highly skilled jobs in all areas of research activity.

Overall, investing in eResearch and Super Science will strengthen Australia’s ability to generate ideas, enable new types of research and new careers for researchers. It will allow Australian researchers to participate in world-leading research from Australia. It will create high-skill, high-wage jobs in Australia, and it will build a cadre of ICT professionals with world-class expertise in the ICT needed by our future.