Australian Synchrotron to cement world leading status
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1 October 2008
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The Australian Synchrotron is set to cement its place as a world leading research facility, with the addition of a new supercomputer equipped to reconstruct high-resolution, 3D phase contrast images while experiments are in progress.
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A new $3 million High Performance Computing Facility at the Australian Synchrotron, based in Melbourne, will create the largest scientific user facility in the southern hemisphere by the end of 2009, becoming one of only two in the world.
“This new state-of-the-art facility will keep Australian scientists at the forefront of x-ray imaging development, attract the best scientists to Victoria and provide a unique platform for accelerating scientific discovery,” Victorian Innovation Minister Gavin Jennings said.
“This facility will equip the Australian Synchrotron with the specialist capabilities required to analyse beamline experiments, allowing rapid interrogation, analysis and visualisation of the data being generated directly at the beamlines.
“It will provide scientists with the capacity to undertake immediate analysis of experiments, determining whether the results are meaningful or need to be reworked.
“The performance of experiments at the Australian Synchrotron will be enhanced by this facility and is predicted to improve scientists’ productivity by 25 per cent.”
Mr Jennings explained that the Synchrotron, operating since July 2007, is already accelerating groundbreaking Victorian biotechnology research. He said the facility would speed up development of new drugs for cancer, cardiovascular and neurological disease and diabetes.
The Victorian Government’s investment in this project builds on its $50 million commitment to build a $100 million Victorian Life Sciences Computation Initiative to support researchers from the Parkville Precinct, Monash University and other Victorian research institutes.
Through these iconic projects and the injection of more than $1 billion into Victoria’s innovation program through Innovation: Victoria’s Future, the Victorian Government is building on the state’s leadership in innovation.
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