10/09/2014 Jisc’s new shared data centre
Professor Paul Layzell, Principal of Royal Holloway University of London
For UUK annual conference 2014

10/09/2014 Jisc’s new shared data centre
Professor Martyn Harrow, chief executive officer, Jisc
For UUK annual conference 2014

www.luscombelab.org
Nicholas Luscombe
Professor of Computational Biology, UCL
Senior Group Leader, Francis Crick Institute

Our research
Applying computational methods to genomic data
to understand how genes are switched on and off.

Human genome encodes ˜23,000 genes

Right gene at right time and place

Right gene at right time and place

Switching is controlled by regulatory genes

• We discovered 1,300 regulators in
humans
• 80% have no known target genes
• Foundation for many downstream
studies
33 human tissues
What are the regulators?
[Vaquerizas (2019) Nat Rev Genet]

What do they control?
predicted expression
• eve gene is
expressed in fly
embryos
• Regulator-target
relationships
unknown
• Modelling
identifies
relationships
[Ilsley (2013) eLife]
actual expression
even-skipped

No hnRNP C
Nonsensical
transcripts
hnRNP C binds
pre-mRNA
Alus suppressed
And if it goes wrong…?
• hnRNP C loss causes 1000s
of nonsense transcripts
• Mutations in binding sites can
cause genetic disorders
[Zarnack (2013) Cell]

The data challenge

Human genome is huge
This is really hard
Relationship between regulators and genes are not
straightforward
We still don’t know what 90% of regulators control

Human genome is huge
This is really hard
Relationship between regulators and genes are not
straightforward
We still don’t know what 90% of regulators control
3 billion letters = 119 volumes!

GenBank growth since 1989
# nucleotides
1989
time
Datasets keep growing
1999

1999
GenBank growth since 1989
# nucleotides
1989
time
Datasets keep growing
1999 2010

1999
GenBank growth since 1989
# nucleotides
1989
time
Datasets keep growing
1999 2010 2010 2014

How do you transport them?
data transfer

How do you transport them?
data transfer

Discovery without boundaries

Francis Crick Institute
• Opening 2015
• 6 partners (MRC, Cancer
Research UK, Wellcome
Trust, UCL, KCL, ICL)
• World-class biomedical
institute with
interdisciplinary research
• Aiming for >100 “dry"
scientists

Central London location

A solution

Shared offsite data centre
Crick computing
Collaborator
project

eMedLab
Data driven discovery for Personalised Medicine

eMedLab
£8.9M MRC award for medical bioinformatics
eMedLab infrastructure
Capacity building

eMedLab
£8.9M MRC award for medical bioinformatics
eMedLab infrastructure
Capacity building
Secure storage,
coordination, analysis

eMedLab
£8.9M MRC award for medical bioinformatics
eMedLab infrastructure
Capacity building
Secure storage,
coordination, analysis
Research output
Clinical outcomes

Partners provide unique expertise's
• Interface between bioinformatics
and clinic
• Novel bioinformatics methods and
interface with wet lab
• Genomics of health and disease
• Public data access and
chemoinformatics

eMedLab infrastructure
Crick

eMedLab infrastructure
Crick
Sanger
UCL
Partners
EBI
Secure
collaborative
space

eMedLab infrastructure
Crick
Sanger
UCL
Partners
EBI
Secure
collaborative
space

eMedLab infrastructure
Crick
Sanger
UCL
Partners
EBI
Secure
collaborative
space

Infrastructure enables science
Research can’t be achieved without reliable infrastructure

10/09/2014 Jisc’s new shared data centre
Dr Phil Richards, Chief Innovation Officer, Jisc
For UUK annual conference 2014

Outline
»Background
»Benefits of scale
»The human barriers
»Partners
»Thanks

Background
»Government focus on shared services 2011
»HEFCE Universities Modernisation Fund (UMF)
› Feasibility work around shared data centres
› Technical proofs of concept via Janet network
»Then a pause…

Benefits of scale

Benefits of large scale
“… construction of extremely large-scale,
commodity-computer data centres at
low-cost locations… uncovered the
factors of 5 to 7 decrease in cost of
electricity, bandwidth, operations,
software and hardware at these very
large economies of scale.”
Armburst, Armando Fox et al.,
Above the Clouds, Berkeley

Example industrial-scale data centres
Owner Location Square feet
Apple Maiden, North Carolina 500,000
Facebook Forest City, North Carolina 300,000
Amazon Dublin, Ireland 240,000
Google Hamina, Finland 300,000
HP Winyard, UK 305,000
Source: Greenpeace report ‘How dirty is your data?’, April 2011

The human barriers

The human barriers
Distributed Data-centres Under Desks
(DDUDs)

The Janet network –
our ‘national grid’ for big data and computing
Industrial-scale data centre Industrial-scale data centre
Universities and research institutions

Partners

PR’s candidate big themes and possible projects
• Lifting the student number cap
• Break replacement cycle for Student Record Systems
• Open source SRS modelling student lifecycle
• Backdoor to HESA for easier data entry and benchmarking
• Exorcising the ‘ghost of the MAC initiative’?
• MOOCs for the masses
• National platform to complement FutureLearn
• FutureLearn platform lite or EdX instance?
• Scalable approaches to Research Data and Equipment
• National site licences for commercial big data
• National Kit Catalogue
• Joining the big data to the meta-data
• Going beyond short-term compliance
• Will policy be diluted as true costs emerge?

Partners

Extra slides

Further opportunity

Further opportunity
»Collaborative research data sharing
»Consolidation of research computation support
»Scale to £100Ms PA saving for the sector
› Why does any HEI need its own data centre?
› Can we all start benefitting from large scale?
»Through the Janet network, we can!

Thanks

Thanks
• Colleagues
• Tim Marshall
• Bob Day
• Jeremy Sharpe
• Dan Perry
• Organisations
• Hefce
• Infinity

Find out more…
Dr Phil Richards
Chief Innovation Officer
p.richards@jisc.ac.uk
One Castlepark Tower Hill Bristol BS2 0JA
T 020 3697 5800
info@jisc.ac.uk jisc.ac.uk
Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND

Panel discussion