Linking European and Chinese Research Infrastructures through the ORIENTplus project
For the last four years, the ORIENTplus project has been providing direct super-fast Internet connectivity between the research and education communities in Europe and Chine. The project provided the highest capacity connection and the shortest network path between the two regions.
The ORIENTplus project which ran from July 2011 for 42 months and received EUR 1 million in EU funding, involved multinational partners. The project underpinned a wide range of data intensive Sino-European scientific and academic collaborations and achieved some major results in the following scientifc fields:.
- Decoding the human genome: ORIENTplus tackled the data deluge generated by genome projects between the European BioInformatics Institute (EBI) and the Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI), enabling rapid advances in the medical sciences.
- Revealing the mysteries of the universe: ORIENTplus enabled the real-time transfer of observational data from Shangai Astronomical Observatory radio telescope in Sheshan to the JIVE supercomputers in the Netherlands, to help obtain the most detailed picture of the universe.
- Taking global learning to a new level: ORIENTplus facilitated advanced, real-time knowledge transfer through innovative e-learning tools of the ShanghAI Lectures, overcoming the complexity of multi-cultural and interdisciplinary learning.
Over the past four years, ORIENTplus has successfully connected 4.8 million researchers and 51 million students via the pan-European GEANT network and Chinese counterparts. The project has multiplied the link capacity by four, ensuring 10 years of connectivity and thus long term sustainability for Sino-European research. The e-Infrastructure will be maintained guaranteeing future collaboration between EU and China on Big Science projects.
