A decade of research data management innovation
January 21, 2021 | Science Node
Last year marked the 10th anniversary of Globus, which launched in 2010 as the “Globus Online” service to connect researchers and make large-scale data transfer accessible to any researcher with an internet connection and a laptop.
It would have been difficult to predict back then that Globus would become an essential service for over 150,000 researchers around the world. Users in 80 countries have moved over one exabyte of data and 100 billion files, and the service has evolved into a platform that enables universities, national laboratories, government facilities, and commercial organizations to securely manage data throughout the research lifecycle.
Battling COVID-19 with Science and Technology
Since January 2020, nearly 80 research groups from across the United States and around the world have used protein crystallographic techniques at the Advanced Photon Source (APS), a Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility at Argonne National Laboratory, to learn more about the protein structures comprising SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
The more we know about the protein structures, the better equipped researchers are to understand how to treat it. Researchers use the ultrabright, high-energy X-ray light generated at the APS to determine the virus’ structure at an atomic level.
Globus enables the facility to provide researchers with a means to quickly, effectively, and securely transfer and share data with other researchers. Researchers working remotely can rapidly transfer massive datasets and see sample data generated from the beamlines in near real-time to determine whether it is good or bad.