WASHINGTON -- Joint Oceanographic Institutions (JOI), a consortium of leading U.S. oceanographic research institutions, has awarded multimillion dollar contracts to the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and the University of Washington (UW) to support the development and operations for the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). The OOI is a U.S. National Science Foundation investment to advance scientific understanding of the oceans, transforming research by establishing a network of interactive, globally distributed sensors in the ocean.
JOI President Steve Bohlen said, Today is an exciting day for ocean science. Awarding these contracts marks the first step in transforming the way ocean science is conducted. Rather than relying on limited expeditions from ships to gather data, observatories in the ocean will allow us to access data from our labs and desktops. Through the OOI, real- time data will be made available to scientists, citizens, teachers, and schoolchildren across the country.
With National Science Foundation support, identified in the agencys FY2007 and FY2008 budget, the OOI will construct a networked infrastructure of science-driven sensor systems to measure the physical, chemical, geological and biological variables in the ocean and seafloor. The transformative OOI will provide continuous, interactive access to the ocean for the oceanographic research and education communities. The OOIs observatory elements will address science questions on coastal, regional, and global scales, linked by a common instrument, infrastructure, and information management system.
The award to UCSD is for the computer architecture or cyberinfrastructure (CI) portion of the OOI. Scripps Institution of Oceanography will lead the project while the UCSD division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) will manage it and, together with Scripps and the San Diego Supercomputer Center
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Contact: Susan Boa
sboa@joiscience.org
202-232-3900
Joint Oceanographic Institutions
17-May-2007