Shannon Lindsay

Shannon Lindsay

Shannon Lindsay

The researcher who tinkers and tailors with Crabspy

Species extinction rates are at an all-time high in modern times and natural scientists are faced with the challenge of needing to rapidly increase their efforts to gather reliable ecosystem information at broader scales in order to mitigate threats.

Traditional methods of collecting ecological data can often be time consuming, invasive and can alter the natural habitat of the study site.

With this in mind, a James Cook University coastal ecology PhD student has developed an alternative scientific workflow to collect biological and ecological data using computer vision and machine learning to scale up data collection to required levels and improve its efficiency and utility. To do so, he used a node on QRIScloud, QCIF’s cloud, specially designed for machine learning work.

QFAB aids evolutionary discovery to rewrite textbooks

A significant University of Queensland evolutionary discovery published in Nature has had the helping hand of QFAB for the last four years.

QFAB Database and Systems Administrator Nick Rhodes spends about one day a week working with the Degnan Marine Genomics Labs, with half of that day embedded within the research group.

“I do all the IT wrangling—creating accounts, advising students, installing and updating software, handling data storage and just generally ensuring that everyone has the resources they need to analyse their data,” said Nick.

“When we get new members in the lab, I usually tell them that it's my job to make sure that they can do their job.”

QCIF helps trauma educator ease the pain of data storage

When Dr Kay Ayre* was a special education researcher at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) she would carry a portable hard drive to regularly back up her files of data.

“Doing this was quite unsettling,” she said, “because there was always the risk of the drive being lost, left somewhere or left at home when needed at work or vice versa. Plus, it was easy to forget to back up regularly and that could be problematic.”

Fortunately, she attended an information session at USQ in which QCIF’s USQ-based eResearch Analyst Dr Francis Gacenga introduced academic staff to QRIScloud, QCIF’s cloud computing service, and Nextcloud, an application designed to facilitate access, sharing and collaboration across data sets.

The HPCs behind UQ’s all-women Chemistry paper

QRIScloud-accessed Awoonga is one of the high-performance computers behind a University of Queensland all-women authored paper published recently in the “Women in Computational Chemistry” special issue of an international chemistry journal*.

The five researchers, who at the time were all based at the Centre for Theoretical and Computational Molecular Science (CTCMS) in UQ’s Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN), had their paper published in the Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling on 28 May 2019.

The paper reveals certain electrode materials can be easily tuned for different reactions or temperatures, meaning hydrogen could be produced more sustainably and economically by reducing the amount of precious metals used. This has applications in making hydrogen fuel cells more sustainable, as well as for other fuel cell technologies.

QCIF helps Griffith clean energy researcher gain more time on national supercomputers

Through QCIF, a Griffith University renewable energy researcher has taken his work to the next level with all-important access to national high-performance computers.

Before contacting QCIF, Dr Yun Wang of Griffith’s Centre for Clean Environment and Energy was facing the very real possibility of having to stop computational research due to a lack of HPC resources. This would have been a major setback as supercomputers are essential to his research, using large-scale computations in order to understand the properties of complicated materials at the atomic level.

Thankfully, friends at the University of Queensland recommended Yun contact QCIF for help.

USQ music researcher hopes to uncover the keys to creativity

University of Southern Queensland PhD student Bonnie Green is looking at piano teaching practices and how they have either promoted or denied the creativity of those who go on to become piano teachers.

She is using QRIScloud for data and document storage and is thankful to have a free, secure system that readily aligns with the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research, 2007.

CQU data tool eases “mango madness”

Summary

CQUniversity-developed FruitMaps is a data tool that takes real-time data from multiple sources and displays them visually to provide a simple, free, online decision support tool adapted for use by farmers to assess fruit maturity and assist harvesting planning.

The data collections that underpin the tool are stored on QRIScloud, QCIF’s cloud computing service.

FruitMaps’ pilot users, farm managers in Queensland and the Northern Territory, have welcomed the data tool to help minimise crop loss and plan for resources, such as labour, at peak times.

FruitMaps is currently being developed for other uses, such as assessing soil quality, and quality control of coral trout exported to China, and for use with other crops important to Australia’s economy, such as citrus, bananas and avocadoes.

USQ researchers tackle Australian agriculture’s weed problem

Summary

University of Southern Queensland researchers are using drones to map farms to help form a more targeted, lower-cost and environmentally-friendly approach to eliminating weeds.

The aim is to develop a commercial system to reduce the use of herbicides when using existing weed-spraying technology.

Large volumes of aerial imagery and drone data being collected by the USQ team during the project’s current trial period are stored and managed on QCIF’s QRIScloud, a cloud computing service for Queensland researchers.

Weeds have a devastating economic impact on Australian agriculture. The federal Department of the Environment and Energy estimates weeds cost Australian farmers $1.5 billion a year in weed control activities and a further $2.5 billion a year in lost agricultural production.

QRIScloud-powered app to increase profitability of Australia’s cattle industry

Summary

CQUniversity-developed DataMuster is a groundbreaking animal monitoring Web application that links biology with technology, combining automated livestock management hardware, such as weighing systems, with cutting-edge software so that beef producers have a precise and real-time understanding of individual animal performance.

With DataMuster, farmers can make informed decisions to improve cattle genetics, cattle management and supply chain management.

After a two-year pilot trial involving six farms and Queensland’s Belmont Research Station, DataMuster is now being offered as a commercial service.

QRIScloud, QCIF’s cloud computing service, provides the server to run the app and hosts the data automatically collected from DataMuster-using farms.

QRIScloud supports globally significant Australian Threatened Species Index project

Summary

Australia’s Threatened Species Index (TSX) project is developing a tool to allow holistic reporting on the broad status of Australia’s biodiversity, as is routinely done for the economy.

TSX, led by the University of Queensland’s Professor Hugh Possingham, will support more coherent and transparent reporting of changes in biodiversity and will assist those working towards protecting threatened species.

This is the first time a threatened species index will be created in Australia, and in fact, worldwide.

The project team is using QRIScloud, QCIF’s cloud computing service, to run the thousands of combinations of indices, and for data storage — QRIScloud hosts the TSX database and Web service.

About QRIScloud

QRIScloud is a large-scale cloud computing and data storage service.  It is aimed at stimulating and accelerating research use of computing across all disciplines. 

Latest Posts

Get in touch

QRIScloud @
QCIF Ltd
Axon building, 47
The University of Queensland
St Lucia, Qld, 4072

Contact us through the QRIScloud support desk, or email support@qriscloud.org.au

 

Connect with us