By Andrea Held,
Program Manager, Google University Relations
Last spring Google
University Relationsannounced
an open call for proposals for Google App
Engine Research Awards. We invited academic researchers to use Google App Engine for research
experiments and analysis, encouraging them to take advantage of the platform’s ability to
manage heavy data loads and run large-scale applications. Submissions included proposals in
various subject areas such as mathematics, computer vision, bioinformatics, climate and
computer science. We selected seven projects and have awarded each $60,000 in Google App
Engine credits recognizing their innovation and vision.
Today we would like to share a brief introduction of the winning projects and their Principal
Investigators:
K. Mani
Chandy, Simon Ramo Professor and Professor of Computer Science, California Institute
of Technology Cloud-based Event Detection for Sense and Response: Develop a low-cost
alternative to traditional seismic networks. The image below is taken from the Community
Seismic Network map showing active clients and events in real time.
A dense network of seismic stations enables the Community Seismic Network to
perform a finer-grained analysis of seismic events than possible with existing seismic
networks.
Julian
Gough, Professor, University of Bristol, UK Personalised DNA Analysis: Develop a service that provides personal DNA
analysis.
Ramesh Raskar, PhD, MIT
Media Lab; Dr. Erick Baptista Passos, IFPI
(Federal Institute of Technology, Brazil) Vision Blocks:
develop a tool that delivers computer vision to people everywhere. The image below shows a
current prototype implementation of Vision Blocks.
Many algorithms are already included, and you'll be able create your own blocks
as well.
Norman
Sadeh, Professor, Director of Mobile Commerce Lab, School of
Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University Mapping the Dynamics of a City & Nudging Twitter Users: uncovering
local collective knowledge about the a city using social media.
William Stein, Professor of
Mathematics, University of Washington Sage: Creating a Viable Free Open Source Alternative to Magma, Maple,
Matlab, and Mathematica.
Congratulations to the award winners! We are excited about the proposals’
creativity and innovation and look forward to learning about their discoveries. To read more
about specific projects, go here.
Andrea Held is a Program Manager on the University Relations team at Google. She
grew up in Germany and has lived in California for almost 30 years.
By Andrea Held,
Program Manager, Google University Relations
