Europe

The skies of Latin America have captivated stargazers for centuries. Today, the landscape is dotted with many of the world’s most advanced and important regional, national and international observatories, providing forefront access to the heavens and beyond – enabling groundbreaking research to advance our knowledge of the universe.

For volcanologists and seismologists Iceland is the world’s volcanic laboratory, where they try out new, data-intensive monitoring and early warning technologies, to help save lives and livelihoods in all parts of the world threatened by volcanic eruptions.

Engineers used research networks and supercomputing in two countries to inform the design of airplane wings that will make airplanes lighter, reducing fuel consumption and the number of raw materials used in construction

One of the major trends in scientific research is the increase in data volume. Science is increasingly data-driven when datasets are on the tera-scale level. Once, only particle physicists produced these huge amounts of data, but now many other branches of science do too and a new service aims to make crunching these data easier for researchers.

Genome researchers in the Netherlands work closely together in the field of omics data (such as genomic and metabolomic data). To ensure the data can be shared easily and securely, E-LAN network technology is being piloted in a shared network environment.

The sooner a person suffering a stroke receives medical attention, the better the outcome is likely to be. Scenario training using simulation technology is helping hospital staff respond to these types of emergencies more efficiently.

A music and dance performance in Copenhagen included live feeds of musicians in London and dancers in Barcelona. Thanks to LOLA technology the synchronised effect was as if they were all physically present on the same stage.

On 19 April 2017 the 'Rock' asteroid made an uncomfortably close pass to Earth - the closest in 400 years. The first step to protecting against such hazards is to monitor them to calculate their precise orbits; this requires fast, reliable internet connections so that the huge volumes of observation data involved can be sent speedily and reliably to researchers around the world for analysis.

Although approx. 2555 km apart, theatre students from The University of Tampere, Finland, and Coventry University, UK, are rehearsing Shakespeare together, sharing a “virtual learning theatre” made possible by powerful videoconferencing equipment and high-speed connectivity.

As weather forecasts are becoming increasingly detailed, data volumes are increasing as well, demanding high-speed connectivity and supercomputing power.

Developing alternative, greener energy sources is a key priority across the world but many countries don’t have the infrastructure and skills needed to create renewable energy industries from scratch. Technology, and in particular research networks, can help develop these skills, transferring knowledge to build the industry.

ARES (Advanced networking for the EU genomic Research) is implementing novel genome content distribution solutions to make large data sets accessible to healthcare practitioners for better patient care. Robust and bottleneck-free data networks are key to the success of this vital undertaking.