Monash gets MASSIVE boost for researchers

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 27 April 2010 16:29

Science - Health

An $A8 million image processing centre will open at Monash University later this year.

MASSIVE - Multi-modal Australian Sciences Imaging and Visualisation Environment - will open at Monash University's Clayton campus in August 2010.

Funded by the Federal and State Governments, Monash University, CSIRO, the Australian Synchrotron, and the Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing, the $A8 million facility will provide researchers on or near the Clayton campus with the means to generate and display 2D, 3D and 2D-plus images from experimental data.

"The size of images produced by detectors in the new generation of Australian imaging instruments is growing at a phenomenal pace," said Monash University e-Research Centre Director Professor Paul Bonnington.

"For example, the Australian Synchrotron imaging and therapies beamline will be capable of producing 128GB-volume images, but without this new facility there would be no way to reconstruct or view them at full resolution in an acceptable period of time," he added.

The Synchrotron is literally across the road from the campus's eastern boundary, and a CSIRO facility abuts the northern boundary.

Monash senior deputy vice chancellor Professor Edwina Cornish said MASSIVE would provide cutting-edge capabilities and supporting expertise for the diverse array of research and education activities carried out at Monash, within the Clayton precinct and across Australia.