Queensland to lead technological change - UQ Vice-Chancellor
Queensland is positioned at the forefront of emerging technological changes which will have major flow-on benefits for the State's traditional and emerging industries, University of Queensland Vice-Chancellor Professor John Hay said today.
Professor Hay said the State Government's $10 million Budget backing for supercomputing and its $77.5 million commitment to biotechnology would mean industries such as agriculture, mining and marine science would have access to leading-edge knowledge in their fields.
"By these decisions to support supercomputing and biotechnology, Queensland builds on its national leadership in fields vital to our future as a State and a nation," Professor Hay said.
"The funds are conditional on collaboration with key research centres and with industry. The Institute for Molecular Bioscience to be built at the St Lucia campus next year is already a major collaborative project.
"Funding for supercomputing will allow us to develop new levels of collaboration with government, large corporations and companies, and key centres in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra. It will allow us to take super-computing to new levels.
Supercomputers are high-end, high performance computers, each capable of performing the work of a large number of individual PCs. Currently UQ supports the largest scalable supercomputer in an Australian university, a 64-node Origin 2000 with a capacity of 24.3 Gigaflops.
Professor Hay said the significant investment in high performance computing and communications would lead to the establishment of a massive virtual reality facility in the State.
It would also underwrite such new knowledge-intensive industries as biotechnology, financial engineering and environmental management.
"I congratulate the State Government for its vision in these fields and acknowledge the role of its predecessor in providing the start-up funding for the IMB development," he said.
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