A new effort to increase several overseas universities’ access to cloud computing, or using Web-based resources to execute computationally intense tasks, could allow researchers there to use more sophisticated tools for field study.
IBM announced today that it had selected three universities in Qatar — Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, Texas A&M University at Qatar, and Qatar University — as collaborators for its cloud-computing software. In a news release, IBM said it hoped the technology would aid in the universities’ advanced research into the region’s oil and gas exploration and production. Other uses of the technology may include the development of Arabic-language search engines.
The company also said it would be working with the University of Pretoria, in South Africa, and the Health Alliance, a consortium of seven universities in East Africa, to use cloud computing to enhance public-health research. —Steve Kolowich
