Research informatics company Flywheel and the Google Cloud Platform have partnered to launch the first node of a cloud-based Columbia University MR Research Center, according to a statement released this week.
The Flywheel platform, which claims to be “science and industry’s first fully integrated cloud-based MRI research center,” was developed at the direction of John Thomas Vaughan, PhD, a principal investigator at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute and director of the Columbia MR Research Center in New York, New York, according to the release.
The launch of the new platform, which will take place at the Zuckerman Institute, will reportedly be the first of many to eventually connect Columbia’s various schools, centers and collaborators across the world via cloud technology.
Flywheel is meant to facilitate mass data acquisition and connectivity in the project, Vaughan said. Married with the Google Cloud Platform, the pair can fulfill Columbia MR Research Center requirements for on-demand power and data storage.
“Flywheel, together with the GCP, are the nervous center of our Center, providing the innervation for the many coordinated functions of a modern, distributed laboratory potentially spanning the world,” Vaughan said in the release. “Leveraging the power of the cloud is obvious and central to the future of scientific investigation.”
After graduating from Indiana University-Bloomington with a bachelor’s in journalism, Anicka joined TriMed’s Chicago team in 2017 covering cardiology. Close to her heart is long-form journalism, Pilot G-2 pens, dark chocolate and her dog Harper Lee.