Jeffrey D. Palmer
Professor, Department of Biology
Indiana University, Bloomington
Executive Summary
Computational phylogeny has become a major part of Indiana University's research computing, and a major part of the IUB Biology Department's research program. IU's biologists use fastDNAml to create maximum-likelihood phylogenetic trees from genetic data. Much of this computation could be done on distributed networks of personal computers; the Student Technology Centers at IUB have been shown to be capable of providing an immense number of computing cycles. We propose to implement the technology to run fastDNAml on IU's STC workstations. The technology developed to capitalize on this resource should eventually be distributed across the entire Indiana University system.