Modern day computing tools geared towards scientific research activities are often evolving and non-structured, with many of them in the opensource domain. With this premise, the group is tasked with the following goals in mind.

1) To provide and support opensource/vendor desktop tools for our scientific community and from our scientific community.

• Tesla GPU desktop computing - configure and support multi-core/GPU high-end workstation
• 3D visualization - install and configure OS/applications for 3D viewing (Zalman 3D monitors, Ubuntu Linux, pymol)
• Institute-wide scientific file server and department shares - configure and support AFS desktop clients to allow researchers to access and share their files. This flexible platform also enables the researchers to host scientific information to the world-wide audience.
• Source code revisioning and scientific tool licenses hosting
• Internal department's wikis and info collaboration
• Adhoc large volume (TBs) data sharing between users

2) To explore and develop proof-of-concept (POC) opensource systems for the Institute

• glpi - a ticket submission/tracking and desktop inventory tool (implemented March 2009)
• Horde mail - an opensource Web2.0 based interface to BII email system (implemented Feb 2010)

The following systems are under POC - they are designed to elevate and increase the mindshare of BII/A*STAR in the world-wide scientific community

• openmeeting - an opensource and web-based tool for video-voice conference hosting (under POC development)
• jvideodirect - joomla/jview based video sharing and collaboration platform (under POC development)
• Scientific paper hosting - opensource based documents sharing and retrieval system (still in initial info gathering)

3) To educate and promote usage of opensource tools within our scientific community

• openvpn - an opensource VPN solution for remote access back to BII (implemented June 2009)
• virtualbox virtual servers hosting - promote and support desktop virtualization for researchers that needs to work on multi-OS platform