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Adina Magda Florea
Associate Professor, PhD
Department of Computer Science          Tel: +40-1-410.0325
"Politehnica" University of Bucharest   Fax: +40-1-411.2181
Spl. Independentei 313, Sector 6        email: adina@cs.pub.ro
Bucharest 79590, ROMANIA          URL: http://apolo.cs.pub.ro/~adina
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CoLaborator denotes a multi-user research base for high performance 
computing (HPC). CoLaborator will function as a collaborative environment, 
based on the Romanian National Computer Network for Education and 
Research, RoEduNet.

TCoLaborator comprises several partners to set up the project: the 
Computer Science Department of the "Politehnica" University of Bucharest 
(coordinator), the Numerical Methods Laboratory of the "Politehnica" 
University of Bucharest, Medicine and Pharmacy University of Cluj-Napoca, 
University of Galati, and Technical University of Iasi. All the Romanian 
universities and research units will have access to the CoLaborator resources.

The funding of the project devoted to create CoLaborator comes from the 
Romanian Ministry of National Education and the World Bank. 

The main objectives of CoLaborator are:
- offering wide access, for the Romanian academic and research community, 
to a powerful HPC server;
- develop a new paradigm for intimate collaboration among computer 
scientists, computational scientists and researchers from a diversity of 
domains;
- promoting advanced and interdisciplinary research;
- human resources development by interdisciplinary educational programs 
(MSc, Ph.D., post-graduate training);
- integration of the CoLaborator Center in the network of  nodes of 
research excellence in Europe and in the United States;
- transfer of technology in the field of high-performance computing and 
increase of the national industry competitiveness.

The CoLaborator resources will include:
(1) A high-performance computation server, integrated into the national 
computer network for education and research. 

(2) Computer-supported cooperative work tools: programs for remote access to 
the HPC system; Web servers and clients to browse and access scientific 
information; computation and visualisation on-line instruments for scientific 
experiments; dialogue support tools among researchers.

The main characteristics of CoLaborator are:
- support of Advanced Research; as significant computation resources 
represent indispensable tools for any scientific activity, the solicited 
resources fulfil the needs of many research teams from Romanian 
universities, research institutes and commercial companies;
- a gradually evolving solution; the conceived solution for the high-
performance distributed system is flexible, allowing additional equipment 
and programs to be included later on in the configuration, in order to 
enhance the computing power and availability of the research base
- broad Access for the Users. One of the main concern of CoLaborator is a 
wide access to its resources, at a national level. This access will be
possible 
through the constantly evolving national academic and research computer 
network
- motivating and training young researchers; the project will essentially 
contribute to the development of the human research resources, including 
the MS and doctoral programs.