When rubbish enters the ocean what happens? Oceanographer Dr Erik Van Sebille says: “The plastic joins other rubbish ... and is eaten by thousands of sea animals, birds and fish who mistake the plastic for food.” Dr Van Sebille is using the NeCTAR Research Cloud to host http://www.adrift.org.au a research tool 'Adrift' to explore how objects drift through the ocean.
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Please join NeCTAR's Australian developer community
NeCTAR and ANDS host successful developer days
NeCTAR in partnership with the 
Australian National Data Service (ANDS) recently held two successful 'hands on developer days' in Melbourne, Friday March 23 and Brisbane, Tuesday March 27, 2012.
More than 160 developers, system analysts, technical architects and technically proficient researchers came together to learn more about NeCTAR's new research cloud and all the great services on offer from ANDS.
Developers showed a high level of enthusiasm - networking, making new friends and sharing their knowledge to help launch new instances in the NeCTAR cloud. 
The Australian developer community hopes to meet regularly in the future. Please join. It is easy, please provide your details http://eepurl.com/kuhOD so we can keep you up-to-date with all the great activities happening in this space.
What is NeCTAR's new Australian research cloud?
NeCTAR is partnering with Australian institutions and research organisations to create, for the first time, a national research cloud for Australian researchers. The University of Melbourne has built the first node of the research cloud, operational now, and further nodes will be commissioned by other research institutions throughout 2012.
Is it an Australian first?
NeCTAR's new national research cloud is an Australian first. Once fully operational with 26,000 cores, it will be the largest deployment of OpenStack technology outside the United States.
What are some benefits of cloud computing?
The NeCTAR research cloud enables Australian researchers to respond rapidly to new developments by providing instant access to scalable computing resources and applications. Computational results are easily shared with national and international collaboration partners. It fosters innovation in research software applications and services by reducing barriers to rapid deployment and sharing of research applications.
Access anywhere and at anytime with complete control
You do not have to apply for permission to use NeCTAR’s research cloud. It is free to Australian researchers and fosters collaboration across institutional and international boundaries. It is accessible from anywhere in the world and you have complete control over who has access to your resources in the cloud.
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Researchers
Joanne Whittaker is a Research Fellow at the School of Geosciences in the University of Sydney. She conducts research investigating Earth-ocean system phenomena including understanding interactions between upper mantle convection patterns and the manner with which they interact with the newly forming lithosphere of ocean basins.
Nicky Wright is fascinated by the earth’s geologic history. She is currently researching paleogeography throughout the Phanerozoic and combines GPlates, an open source plate tectonic software, with the online global Paleobiology Database to reconstruct past environments. "I am learning how to unravel the secrets of past worlds..."
Sabin Zahirovic is a PhD candidate at the School of Geosciences in the University of Sydney conducting research on the plate tectonic history and evolving geography of our planet through geological time. Sabin has studied the history of the collision between the Indian and Eurasian continent that was responsible for the uplift of the Himalayas and Tibet.
Maria Seton is an Australian Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Geosciences, University of Sydney. She works in the field of plate tectonics and geodynamics, reconstructing the configurations of the continents and ocean basins over hundreds of millions of years using GPlates, a Virtual Geological Observatory prototype.
Dr Shelley Wickham is a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School in the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Working in Associate Professor William Shih’s lab, the entire lab uses an open-source electronic lab book. Shelley shares her research story.
Associate Professor Martin Sevior performs experiments with the world's highest intensity and energy particle accelerators in Japan and at CERN in Switzerland. He shares his research story.
Izabela Ratajczak-Juszko is a Research Fellow at the Climate Change Adaptation Programme of the Global Cities Institute at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. She shares her research story.
As a final year veterinary student, Chairman of the NeCTAR project Board, Dr Graham Mitchell AO wrote an essay on the thymus gland - and has been hooked on immunology ever since. Today he is one of Australia's top biological scientists and holds an Order of Australia.
NeCTAR Partners
Senior software developer from Cybera in Alberta, Canada, Everett Toews, recently visited Melbourne to offer his support to Australia's Research Cloud. He shares his experience building clouds. Everett is a keen scuba diver, since 2004. He is seen in these photos playing hockey underwater in Hawaii.
A NeCTAR partner is a friend, an individual or a group doing something of interest to the NeCTAR project. They are not necessarily someone with an economic or stakeholder interest in NeCTAR. As NeCTAR is partnering with a broad range of disciplines; eResearch communities and their computing partners, there are lots of interesting stories to tell. Please email: communications@nectar.org.au
Canada has embarked on building a Research Cloud. Read more about their journey via an interview with technical architect John Shillington.
