A $1.1 million National Science Foundation grant to two Rice University computer science groups will allow them to build cloud-computing tools to help analyze evolutionary patterns. With the three-year grant, Christopher Jermaine and Luay Nakhleh, both associate professors of computer science, will develop parallel-processing tools that track the evolution of genes and genomes across species. Even those who have access to mainframes may find it easier to go to the cloud. The programs will be able to run parallel analyses on thousands of computers, with results that may not only be faster but may also make it possible to trace genes at scales that were not practical before. The Rice team expects its new open-source algorithms will bring sophisticated computing techniques to researchers who have limited access to supercomputing resources but can easily rent “cloud-computing” time from the likes of Amazon or Microsoft. To read further, please visit http://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/rice-university-receives-1-1m-grant-nsf/ .