Cloud Computing for e-Science with CARMEN

The CARMEN e-science project (www.carmen.org.uk) is designing a system to allow neuroscientists to share, integrate and analyse data. Globally, over 100,000 neuroscientists are working on the problem of understanding how the brain works. This is a major challenge that could revolutionise biology, medicine and computer science. Solving it requires investigating how the brain encodes, transmits and processes information. In this paper we describe the CARMEN system. This is a generic e-science platform "in the cloud" which enables data sharing, integration and analysis supported by metadata. An expandable range of services are provided to extract added value from the data. CARMEN is accessed over the Web by neuroinformaticians, who are populating it with content in the form of both data and services. We describe the design of CARMEN and show how it is being used to support neuroscience.