Brief Project Overview: A 3D Geometric Kernel (3DKernel) supported by an easy to use Gird Infrastructure (3DHub  ) will provide a competitive advantage for companies to conceive, create, as well as develop and distribute, products and services (3DApplications) in new ways. This will transform the way geometry dependant business models will be conceptualized and operate in many sectors including proteomics, education, manufacturing, and surgery. In addition research in geometry dependant fields will also progress much faster through the resulting communities. “3DHub: A Geometric Kernel and Infrastructure for Community-based Rapid Application Development and Deployment” Purdue University PI: Dr. Karthik Ramani Co PIs: Dr. Mark Lundstrom, Dr. George Adams, Dr. Leah Jamieson, Dr. Wen Jiang NSF Award # Year Award Start Date: 1 August 2009 Program Activities: Contributing Research (Completed) Surface Shape-based Screening of Protein Structure Databases (NIH, May 2005 – July 2010; $1.5 Million). The accomplishments include: created a database of protein binding sites; developed new protein-protein docking algorithm which will help predict the function of newly determined proteins produced by structural genomics projects. PCS: Prominent Cross-Sections for Mesh Models (NSF – IIS). In this work, a new high-level abstraction from a mesh model- the PCS has been proposed and demonstrated. This methods enables the detection of interacting regions and the corresponding skeleton and also segmentation. The PI published a paper that won the Best Student Paper Award in Computer-Aided Design & Application, Partners: Top Challenges: 1. Redevelop and abstract the geometric operations developed in the past to serve as a geometric kernel for diverse applications. 2. Develop the ability to generalize geometric operations across several sectors for the current HUB infrastructure. Key Attributes of our Innovation Ecosystem: Questioning & Curiosity: 1. How to overcome the bottleneck of intelligent algorithms for shape understanding of the acquired 3D data? 2. How can downstream applications use the acquired geometric data seamlessly? 3. How to enable small and medium sized businesses (and even large companies that are not network software based) to capitalize from the advancements in grid computing? Risk Taking: In spite of the promising outcome of this proposal, it is likely that this model will be too early for industrial business models to take on; but we can never find out unless we develop the prototypes and business scenarios. This also means that the best place to incubate and educate industry in such areas is the University incubation model. We are confident that the PI can raise funds from industry because he has extensive relationships to fund portions of prototyping related to their interests. Openness: We want the end users to benefit in research and also we would like to encourage more innovation from the research community itself around our development. Hence an open innovation model will be pursued. Intellectual property as well as open-innovation models will be integrated into both research-to-realization pipeline as well as for educational purposes. Collaboration Across Fields: The benefits of the 3DHub  are embedded in the nature of our applications formed by partnerships in diverse sectors. The collaborating faculties are from two academic departments and further more, we have formed partnerships with key verticals in biology, design-manufacturing, education and surgery. Because of the shared resources, the 3DHub  will transform the businesses fundamentally. Placing Partners in “New Environments” & “Playgrounds”: 1.Increased interaction between industry and academia through direct involvement in on-going projects, leading to symbiotic growth. 2.The 3DHub  can give researchers leverage for industry project prototyping, since they will be developed and deployed in a short time and at lower costs. In our environment, each of the partners can have extensive cross-community interactions and develop into communities themselves. Surprising or Unexpected Results Although still at its experimental stage, the use of the 3DHub  has been proved very effective for educational purposes especially in the field of distance education. The 3DHub  was used for design wiki, a shared knowledge base, which was actively used by design teams across the global. This fundamentally changed the way product design is carried out and can serve as reference for future application in industries. National Science Foundation Partnerships For Innovation Grantee’s Meeting April 25-27, 2010 Arlington, VA.. PFI. Completed geometric research projects will be incorporated into the geometric kernel Top Contributions: 1. Merging advanced geometric computing capabilities together with the Hub (grid computing infrastructure in an easy to use form), 2. Forming partnerships with key verticals in proteomics (NIST/Cryo-EM), design (Imaginestics), education (VCom3D), and surgery (Peyton Manning Childrens Hospital) to help abstract end-user requirements, and 3. Creating prototypes that will show case new technological as well as business model possibilities. New markets and strategy are enabled by technological possibilities. These possibilities are in turn driven by new research