Issue 43, August 2006
News Contents
Students attend Fourth
International Summer School on
Grid Computing
UK e-Science Envoy and
International Key Notes Discuss
the Future of e-Social Science
Enterprise Grid Alliance and
Global Grid Forum Complete
Merger To Form Open Grid
Forum
Reminder to Register for AHM
2006
The brain, traffic and nanocircuits – e-Science takes on
major challenges
e-Science MSc/Diploma
Programme
TRAINING EVENTS - EGEE 06
CONFERENCE
Apply now for GridKa School
IV International Conference
on Multimedia and ICTs in
Education (m-ICTE2006)
Open DELOS Seminar on
Digital Libraries and Digital
Preservation
Other events and Current
Vacancies
For more information on anything
mentioned in the newsletter, please
contact:
Alison McCall
alison@nesc.ac.uk
Telephone 0131 651 4783
Newsletter produced by:
Alison McCall and Jennifer Hurst
Next months deadline for articles
is: 30 September 2006
NeSC News
www.nesc.ac.uk
65 Students complete Fourth International
Summer School on Grid Computing
This summer sixty-five students
from 17 different countries travelled
to the beautiful Island of Ischia, near
Naples. Throughout two weeks,
they took part in an intensive
programme designed by an
international committee to give them
an in-depth introduction to Grid
technologies and applications.
The participants of the Fourth
International Summer School
for Grid Computing consisted of
young researchers from technical
industries, research laboratories,
and academic environments
who were interested in using or
developing Grid technologies.
Students from computer science,
computational science and
application backgrounds attended
the school.
The students received more than
seventy hours of lectures, listened
to over 47 presentations from 30
expert speakers and performed
practical exercises on equipment
installed on the school site.
The testbed was established
locally and was connected to major
international grid resources and
thus provided a rich and challenging
environment for hands-on learning
and experimentation.
This year, the school was
sponsored by Microsoft, AMD,
Global Grid Forum, HP, IBM,
Allied Telesen and support was
provided by the Italian National
Institute for Nuclear Physics
(INFN), the ICEAGE Project, the
Globus Alliance, NAREGI, the
Condor Project, OMII, the National
Research Council, gLIte, UNF II,
OGSADAI, Micron, EGEE Project,
ETICS, FIRB Grid.it Project, and
SPACI consortium, and funding
support was given by the UK
e-Science Program.
The summer school provided
students with one of the few
opportunities to learn the basics of
grid computing hands-on.
This is the Fourth in a series of
schools which started in 2003
– the first school being held in Vico
Equense in Italy, again near Naples.
Next year there are plans to move
the school to Sweden for the first
time.
For more information please refer to
the ISSGC06 website at: www.dma.
unina.it/~murli/ISSGC06/
Issue 43 August 2006
UK e-Science Envoy and International Keynote Speakers Discuss the
Future of e-Social Science
The Second international
conference on e-Social Science
organised by the ESRC National
Centre for e-Social Science took
place on the 28th -30th June. The
event brought together more than
170 e-social scientists from across
the UK as well as large delegations
from the US, Australia and Europe.
The conference consisted of five
parallel workshops held on the
first day followed by two days
of parallel paper sessions. The
workshops covered topics such as
the Semantic Grid, e-collaboration,
new tools and techniques for
qualitative research and the social
science perspective on e-science.
The workshops generated a great
deal of discussion which continued
throughout the conference.
The paper sessions were by a
welcome from the Director of
NCeSS, Prof. Peter Halfpenny,
who gave an overview of NCeSS
and the services it offers and the
research it co-ordinates. This was
followed by the first keynote of
the conference given by Malcolm
Atkinson, UK e-Science envoy, who
spoke about the current position
of e-science worldwide and how esocial science is key to progress in
all areas of e-science.
Two more keynotes were given
during the conference – Prof. Noshir
Contractor, Director of the Science
of Networks in Communities
(SONIC) Research Group at the
National Centre for Supercomputing
Applications, University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
who spoke about the effect of
cyberinfrastructure (as e-science is
known in the US) on communities;
and Prof. Peter van den Besselaar,
Chair of e-Social Science at the
Universiteit van Amsterdam and
Head of the Science System
Assessment Department at the
Rathenau Instituut, who asked if
e-social science was the future of
social science.
NeSC News
Paper sessions were held on the
topics of metadata, collaboration,
data integration, methods and tools,
social shaping, simulation modelling
and confidentiality with 40 papers
being presented. Also present in
the conference programme were
four panel sessions on
- Collaboration, Computation
and Community: Lessons from
the music information retrieval
community
- Social Network Analysis
Cyberinfrastructure
- Collaboration and Engagement:
the use of new technologies
across the Teaching and Learning
Research Programme and the
Applied Education Research
Scheme
- Living Labs for Intelligent Cities
In amongst all the hard work of
presenting, there was plenty of time
available for networking with a wine
reception at Manchester Museum
and a wonderful conference dinner
in the stunning surroundings of
Manchester Town Hall.
All the presentations and
accompanying papers from this
years and last years conference are
available from the NCeSS website
(http://www.ncess.ac.uk/). If you
would like to be kept informed of
news on next years conference
then please join the NCeSS monthly
mailing list – details are available on
the NCESS website.
2
Enterprise Grid Alliance
and Global Grid Forum
Complete Merger To
Form Open Grid Forum
On 26 June 2006 the
Enterprise Grid Alliance
(EGA) and the Global Grid
Forum (GGF) announced the
completion of their merger,
forming the Open Grid Forum
(OGF). The new organisation
brings together the industry’s
two leading grid standards
organisations to accelerate the
pervasive adoption of grids
worldwide. It will be led by
former GGF Chairman Mark
Linesch, who will serve as
president and chief executive
officer.
“This merger integrates
the passion, expertise and
experience of the EGA and
GGF members to enhance
our capability to deliver results
faster, communicate more
clearly, and collaborate more
effectively,” said Linesch. “The
name Open Grid Forum is
inspired by our international
community of grid researchers,
developers, educators,
users and solution providers
who by working together,
open new doors to scientific
discovery, business value
and commercial adoption
worldwide.”
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue 43 August 2006
The brain, traffic and nano-circuits –
e-Science takes on major challenges
UK e-Science AHM 2006
Research into three major scientific and
technological challenges – understanding the brain,
designing future generation nano-scale electronic
circuits and mapping the detailed environmental
impact of traffic – is set to take a leap forward
thanks to the application of e-Science and grid
computing. The Engineering and Physical Sciences
Research Council, with other funding partners, has
awarded more than £13m to three, 3-4 year projects
covering each of these topics in the third round of its
e-Science programme.
The Fifth UK e-Science All Hands Meeting takes
place this September from Monday 18th - Thursday
21st September. The Theme of this year’s event is
“Achievements, Challenges and New Opportunities”.
There will be a broad range of presentations and
discussions at the meeting about completed activities,
challenges for new areas, research issues and industry
take up of prototype technologies.
The programme is now available to view online. Many
keynote speakers have now been confirmed including:
e-Science is opening up to scientific scrutiny
challenging problems that had seemed out of reach,
or even impossible to tackle. By giving researchers
access from their own desktops to resources held
on widely-dispersed computers, it is enabling
research that would have been impossible using
one computer alone, even a supercomputer.
• Professor Robert J Gurney, NERC Environmental
Systems Science Centre & University of Reading
• Professor Dan Atkins, Director of the Office of
Cyberinfrastructure, NSF
• Professor Michael Fulford, Archaeology, University of
Reading
• Dr Stephen Emmott, Director, External Research
Office, Microsoft Research Cambridge
• Professor Dave De Roure, Head of Grid and
Pervasive Computing in the School of Electronics and
Computer Science, University of Southampton
• Professor Malcolm Atkinson, e-Science Envoy
The £4.5m CARMEN project, led by Professor
Colin Ingram at the University of Newcastle upon
Tyne, will harness e-Science techniques to enable
neuroscientists, working on different aspects
of brain function at different labs, to share and
integrate their data and models.
Numerous workshops, panel sessions, posters
and BoFs are planned together with interactive
demonstrations at the e-Science centres and other
exhibitor booths.
The £5.2m NanoCMOS project, led by Professor
Asen Asenov at Glasgow University, will build
e-Science tools to allow designers of tiny
electronic circuits to meet the very demanding
challenges created by future nano-scale electronic
components.
To register go to:
http://www.allhands.org.uk/registration/index.html
Traffic contributes the largest share of air pollution
in inner cities. Governments devise policies and
traffic management schemes to minimise the impact
of air pollution, but they are hampered by a lack
of detailed knowledge. Factors such as street and
building design, vehicle braking and accelerating
patterns, individual traveller decisions and local
weather conditions affect the concentration of
pollutants that individuals are exposed to as they
move around. The £3.5m PMESG (Pervasive
Mobile Environmental Sensor Grids) project, led by
Professor John Polak at Imperial College London,
is jointly funded by the EPSRC and the Department
for Transport. It will develop e-Science and grid
technologies to enable data from a network of
mobile sensors to be gathered and interpreted. The
e-Science technologies developed will be generic
enough for use in other applications of mobile
sensor networks, for example, climate or weather
mapping.
PLEASE NOTE: CLOSING DATE FOR
REGISTRATION is THURSDAY 31 AUGUST 2006.
Late registrations will incurr an extra fee.
Virtual Research Environment
Programme
A Virtual Research Environment harnesses
on-line tools and network resources and
technologies to enable researchers in widely
dispersed locations to work collaboratively.
JISC has recently allocated a further £2 million
to continue the activities of its Virtual Research
Environments (VRE) programme, which aims to
build and deploy collaborative multi-disciplinary
VREs. Further details about the new programme
are available at
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=pub_
vreroadmap
NeSC News
http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/escience
3
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue 43 August 2006
e-Science
Institute
The e-Science Institute invites proposals
for new themes to be run over the next
two years.
Adoption of e-Research technologies: From
prototype to commodity
www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/themes/theme_03/index.htm
Theme topics, as well as being interesting in their
own right, should address issues that are relevant to
applications researchers and be able to demonstrate
significant buy in from both the applications and
computational scientist communities. It is not
intended that they address only the sciences – all
areas of academic research present opportunities for
the application of e-Science techniques.
The e-Science Institute is pleased to announce the third
theme in its series of thematic programmes. This theme,
a collaboration with the National Centre for e-Social
Science (www.ncess.ac.uk), will study the factors that may
inhibit or enable the wider diffusion and adoption of eResearch technologies and tools seek to devise strategies
for furthering the use of e-Infrastructures based on the
knowledge gained.
To continue our rolling thematic programme, we are
now calling for proposals for topics for future themes
to start January 2007 or later. These will be reviewed
by the eSI Science Advisory Board which will meet
in late November 2006, and should be submitted no
later than 30 September 2006 for initial consideration
by the Programme Committee. Proposals for theme
topics can be made either by the research community
in which case eSI will undertake to try to find an
appropriate leader, or potential theme leaders may put
themselves forward along with the theme they wish to
develop. Themes carry a budget of about £60k.
The topic commences on 1st September 2006 and will run
for 12 months. It will be led by Alex Voss, Prof Rob Procter
(NCeSS) and Prof Tom Rodden (University of Nottingham).
Co-funding from NCeSS will enable Voss to conduct
research on the topic as well as acting as theme leader.
Background: The success of the UK e-Science Core
programme has encouraged other disciplines – notably
within the social sciences and the arts and humanities
– to explore the benefits of e-Research approaches and
technologies. The e-Science vision is that e-Infrastructure
should be available to underpin all research activities,
regardless of discipline, location, organisational context
and become the “seen but unnoticed” fabric that underpins
research activities of any kind, be it high energy physics in
large international collaborations like CERN or the study of
environmental changes conducted in schools and at home.
However, before this vision of “democratic e-Research” can
be realised, there are significant obstacles to be overcome.
These relate to issues such as the commodification of
Grid technologies, the shaping of national infrastructures
and organisational context as well as developments within
research traditions. This theme will study the factors
involved and specifically the topics:
The e-Science Institute (eSI), hosted by the
University of Edinburgh, is the UK’s Centre for
e-Science Meetings. Funded by the e-Science Core
Programme, it has been operating since August 2001,
during which time it has run 406 meetings attended
by some 12,844 delegates and hosted 50 visitors who
have stayed for varying periods from one day to a
year.
As well as hosting meetings, summer schools and the
visitors’ programme, the Institute now runs a thematic
programme, which concentrates on in-depth and
sustained investigation of a topic by a series of linked
talks, visitors, workshops and conferences over a
period of six months to a year. Such themes are led
by a theme leader who is a long-term funded visitor to
the Institute.
- Commodification of Grid Technologies
- Designing for Diverse User Communities
- Research Methodologies and Analytic Approaches
- Resourcing e-Research
Themes to date:
- Information Services for Smart Decision Making led
by Dr Jennifer Schopf of Argonne National
Laboratory
- Exploiting Diverse Sources of Scientific Data led by
Prof Jessie Kennedy of Napier University
- Adoption of e-Research Technologies: From
prototype to commodity to be led by Alex Voss, Prof
Rob Procter and Prof Tom Rodden in collaboration
with NCeSS.
Call for Visitors
A central part of any theme at eSI is played by the people
who visit eSI to contribute to the theme activities. If you are
a researcher with an interest in the issues around the wider
adoption of e-Research and would like to visit eSI sometime
over the course of the theme, please have a look at the
eSI Visitors Programme and get in touch with Alex Voss
(avoss@inf.ed.ac.uk) to discuss a possible visit as part of
this theme.
Further information on eSI themes is available at: www.
nesc.ac.uk/esi/themes/index.htm
Further information on eSI themes is available at:
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/themes/index.htm
To propose a theme or if you have any questions, please
contact Anna Kenway by email anna@nesc.ac.uk or ( +44
(0)131 650 9818
To propose a theme or if you have any questions,
please contact Anna Kenway by email anna@nesc.
ac.uk or ( +44 (0)131 650 9818
NeSC News
4
www.esi.ac.uk
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue 43 August 2006
e-Science MSc/Diploma Programme
A few places still available for the e-Science
MSc/Diploma programme at the University of
Edinburgh in 2006/07.
In September there are the following events:
The e-Science MSc programme is a
collaboration between Edinburgh’s Schools
of Physics and Informatics, in conjunction
with the National e-Science Centre. It aims
to provide students with a grounding in
the principles underlying e-Science and
experience of working with e-Science and
Grid Computing technologies, and will prepare
them equally well for a career in academic
research or in the commercial IT sector.
In addition to the core e-Science courses,
students may choose options from a large
pool of courses from the Informatics MSc and
the MSc in Geographic Information Science,
plus the MPhys programmes in Physics and
Astrophysics, so that each can design a
curriculum tailored to their individual interests.
The principal entry requirement is a 2:2
(or equivalent) or better in a degree
which provides experience of computer
programming: the course language is Java,
but this is taught from scratch as part of the
MSc, so the requirement is only that students
have proven expertise in a programming
language.
1st Call for Participation
CompuSteer is an EPSRC-funded
network which aims to build a
computational steering community
and encourage collaboration
amongst its members.
Demand for places at this free, oneday workshop is likely to be high. To
register email h.wright@hull.ac.uk.
For more information visit http://www.
compusteer.hull.ac.uk/
NeSC News
1. Integrating Fortran and XML, a 3-day training event for people whose
primary simulation and analysis codes are written in Fortran and who want
to be able to incorporate XML output/input into their normal workflow. This
training event is very much focussed on hands- one practical teaching,
with time and expert help devoted to helping people get their own codes
working with XML. 4-6 September.
2. eGenomics; cataloguing our complete genome collection. This is a
follow on event from a very successful workshop that we ran last year. The
workshop will explore ways of capturing using the huge range of genome
data that is being created and combining that with evolutionary and
ecological data.
3. The NIEeS are also involved in the National Transport Data Framework
(NTDF) launch. We intend to work closely with the NTDF to explore the
environmental impact of transport.
4. The UK eScience All Hands meeting. This is the annual UK event with
participants from all areas of escience. NIEeS and Reading eScience
Centres are co-hosting a “Birds of a Feather” session on the first
day, Robert Gurney is giving a keynote talk on the NERC escience
programme, and there will be talks from a number of the NERC escience
projects. 18-21 September.
All details and registration are available from http://www.niees.ac.uk/
One thing that is now live on the NIEeS is their escience grid information
web site, http://gridinfo.niees.ac.uk/. This has a lot of basic information
about escience and grid technologies.
Further details of the MSc programme
are available online at www.ph.ed.ac.uk/
postgraduate/degrees/msc_escience.html or
by emailing Robert Mann on (rgm@roe.ac.uk).
Computational Steering
Workshop
15 September 2006
News from the National Institute for Environmental
eScience.
NIEeS are launching something called “Test services”, which is basically
a set of grid computing resources that anyone can try. It is described on
their web site in more detail. NIEeS offer support to
help get you going.
TRAINING EVENTS - EGEE 06 CONFERENCE
The following two one-day training events have been arranged
in conjunction with the EGEE’06 conference in Geneva. Both
will be held at CERN:
Application Developers course: Saturday 23 September 2006
This event is to support those intending to write or port applications to run using
gLite 3.0 middleware.
Agenda can be found at: http://agenda.cern.ch/fullAgenda.php?ida=a063196
Registration page is http://www.nesc.ac.uk/action/registration/egee/index.
cfm?id=707
Training the trainers course: Sunday 24 September 2006
This event is to support those intending to give training courses during EGEEII. Participants might be members of the NA3 activity, or might be members of
partner projects or application comunities associated with EGEE.
Agenda: http://agenda.cern.ch/fullAgenda.php?ida=a063195
Registration: http://www.nesc.ac.uk/action/registration/egee/index.cfm?id=708
5
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue 43 August 2006
Registration is now open for the 2nd
International Digital Curation Conference
Second IEEE International Conference on
e-Science
Amsterdam, December 4-6, 2006
The 2nd International Digital Curation Conference will
explore the topic of Digital Data Curation in Practice.
Keynote speeches will be made by Dr Hans F Hoffmann,
CMS Team Leader, CERN and Clifford Lynch, Director of
the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI).
A comprehensive programme of papers, posters and
demos will take place over two days along with an
conference banquet at the City Chambers in
the centre of Glasgow. A full programme and further
information about registration can be found at:
The e-Science 2006 conference, sponsored by
the IEEE Computer Society aims to bring together
developers and users of e-Science applications and
enabling IT technologies, from leading international and
interdisciplinary research communities. The conference
serves as a forum to present the results of the latest
research and product/tool developments, and highlight
related activities from around the world.
You are invited to submit a paper with unpublished
original work for e-Science 2006 or to one of its
workshops. Please, see http://www.escience-meeting.
org/eScience2006 for details.
http://www.dcc.ac.uk/events/dcc-2006/
Call for Papers for the CCGrid 2007
Conference
CCGrid 2007 is the seventh in a series of successful
international symposia and for the first time will take place
in South America – in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
More details of the conference can be found at: http://
ccgrid07.lncc.br/ There is a PDF version of the Call for
Papers (CFP) available at this site -- at:
http://ccgrid07.lncc.br/docs/ccgrid07-cfp.pdf
More details
http://www.escience-meeting.org/eScience2006/index.
html
IV International Conference on
Multimedia and ICTs in Education
(m-ICTE2006)
Seville, 29 November - 2 December 2006
Abstracts deadline: 25th September / Early
Registration: 10th October
Invitations to send abstracts of your best research
for presentation at the forthcoming IV International
Conference on Multimedia and ICTs in Education
(m-ICTE2006), to be held in Seville (Spain) from 29
November to 2 December 2006. All the information
regarding this interdisciplinary conference can be
found at the conference website:
http://www.formatex.org/micte2006/
Open DELOS Seminar on Digital
Libraries and Digital Preservation
A two-day seminar for digital preservation specialists
and practitioners at the National Library of Estonia,
Tallinn 4th and 5th September 2006 http://www.dpc.
delos.info/tallinn06/
Apply now for GridKa School
To register, please complete the online registration
form at http://www.dpc.delos.info/tallinn06/index.
php?register=register
Registration is open until August 20th, 2006
German e-Science Conference 2007
2nd - 4th of May 2007, Baden-Baden, Germany
The “German e-Science Conference 2007” (GES2007)
- organised by Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft, Max-PlanckGesellschaft and German Rectors’ Conference (HRK) and
supported by the German Federal Ministry for Education
and Research (BMBF) - will bring together the experts from
four different e-Science areas:
- Grid Computing
- Knowledge Networking
- e-Learning
- Open Access
The GES2007 will be an excellent market place to
exchange the latest ideas in the different domains and to
meet international experts of the e-Science community.
http://www.ges2007.de
NeSC News
http://www.escience-meeting.org/eScience2006
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6
The regional EGEE school of the German/
Swiss EGEE federation will be held for the
fourth time in Karlsruhe /Germany. As a result
of their close cooperation, the event for the first
time also covers topics related to the national
German Grid initiative, D-Grid. A wide array
of hands-on tutorials and presentations is
complemented by topics related to industrial
use of Grid Computing. Applicants from all
scientific and industry disciplines are welcome
to apply online at http://www.fzk.de/gks06
. Registrations before August 14 can take
advantage of an early bird discount. The
organising team reserves the right to limit the
number of participants, if necessary.
Ruediger Berlich
Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe
Institute for Scientific Computing
E-mail: ruediger.berlich@iwr.fzk.de
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue 43 August 2006
Forthcoming Events
August
29-30
UCLP Workshop
e-Science Institute,
Edinburgh
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/693/
September
4-5
11-15
Open DELOS Seminar
National Library
of Estonia,
Tallinn
GLOBUSWorld 2006 and GGF 18
Washington D.C.
Convention Center
http://www.dpc.delos.info/tallinn06/index
http://www.globusworld.org/ or http://www.gridforum.org/GGF18/ggf_events_ggf18.htm
15
Computational Steering Workshop
University of Hull
http://www.compusteer.hull.ac.uk/
11-13
Tenth International Workshop on Cooperative Information Agents (CIA 2006)
e-Science Institute,
Edinburgh
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/650/
18-21
All Hands Meeting 2006
East Midlands
Conference Centre
http://www.allhands.org.uk/index.html
23
Applications Developers Course
Geneva
http://agenda.cern.ch/fullAgenda.
php?ida=a063196
Geneva
http://agenda.cern.ch/fullAgenda
24
Training the trainers course
25 - 29
EGEE 06 Capitalising on e-Infrastructures Geneva
http://egee-technical.web.cern.ch/egee-technical/
conferences/EGEE06/index.html
October
2
GGUS Training
Geneva, Switzerland
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/action/registration/egee/index.cfm?id=713
27
Maintaining Long-term Access to Geospatial Data
e-Science Institute,
Edinburgh
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/697/
GridPP17 Meeting
e-Science Institute,
Edinburgh
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/666/
November
1-2 Nov
6-7
GGUS Training
Karlsrhue, Germany
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/action/registration/egee/
index.cfm?id=714
11-17
SC2006
Tampa Convention
Centre, Florida,
USA
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/events/sc06/
29 - 2 Dec
IV International Conference on
Multimedia and ICTs in Education
Seville, Spain
http://www.formatex.org/micte2006/
30
NeuroGrid Annual Workshop
e-Science Institute,
Edinburgh
December
4-6
Second IEEE International
Conference on e-Science
GLOBUSWorld 2006 and GGF 18 are
Amsterdam,
Netherlands
being held in conjunction and will take place at
Washington D.C. Convention Center, September
11 - 15, 2006. For more information go to: http://
www.globusworld.org/ or http://www.gridforum.
org/GGF18/ggf_events_ggf18.htm
http://www.escience-meeting.org/
eScience2006
VACANCY - Technical Director at NEReSC
Technical Director, School of Computing Science, £32,471
to £36,546 pa
More information:
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/vacancies/vacancy.phtml?ref=D1385R
If you would like to hold an e-Science event at the e-Science Institute, please contact:
Conference Administrator, National e-Science Centre, 15 South College Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AA
Tel: 0131 650 9833 / Fax: 0131 650 9819 / Email: events@nesc.ac.uk
NeSC News
7
www.nesc.ac.uk