Issue 42, June 2006
News Contents
NeSC News
www.nesc.ac.uk
BBC Chef and UK e-Science Envoy Converge on South
Yorkshire for Digital Industrial Scientific Collaboration
Digital Industrial Scientific Collaboration
Grid Computing Now! and the British
Computer Society launch Competition
Microsoft and QUT/FIT Establish
E-Research Lab
Winners of the 2006 ASIST SIG III
International Paper Contest
GLOBUSWorld 2006 and GGF 18
Joint Regional CE EGEE and
SEEGRID-2 Summer School
Portals and Portlets 2006
Call for Papers: the 20th CODATA
International Conference
CoreGRID Summer School 2006
LCI Workshop
DGMap Project
2nd Call for Proposals within the
DEISA Extreme Computing Initiative
Second IEEE International Conference
on e-Science
Data Webs: new visions for research
data on the web
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: 30th June 2006
Dr David Watson, Prof Malcolm Atkinson & Sir Bob Kerslake
Malcolm Atkinson, the UK e-Science
Envoy delivered the Keynote address
at the DISC Conference in Sheffield in
May. The primary message delivered
to industrialists and academics was that
passionate collaboration across different
disciplines will be the key to future
innovation and competitive edge.
and Program Director of Emerging
Technology at IBM said, “If you bring a
lot of people together like this, you get
an interesting mix and a lot of ideas
come out. That’s what DISC was set up
to do. It’s the catalyst of hearing about
something in another field that typically
brings a great idea out.”
Paul Rankin, BBC Masterchef of ‘Ready
Steady Cook’ fame also treated dinner
guests to a Masterchef Demonstration
in The Sheffield College state-of-theart demonstration theatre at Sparks
Restaurant. Conference diners went
on to sample the menu created for the
Queen’s 80th Birthday, cooked and
served under the Chef’s watchful eye.
In one of his first keynote addresses
since his appointment as UK e-Science
Envoy in April, Professor Malcolm
Atkinson used the opportunity at DISC
to call for greater collaboration across
different disciplines, “It’s about mutual
respect. It’s about recognising that you
are all bringing ideas and each group
has to benefit from the collaboration.
That’s not easy to achieve.”
The event that brought together senior
figures from the global IT labs in the UK
including HP, IBM, Intel and Microsoft,
with futurologists, hi-tech industrialists,
entrepreneurs and researchers for an
interactive forum looking at the next
wave of technology-led opportunity.
The Digital Industrial Scientific
Convergence Conference focused
on the impact of future generation
computing technologies on hi-tech
industries and public services. The
programme covered a variety of
sectors that are vibrant in Yorkshire
and Humber, including healthcare
and advanced engineering and
manufacturing.
David Watson, DISC Conference Chair
DISC delegates had an opportunity
in afternoon workshops to share
knowledge across different fields of
expertise to solve common problems,
with panels of industry experts on hand
to stimulate discussion. The DISC
conference was hosted by Skills for
Business, the industry training arm of
The Sheffield College, in collaboration
with Yorkshire Forward’s Science
and Technology Network, with further
part-funding through Objective 1 South
Yorkshire.
For full event information visit: www.
disc2006.com
For full event information visit:
www.disc2006.com
Registration for the Fifth UK e-Science All Hands Meeting now Open
Register now online for this year’s All Hands Meeting which is taking place at the East Midlands
Conference Centre in Nottingham from the 18th - 21st September 2006.
You can find more information and register at http://www.allhands.org.uk/
Issue 42, June 2006
Grid Computing Now! and the British
Computer Society launch Competition
Microsoft and QUT/FIT Establish E-Research
Lab
Grid Computing Now!, a DTI funded taskforce that is
championing grid computing education and adoption
among UK businesses, recently launched a nationwide
grid computing competition in partnership with the British
Computer Society. The Grid Computing Now! competition
is aimed at students and young professionals to develop
solutions to 21st century challenges using the capabilities
of grid computing technologies. As the Head of Department
at your University, Grid Computing Now would appreciate
if you would encourage your undergraduates to enter the
competition.
Microsoft and QUT/FIT have set up Australia’s first
e-research lab. A $2.7m e-research lab will be established
at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Faculty of
Information Technology to speed up scientific discoveries in
Queensland and across the world. The lab, which is the first
of its kind in Australia and one of only 11 in the world, aims
to give scientists more time for discovery and invention by
automating the data processes that are necessary to their
research.
The lab is jointly funded by worldwide technology leader
Microsoft, QUT Faculty of Information Technology and the
Queensland Government and could be the forerunner to an
international Microsoft Research Centre being established in
Queensland. QUT’s world-leading IT and information science
researchers had worked with Microsoft for many years and
were excited about this opportunity to advance international
research.
The competition has the backing of the National eScience
Centre, Intel, Microsoft and includes judges from the fields of
science, technology, design and government such as:
• Ray Browne, Assistant Director of Innovation Technology
and Sustainable Development, Department of Trade and
Industry
• David De Roure, Head of Grid and Pervasive Computing in
the School of Electronics and Computer Science, University
of Southampton
• Sean Hanna, Research Engineer at University College
London
• John Barr, Architect, Grid and High Performance
Computing, Intel
• Jerry Fishenden, National Technology Officer, UK, Microsoft
• Carl Christensen, Chief Software Architect,
ClimatePrediction.net project, Dept of Physics, University of
Oxford
The lab will be funded over three years by $900,000 from
the Queensland Smart State Innovation fund (National and
International Research Alliances Program), $900,000 from
Microsoft and $900,000 in cash and kind from QUT.
Intellectual property will be owned by QUT, enabling it to
continue research, and Microsoft will have a licence to
commercialise all generated IP.
Winners of the 2006 ASIST SIG III International
Paper Contest
The American Society for Information Science & Technology
(ASIST) Special Interest Group on International Information
Issues (SIG III) recently announced the winners of its sixth
International Paper Contest: Aditya Nugraha from Indonesia
was first with the paper title Desa Informasi - The Role of
Digital Libraries in the Preservation and Dissemination of
Indigenous Knowledge. Second to fifth place winners were
from China, Sudan and India.
The winner, first and second runner up will receive very
attractive prizes. The winner will be eligible for a six week
paid Grid Computing Now! project Internship hosted by
Intellect, the UK hi-tech association in Summer 2007. The
winner will also be eligible to attend the Microsoft European
Technology Conference held in Brussels, enjoy a year’s free
membership of the British Computer Society and receive an
XBox 360, with the offer of Microsoft Windows Server 2003
Standard 10 CALs and Microsoft Compute Cluster Server for
the prize winner’s employer/university.
The theme of this year’s contest was “Information Realities:
Shaping the digital future for all?” The six winning papers
were selected from 31 submissions by 42 authors from 12
developing countries.
The entrant will have to develop a submission of up to
500 words describing the problem and their approach to a
solution using grid computing technologies. The submissions
will be reviewed by the organising committee and selected
candidates will be invited to submit a more complete entry.
The principal authors of each of the six winning papers will
be awarded a two-year individual membership to ASIST.
In addition, the first place winner, Aditya Nugraha will be
awarded a minimum of $1,000 to attend the November 3-8,
2006 ASIST Annual Meeting, in Austin, Texas.
The deadline for initial entries is 30 June 2006 and up to 10
shortlisted entrants will be invited to present their entries
to the judges at the competition final on 28 September at
the BCS offices in Southampton Street. Please direct your
students to the following for more details and to enter the
competition: www.gridcomputingnow.org
These winning papers and other submitted papers for the
competition will be considered for publication by Elsevier’s
International Information and Library Review, which is edited
by Toni Carbo.
More information about the paper competition is available
from the SIG III website http://www.asis.org/SIG/SIGIII/
GLOBUSWorld 2006 and GGF 18
This year the two events are 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
NeSC News
2
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue 42, June 2006
Joint Regional CE EGEE and SEEGRID-2 Summer School on Grid Application Support
Budapest, Hungary, 3-8 July, 2006
This is also an official ICEAGE training event.
Scope
Grid infrastructures developed within the EGEE and SEE-GRID projects enables scientist to create virtual organisations, to share
resources and to develop applications that are capable to utilize these resources.
The Joint Regional CE EGEE and SEEGRID Summer School on Grid Application Support aims at introducing Grid technology
to potential users and at studying and practicing application development methods and tools using the Central European Virtual
Organization of the EGEE Grid infrastructure and the South-East European Grid infrastructure. Lecturers from these two regions
will give talks on available Grid infrastructures, Grid technologies and application development tools and will introduce projects
that achieved outstanding results by these solutions. During dedicated sessions the attendees - with the help of our grid experts
- can port their own applications onto the VOCE and SEE-GRID Grid infrastructures having about 1000 CPUs connected.
The Regional school is open for anyone interested in the use of EGEE and SEE-GRID tools, technologies and infrastructures.
Particularly, researchers and students from the Central European and South-East European regions are expected but anyone
interested is warmly welcome.
Because the school is focusing onto the end-user view of Grids it provides a perfect occasion to learn the usage of Grids without
the irrelevant and often confusing low-level technical details. Besides getting first-hand user experience, the school will be an
excellent forum to meet the representatives of Grid user communities, Grid infrastructure providers and Grid tool developer
groups.
Venue
Budapest, one of the most beautiful historical capitals in Europe, situated on the banks of the Danube, will host the Conference.
The architectural beauty with its monuments from neo-classic through baroque to eclectic art nouveau is prevalent in the city.
Budapest is also world famous for its artistic abundance of concerts, operas, recitals, galas and exhibitions. The warm hospitality
of people, excellent food and wine reliable and frequent public transportation, vivid cultural life, rich museums attract millions of
vizitors every year. Visitor friendly visa policy, value-for-the-price services and goods, and pleasant climate make Hungary one of
the most popular meeting venues worldwide.
Summer School Fee
The registration fee will includes the following:
* Coffee and refreshment in the breaks
* Five buffet-feast style lunches in the nearby Trofea Grill restaurant (see the Picture Gallery) with unlimited consumption of
meals and drinks
* Buffet-style lunch on 8th of July in the Citadella Restaurant located on the Gellrt Hill giving gorgeous view over the city.:
www.citadella.hu
* An excursion on Monday: Cruise on the Danube with dinner
Please, see the details at the Summer School web page: http://egee.hu/grid06/
Portals and Portlets 2006
17- 19 July
NeSC e-Science Institute, Edinburgh, Scotland.
http://www.grids.ac.uk/twiki/bin/view/EResearch/PortalsAndPortlets2006
It is soon to be exactly three years since the Portals and Portlets 2003 workshop. A similar event is being organised to review
progress and best practice within the international community. This is to be held again at the UK National e-Science Centre in
Edinburgh. Please see the information and registration page at the above URL. These will be updated over the next few weeks.
The event is seeking input and offers of additional technical presentations from which we will select the most relevant. The
organisers are particularly interested in technical input of a novel nature, such as use of new standards, interoperability, success
in developing highly-functional portlets, solutions to authorization issues, portals using workflow, WSRF, etc. Usability of Web
interfaces is being handled separately.
This event will attempt to unite the e-Research and the Digital Information communities as there is currently a lot of interest in
providing commonly-used services. There will also be reports on activities looking at portals as a User Interface component in a
Service Oriented e-Framework.
A hands-on tutorial is planned on developing portlets for uPortal on the third day, 19th July.
Please register for the event at the above URL if you would like to attend.
NeSC News
3
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue 42, June 2006
Current and Future Generation Grid Technology
CoreGRID Summer School 2006
Call for Papers: the 20th CODATA International
Conference
24th - 28th July, Bonn (Germany)
The 20th CODATA International Conference: Scientific
Data and Knowledge within the Information Society will
be held at the Beijing International Convention Center
during 23-25 October, 2006. The conference sponsors
include the Committee on Data for Science and Technology
(CODATA), the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the
China Association for Science and Technology (CAST), the
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS)and the InterAcademy Panel on International Issues (IAP).The conference
is organized by the Chinese National Committee for CODATA
and the Computer Network Information Center of CAS, and
co-organized by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the
P.R.C. (MOST) and the National Natural Science Foundation
of China (NSFC).
The annual summer school is the main training activity of the
CoreGRID Network of Excellence. The CoreGRID summer
school will be held this year in Bonn (Germany), 24-28 July
2006, hosted the Bonn-Aachen International Center for
Information Technology.
The summer school is organised by the Fraunhofer institute
SCAI. The school offers theory courses as well as practical
work sessions. The main objective is to introduce researchers
and students to the concept of GRID and to practice some
existing tools for deploying GRID systems and applications.
Additionally, there are two main topics in the lectures this year:
• Resource Management and Monitoring in Grids, and
• Life Science Grid Applications.
All papers and abstracts, written in English as required,
should be submitted as attached word document files through
the on-line system in the conference website
( <http://www.codata.cn/2006/> http://www.codata.cn/2006/).
Accepted papers will be presented by oral or poster.
Registration for the CoreGRID summer school 2006 is now
open
http://www.coregrid.net/mambo/content/view/231/221/
Notes for authors and other conference participants
Deadline for the abstract: June 30th, 2006
LCI Workshop
A receipt will be sent within 3 months since submission to all
approved abstracts after the review. Selected papers will be
included in Data Science Journal, an e-journal released by
CODATA.
June 27 - 30, 2006 New York City, NY
The Linux Clusters Institute (LCI) includes some of the world’s
foremost specialists in building and deploying Linux clusters
at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications
(NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
the Center for High Performance Computing at the University
of New Mexico (HPC@UNM), the Advanced Computing
Technology Center (ACTC) at the IBM Watson Research
Center, and Cray Inc.
Email address and phone numbers should be included in the
contact information of the author.
Registration fee for the conference: USD $400 (USD $200 for
students), covering conference materials and publications.
More information of the conference will be released according
to the progress of paper submission.
The group was founded by NCSA, HPC@UNM, and ACTC at
IBM Research.
Contact: Ms. Cheryl Levey, Mr. Wang Runqiang
E-mail: cheryl@codataweb.org or wrqiang@sdb.cnic.cn
Registration deadline is May 26, 2006.
http://news.taborcommunications.com/ct.jsp?uz1332368Biz1
733442
Website: http://www.codata.cn/2006/
2nd Call for Proposals within the DEISA Extreme Computing Initiative
DEISA is consortium of leading national supercomputing centres
that currently deploys and operates a persistent, production
quality, distributed supercomputing environment with continental
scope.
The purpose of the DEISA Extreme Computing Initiative (DECI)
is to enhance the impact of the DEISA research infrastructure on
leading European science and technology.
This initiative consists in the identification, enabling, deployment
and operation of “flagship applications” in selected areas
of science and technology. These leading, ground breaking
applications must deal with complex, demanding, innovative simulations that would not be possible without the DEISA
infrastructure, and which would benefit - if accepted - from the exceptional resources from the Consortium.
The 2nd call for challenging projects and applications from computational sciences has been launched. In addition to providing
resources from the DEISA infrastructure, support for complex application enabling will be made available.
Deadline for proposals will be July 15, 2006.
Please visit http://www.deisa.org/applications for more details.
NeSC News
4
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue 42, June 2006
Second IEEE International Conference on e-Science
Amsterdam, December 4-6, 2006
http://www.escience-meeting.org/eScience2006
****************************************************
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.
Many important Invited speakers have now been confirmed including Jim Austin, University of York, UK, Wolfgang Gentzsch,
D-Grid Germany and RENCI, USA, Bob Hertzberger, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, Tony Hey, Microsoft Corporation,
USA, Peter Hunter, University of Auckland, New Zealand and Carl Kesselman, USC, USA
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.
All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers from both the main track and the workshops will be published in preconference proceedings published by IEEE. Selected excellent work may be eligible for additional post-conference publication as
extended papers in selected journals, such as FGCS (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/fgcs)
IMPORTANT DATES
Papers due June 15, 2006*
Paper acceptance Aug 15, 2006*
Camera ready papers due Sept 20, 2006
CONFERENCE December 4, 5 & 6, 2006
CONFERENCE ORGANISATION
General Chairs
Peter Sloot, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Anne Trefethen, e-Science Core Program, EPSRC, UK.
More details
http://www.escience-meeting.org/eScience2006/index.html
Data Webs: new visions for research data on the web
Wednesday 28th June, 10:00 – 18:00
Imperial College, Exhibition Road, London SW7
A Research Information Network Workshop
The idea for this workshop, organised by the Research Information Network,
emerged following a discussion at the life sciences group, but it has relevance
to all areas of research. With a panel of distinguished international speakers,
the workshop will explore the changing nature of scholarly publication and
the use of lightweight semantic web, ‘Web 2.0’ and data web approaches to
improve access to and interoperability between scientific research data. It is
aimed at researchers and is planned to be the first of many such RIN events
in areas relating to research information outputs.
In particular, the workshop will develop the concept of data webs, a new
concept in digital information storage and integration that involves lightweight
harvesting of metadata describing distributed data into a central searchable
registry. It will show that data webs are often a more appropriate means for
the publication and integration of research data than the use of centralized
databases.
Although the programme has a focus in the biomedical sciences, the event
should appeal across all disciplines to researchers with an interest in
improving the way they publish and share their data. The workshop will aim
to show that the methods discussed have the potential to provide significant
benefits, including scalability, and will explore the key issues for establishing
them across the research spectrum.
DGEMap Project
The DGEMap (Developmental Gene
Expression Map) project is the first ever
EU Design Study for a pan-European
research infrastructure dedicated to the
analysis of gene expression patterns
in early human development. It aims to
deliver a design for the organisational
and collaborative structures, the
ethical framework, the lab-based
technologies, and the informatics
technologies necessary for a new
research infrastructure designed by and
dedicated to the scientific community.
The project started in April 2005 and will
end in July 2008
Follow the project on-line at http://www.
dgemap.org
Everyone is welcome, but places are limited and will be allocated on a first
come, first serve basis.
Further information is at www.rin.ac.uk/?q=data-webs or e-mail Stéphane
Goldstein stephane.goldstein@rin.ac.uk
NeSC News
5
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue 42, June 2006
Forthcoming Events
June
19-21
ATHAM Workshop
University of
Cambridge
http://www.niees.ac.uk/
events/atham2006/index.html
26-28
GENIE Earth System Modelling Workshop
University of
Cambridge
http://www.niees.ac.uk/
events/genie/index.html
20-21
ESLEA Technical Collaboration meeting
e-Science Institute,
Edinburgh
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/
events/692/
21-23
1st UK induction to EGEE-II and its gLite 3 Middleware
e-Science Institute,
Edinburgh
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/
events/696/
23
Introducing OMII-Europe
e-Science Institute,
Edinburgh
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/
events/694/
5
e-Science Director’s Meeting
e-Science Institute,
Edinburgh
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/
events/695/
9-21
International Summer School on Grid Computing
Jolly Hotel Delle
Terme, Ischia, Italy
http://www.dma.unina.
it/~murli/ISSGC06/
17-18
Portals and Portlets
e-Science Institute,
Edinburgh
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/
events/686/
UCLP Workshop
e-Science Institute,
Edinburgh
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/
events/693/
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
27
Geospatial Data Workshop
e-Science Institute,
Edinburgh
31-2 Nov
GridPP
e-Science Institute,
Edinburgh
July
August
29-30
September
October
Vacancies
Training and Education Material Repositories
Software Developer for Grid Systems
Closing date 7 July 2006.
http://www.jobs.ac.uk/jobfiles/QB912.
html
Training and education material repositories have recently been released by both EGEE
and ICEAGE. Both of these are based on digital library technologies and have web
services APIs available making the generation of locally customised clients simple. The
EGEE repository features a collection of material which supports users, developers and
operations staff in acquiring the skills to make best use of the EGEE infrastructure. It also
acts as a resource for trainers to help develop new courses, to create customised local
courses and courses for new communities. To facilitate this, the repository also features
a collection of courses which have been selected by EGEE as the best exemplars for
particular types of course.
Posts for middleware experts available
at NeSC in Edinburgh in a number
of disciplines. For more information:
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/career/
Jobs available at Brookhaven National
Lab. http://www.bnl.gov/HR/jobs/
This month NeSc would like to
welcome....
Jo Newman, who joins us as the PA
to the eSI Director and e-Science
Envoy Malcolm Atkinson.
The ICEAGE repository is aimed at a different target audience. It is specialised to provide
educational materials to support the incorporation of grid concepts into mainstream
academic courses.
The EGEE repository is available at: http://egee.lib.ed.ac.uk/
The ICEAGE repository is available at: http://www.iceage-eu.org/eLearning.htm
There is a wiki for discussing elearning issues at: http://wiki.nesc.ac.uk/read/egeeelearning. Further services can be found on the EGEE NA3 pages http://www.egee.
nesc.ac.uk/ for registering events and quality assurance procedures for EGEE training.
These services are being developed into a comprehensive suite of services and
framework to support grid training and education.
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
6
www.nesc.ac.uk