Report of the BIRN-UK Workshop held at the eScience Centre, Edinburgh, 2-3 October 2006
Richard Baldock <Richard.Baldock@hgu.mrc.ac.uk> and
Jano van Hemert <jvhemert@nesc.ac.uk>
The BIRN-UK workshop was organised as part of the EPSRC funded BIRN-node
project, which has a specific objectives to install, evaluate and use the BIRN
infrastructure in the context of UK e-science. The meeting was organised in two parts,
the first a series of invited presentations to cover aspects of the BIRN project in the
US and to present some of the UK interest, in particular research interests of the
universities of Manchester and Edinburgh. In the second part the delegates split into
two groups to discuss specific immediate actions that we could pursue to utilise and
test the two BIRN nodes now located and fully functional in the UK. Overall the
meeting was attended by about 40 participants and proved very successful and highly
productive, which is evident from the response forms gathered afterwards and the
many follow-up activities outlined in this report.
Agenda
Monday 2nd October:
Chair: Professor Richard Baldock
• 9:40 Welcome & Introduction – Professor Peter Clarke
• 9:45 BIRN Overview - Dr Jeff Grethe
• 10:15 Building of Portal Infrastructure - Dr Jason Novotny
• 10:45 Function BIRN Testbed - Dr Dave Keator
• 11:15 Coffee break
Chair: Dr Jano van Hemert
• 11:30 OMII - Dr Steven Newhouse
• 11:50 Taverna - Mr Stuart Owen
• 12:10 Taverna and Image Processing – Mr. Alan Williams
• 12:30 Lunch
Chair: Dr Jenny Ure
• 13:30 NeuroGrid/PsyGrid - Dr Stephen Lawrie & Dr John Ainsworth
• 14:10 Generation Scotland GRID Project - Professor David Porteous
• 14:30 MIAS & GRID Imaging Professor – Professor Chris Taylor
• 14:55 Atlases & Spatio-Temporal Image Data - Professor Richard Baldock
• 15:15 Tea & Biscuits
• End of presentations part of the meeting.
• 15:45 BIRN Workshop Discussion - setting goals and making breakout
groups
• 16:45 Finish
Tuesday 3rd October:
• 9:00 BIRN Portal demo – Dr Jeff Grethe
• 9:30 Taverna workflows demo – Dr Jano van Hemert
• 10:00 Parallel group sessions:
o Integration of software architecture – chair: Jano van Hemert
o Application task identification– chair: Richard Baldock
• 11:00 Coffee
• 11:30 Continue Parallel Sessions
• 12:30 Lunch
• 13:30 Group reporting and future plans
• 15:00 Meeting close.
Meeting Report
The meeting proved very successful with a very strong interest to collaborate to
develop links both at the level of infrastructure and at the level of the application
science. Each of the day 1 presentations are available from the NeSC web site and
will not be reviewed further.
The day 2 workshop sessions resulted in a plan of action for the immediate and
medium term, this was summarised as a presentation and is included as an appendix
below. This also summarizes the actions agreed by the group. It was agreed that the
activity of using the BIRN nodes would probably start when the new portal is rolled
out in a few weeks.
The only additional information needed is the list of Manchester and Edinburgh folk
who would like to be included as users of the BIRN so that some testing and
exploration of the tools can begin. These are:
University of Edinburgh, Department of Psychiatry:
Dominic Job,
djob@staffmail.ed.a.c.uk
Katherine Lymer,
Katherine.Lymer@ed.ac.uk
Elvina Gountouna, E.Goutntouna@ed.ac.uk
Stephen Lawrie,
S.Lawrie@ed.ac.uk
Jenny Ure,
Jenny.Ure@ed.ac.uk
Imperial College London, Department of Computing
A. A. Khanban
khanban@doc.ic.ac.uk
Heriot Watt University, School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences:
Albert Burger,
ab@macs.hw.ac.uk
University of Edinburgh, Brain Imaging Centre:
Martin Connell,
Paul Armitage,
Trevor Carpenter,
Mark Bastin,
M.Connell@ed.ac.uk
Paul.Armitage@ed.ac.uk
Trevor.Carpenter@ed.ac.uk
Mark.Bastin@ed.ac.uk
University of Dundee, Open Microscopy Environment:
Donald MacDonald Donald@lifesci.dundee.ac.uk
University of Edinburgh, Informatics & NeSC:
Yin Chen,
Yin@nesc.ac.uk
Stuart aitken,
stuart@inf.ed.ac.uk
Siu-wai Leung
siu@inf.ed.ac.uk
Jano van Hemert
jvhemert@nesc.ac.uk
Appendix: Power point conclusions.