The UK e-Science Vision:
Building a Sustainable
e-Infrastructure
Tony Hey
Director of UK e-Science Core
Programme
Tony.Hey@epsrc.ac.uk
The UK e-Science Paradigm
• The Integrative Biology Project involves seven UK
Universities lead by Oxford and the University of
Auckland in New Zealand
– Models of electrical behaviour of heart cells
developed by Denis Noble’s team in Oxford
– Mechanical models of beating heart developed by
Peter Hunter’s group in Auckland
• Researchers need robust middleware services to
routinely build secure ‘Virtual Organisations to’
support an international “collaboratory”
 Goal is to enable ‘faster, better or different’
research
RCUK e-Science Funding
First Phase: 2001 –2004
• Application Projects
– £74M
– All areas of science
and engineering
• Core Programme
– £15M Research
infrastructure
– £20M Collaborative
industrial projects
Second Phase: 2003 –2006
• Application Projects
– £96M
– All areas of science and
engineering
• Core Programme
– £16M Research
Infrastructure
– £11M DTI Technology
Fund
Some Example e-Science Projects
• Particle Physics
– global sharing of data and computation
• Astronomy
– ‘Virtual Observatory’ for multi-wavelength astrophysics
• Chemistry
– remote control of equipment and electronic logbooks
• Engineering
– industrial healthcare and virtual organisations
• Bioinformatics
– data integration, knowledge discovery and workflow
• Healthcare
– sharing normalized mammograms
• Environment
– Ocean, weather, climate modelling, sensor networks
UK e-Science Grid
Edinburgh
Glasgow
DL
Belfast
Newcastle
Manchester
Cambridge
Oxford
Cardiff
RAL
London
Southampton
Hinxton
Access Grid – Group Conferencing
Multi-site group-to-group
conferencing system
Continuous audio and
video contact with all
participants
Globally deployed
All UK e-Science
Centres have AG
rooms
Widely used for
technical and
management
meetings
A Status Report on UK e-Science
• An exciting portfolio of Research Council e-Science
projects (~40 projects)
– Beginning to see e-Science infrastructure deliver
some early ‘wins’ in several areas
– DiscoveryNet success at SC02
– TeraGyroid success at SC03: ‘heroic’ achievement
• The UK is unique in having a strong collaborative
industrial component (~50 projects)
– Nearly 80 UK companies contributing over £30M
– Engineering, Pharmaceutical, Petrochemical, IT
companies, Commerce, Media, …
AHM 2004 Attendees
Breakdown of AHM attendees
C o mp ut er Ser vices
& N et wo r ks
3%
eScience
C ent r es
11%
Go v
5%
C o mp ut er Science
33%
Lab o r at o r y
8%
Envir o nment al
5%
M ed ical
3%
Ind ust r y
7%
Int er nat io nal
5%
Eng
&
M at h
4%
B io
3%
Physical
Science
8%
So cial
5%
Identifiable UK e-Science Focus
• Data Access and Integration
– OGSA-DAI and DAIT project
• Grid Data Services
– Workflow, Provenance, Notification
– Distributed Query, Knowledge Management
• Data Curation and Data Handling
– Digital Curation Centre
• Security, AA and all that
– Digital Certificates and Single Sign-On
– Federated Shibboleth framework
UK e-Science Grid:
Second Phase Web Service Grids
Edinburgh
Glasgow
DL
Belfast
Newcastle
Manchester
Oxford
Cardiff
Cambridge
RL
London
Soton
Hinxton
The e-Science Core Programme:
Phase 2 - Building a Sustainable
National e-Infrastructure
The UK Government ‘Investment Framework
for Research and Innovation 2004 – 2014’
report emphasizes the need for:
• Creation of a multidisciplinary research
environment
• National Information Infrastructure
– Access to experimental data sets and publications
– Collection and preservation of digital information
Key Elements of a UK
e-Infrastructure
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Research Network
National Grid and HEC Service
Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute
Digital Curation Centre
National e-Science Institute
Portals and Discovery Services
Access to facilities, data services and
repositories
8. Tools and Services to support collaboration
9. National data archive
10. Support for International Standards
SuperJANET4/5
Local Research
Equipment
UK Researchers
International
Point-of-Access
Extended JANET
Development Network
Existing
connections
Proposed
connections
CA*net
StarLight
Chicago
UKLight
London
10Gb/s
2.5Gb/s
10Gb/s
Abilene
CERN
10Gb/s
10Gb/s
10Gb/s
NetherLight
Amsterdam
JISC £6.5M for UKLight
‘Lambda’ Network
CzechLight
GEANT
The Future: Hybrid Networks?
• Standard packet routed production network
for email, Web access, …
• User-controlled ‘lambda’ connections for eScience applications requiring high
performance end-to-end Quality of Service
NGS “Today”
Interfaces
Projects
e-Minerals
e-Materials
Orbital Dynamics of Galaxies
Bioinformatics (using BLAST)
GEODISE project
UKQCD Singlet meson project
Census data analysis
MIAKT project
e-HTPX project.
RealityGrid (chemistry)
Users
Leeds
Oxford
UCL
Cardiff
Southampton
Imperial
Liverpool
Sheffield
Cambridge
Edinburgh
QUB
BBSRC
CCLRC.
OGSI::Lite
NGS “Tomorrow”
GOSC Timeline
NGS WS Service
NGS Expansion
(Bristol, Cardiff…)
NGS Production
Service
NGS WS Service 2
OGSA-DAI
NGS Expansion
WS2 plan
WS plan
Q2
Q3
Q4
Q1
2004
Q2
Q3
2005
Q4
Q1
Q2
Q3
2006
OMII release
gLite release 1
EGEE gLite alpha
release
EGEE gLite release
OMII Release
Grid Operation Support Centre
Web Services
based
National Grid
Infrastructure
Lessons from the NGS?
• Do users want an NGS?
• What will they use it for?
• Will the data nodes be useful?
Research Prototypes to
Production Quality Middleware?
• Research projects are not funded to do the
regression testing, configuration and QA required
to produce production quality middleware
• Common rule of thumb is that it requires at least
10 times more effort to take ‘proof of concept’
research software to production quality
 Key issue for UK e-Science projects is to ensure
that there is some documented, maintainable,
robust grid middleware by the end of the 5 year
£250M initiative
Open Middleware
Infrastructure Institute (OMII)
Vision
• To be the national provider of reliable,
interoperable, open source grid middleware
• Provide one-stop portal and software
repository for grid middleware
• Provide quality assured software engineering,
testing, packaging and maintenance for our
products
 Located in Southampton with Edinburgh
‘node’ producing OGSA-DAI middleware
Digital Curation?
•
•
In next 5 years e-Science projects will
produce more scientific data than has been
collected in the whole of human history
In 20 years can guarantee that the operating
and spreadsheet program and the hardware
used to store data will not exist
 Research curation technologies and best
practice
 Need to liaise closely with individual research
communities, data archives and libraries
 Edinburgh with Glasgow, CLRC and UKOLN
selected as site of DCC
Digital Curation Centre
• Actions needed to maintain and utilise digital data and
research results over entire life-cycle
– For current and future generations of users
• Digital Preservation
– Long-run technological/legal accessibility and usability
• Data curation in science
– Maintenance of body of trusted data to represent
current state of knowledge in area of research
• Research in tools and technologies
– Integration, annotation, provenance, metadata,
security…..
Imperial
Imperial
EBI
EBI
GLOBUS
UCL
UCL
User
query
Local
databases
GRID
sharing
Linux farms
BioSimGrid Project
York
Nottingham
RAL
Oxford
Bristol
Southampton
Application
Analyse Data
Simulation Data
Distributed Query
2nd Level Metadata –
Describing the Results
of Generic Analyses…
1st Level Metadata –
Describing the
Simulation Data…
London
Distributed Raw Data
BioSimGRID - A biosimulation GRID database
e-HTPx Project
Crystallisation
Data Collection
Phasing
Protein Production
START
Target
Selection
Protein Structure
Structure analysis
Deposition
NERC DataGrid Project + Remote Access =
Grid Challenge
British Atmospheric
Data Centre
Simulations
British
Oceanographic Data
Centre
Assimilation
http://ndg.nerc.ac.uk
Partners for e-Infrastructure
• Sustainability requires long-term support
• e-Science is creating the e-Infrastructure for
research
• The support of the e-Infrastructure will,
over time, become the role of JISC.
• Research and Development of this eInfrastructure will be the responsibility of
OST/RCUK.
JISC Funded e-Research
Projects
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Security
Knowledge management
Collaborative Environments
Visualisation
Data curation and handling
Middleware architectures and development
Education and Outreach
UK e-Science Grid Vision
• TeraGrid and DEISA Vision of Supercomputer
Centre Grids
• SETI@HOME and ClimatePrediction.Net Vision of
Public ‘Idle-Cycle’ Grids
• Particle Physicists Vision of truly global ‘ComputeFile’ Grids
• UK e-Science ‘Plug and Play’ Grid Vision driven by
user needs
 Need to provide robust, interoperable Middleware
Services so that different user communities can
connect the resources and research groups that
they need for their type of e-Science Grid