Draft Memorandum of Understanding for Collaboration on e-Science
between the UK and China
On the basis of the intergovernmental agreement between the China Ministry of
Science and Technology and UK Office of Science and Technology on technical and
scientific cooperation and development, the first UK/China N+N Workshop on ‘eScience and Bioinformatics’, took place at the UK National e-Science Centre (NeSC),
Edinburgh, on June 26-27, 2002. This Workshop was held in a very positive and
cooperative spirit and revealed a remarkable congruence of interests between the two
nations in this area of science. Both nations were trying to establish e-Science based
Grid platforms, and believe that, at this initial stage, e-Science collaborations between
the UK and China should focus on Grid computing, the life sciences, and
bioinformatics.
Both sides agreed that e-Science is an advanced scientific paradigm that has huge
potential to promote scientific progress in both the UK and China. The two countries
found that there was significant complementarity between their approaches and
available resources, and expressed their hope to further develop cooperation in the
field of e-Science. It was agreed to establish an official communication channel on eScience research progress between NeSC and the Chinese Expert Committee. Further,
it was decided that the next e-Science N+N workshop between the UK and China
should take place in China. (Likely dates for this event fall in
September/October/November, 2002.)
Given this congruence of interests and complementarity of resources, it is proposed
that a programme of collaboration between the UK and China be established in the
areas of Bioinformatics and Medical/Health Informatics:
Development of a UK/China e-Science infrastructure
1. The UK and China should collaborate in the establishment of standards for
Grid systems, bioinformatics, and medical informatics. The two nations
should try to act together to promote the international adoption of these, or
equivalent, standards through organisations such as the Global Grid Forum.
2. The two nations should encourage collaborative research and resource sharing
in the area of Grid systems, thus opening national resources to each other; at
the same time, resolving any related cost and IPR problems.
3. The two countries should cooperate in developing Grid middleware, including
data integration platforms, semantic Grid, knowledge discovery, and grid
portals.
4. A procedure should be established to permit designated researchers in China
to connect to the UK Grid. Specific joint projects, perhaps based on existing
UK Grid demonstrator projects could then evolve. These projects would be an
important demonstration of the Grid principle, given the geographical distance
between the two nations. They would also exploit complementary daily
patterns of computer usage between the two nations, given the time zones they
occupy. The two nations will also cooperate in the development and
exploitation of high performance computing as part of a joint Grid initiative.
Exploitation of UK/China Grid e-Science
5. Discussions should be held to identify all relevant bioinformatics and medical
informatics databases in the two nations with a view to enabling reciprocal
access to these resources.
6. Given that the UK and China both have publicly funded healthcare systems,
ways should be explored of pooling clinical data for research purposes, within
an appropriate ethical framework that protects patients’ interests.
7. A collaborative effort should be established between human geneticists in the
UK and China, whereby candidate disease loci identified by UK scientists
could be evaluated by using the genetic diversity of the Chinese population.
8. A number of collaborative projects focussed on specific domain applications
should be established, e.g. in the areas of molecular dynamic modelling; the
modelling of developmental, regulatory, and metabolic pathways; proteome
informatics; biological and medical imaging.
Collaboration between Researchers
9. All relevant funding agencies in the two counties should collaborate in the
establishment of Scholarships and Fellowships schemes to enable the
exchange of post-graduate students and post-doctoral researchers between the
UK and China.
10. The UK and China should work to enhance communication between research
teams in the two countries by organising regular Workshops and also by
Teleconferences via Access Grid.
Both sides agreed that this Memorandum should be delivered to the appropriate UK
and China Departments of Government.
Professor Depei XIAN
Professor Tony HEY
Professor Yixue LI
Professor Stephen OLIVER