Introducing Research Grids and eScience whats in it

Introducing Research Grids and e-Science – what’s in it for the Humanities? Dr Liz Lyon, Director, UKOLN DRH 2003 University of Gloucestershire A centre of expertise in digital information management www. ukoln. ac. uk

Overview • • • Setting the context - a little bit of history The UK e-Science Programme Research – some common challenges What’s happening now? Opportunities…. . A centre of expertise in digital information management www. ukoln. ac. uk

“Grid computing refers to the large-scale integration of computer systems via high speed networks to provide on-demand access to data-crunching capabilities and functions not available to one individual or group of machines” Ian Foster, Scientific American April 2003 A centre of expertise in digital information management www. ukoln. ac. uk

“Grid technology enables large-scale scientific and business collaboration among members of virtual organizations, remote experimentation and high-performance distributed computing and data analysis” Ian Foster, Scientific American April 2003 A centre of expertise in digital information management www. ukoln. ac. uk

The Grid 1967 – 2003 Part 1 With acknowledgement to Rob Baxter (Ne. SC) • • • 1967 World’s first packet-switched network 1973 Ethernet demo at Xerox PARC 1976 First Cray-1 “super-computer” 1984 JANet built 1988 Condor project begins – earliest “cycle scavenger” or scheduler – ideal tool for Grid? ? 1991 WWW created by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN 1993 Legion project launch – used Grid Object model 1994 Nimrod project launch – co-ordinates tasks across a network 1997 UNICORE project starts – combined toolkit and portal model 1997 Storage Resource Broker v 1. 0 – client server middleware connecting to heterogeneous datasets based on attributes 1998 The GRID book – Foster & Kesselman A centre of expertise in digital information management www. ukoln. ac. uk

The Grid 1967 – 2003 Part 2 • 1998 Globus v 1. 0. 0 – the leading Grid toolkit – Defines standards for security, resource discovery, data access & transfer, remote job execution – Layered architecture – Single sign-on • • • 2001 March Global Grid Forum 1 2001 March Web Services IBM – “provided a sea-change in Grid thinking” 2001 July UK e-Science Programme Phase 1 launch 2001 November GEANT activated – pan-European gigabit network 2002 February OGSA–DAI (Open Grid Services Architecture-Data Access & Integration) project launched – UK Grid Core Programme with DTI, IBM, Oracle partners, “a marriage of Globus and Web Services” • 2003 March Open Grid Services Infrastructure OGSI V 1. 0 spec • 2003 July UK e-Science Programme Phase 2 planning • 2003 September 2 nd All Hands meeting in Nottingham tomorrow……. A centre of expertise in digital information management www. ukoln. ac. uk

UK e-Science Programme “e-Science is about global collaboration in key areas of science and the next generation of infrastructure that will enable it. ” Dr John Taylor, Director General of the Research Councils A centre of expertise in digital information management www. ukoln. ac. uk

UK e-Science Programme Phase 1 2001 - 2004 • Professor Tony Hey, Director • Government funds from OST and DTI + industry matching • £ 74 M application projects • £ 35 M Core Programme (CP) • CP managed by EPSRC for Research Councils • To advance the development of robust and generic Grid middleware in collaboration with industry • http: //www. rcuk. ac. uk/escience/ A centre of expertise in digital information management www. ukoln. ac. uk

UK e-Science Grid & Centres of Excellence With acknowledgement to Tony Hey Edinburgh Glasgow Belfast Lancaster Social Sciences Newcastle White Rose Manchester Birmingham/Warwick Modelling Oxford Cardiff UCL Cambridge RL Hinxton London Bristol Media Soton A centre of expertise in digital information management www. ukoln. ac. uk DL

Powering the Virtual Universe http: //www. astrogrid. ac. uk (Edinburgh, Belfast, Cambridge, Leicester, London, Manchester, RAL) Multi-wavelength showing the jet in M 87: from top to bottom – Chandra X-ray, HST optical, Gemini mid-IR, VLA radio. Astro. Grid will provide advanced, Grid based, centre of mining expertisetools in digital information management federation Aand data to facilitate better and faster scientific output. www. ukoln. ac. uk Picture credits: “NASA / Chandra X-ray Observatory / Herman Marshall (MIT)”, “NASA/HST/Eric Perlman (UMBC), “Gemini Observatory/OSCIR”, “VLA/NSF/Eric Perlman (UMBC)/Fang Zhou, Biretta (STSc. I)/F Owen (NRA)” :

my. Grid Project • Imminent ‘deluge’ of data • Highly heterogeneous • Highly complex and inter-related • Convergence of data and literature archives • Virtual workbench A centre of expertise in digital information management www. ukoln. ac. uk

Comb-e-Chem Project Video Simulation Diffractometer Properties Analysis Structures Database X-Ray e-Lab Properties e-Lab Grid Middleware

What are the common challenges? • Research is increasingly data–intensive • New approaches require new skills (IT+statistics+domain) • Inter-disciplinary e. g. Astro-informatics • Collaborative: virtual communities • Knowledge-rich infrastructures: development of ontologies, terminology servers • Highly distributed resource utilisation – instruments, bibliographic collections, primary data A centre of expertise in digital information management www. ukoln. ac. uk

Resources are used in new ways • Spatial change – Federation, aggregation, dis-aggregation, replication, manipulation, linking, annotation, editing/versioning, transformation • Knowledge extraction – Analysis (textual, musical, statistical, mathematical, visual, chemical, gene……) – Mining (text, data, structures……) – Modelling (economic, mathematical, biological. . ) – Presentation (visualisation, rendering…. ) A centre of expertise in digital information management www. ukoln. ac. uk

What is happening now? • Planning for Core Programme 2 • Digital libraries and e-Science 2003 -2006 – Joint UKOLN / Ne. SC workshops – Digital Curation Centre call – EPSRC/JISC funded projects such as e. Bank (with Combechem) see Ariadne article http: //www. ariadne. ac. uk/issue 36/lyon/ – National Centre for Text Mining call • e-Social Science – Centre of Excellence Lancaster ESRC April 2004 – Awareness & Training Environment JISC August 2003 • Humanities ? ? ? A centre of expertise in digital information management www. ukoln. ac. uk

A centre of expertise in digital information management www. ukoln. ac. uk

A centre of expertise in digital information management www. ukoln. ac. uk

Some possible applications in the humantities? • Complex text mining across distributed documents – multi-lingual processing? ? • Visualisation and modelling of historically linked archaeological sites • Real-time retrieval and image analysis of multiple video streams – news and media? ? • New distributed and collaborative performance scenarios • ? ? ? A centre of expertise in digital information management www. ukoln. ac. uk

Opportunities for collaboration……. A centre of expertise in digital information management www. ukoln. ac. uk