Science PAD Incubation Laboratory Alberto Di Meglio CERN

Science. PAD Incubation Laboratory Alberto Di Meglio – CERN

Science. PAD • Platforms, Applications, Data for Science • Collaboration among a number of research centres, research projects and companies • Its goals are to investigate: • The requirements of scientific communities in terms of software information management • The formalization of such information and the integration with other digital objects (publications, people, datasets, etc. ) • The requirements for long-term preservation and reuse of software especially related to data • The prototype a data-driven “Software as a Service” platform for scientific research 09/04/2013 EGI CF - EMI TC 2

Science. PAD 5 th Goal • Technology Transfer and Ideas Incubation • Investigate the constraints, conditions and tools required to promote the transfer of ideas and people from academic research to commercial endeavours 09/04/2013 EGI CF - EMI TC 3

Background • Science. PAD (formerly know as Science. Soft) started as a lightweight investigation in Sep 2011 • Involved a number of research and computing projects (EMI, i. Marine, Stratus. Lab, Open. AIRE, IGE), infrastructures (EGI, WLCG) and companies (Maat, Sixsquare, Shared. Objects, DCore) • Asked questions about the issues and challenges in preserving, discovering, accessing software in relation to scientific research 09/04/2013 EGI CF - EMI TC 4

Critical issues Problem area Challenge description Affected stakeholder groups Difficulty in identifying software and related activities Limited or complex ways of finding what exists already Researchers, software developers Lack of visibility and recognition of development activities Software engineers, developers Lack of consistent real usage information and impact assessment Development projects, infrastructure managers, funding bodies Limited access to other users’ experience Researchers, infrastructure managers and operators Lack of continuity in development, coordination of software Software engineers, developers, software development projects Lack of continuity in support of software Researchers, research projects Non-optimal communication between users and developers Researchers and software developers, R&D projects, infrastructure managers and operators No way of assessing the user “market” and potential revenues SMEs Limited possibilities of influencing the production of software Researchers, infrastructure managers and operators Limited commercial exploitation and support for technology transfer Funding bodies, software engineers, SMEs Difficulty in evaluating software Difficulty in leveraging existing software through reuse Difficulty in justifying or proposing business case for development of new software 09/04/2013 EGI CF - EMI TC 5

Identified areas of work • Software; links to services, people, organizations, publications, datasets • Reliable entry points, persistent IDs • Software as a Service, community platforms, scientific results validation, data access preservation, support, consultancy, Registries Services Knowledge sharing Communities • Cross-disciplinary activities, citations, industry, incubation, impact assessment 09/04/2013 • Interactivity, shared experiences, evaluation and ratings, collaboration tools, open source EGI CF - EMI TC 6

Science. PAD Goals Software Registries 09/04/2013 EGI CF - EMI TC 7

Science. PAD 5 th Goal Software Registries 09/04/2013 EGI CF - EMI TC 8

Sustainability as the Creation of Value Funding Agencies ICT Projects Direct selling Research Projects ICT and Research Projects Support Technolo gy and skills Research Projects Industry Value Revenues 09/04/2013 Impact on society and industry EGI CF - EMI TC 9

Wide collaboration 09/04/2013 EGI CF - EMI TC 10

Existing experience A unique public-private partnership between CERN and leading ICT companies. Its mission is to accelerate the development of cutting-edge solutions to be used by the worldwide LHC community A business incubation scheme launched today will allow UK-based entrepreneurs and small businesses to take ideas from some of the world’s most innovative technologies developed at CERN, and translate them into marketable services and products. Since 1996 our Industry Programme helps industry make the most of advances in bioinformatics and cheminformatics Assists many major companies in developing new materials and industrial processes, in controlling emerging technologies or exploring future avenues of research using the ILL's specialised facilities 09/04/2013 EGI CF - EMI TC 11

Commercial Expertise Value assessment and potential for exploitation based on data collected in the Ohloh. net open source registry and the Black Duck Knowledge. Base™ The European Commercial Network Project (ECNet) is a collaboration program between the European Middleware Initiative (EMI, a CERN-coordinated project), SCS Group (Switzerland), the Mitropa Institute (Austria), MID Laboratories, (part of DCore Systems in Switzerland) and leading European research institutions / universities. 09/04/2013 EGI CF - EMI TC 12

Incubation Laboratory Calls for proposals or direct invitation based on available data Software Registry “First Tuesday”-like events, lightening talks, etc. Potentially valuable ideas are coached by technical experts, legal experts, venture capital companies Direct coaching A first business plan is produced and presented to investors 09/04/2013 EGI CF - EMI TC 13

Next steps • Collect feedback on the idea and its feasibility • Start gathering interest from the different parties involved • Identify experts in technical, legal, financial and admin aspects of writing business plans (and convince them to join!) • Advertise the initiative as soon as the idea becomes viable, hopefully by end of 2013 09/04/2013 EGI CF - EMI TC 14

http: //sciencepad. org Science. PAD is an initiative by EMI, partially funded by the European Commission under Grant Agreement RI-261611 09/04/2013 EGI CF - EMI TC 15