RCUK Review of E-Science 2009
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RCUK Review of e-Science 2009 BUILDING A UK FOUNDATION FOR THE TRANSFORMATIVE ENHANCEMENT OF RESEARCH AND INNOVATION Report of the International Panel for the 2009 Review of the UK Research Councils e-Science Programme International Panel for the 2009 RCUK Review of the e-Science Programme Anders Ynnerman (Linköping University, Sweden) Paul Tackley (ETH Zürich, Switzerland) Albert Heck (Utrecht University, Netherlands) Dieter Heermann (University of Heidelberg, Germany) Ian Foster (ANL and University of Chicago, USA) Mark Ellisman (University of California, San Diego, USA) Wolfgang von Rüden (CERN, Switzerland) Christine Borgman (University of California, Los Angeles, USA) Daniel Atkins (University of Michigan, USA) Alexander Szalay (John Hopkins University, USA) Julia Lane (US National Science Foundation) Nathan Bindoff (University of Tasmania, Australia) Stuart Feldman (Google, USA) Han Wensink (ARGOSS, The Netherlands) Jayanth Paraki (Omega Associates, India) Luciano Milanesi (National Research Council, Italy) Table of Contents Table of Contents Executive Summary About this Report 1 Background: e-Science and the Core Programme 1 Current Status of the Programme and its Impacts 1 Future Considerations 2 Responses to Evidence Framework Questions 3 Major Conclusions and Recommendations 4 Table of Acronyms and Acknowledgements Table of Acronyms 7 Acknowledgements 9 1. Introduction and Background Purpose of the Review 11 Structure of the Review 11 Review Panel Activities 12 Attribution of Credit 13 Background on the UK e-Science Programme 13 2. Current Status of the UK e-Science Programme Introduction 17 Phased Development and Status of the Core Programme 18 Phase One (2001-2004) 18 Phase Two (2004-2006) 18 Phase Three (2006 - present) 18 Academic Scientific Research 19 Platform for Research Enhancement 20 Software 20 Hardware 21 Human Capital 22 Community, Organisations, Institutions 23 Data and Information Stewardship 23 Services 24 More on the Challenge of Sustaining and Improving the Platform 25 Economic Impact 25 Direct Economic Impact on the Science Community 26 Direct Impact on Industry 26 Secondary Effects 27 3. Future Considerations: Vision, Opportunities, Risks, Timescales and Response Introduction 29 Crossing the Chasm 29 Sustaining Requirements and Resources 30 Superior networking 30 Distributed computing 30 GRID architecture 30 Data curation, sharing and management 30 Storage management 31 Semantic technology 31 Process and workflow management 31 Web technology 31 Investments and Adoption 31 Building a UK Foundation for the Transformative Enhancement of Research and Innovation Table of Contents The Next 5 Years: From Research to Sustainability 32 Maintain critical-size centres already established 32 Dramatically expand community involvement 32 Provide mid-term career paths for current personnel 32 Build stronger bridges to the high performance computing (HPC) community 32 Develop shared infrastructure that is reliable, mature and sustainable 32 The Next 5 Years: Sustain and Grow the Emerging Community 32 Strong national leadership, stable cross-council coordination 32 Community building and training 33 Systematic dissemination of best practice 33 Packaged and hosted service-based e-Science 33 The Next 10 Years: Evolutionary Challenges 33 Keep up with emerging and evolving new technologies 33 Transformations in different disciplines will not happen at the same time 33 Stable hierarchical distribution of resources 33 The Next 10 Years: Data Challenges 33 Data sets: new kinds of instruments 33 Self-amplification of data 33 Simulations larger and in more disciplines 34 Data growth beyond any current imagination 34 Special Opportunities for the UK in e-Science and Social Sciences 34 A Foundation for More Effective Pursuit of Key Challenges 35 Stretching the Vision and Elevating the Response 36 4. Brief Responses to the Questions in the e-Science Evidence Framework Introduction 39 Did the UK e-Science Programme build a Platform which enables e-Science tools, 39 infrastructure and practises to become incorporated into mainstream research in the UK? How does UK e-Science activity compare globally? 41 What has been the impact (accomplished and potential) of the UK e-Science Programme? 43 What are the future opportunities for UK e-Science? 46 How did the Programme Strategy (having a Core and individual Research Council 48 Programmes, developing tools and applications in parallel) affect the outputs from UK e-Science? 5. Major Conclusions and Major Recommendations Major Conclusions 51 Major Recommendations for Action 52 1. Structure and leadership 52 2. Industry-academic collaboration 52 3. RCUK e-Science Centre network 52 4. Sustaining advanced e-infrastructure 52 5. Supporting complementary roles 53 6. Sharing for cost and science effectiveness 53 7. Role for arts and humanities 53 8. Role for social sciences 54 9. Crossing the chasm; refreshing innovation 54 10. Data stewardship at enormous scale 54 11. Openness as a general policy 54 12. Towards functionally complete, four-quadrant, research environments 55 Building a UK Foundation for the Transformative Enhancement of Research and Innovation Table of Contents Annexes Annex A: Brief Biographies of Panel Members 57 Professor Daniel Atkins 57 Professor Nathan Bindoff 57 Professor Christine Borgman 58 Professor Mark Ellisman 58 Dr Stuart Feldman 59 Professor Ian Foster 60 Professor Albert Heck 60 Professor Dieter Heermann 61 Professor Julia Lane 61 Professor Luciano Milanesi 61 Dr Jayanth Gopinath Paraki 62 Dr Wolfgang von Rüden 62 Professor Alexander Szalay 63 Professor Paul Tackley 63 Mr Han Wensink 63 Professor Anders Ynnerman 64 Annex B: Review Week Itinerary 65 Annex C: Supporting Evidence and Information Provided to the Panel 67 Building a UK Foundation for the Transformative Enhancement of Research and Innovation Executive Summary Executive Summary About this Report assessment structure. These changes could be used in concert to further strengthen an ongoing strategic This is the report of an international Panel of 16 e-Science Programme. experts convened by an RCUK Steering Committee on behalf of all UK Research Councils to review the RCUK Current Status of the Programme and its e-Science Programme. The Review focussed on e- Impacts Science as a whole, across all Research Councils’ remits. It focussed on the added value from the The inaugural goals of the e-Science Core Programme Programme as a whole rather than separately (eSCP) were to assist the development of essential, reviewing each individual element. The Steering well engineered, generic Grid middleware usable to Committee in concert with the Chair also (1) agreed both e-Scientists and industry; provide necessary on a set of questions to guide the assessment process infrastructure support for UK e-Science projects; termed the “e-Science Evidence Framework”; (2) collaborate with the international e-Science and Grid selected the 63 projects from 24 institutions to be communities; and develop a framework in visited by the Panel; (3) selected background data to collaboration with scientists, computer scientists and be provided to the Panel; (4) created the agenda for industry to promote the emergence of robust, the review week; (5) received a preliminary briefing industrial-strength Grid middleware. The from the Panel at the end of the review week; and (6) complementary goals of the individual Research orchestrated the disposition and use of this final Councils’ e-Science investments were to support and report. leverage the Core Programme investments in service of their disciplinary and interdisciplinary mission of Background: e-Science and the Core research excellence, impact, public engagement, Programme training and provision of world-class research facilities. In 2001, the UK Research Councils launched one of The most obvious and expected impacts of the the earliest multidisciplinary “e-Science” initiatives, Programme are in academia. Perhaps the largest and recognising that the push of technology – the most important academic impact is in the enormous and growing capacity of computing, interdisciplinary efforts that have gone into most of storage, communication and software systems – the projects and that have fostered new social offered the opportunity not only to automate science academic networks and spawned new collaborations. but also to apply new methods that could The Programme was a forerunner to many other revolutionise how science was performed. e-Science similar programmes worldwide, put the UK at the was defined as “research done through distributed forefront of the development of e-Science, and global collaborations enabled by the Internet, using contributed to the acceptance of e-Science as a valid very large data collections, terascale computing research paradigm. resources and high performance visualisation.” The Programme was ring-fence funded, allocated between e-Science serves as a platform for research an “e-Science Core” – a matrix structure spanning all enhancement, including systems (shared software with Councils – and the disciplinary Councils. All ring-fence interfaces and a variety of extensions features), funding was intended to be used in a coordinated, organisational structures (formal and informal groups leveraged way to enhance both the infrastructure for that provide very important e-Science services), human e-Science (e-infrastructure) as well as the meaningful capital (build-up of knowledge and experience that application of e-Science methods to high quality makes it