ACHIEVING GLOBAL SCIENCE

Grid-powered solutions from EGEE and Collaborating Projects

Introduction

A globally distributed computing Grid now plays an essential role for large-scale, data intensive science in many fields of research. Global virtual communities are getting organised and equipped to fully exploit the potential of the Grid, today demonstrated with scientific results from a wide range of disciplines. The Enabling Grids for E-sciencE project and collaborating projects are cooperating towards the provision of a world class, coherent and reliable international Grid enabling scientific excellence in many domains. TABLE OF CONTENTS EGEE ...... 1 AssessGrid ...... 2 BalticGrid-II ...... 3 BEinGRID ...... 4 BELIEF-II ...... 5 COMPCHEM ...... 6 D4Science ...... 7 DEGREE ...... 8 DORII ...... 9 EDGeS ...... 10 EELA-2 ...... 11 EGI_DS ...... 12 ETICS 2 ...... 13 EUAsiaGrid ...... 14 EUChinaGRID ...... 15 EUFORIA ...... 16 EU-IndiaGrid ...... 17 EUMEDGRID ...... 18 g-Eclipse ...... 19 GridCOMP ...... 20 GridPP ...... 21 GridTalk ...... 22 Health-e-Child ...... 23 neuGRID ...... 24 NGS ...... 25 OGF-Europe ...... 26 SEE-GRID-2 ...... 27 EGEE

http://www.eu-egee.org/ The EGEE Grid is a unique and powerful resource for international science, allowing researchers in all regions to collaborate on common challenges. Numerous collaborations extend its reach to other geographical areas and application domains.

Building on the pan-European network GÉANT2, the third phase of the EGEE (Enabling Grids for E-sciencE) project, EGEE-III, has two clear objectives that are essential for research infrastructures:

to expand, optimize and simplify the use of the worldwide lar- gest production Grid by continuous operation of the infrastruc- ture, support for more user communities, and addition of further computational and data resources;

to prepare the migration of the existing Grid from a project-based model to a sustainable federated infrastructure based on Na- tional Grid Initiatives.

By strengthening interoperable, open source middleware, EGEE-III actively contributes to Grid standards, and work closely with busi- nesses to ensure commercial uptake of the Grid, which is a key to sustainability. Federating its partners on a national or regional ba- sis, EGEE-III also has a clear structuring effect on the European Research Area.

EGEE operates today a Grid infrastructure with over 250 sites, pro- viding access to more than 70,000 CPUs. It has consolidated the grid operations and middleware for use by a wide range of scientific communities, such as astrophysics, computational chemistry, earth and life sciences, fusion and particle physics. Strong quality assu- rance, training and outreach programmes contribute to the success of this production Grid infrastructure.

EGEE works together with a range of other projects and initiatives. The EGEE Collaborating Projects Liaison Office is a point of contact for projects which are collaborating with EGEE, and facilitates the relationships between those projects and the EGEE activities. For many projects, the first step to collaboration is receiving a Letter of Support from EGEE to accompany their proposal. Other projects have drawn up a Memorandum of Understanding, stating explicitly what they will need from EGEE and what they will offer in return. Collaborative activities range from technical work on interoperability to community activities such as organising joint training events and dissemination material. Depending on the issue at hand, different forms of co-operation might be appropriate and EGEE is open to suggestions and initiatives from any project that wants to help move Grid computing forward.

Contact: project-eu-egee-cplo@cern.ch

 AssessGrid

http://www.assessgrid.eu/ AssessGrid, Advanced Risk Assessment and Management for Trustable Grid, focuses on the es- tablishment of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for commercial and academic grid users.

The main objective of AssessGrid is to address obstacles to a wide adoption of grid computing by bringing risk ma- nagement and assessment to this field, enabling use of Grid technologies in business and society. The AssessGrid platform introduces risk assessment and management on all grid layers: end-users, brokers, and resource providers. It is the goal of this European Commission co-funded project to overcome providers’ and brokers’ inhibitions to accept specific Quality of Service (QoS) requests.

Since SLAs are becoming increasingly important to people involved in grid technology, including to EGEE project participants, AssessGrid’s results can be used by EGEE. Independent from the risk-awa- re components, the AssessGrid negotiation mana- ger can be integrated in EGEE solutions. It is the first worldwide solution for negotiating SLAs accor- ding to the WS-Agreement specification in a Globus Toolkit environment.

The prototype can be used in EGEE and colla- borating projects which need an automated SLA negotiation process. It supports SLA negotiations between end-users and providers as well as end- users and brokers. Furthermore, a quote mecha- AssessGrid is contributing to Commercial Grid Uptake by providing nism has been integrated which enables the user risk-aware SLA support to ask for non-binding agreements. Since this quote mechanism has been accepted by the GRAAP working group at OGF, the extension might also conform to the next WS-Agreement specification.

In addition to the usage of the negotiation manager in EGEE and other projects, collaboration activities will focus on the definition of concrete SLA terms. Today no repository of common SLA requests is available. In order to achieve a good risk assessment and management, AssessGrid aims to use SLA requests as these will be generated in a commercial grid environment. Hence, the variety of SLA requests, as it exists in a large grid, certainly reflects the requirements in a commercial grid. In particular, the ratio of a job’s earliest start time, latest finish time, and execution duration should be evaluated. AssessGrid can benefit from experience and requirements of the large EGEE community in order to de- fine accurate key QoS requests for the test environment.

Contact: [email protected]

 BalticGrid-II

http://www.balticgrid.eu The main objective of the BalticGrid-II project (second phase of BalticGrid) is to establish the pro- ject’s grid infrastructure as a part of a European Grid Infrastructure.

The project’s infrastructure will support and help scientists of the Baltic States and Belarus in fostering the usage of modern computation and data storage systems. They will in thus gain the knowledge and experience to help them work in the European Research Area and participate fully in common research projects. The e-Infrastructure of 26 clusters built in five countries during BalticGrid’s first phase is envisaged to grow, both in the capacity and capability of its computing re- sources, and will be fully interoperable with the pan-European e-Infrastructure established by EGEE.

The overall strategy of BalticGrid-II is to ensure reliable network connectivity for a grid infrastructure in Estonia, Latvia, Lithua- nia and Belarus, as well as to ensure optimal network perfor- mance for large file transfers and interactive traffic associated with Grid.

The main applications areas within BalticGrid-II are: high energy physics, material science and quantum chemistry, fra- mework for engineering modelling tasks, bioinformatics and biomedical imaging, experimental astrophysical thermonuclear fusion, linguistics as well as operational modelling of the Bal- tic Sea ecosystem.

Spatial distribution of time averaged sensitivity to green The research activity in BalticGrid-II will comprise: algae maximum growth parameter in the Curonian La- goon (Baltic Sea) for five most sensitive state variables. the introduction of advanced services enabling user-friendly and intuitive access to a grid environment;

visualisation of specific computing results;

the development of the Gridcom tool - especially important in networking cooperation between people.

The most intensive and diverse collaboration is planned with EGEE in the framework of e-Infrastructure interoperabi- lity, as well as on dissemination and educational matters. BalticGrid-II will:

participate in EGEE events and provide input for relevant EGEE-initiated dissemination activities;

investigate options to support UNICORE and ARC middlewares, in addition to the current gLite-based middlewa- re, which have user bases in the immediate vicinity of the Baltic States as well as some user communities using these middlewares within the Baltics;

investigate the requirements of joining the global European monitoring infrastructure of the EGEE project - NPM (Network Performance Monitoring).

Contact: [email protected]

 BEinGRID

http://www.beingrid.eu The mission of BEinGRID is to establish effective routes to foster the adoption of grid technolo- gies across the EU and to stimulate research into innovative business models using Grid tech- nologies.

BEinGRID, Business Experiments in GRID, is the European Union’s largest integrated project funded by the Information Society Technologies (IST) research programme, part of the European Union’s sixth Framework Programme (FP6).

Grid technology is in a critical transition as it moves from research and academic use to wider adoption by business and enterprise. The commercial exploitation of grid solutions, however, is being hampered by a lack of business refe- rence cases to persuade potential users to explore the economic benefits of grid.

BEinGRID is running 25 targeted Business Experiments (BEs) designed to implement and deploy grid solutions across major European business sectors (including the media, financial, logistics, manufacturing, retail and textile sectors).

Each one of the 25 BEs is a real grid application focusing on specific business processes addressing current customer needs and requirements.

Complementing this work, Gridipedia (www.gridipedia.eu), a knowledge and toolset repository, has been developed, consisting of grid service components and best practices to support European businesses with the take-up of grid.

The BEinGRID consortium of 96 partners, led by ATOS Origin, is drawn from across the EU and represents the leading grid research organizations and a broad spec- trum of companies keen to assess the benefits to their productivity, competitiveness and profitability from their use of grid solutions.

BEinGRID is a supporter of the EGEE project. Through its involvement and collaboration within the EGEE Indus- try Task Force, the aim of BEinGRID is to make technical contributions and utilize the considerable expertise built up in Grid computing within the EGEE project.

Regular exchanges between EGEE and BEinGRID consist of:

EGEE partners to support gLite use in BEinGRID (private infrastructure);

Active participation of BEinGRID to EGEE forum and workshops;

Co-organisation of events such as the Finance Day in Paris on November 28, 2007;

Two BEinGRID Business Experiments are built on top of EGEE technologies and supported via the EGEE-II In- dustry Task Force;

EGEE works with BEinGRID on business common topics.

Contact: [email protected]

 BELIEF-II

http://www.beliefproject.org BELIEF-II, Bringing Europe’s eLectronic Infrastructures to Expanding Frontiers Phase II, is a two- year European Commission co-funded FP7 project, which aims to support the goals of e-Infras- tructure projects to maximise synergies in specific application areas between research, scientific and industrial communities.

BELIEF-II has the strategic objective to efficiently coordinate the communication of results, networking and knowledge between EU e-Infrastructure projects and their users to promote worldwide development and exploitation.

Thanks to its networking opportunities, which include the organisation of two e-Concertation meetings, two brainstor- ming events in Europe and three international symposia, held in India, Brazil and South Africa, BELIEF-II will build upon the first phase of the project to further strengthen the awareness and impact of e-Infrastructures on the emer- ging economies.

The BELIEF Digital Library (DL), which cur- rently gathers over 13,500 e-Infrastructures documents, is a useful tool used by several EU projects for their documentation and dis- semination activities. The DL ensures audien- ces have a one-stop-shop for researching a full range of multimedia information on e-In- frastructure projects. Enhancements of the DL will integrate a powerful Repository Service to supply access to stored material via standard protocols and ensure interoperability with dif- ferent relevant repository infrastructures.

Together with external dissemination tools like the ‘Zero-In’ eMagazine, a high-impact e-In- frastructure publication reporting on key the- mes and pressing issues from a truly global perspective, the BELIEF-II DVD on e-Infras- © James Thew tructures, the e-Infrastructure Guide, the por- tal and the DL will form a key dissemination tool not only for projects’ knowledge and content management but also for re- searchers and public wanting to search easily the most relevant activities and results of e-Infrastructures initiatives.

EGEE and BELIEF cooperate in several dissemination initiatives: EGEE is an active member of the Review Panel of the e-Infrastructure News Magazine (Zero-In) edited by BELIEF and will contribute to the script and filming of the BE- LIEF DVD on e-Infrastructures as well as the e-Infrastructure Guide. Moreover BELIEF - through its Portal and Digital Library - will offer to EGEE an additional medium for its dissemination activities.

Contact: [email protected]

 COMPCHEM

http://compchem.unipg.it The COMPCHEM (Molecular and Matter Sciences Applications) project enhances and supports collaborative computing among top chemistry laboratories for chemical applications and scien- tists carrying out MMS research.

The COMPCHEM project is building a collaborative computing framework for conducting molecular and matter sciences (MMS) simulations of fundamental use for chemical applications. This includes design and implementation of a workflow manager for ab initio simulations of some chemical processes, management of the required packages on the EGEE sites supporting the Virtual Organisation (VO), development of the credit system for regulating the economy of CompChem VO and construction of databases and web services linking molecular structures to observable properties.

EGEE provides COMPCHEM with the grid services and the computational resources it needs to achieve the scientific targets of the community through the CompChem VO. The laboratories participating to this VO connect small clusters of CPUs to the EGEE production Grid. The project interacts with other EGEE VOs, like Gaussian, and the COST Che- mistry and Molecular Sciences and Technologies GRIDCHEM action.

COMPCHEM currently runs large batches of sequential and parallel jobs for studying and simulating complex molecular systems. So far its main achievements are:

a massive study and quantum rate coefficient calculations of systems of great interest for spacecraft re-entry (i.e.: N+N2 system);

an extended quasi-classical study of important systems for the che- mistry of hydrocarbon combustion and atmospheric chemistry (i.e.: OH+CO);

protein dynamics and spectroscopy for the ferryl intermediate of Cyto- chrome c Oxidase, fundamental in studying the steps of cellular res- piration.

EGEE gives the CompChem community helpdesk support, GGUS support, training, middleware development and manage- A sketch of the Cytochrome c Oxydase simu- ment support. Several researchers within COMPCHEM are devo- lation carried out on the EGEE production grid ted to grid computing activities, and collaborate closely with EGEE. by the FORTH laboratory of Crete (Prof. S. The COMPCHEM project: Farantos)

extends the reach of EGEE to the chemistry community, mainly in Southern Europe;

contributes several computing clusters to EGEE’s production infrastructure;

runs intensive computing and data exchanges challenging the infrastructure;

tests the gLite middleware in the MMS application domains;,

provides regular feedback to improve quality, reliability and interoperability of gLite;

experiments with a credit system for collaborative computing;

and engages in dissemination activities within the chemistry community.

Contact: [email protected]

 D4Science

http://www.d4science.eu The D4Science project deploys, consolidates and expands its production level e‑Infrastructure to address the needs of scientific communities affiliated with the disciplines of Environmental Moni- toring and Fisheries and Aquaculture Resources Management.

The D4Science (DIstributed colLaboratories Infrastructure on Grid ENabled Technology 4 Science) project focuses on two main areas:

the provision and operation of a production level e-Infrastructure that will exploit the utilities developed by the EGEE and DILIGENT projects;

the implementation of Virtual Research Environments and services that are necessary to realize the scenarios established by the scientific communities and the adaptation of community-specific data and service resources to exploit the e-Infrastructure capabilities.

The gCube system (http://www.gcube-system.org/), the software developed by D4Science, builds on top of gLite grid middleware and utilises emerging standards and tech- nologies, in the domains of grid computing, service orien- ted architecture and information management and retrieval. gCube extends the EGEE middleware by building various elements, services, components and protocols that offer the building blocks for creating end-user applications in the domain of collaboration and knowledge management, and bring on the scene new capabilities for dynamic, efficient and interoperable services.

The close relations of D4Science and EGEE have stimu- lated: Mediterranean fisheries (c) FAO/18820/Roberto Faidutti

valuable feedback on software and services provided by EGEE through:

the adoption of the gLite, which offered development-level feedback on performance, stability and usability aspects;

the execution of data challenges stressing the infrastructure, such as a number of experiments fed by DILI- GENT data, which gave feedback on job success rates etc.

the extension of EGEE infrastructure with five production sites;

the mutual support and adoption of EGEE peripheral projects, through making new data and services available.

D4Science raises awareness on the infrastructure and capabilities of the grid to new communities and domains, fos- tering the growth of grid adoption. The added value of gCube, interacting with the gLite middleware, is being extensi- vely demonstrated in significant worldwide grid and digital library related events, through in-depth technical presenta- tions, tutorials and live demonstrations at EGEE and Open Grid Forum events and at joint European conferences on digital libraries.

Contact: [email protected]

 DEGREE

http://eu-degree.eu The DEGREE project fostered the formation of a large and diverse Earth Science (ES) commu- nity. It raised awareness on the use of grid infrastructures and increased the interaction between ES users and grid developers.

The DEGREE (Dissemination and Exploitation of Grids in Earth Science) project’s main challenges were to increase awareness and uptake of grid technology by ES Industry and Research and to ensure requirements are addressed in the next generation Grid, bridging and grid technologies via the EGEE project.

DEGREE started by assembling a representative collection of ES applications for the definition of ES grid- related re- quirements. Grid middleware tools were surveyed, focusing on data management, workflows and portals. Test suites aiming at demonstrating ES grid usage and illustrating specific requirements were proposed to 12 grid projects for eva- luation: 62% of individual ES requirements were fulfilled by the middlewares surveyed, gLite included. Feedback was used as input for the ES Grid Roadmap, a document that aims to set the key steps needed for the community to move towards its grid objectives.

There is sustained collaboration between DEGREE and EGEE. The projects have worked to- gether to link the community, and its ICT infrastructures, with the ES applications of EGEE. The collaboration with EGEE also contributed to assess the me- dium to long term requirements of the ES community related to grid infrastructures. These requi- rements are included in the ES Grid Roadmap. The ultimate goal of the Roadmap is to aid in esta- blishing an ES Grid Platform.

Working towards this Platform, in- termediate steps include porting new applications to the EGEE Grid and cross-fertilization of de- velopments between ES and the grid communities. top-down approach involving decision makers, is also recommen- ded.medium- and long-term objectives described in the ES Grid Roadmap are aligned with EU Grid Strategy, INSPIRE and Global Environment and Security initiatives. The DEGREE project completed in May 2008, however dissemination and discussions with EGEE, in particular on the roadmap and requirements continue, as DEGREE seeks to bring the full potential of grids to the ES community.

The ES Grid Roadmap is a public document available at http://www.eu-degree.eu/DEGREE/internal-section/wp6/DEGREE-D6.1.2_v2.8.pdf

Contact: [email protected]

 DORII

http://www.dorii.eu The DORII project aims at deploying an e-Infrastructure for new scientific communities that use experimental equipment and instrumentation not yet integrated or only partially integrated in Eu- ropean e-Infrastructures.

DORII (Deployment of Remote Instrumentation Infrastructure) focuses on the:

earthquake community, with various sensor networks;

environmental science community;

and the experimental science community, with syn- chrotron and free electron lasers.

The scientific communities addressed by the project are well recognised and are represented by a number of small to medium enterprises within industry. Working closely with end-users, DORII provides solutions that build upon the success of past and ongoing projects in such areas as re- mote instrumentation (GRIDCC, RINGrid), interactivity (int. eu.grid), software frameworks for application developers (g-Eclipse) and advanced networking technologies (GN2) with EGEE-based middleware.

The key components of the DORII architecture are: Instrument Element; Virtual Control Room, g-Eclipse framework, gLite components, Workflow Manager Framework, support for MPI applications and interactivity (gLogin, Migrating Desktop).

DORII relies on the EGEE gLite middleware for all grid components. The Instrument Ele- ment (IE) and the Virtual Control Room are the elements which respectively introduce the control of the instrumentation and a specific collaborative tool. The IE is a web-ser- vice-based element that gives access the instruments under its control. The IE, integra- ted into the EGEE e-Infrastructure, extends its functionality to the interactive control and monitoring of remote instrumentation.

Most of DORII computing resources are provided by partners that will share their sites with EGEE. Interoperability with EGEE is therefore a key point. DORII middleware will be available for download and installation on top of gLite allowing the users to interact with instruments and also to profit from a more interactive and parallel oriented Grid in- frastructure.

To ensure interoperability and sustainability of DORII, the project promotes standardisation and knowledge transfer via e-IRG and Open Grid Forum research groups. DORII partners established and continue a research group in OGF, which exactly focuses on topics presented in the project, namely, RISGE-RG - Remote Instrumentation Services in a Grid Environment-Research Group (also in collaboration with EGEE representatives).

Contact: [email protected]

 EDGeS

http://edges-grid.eu/ EDGeS will interconnect EGEE, the largest European Service Grid infrastructure, with existing Desktop Grid systems in order to support user communities that require large computing power not available or accessible in current scientific e-Infrastructures.

Two types of Desktop Grid systems will be connec- ted to EGEE: BOINC-based and XtremWeb based Desk- top Grids. Within the EDGeS (Enabling Desktop Grids for e- Science) project eight different physical Desktop Grids will be connected to EGEE including Extremadura School Desktop Grid, SZTAKI Desktop Grid, AlmereGrid, IN2P3 Desktop Grids and Westminster Uni- versity Desktop Grid.

Service Grids are more flexible and can accommodate a wider variety of applications than Desktop Grids. However, their setup and maintenance requires more effort, in the form of highly skilled IT specialists and dedicated resources. On the other hand, Desktop Grids are currently restricted solely to a subclass of compute-intensive applications but these easy-to-scale systems are able to collect one to two orders of magnitude more compute power by utilizing the involved spare and volunteer IT resources at a fraction of the cost. Making a bridge between these two types of grid systems will enable the users to transparently execute applications on any arbitrary platform involved in the new infrastructure.

EDGeS, which runs from January 2008 until December 2009, will create the integrated EGEE-Desktop Grid infras- tructure in two phases. Phase 1 will establish a ‘Desktop Grid to EGEE bridge’ enabling Desktop Grid projects to send tasks to EGEE sites that are ready to support external Desktop Grid projects. Phase 2 will create a ‘EGEE to Desktop Grid bridge’ extending EGEE with the capacity of connected Desktop Grids and enabling the EGEE user community to submit jobs from EGEE to the connected Desktop Grids. EDGeS will train both the EGEE and Desktop Grid user communities on how to use the EDGeS infrastructure. EDGeS established a User Forum and an Industrial Forum to identify and support more user communities that would need the integrated EGEE-Desktop Grid infrastructure. EDGeS and EGEE have established a strong partnership to assist the EGEE user community to port and run their applications on the EDGeS infrastructure in a seamless way.

Contact: [email protected]

10 edutain@grid

http://www.edutaingrid.eu edutain@grid seeks to meet online gaming challenges through development of a Grid-based fra- mework allowing responsive and interactive applications to exploit technology that has previously been applied to “big science”.

Online gaming is characterised by the high rate of interaction between the users, requiring very fast updates of infor- mation being passed from one computer to another. The faster the updates, the more immersive the game becomes and consequently adds significantly to the whole gaming experience. At present, online games run in static way that is dependent upon tight coupling of computer resources that are not flexible to strong fluctuations in the number of players. Users are very sensitive to interrupted game play, affecting their decision to play and ultimately their decision to purchase.

The edutain@grid project success will be demonstrated through the develop- ment of two pilot applications for mas- sively multiplayer interactive gaming and e-learning, which the project defi- nes as examples of Real-Time Online Interactive Applications (ROIAs).

To address this, edutain@grid is de- veloping a service oriented architec- ture comprising three layers that se- parate transaction and deployment activities from real-time delivery me- chanisms. A Business layer handles transactions between ROIA custo- mers and suppliers, Service Level Agreements (SLA) between ROIA suppliers and hardware hosts, se- A distributed Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) hosting millions of curity arrangements, etc. A Mana- interacting players within one session. gement layer determines how ROIAs should be deployed to meet current demand in accordance with SLA negotiations conducted in the Business layer. The Business and Management layers are based on web services. In the Real time layer, the ROIAs are executed using resources assigned to them through the Management layer and provide rapid response and interaction times. Web services are not suitable for this task due to the constraints of bandwidth and communication protocol latency. , response and interaction is further improved through the development of a platform-independent API, enabling ROIAs to exploit real-time protocols.

The edutain@grid project intends to use the EGEE infrastructure as a large-scale test-bed for the gaming and training environment and applications. Only the largest running Grid Infrastructure in the world can deliver the computational power required to provide scalability for thousands of users. The project is currently investigating a common program- ming interface which would allow to dynamically switching between EGEE or specialized edutain@grid resources on the fly.

Contact: [email protected]

11 EELA-2

http://www.eu-eela.eu EELA-2 aims to build a high capacity, production-quality, scalable Grid facility providing services needed by several European-Latin American scientific collaborations and to ensure the sustai- nability of the e-infrastructure beyond the end of the project.

EELA-2 (E-science grid facility for Europe and Latin America), the EELA project’s second phase, started in April 2008. Huge interest was shown by new countries and institutions to participate to the EELA-2 project and build on the suc- cesses of EELA. EELA-2 is providing resources to researchers in Europe and Latin America, allowing them to tackle important scientific and regional problems that they could not do before due to a lack of adequate resources. EELA-2 also significantly increases the cooperation among its partners and with other countries and institutions.

EELA-2 is closely linked to EGEE, being its extension in La- tin America. It takes advantage of EGEE services and pro- ducts, e.g. the gLite middleware. It adopted the same certi- fication process for its infrastructure. It will share with EGEE the development of infrastructure and application-oriented additional middleware of common interest and use, in the framework of the EGEE RESPECT (Recommended External Software Packages for EGEE Communities) programme. It will create knowledge repositories on grid operations conso- lidated with those of EGEE, and organize joint dissemination and training events. There are 14 countries participating in EELA-2, 5 from Euro- EELA-2 will strengthen its collaboration with EGEE and with pe and 9 from Latin America, including 53 institutions. other projects with comparable goals, such as BalticGrid-II and SEE-GRID-SCI. These collaboration areas include:

porting the gLite User Interface and Computing Element to the Microsoft Windows platform;

interoperating gLite with peer-to-peer grid middleware;

simplifying the access to the infrastructure for new users and applications;

easy building of digital archives and data grid frameworks;

storing data in a secure way, solving the insider abuse problem;

promoting the collaboration of user communities through the support of cooperative workflow applications and tagging systems;

developing application and VO-compliant execution environments through virtualization;

optimization of Grid operation and monitoring across projects by means of (more) common tools, by publicizing best practices, reinforcing quality and security;

common support for Virtual Organizations (VO) to minimize efforts.

Contact: [email protected]

12 EGI_DS http://www.eu-eela.eu http://www.eu-egi.eu The European Grid Initiative Design Study (EGI_DS) represents an effort to establish a sustainable grid infrastructure in Europe. Driven by the needs and requirements of the research community, it is expected to enable the next leap in research infrastructures, thereby supporting collaborative scientific discoveries in the European Research Area (ERA).

If Europe wants to maintain its leading position in the global science field, there is an urgent need to ensure a reliable and adaptive support for all sciences. Therefore, the idea of a European sustainable grid infrastructure is widely sup- ported. For this purpose the EGI_DS was launched in September 2007 with the support of the European Commission’s 7th Framework Programme (FP7).

The aim of EGI_DS is to define and install the EGI organiza- tion (EGI.org) for the support of all sciences in Europe. The objective is to create a large-scale production grid infras- tructure built on national grids that interoperate seamlessly at many levels. The infrastructure should offer reliable and predictable services to a wide range of applications. Several European countries have already launched, or are about to launch, their National Grid Initiatives (NGI), which are reco- gnized national bodies that ensure operations of the grid in- frastructure in each country.

The EGI will include both the EGI.org and the NGIs. Repre- sentation will include that the requirements of the scientific community and the resource providers are met. The role of the EGI organization will be to facilitate interaction and col- laboration between the NGIs and to provide a common ma- nagerial framework for the pan-European grid infrastructure.

The European Commission’s funded Enabling Grids for E-sciencE (EGEE) project has a crucial role in the creation of this new infrastructure. The preparation work is carried out in a close cooperation with EGI_DS and EGEE-III mem- bers to learn from EGEE’s experience in operating large scale international grid infrastructures. The EGI_DS project will complete at the end of November 2009, and according to current plans, the EGI organization should be operatio- nal in early 2010.

Contact: [email protected]

13 ETICS 2

http://www.eticsproject.eu ETICS 2 provides software professionals with an «out-of-the-box» build and test system, powered with a build and test product repository, and automatic collection of software quality metrics.

The quality of grid and distributed software has to be continuously improved to reach a widespread adoption of servi- ces and applications and to increase trust between software providers and users.

ETICS 2 (e-Infrastructure for Testing, Integration and Configuration of Software - phase 2) aims at expanding and enhancing the ETICS solution (designed and deve- loped during the first phase of the ETICS project). It of- fers an infrastructure which helps its users to configure, build, test and manage the development process of their software. ETICS 2 also implements the Grid-QCM, Grid- Quality Certification Model, to offer users the possibility to assess the quality of their software through the auto- matic collection of metrics. The ETICS system is multi- platform and independent from any specific tool. Thanks to its plugin-based architecture and APIs, the ETICS system can be integrated into existing processes and extended to include custom actions. Users can browse and edit project data and monitor the results from pe- riodic and continuous builds and tests via a secure and rich Web application.

Among the main users of the ETICS services are EGEE and DILIGENT/D4Science. EGEE uses the ETICS build system as the foundation of the build and integration The ETICS solution process of the gLite middleware. The EGEE Networ- king Support team implemented with the ETICS system the IPv6 compliance analysis of gLite code and the distributed IPv6 experimental testbed. The EGEE team uses the system to build some of its high-level services, such as Grid- Way. D4Science uses ETICS services, as its build and integration platform since 2006. It has now fully standardized its software engineering process on it.

The current ETICS system is the result of two years of continuous refinement, where EGEE and DILIGENT/D4Science collaborations have been a continuous source of feedback. ETICS 2 is now working on the adoption of virtualisation techniques to improve the management of the build and test infrastructure and the enhancement of the test system capabilities. The main objectives remain the extension to new communities and projects in the view of self-sustaina- ble ETICS services.

Contact: [email protected]

14 EUAsiaGrid

http://www.euasiagrid.eu The EUAsiaGrid project contributes to the aims of the EU Research Infrastructures FP7 Program- me by “promoting international interoperation between similar infrastructures with the aim of rein- forcing the global relevance and impact of European e-Infrastructures”.

Taking advantage of existing global grid technologies, with the specific emphasis on the European experience with the gLite middleware and applications, the EUAsiaGrid project plans to encourage federating approaches across scientific disciplines and communities. Acting as a support action and comprising 15 partners in 12 countries, EUAsiaGrid aims to define and implement a policy to promote the gLite middleware developed within the EU EGEE project across Asian countries. To enable regional collaboration, as well as collaboration with European scientific communities building on top of a common EGEE middleware platform, its main goals are to:

support scientific communities through help with application porting and deployment;

provide training to further increase grid technology know-how;

monitor the results and give feedback for the definition of policies.

To determine which scientific domains and applications could benefit from the use of the EGEE gLite middleware, the EUA- siaGrid project will collect information from the Asian scien- tific communities to get a comprehensive picture about their computing, storage, application support and training requi- rements. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of a grid approach in responding to these needs, the applications in this project are based on existing and envisaged promising collaborations between European and Asian scientific groups. The applications that EUAsiaGrid highlights are high energy physics, computational chemistry, mitigation of natural di- sasters, bioinformatics and biomedical science and social science applications. Clockwise from top left: Protein Structure; Atmospherics and Climate; Simulation; Collision of Particles The dissemination arm of EUAsiaGrid spreads the word about the benefits of using the EGEE infrastructure and services to both existing and new user communities and promotes EUAsiaGrid as a grid service facilitator to user communities in the Asia Pacific region. To further uptake of e-Infrastructures for research, training is an essential component to ensure that all potential and actual grid users have enough in-depth technical knowledge to fully understand the characteristics of available grid services and to keep all users informed about new services and functionalities.

Contact: [email protected]

15 EUChinaGRID

http://www.euchinagrid.org The EUChinaGRID project’s objective was to support the interconnection of the existing Euro- pean and Chinese Grid infrastructures for e-Science, namely EGEE and CNGrid, and enable their interoperability.

Co-funded by the European Commission under FP6, the EUChinaGRID project ran from 1 January 2006 to 31 March 2008. The project’s first aim was to facilitate scientific data transfer and processing in a first sample of pilot applications where a strong collaboration between Europe and China already existed. These applications, including physics and biology, immediately benefited from the new infrastructure. These acted, in turn, as a driving force to test and deploy an effective Grid infrastructure between Europe and China.

At the end of the project, this infrastructure included 12 sites with all relevant grid services up and running. The pilot infrastructure was designed to allow interoperability between European and Chinese sites, and comply with an IPv6 environment. The impact of achieving both kinds of interoperability is thus far beyond the scope of this project.

The Gateway software was developed and tested in order to enable cross-interoperability between EGEE gLite and CNGrid GOS (Grid Operating System) middlewares. The Gateway software allowed ex- changing jobs between the two infrastructures, taking into account differences in the Job Description Languages and the security me- chanisms. Experience suggested that a more general architecture for a multi-middleware Gateway implementation would be best. A plan for this was presented at the workshop organised jointly with EU-IndiaGrid at the EGEE’07 Conference in Budapest, Hungary (October 2007).

A novelty in the grid sector, the EUChinaGRID assessment of IPv6 compliance of grid middleware raised a widespread interest amongst middleware developers in EGEE and ETICS communities, and trig- gered several common activities. These included dedicated tuto- rials and workshops on best practices, an IPv6 grid testbed and the implementation of a code checker for verifying the middleware code in the ETICS building system. Though at present the IPv6 protocol is not widely used for grid purposes, such applications could indeed take advantage from some features. Furthermore, the deployment of the first double-stack grid nodes has demonstrated its usefulness in overcoming IPv4 bottlenecks and confers resilience to the e-Infrastructure.

Contact: [email protected]

16 EUFORIA

http://www.euforia-project.eu The EUFORIA project will provide a comprehensive pan-European framework and infrastructure for plasma core and edge simulations, linking grid and high performance computing, to the fusion modelling community.

ITER is the next generation of fusion devices intended to demonstrate the scientific and technical feasibility of fusion as a sustainable energy source for the future. An important stepping stone towards this goal is the development of a com- prehensive modelling capability, also essential for the design of a “DEMO” reactor. The needed modelling tools cover both a wide range of timescales and spatial orderings and are in general very computationally demanding.

The EUFORIA implementa- tion consists of a develop- ment and deployment phase where an EGEE-compliant Grid is deployed together with a high performance computing infrastructure. A user-driven support and re- search activity towards the adaptation and optimisation of a selection of ITER phy- sics software is a fundamen- tal component of this stage. The second phase is a stan- dardisation and integration activity, including a techno- logy-driven part which de- velops the technologies and tools to provide user-trans- parent methods for resource allocation and dynamic cou- pling of physics codes throu- gh workflow components. EUFORIA sets out to define common, project-wide data structures for fusion simulations as well as the adaptation of a workflow-orchestration and generic tools for data exploration and visualisation building on the EGEE middleware.

Since its start in early 2008, EUFORIA has deployed grid services which are a superset of gLite, enhanced by MPI parallel job support and interactivity from the i2g consortium (http://www.i2g.eu). Currently the grid resources that are supporting the EUFORIA VO are of the order of 1000 CPUs with more than 2TB of online storage in addition to shared access to Fusion VO resources for sequential batch jobs. We expect the size of the resources to increase during the next year with the incorporation of further resources from EUFORIA partners and related projects. Another important activity in the first year are the training sessions for the fusion community that, together with targeted code adaptation activities, will bring important code and code users to the EUFORIA infrastructure.

Contact: Par Strand [email protected]

17 EU-IndiaGrid

http://www.d4science.eu EU-IndiaGrid aims at fostering collaboration between EGEE and the Indian Grid infrastructures in order to create strong and effective intercontinental synergies in the processing of data for e- Science.

EU-IndiaGrid (Joining European and Indian Grids for e‑Science Network Com- munity) has contributed to significantly raise awareness and adoption of grid technology in e-Science communities, both in Europe and in India. Collabo- rations have been fostered with the two main Indian Grid infrastructures: the GARUDA National Grid Initiative, based on Globus middleware, and the Re- gional Tier-II DAE-WLCG-grid, based on gLite middleware.

European and Indian Grid infrastructures are now interoperable at a basic le- vel, and a close collaboration has been established between the GARUDA and The villin protein: predicted using BE- DAE-WLCG projects. Collaboration has also begun with EGEE’s Interoperabi- MusE on EU-IndiaGrid, and the second lity Group. To ensure international connectivity, the project has also followed measured experimentally. Image cour- the GEANT-ERNET link upgrade and the access to GEANT of CERN-TIFR link tesy of Stefano Cozzini, EU-IndiaGrid dedicated to LHC and made available by DAE to other EU-India research ap- plications. The project also often acts as mediator among different actors, promoting optimised usage of the links.

EU-IndiaGrid supports four pilot applications in the areas of high energy physics, materials science, biology, earth and atmospheric sciences. Some applications in these domains were already using gLite, while other applications have been ported to EU-IndiaGrid. An example is BEMusE, a grid-enabled tool able to fold a 36-residue protein in less than a year of single CPU time. Other relevant examples are the LHC applications - cooperation has been established with the WLCG and the EGEE projects - and the Regional Climate and Ocean modelling applications which are particularly significant for the region.

EU-IndiaGrid strives to raise awareness of Regional Climate Modeling application ported on the grid infrastructure the importance of a sustainable model for an international Grid infrastructure, and has promoted the discussion on the subject within the Indian Government and the European Commission. EU-IndiaGrid produced a booklet in collaboration with EGEE-III, GÉANT2, TEIN2/3, with input from the EC GÉANT & e-Infrastructure Unit. This publication (http://partners.euindiagrid.eu/docs/Booklet.pdf) offers an overview on the status & perspectives of e-Infrastructures in India as well as the efforts to implement a sustainable e-Infrastructure panorama.

Contact: [email protected]

18 EUMEDGRID http://www.d4science.eu http://www.eumedgrid.eu To support the development of a grid e-Infrastructure in the Mediterranean Area and to promote the deployment of new applications on a grid platform, the EUMEDGRID project, co-funded by the EC in the framework of FP6, started in January 2006 and lasted 26 months.

The EUMEDGRID project allowed Mediterranean scientists to collaborate more closely with their European colleagues. It disseminated Grid awareness and competences across the Mediterranean and triggered the creation of National Grid Initiatives (NGIs) in participating countries. More than 700 IT professionals, researchers and students have been introduced to grid computing and had the opportunity to benefit from advanced training, allowing further exploita- tion and use of the e-Infrastructure.

The project ended on 29thof February 2008, having crea- ted a widespread network of collaboration and making an important step in promoting the uptake and long-term sustai- nability of grid technology in the – once “Greenfield” – region.

At the end of the project, the pilot grid infrastructure inclu- ded 25 sites, distributed across 13 countries, with all rele- vant grid services up and running. The five European sites are part of the EGEE production environment, and some of the Mediterranean sites are taking the necessary steps to reach production level, building upon lessons learned in EUMEDGRID. The latest release of EGEE middleware is currently installed on all the sites and the quality of grid ser- vices is constantly monitored. Fifteen regional applications, most of which are newly gridified by the project team, were deployed and are currently supported on the EUMEDGRID Virtual Organisation.

Although the project officially ended on 29 February 2008, the infrastructure is currently maintained on a best-effort ba- sis by the project consortium. The consortium plans further activities as described in a Memorandum of Understanding among project partners. This will be done also as a part of the newborn Mediterranean NGIs activities. The set up of these Mediterranean NGIs were significantly influenced by the project. New NGIs are now operational in Algeria, Cy- prus, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia. All other participant countries are planning similar initiatives.

Contact: [email protected]

19 g-Eclipse

http://www.geclipse.eu/ “Accessing the Grid in 5 minutes” is not a vision any more. With the g-Eclipse framework inexpe- rienced users are now able to interact with existing grid infrastructures within the shortest possi- ble time, giving them a hitherto unknown experience of accessing grid infrastructures in a user- friendly way.

Based on the popular integrated work- bench framework of the Eclipse Pro- ject, g-Eclipse provides a framework for accessing grid infrastructures in a middleware-independent manner, supporting grid users, operators and application developers. End users in- teract with the Grid via a set of stan- dardised graphical user interface components. Middleware providers can extend this abstract framework for their middleware, benefiting from the rich set of common core functio- nalities and UI components that are already provided by g-Eclipse. The project itself comes with exemplary support for the gLite and GRIA mid- dleware as well as an implementation for the Amazon Web Services cloud infrastructure.

The project currently operates a Vir- tual Organisation on the EGEE pro- Screenshot of the g-Eclipse User Perspective showing a gLite, a GRIA and an AWS duction infrastructure and one on the project on the left. The central part contains the JSDL Editor on top, the Job Details GILDA training infrastructure, thereby View for an already submitted gLite job and the Job View at the bottom. profiting from being able to develop and test its components against a very large production-level Grid as well as offer a new tool to future Grid trainees on GILDA.

Using g-Eclipse, access to grid infrastructures, such as EGEE, becomes more intuitive and simpler than it was in the past. Grid application users are able to access the Grid with standard, but customisable, user-friendly interfaces. Grid resource providers can reduce the cost of operation because the Grid is simplified with supporting tools such as the integrated local batch system management. Grid application developers are empowered to speed up the development cycle of new grid applications by remotely developing and debugging their applications on the Grid through Eclipse’s full-featured Integrated Development Environment.

Within the grid community g-Eclipse has become a standard tool for both new and experienced users in order to per- form their daily work on the Grid. It is furthermore used as a training tool for students to teach them how to access modern grid infrastructures. Third party developers are using the g-Eclipse API for building applications for accessing grid computing and storage resources, providing a variety of client side applications for rather general as well as for very specific scientific tasks.

Contact: [email protected]

20 GridCOMP http://www.geclipse.eu/ http://gridcomp.ercim.org GridCOMP’s main agenda is to design and develop an advanced programming framework proto- type based on components and supporting effective grid programming.

GridCOMP is based on the ProActive li- brary (http://proactive.inria.fr/). ProActive provides the reference implementation of the Grid Component Model (GCM). GCM components are building blocks for Servi- ce Oriented Architecture (SOA) and pro- vide solutions for infrastructure virtualisa- tion (servers, cluster, gateway, multicores, etc). The ProActive library has an EGEE Virtual Organisation (VO), with which the project experiments with ProActive-EGEE interoperability.

GridCOMP has fostered grid relations with new user communities in South America, China and Pakistan. It has collaborated with communities working on genetic algo- rithms (artificial life generations), the ope- rational research community (Flow Shop problem), and the financial mathematics Monitoring of a component distributed application community (Monte Carlo for finance).

In addition, the project continues to increase the number of grid users and has ran several data challenge in the in- frastructure:

Grid Plugtests 2006, Nov. 27 - Dec. 1st, Sophia Antipolis, France;

Grid Crunching Day, Dec. 7 2006, Freiburg, Germany;

Grid Plugtests 2007, Oct. 28 - Nov. 1st, Beijing, China.

GridCOMP also participated to grid related standards activities, with the Grid Plugtests (2004 to 2007, and V edition upcoming in October 2008) co-organized with the European Telecommunication Standards Institute (ETSI.). Additio- nally the project is standardising the GCM within the Grid ETSI Technical Committee. Two parts of the GCM, “GCM Interoperability Deployment” and “GCM Interoperability Application Description” have already been accepted as stan- dards. The first standard describes how to interoperate with several grid middleware including the EGEE gLite. Those activities have contributed to the sustainability of the GCM model which provides interoperable solutions for an inter- national grid infrastructure. The next step is the full integration of GCM components into SOA, towards Service Level Agreement (SLA) and Quality of Service (QoS) enforcement.

A very positive aspect is the foundation of the spinoff ActiveEon (http://www.activeeon.com/) which provides pro- fessional services leveraging the ProActive technology. This technology is already used in industry. Seve- ral companies are using the GCM features developed in GridCOMP, and some of their work will be presen- ted at the 5th edition of the ProActive/GCM User Group in October 2008, during the GRIDs@Work session, see http://www-sop.inria.fr/oasis/plugtests2008/ProActiveGCMUserGroup.html.

Contact: [email protected]

21 GridPP

http://www.gridpp.ac.uk Since September 2001 GridPP has been developing an infrastructure to analyse data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment based at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland.

Currently standing at 12,000 CPUs and 5PB of storage, the GridPP Grid spans 17 sites in the United Kingdom. While providing these resources to the worldwide LHC Computing Grid it is also an integral part of EGEE, contri- buting most of the computing power for the UK and Ire- land region. Although focusing on the needs of physicists working on the LHC, GridPP has always been interested in multidisciplinary grids. Even now with EGEE spanning hundreds of sites around the world, the UK is still one of the main providers of resources for the collaboration. To help support EGEE’s goal of introducing grid computing to as many scientists as possible, GridPP supports almost 30 different virtual organisations from particle physics to biomedical research to geology .

Apart from contributing the storage and computing ele- ments to EGEE, GridPP is heavily involved in the develo- pment of grid middleware and applications. From helping the user by developing the GANGA user interface for the LHCb and ATLAS experiments to working on EGEE secu- rity and grid accounting, GridPP has key roles in many im- EGEE 3D Real Time Monitor developed by GridPP portant aspects of the Grid infrastructure. With respects to the day to day running, the UK’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory leads a Regional Operations Centre that helps monitor and manage EGEE, taking its turn in answering users’ questions and solving problems encountered on the Grid.

The most visible tool developed by GridPP is the Real Time Monitor which displays the work being processed by the Grid in a user-friendly manner. This tool has featured in such diverse locations as the European Commission’s canteen to the Science Museum in London and has been an attraction at many international conferences.

GridPP and its funding body, the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), are also dedicated to bringing grid technology to industry. STFC’s Knowledge, Innovation, Technology Enterprise (KITE) club has been very involved in getting small and medium enterprises interested in Grids, helping many partnerships get started with small grants.

Contact: [email protected]

22 GridTalk http://www.gridpp.ac.uk http://www.gridtalk-project.eu GridTalk (Co-ordinating grid reporting across Europe) brings the success stories of Europe’s e- infrastructure to a wider audience.

The project co-ordinates the dissemination outputs of EGEE and other European grid computing efforts, ensuring their results and influence are reported in print and online. GridTalk collaborates closely with EGEE in each of its three main work areas:

GridBriefings

Many e-infrastructure policy activities produce reports of interest to a wider community, covering topics such as grid standards, security or progress towards a sustainable grid infrastructure. GridTalk works with EGEE and other Euro- pean e-infrastructure projects to publish articles and briefings written in jargon-free language, providing timely summa- ries of policy-oriented reports or key issues. These outputs target scientists and the pu- blic, as well as non-technical policymakers in government and industry.

GridCafé - www.gridcafe.org

The GridCafé website (www.gridcafe.org) was produced by CERN in 2003 to inform the public about grid computing, and has been nominated for Pirelli International and Webby awards. GridTalk is revising and ex- tending the website, keeping it at the cut- ting edge of grid dissemination. GridCafé includes discussion of EGEE and its acti- vities, and is used by EGEE and other grid projects as a dissemination tool. GridTalk is also producing a series of GridCasts (www.gridcast.org), where attendees at grid events blog about their experiences. As well Images illustrating some of the scientific areas covered by international Science as including EGEE members as bloggers, Grid This Week GridTalk runs GridCasts from EGEE conferences, sharing news and events with the wider grid-interested community. In addition, GridTalk is developing a GridGuide, which aims to show the human face of grid computing. GridGuide integrates podcasts, interviews and articles from grid sites worldwide, and will feature key EGEE sites, applications and people.

International Science Grid This Week (iSGTW) - www.isgtw.org

iSGTW (www.isgtw.org) is a successful weekly e-newsletter that informs nearly four thousand readers in one hundred countries about scientific grid computing. iSGTW was formed as a joint project between Open Science Grid in the US and EGEE in Europe. GridTalk is now the European partner in iSGTW. The newsletter regularly includes articles highli- ghting EGEE’s success stories, achievements and events, and covers the activities of EGEE collaborating projects.

Contact: [email protected]

23 Health-e-Child

http://www.health-e-child.org Health-e-Child endeavours to respond to the increasingly pressing demand to fully integrate and exploit heterogeneous biomedical information for improved clinical practice, medical research and personalized healthcare.

The Health-e-Child (HeC) project started in 2006 with the aim of developing a grid-based healthcare platform for Eu- ropean paediatrics, providing seamless integration of traditional and emerging sources of biomedical information; the long-term goal being to deliver uninhibited access to universal biomedical knowledge repositories for personalized and preventive healthcare, large-scale biomedical research and training, and informed policy making.

In particular, the project is focusing on indi- vidualized screening, diagnosis, therapy and follow-up of paediatric heart diseases, inflam- matory diseases, and brain tumours for which it is developing innovative software tools. In order to overcome the fragmented nature of the information available, HeC allows the han- dling of all relevant medical data, spanning genetics, imaging and clinical domains, and bringing these together into an integrated uni- fied representation.

As one of the biggest European FP6 co-fun- ded projects with fourteen partners, HeC brings together three different communities: healthcare professionals - with the concrete involvement of leading clinical centres in Eu- rope; medical imaging and clinical data analy- sis experts - with market driving industry par- The CaseReasoner Application - courtesy of Siemens ticipants coordinating the integration process; and grid computing specialists - harnessing the distributed infrastructure to solve emerging clinical questions.

The realisation of these goals however requires a powerful infrastructure that is highly responsive and reliable. The state-of-the-art grid middleware from the EGEE project, gLite, is used to interconnect clinical centres to allow the inte- gration, analysis and seamless flow of information between institutions, while preserving patients’ privacy. the project is developing the HeC platform which builds on the services provided by gLite, which would enable healthcare workers and clinicians to navigate a large international repository of (anonymised) patient data, to share relevant information and to discover novel knowledge.

The HeC system provides advanced facilities to search for similar patient cases supporting clinical decision making and personalized treatment, to validate arbitrary hypothesis over the entire population, and to further extend medical records with extracting new meaningful features, e.g. through the construction of 4D (3D+t) models of the heart, useful for better decision making on follow-up and intervention with congenital heart diseases.

Contact: [email protected]

24 neuGRID http://www.health-e-child.org http://www.neugrid.eu neuGRID is a new user-friendly grid-based research e-Infrastructure enabling the European neu- roscience community to research degenerative brain diseases.

In neuGRID, large amounts of imaging data are collected, and archived and processed with computationally intense analyses. neuGRID aims to become the «Google for Brain Imaging», providing a centrally-managed, easy-to-use set of tools with which scientists can collaborate and perform analyses.

Neuroscientists will be able to identify neurodegenerative di- sease markers through the ana- lysis of 3D magnetic resonance brain images via the provision of sets of distributed medical and grid services. The neuGRID in- frastructure will be designed to also accommodate other medical applications. It will also be com- pliant with standards for data col- lection, data management, and grid construction. Service-oriented architecture structure and service layers of neuGRID.

neuGRID takes advantage of the experience of two EC-funded projects, MammoGrid and INNOMED-AddNeuroMed. MammoGrid used an infrastructure based on the EGEE gLite middleware and provided standardisation in image col- lection and annotation, together with an automated 2D interactive computer environment. INNOMED-AddNeuroMed federates multi-centre clinical data and biomedical images, and runs computerised image analysis for the study of Alzheimer’s disease, with the aim of finding a biomarker for Alzheimer’s disease (a biomarker is a test that can be used to help diagnose a condition or to help monitor a condition or response to treatment).

neuGrid is facing several key research challenges: the gridification of the cortical thickness extraction algorithm pipe- line; the development of a mid-layer of services between user-facing and grid-facing services to make the infrastructure expandable to a number of algorithm pipelines; and testing and validation of the prototype infrastructure. neuGRID will also liaise with the EGEE community, acquiring further knowledge on the grid middleware and providing feedback on any additional grid middleware requirements relevant to the scope of neuGRID. At a low level, the neuGRID grid-facing services will provide virtual file system access, mapping existing data available in the system to a common hierarchy that other centres may access, as well as job and query submission functionalities. In the long run, neuGRID hopes be an invaluable tool for neuroscientists in their crucial research work.

Contact: [email protected]

25 NGS

http://www.ngs.ac.uk The National Grid Service (NGS) aims to provide coherent electronic access for UK researchers to all computational and data-based resources and facilities required to carry out their research, independent of resource or researcher location.

The NGS is the UK’s Grid for academic research and provides access to a large number of resources as well as trai- ning. The NGS is able to offer a wide range of resources to UK researchers and their collaborators and aims to pro- vide access to research resources outside the UK.

It is in the provision of user support and trai- ning that the NGS and EGEE currently work most closely together. The NGS provides the EGEE helpdesk and user support in the UK. The two organisations also collaborate on training and outreach to the UK commu- nity. A dedicated training and outreach team works within the UK Grid community to ensu- re that both new and established Grid users are trained in the latest Grid technology. The NGS has fostered grid awareness in new re- gions and communities in the UK through community and subject specific workshops and conferences. A screenshot from the MoSeS GridSphere portal (displaying Source: 2001 Census, Output Area Boundaries, Crown Copyright 2003) used by Dr Andy Turner and colleagues at the University of Leeds as part of the MoSeS project. The NGS has contributed resources to EGEE through the GridPP collaboration. Due to the distributed nature of the NGS, the resources encompass a wide range of ownership and access models so access is ultimately governed by the resource owner. Therefore the NGS cannot make resources available directly to EGEE but can support EGEE VOs through a range of partners.

Through working with EGEE, support for pan-European VOs is expected to be available as well as software which sup- ports standard interfaces to compute and data storage. The NGS has tested and deployed the gLite Resource Broker and is collaborating with EGEE on LCAS and LCMAPS developments. An additional benefit of collaborating with EGEE is possible leverage on the licensing models for using commercial software on grids. The NGS has also contributed to the sustainability model of international grid infrastructure through the eIRG and grid-related standards through contri- butions at the Open Grid Forum, especially GIN, Usage Records and Resource Usage Service and CA Operations.

Contact: [email protected]

26 OGF-Europe

http://www.ogfeurope.eu Distributed computing is transforming the IT landscape, shifting it towards an increasingly glo- bal, knowledge-based economy. OGF-Europe aims to address this by setting standards for grids, cloud computing, service oriented architecture, virtualisation, web 2.0 and other emerging tech- nologies.

OGF-Europe (Open Grid Forum-Europe) is aligned with the mission of the Open Grid Forum (OGF), the global forum in which people in research, business and government work together to ensure that the infrastructure of the knowledge- based economy is open and barrier-free.

OGF-Europe is strongly committed to deve- loping an effective collaboration with EGEE. One important area of co-operation with tech- nical experts and EGEE is the ongoing work of the Grid Interoperability Now (GIN) Group within OGF. By supporting GIN workshops, OGF-Europe is helping GIN evolve into a re- sult-driven group to accelerate standardisation adoption.

Engagement with end-users, developers, and researchers in both the private and public sec- tors will facilitate sharing of best practices, and in pushing the drive towards standardisation. OGF-Europe interacts with different sectors and co-ordinates an Industry Expert Group comprising a distinguished panel of experts, chartered with evaluating how the adoption of applied distributed computing is transforming commercial enterprise and in ensuring Europe plays a leading role in fostering best practices, interoperation and standardisation around the core work of OGF.

Community outreach seminars and international events are instrumental in connecting and catalysing user communities and developers. The first outreach seminar held at OGF23 in Barcelona was dedicated to digital repositories, and this will continue over the coming year exploring a range of issues of interest to the EU business community.

A key part of the process of delivering real solutions and tangible benefits for enterprise and science is developing skill sets needed to implement the specifications defined by OGF Working Groups. OGF-Europe Tutorials are aimed at honing skills to speed up this process. The three tutorials at OGF23 targeted technology developers, end-users and newcomers, with the aim of assisting users in making informed choices about the requirements for software and pro- duct integration. Future tutorials will seek to build on the successful outcomes of OGF23 and meet the specific requi- rements of participants.

Contact: [email protected]

27 SEE-GRID-2

http://www.see-grid.eu SEE-GRID-2 (South Eastern European GRid-enabled e-Infrastructure Development 2) was a two-year initiative that gave support to the South-Eastern European (SEE) states, to aid in their participation with pan-European and worldwide grid initiatives.

SEE-GRID-2 established a seamless and interoperable Grid infrastructure that expanded and supported the European Research Area in the region. Through this European Commission co-funded FP6 project, the SEE pilot Grid infrastruc- ture and its services have been expanded. Scientific collaboration and cooperation among participating SEE commu- nities in the area of e-Infrastructures have been strengthened.

A set of coordinated actions at each country level were carried out throughout the whole project in order to contribute to longer-term sustainability. Most notably, the Moldovan and Montenegrin National Grid Initiative (NGI) was formed, while other NGIs have already been officially recognised by a national entity; the NGI memberships in all countries were expan- ded, and official national-level e-Infrastructu- re strategy has been established in Bulgaria, Croatia and Hungary. A number of national Grid projects have been launched in most of the SEE countries.

Twenty six SEE-GRID-2 supported applica- tions run at regional and national levels, ser- ving more than 200 direct users and 400 di- rect beneficiaries with total of 260,000 jobs, and 200,000 CPU hours. The flagship ap- plications are: SALUTE (semiconductor phy- SEE-GRID-2 members sics) where novel Monte Carlo algorithms sol- ve complicated integral equations; PBFS (biomedical) which provides a computer simulation of the cardio-vascular system, designed for usage in predictive medicine; and SDA (seismology) where automatic mirroring of hourly data from Turkish seismic stations is provided for seismic applications.

Through SEE-GRID-2, regional and national Grid infrastructure and operations have been expanded. The SEE-GRID-2 infrastructure consists of 35 sites with 2200 CPUs and 57TB of storage. A number of large, stable sites have migrated to the EGEE production infrastructure supported by the EGEE SEE Regional Operations Centre.

SEE-GRID-SCI (SEE-GRID eInfrastructure for Regional eScience) project, which started on 1st May 2008, is the FP7 follow-up to SEE-GRID-2. SEE-GRID-SCI will build on the results of SEE-GRID-2 to enable scientific collaborations among user communities. It will involve three strategic international scientific communities (Seismology, Meteorology, Environmental Protection) and continue strong liaisons with GÉANT2 and EGEE.

Contact: [email protected]

28

Acknowledgements:

Coordination: EGEE Collaborating Projects Laison Office (CPLO) and CERN NA2 Team

Authors: EGEE Collaborating Projects presented in this booklet, EGEE CPLO and CERN NA2 Team

Design: HealthGrid

Publication: September 2008

EGEE-III is co-funded by the European Commission under contract number INFSO-RI-222667

EGEE-III is co-funded by the European Commission under contract number INFSO-RI-222667