Research Councils ICT Conference The UK e-Science Programme David Wallace, Chair, e-Science Steering Committee

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Research CouncilsICT ConferenceThe UK
e-Science ProgrammeDavid Wallace, Chair,
e-Science Steering Committee

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Overview

1. Why a UK e-Science Programme?
2. An Example
3. Relevance to RC ICT Conference
4. A look ahead

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1. Why a UK e-Science Programme?

• Increasingly global collaboration
• Demands on the scientist to manage data,
  computation and visualisation client server
  model no longer adequate
• Exploitation of heterogeneous data sets

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1. Funding to date

• Second Phase 2003 2006
• Application Projects
• 96M
• All areas of science and engineering
• Core Programme
• 16M Research Infrastructure
• DTI Technology Fund

• First Phase 2001 2004
• Application Projects
• 74M
• All areas of science and engineering
• Core Programme
• 15M Research infrastructure
• 40M Collaborative industrial projects

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1. current status

• An exciting portfolio of Research Council
  e-Science projects
• Beginning to see e-Science infrastructure deliver
  some early wins in several areas
• Astronomy, Chemistry, Bioinformatics,
  Engineering, Environment, Healthcare .
• The UK unique in strong industrial component
• Over 60 UK companies contributing over 30M
• Engineering, Pharmaceutical, Petrochemical, IT
  companies, Commerce, Media,

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2. An example

• The Integrative Biology Project University of
  Oxford (and others) and the University of
  Auckland
• Models of electrical behaviour of heart cells
  developed by Denis Nobles team in Oxford
• Mechanical models of beating heart developed by
  Peter Hunters group in Auckland
• Researchers need to be able to easily build a
  secure Virtual Organisation allowing access to
  each groups resources
• Will enable researchers to do different science

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The Grid A set of core middleware services
running on top of high performance global
networks
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3. Relevance to RC ICT Conference

• Evaluation of the UK programme internationally
  competitive
• Emergence of next generation of web services
• Potential for RC centres to play a major role
• Role of JISC in roll-out

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4. A look ahead SR 2004

• Grid Operations Centre, National Grid Service and
  AAA services
• Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute
• National e-Science Institute
• Digital Curation Centre
• International Standards Activity
• Needs continued support from Research Councils
  with identifiable e-Science funding lines post
  2006