1 eDIKT, NeSC & AstroGrid what is eDIKT? how do NeSC and eDIKT fit together? eDIKT/NeSC and AstroGrid Phase B?

2 The eDIKT Project “e-Data, Information & Knowledge Transformation” SHEFC award to Edinburgh & Glasgow Univs: – £2.3M for 3 yrs, review after 2 yrs for further 2-3yrs almost all spent on staff: –system architect, plus “commercialisation” manager and team of (~9) software developers - appointing all these now –based at NeSC: eDIKT turns it from a building into an institute

3 eDIKT Goals Primary goal: do good e-science –exploit NeSC’s location in Scotland –use local strength in application areas & Informatics/EPCC – focus: coupling of databases & computational resources Secondary: –develop Scottish skills base –develop links with international IT –look for spin-offs to commerce –(hence “commercialisation” manager)

4 eDIKT: initial plans develop working web/grid services for e-science apps. “generic technology” strand (~1/2 effort) –building on OGSA-DAI work at EPCC –same project manager (Rob Baxter) as OGSA-DAI plus four application testbeds (~1/2 effort) –astronomy, particle physics –bioinformatics, medical informatics scientific steering group to select projects –proposals from local application area people

5 eDIKT: current plans more flexibility –in split between generic and applications work –in balance between applications because want to get started doing real work ASAP ==> possible enhanced role for astronomy, because –we have a coherent project - AstroGrid - to work with –we understand the issues & technologies quite well –astronomy presents interesting challenges

6 NeSC & eDIKT…& AstroGrid? National e-Science Centre –training courses, etc, going well BUT –visitor programme not really taken off yet –few e-science “research” workshops –poor attendance by application scientists - AG excepted! ==> ==> combine NeSC visitor/research meeting money & eDIKT staff & look to astronomy as principal work area initially

7 How would this work? astro as prime testbed & driver for “generic” work – develop for astro first, deploy in other areas later what kind of work? –services building on OGSA-DAI –technology assessment studies (e.g. can UDDI work for us?) –more general prototyping/R&D stream? must also interest locals - Informatics/EPCC people – broad interests: DBs, analysis algorithms, HPC, web services NeSC pay for 1/2 of BM for 1yr (+?) to coordinate this –AG gets its half of me for free!

8 Issues to address how does this fit into AstroGrid project structure? –how directly would eDIKT staff be managed by Tony? –how easy for other AG staff to work with eDIKT team? what sort of work could we subcontract to eDIKT? –would we want to do that for critical-path stuff? eDIKT proposals nominally come from AL/BM –no problem with other AG people contributing to them Bottom line: too good an opportunity to turn down - we should find a way to make it work