1. UK e-Science and the White Rose Grid Paul Townend Distributed Systems and Services Group Informatics Research Institute University of Leeds

2. What is e-Science? Put simply, e-Science has been defined by the Directory General of the UK Research councils as: global collaboration in key areas of science and the next generation of infrastructure that will enable it In other words, e-Science is all about developing and using technologies that allow inter-organisational collaborations of both software and hardware.

3. There are two common technologies that are used in most UK e-Science initiatives: Grid computing and Web Services. Both technologies function by providing standard ways of communicating and interacting with remote resources, and entire communities are dedicated to further creating and refining standards to support them. Initially, these technologies were disparate; however, there is now growing convergence to the point where the differences are negligible. Both approaches are evolving into service-oriented architectures. How to achieve e-Science?

4. The concept behind SOAs is simple – represent software as invokable services on a network, and use services to virtualise hardware. Service-oriented architectures? Client Directory Census query service MOSES Population simulator Census DB

5. It cannot be over-stated that SOA technologies, such as Web Services and Grid computing are NOT simply another method of performing high-performance computing. They are technologies to manage and facilitate the integration of complex systems across and between organisations. Grid computing does not equate to HPC, although Grid computing grew out of the HPC community and HPC will always play a role in the attractiveness of Grids. A note about SOA technology

6. The UK e-Science core programme was created in 2000 to help develop both next generation e-Science infrastructure and also projects that take advantage of this infrastructure. The program was created with £118 million in funding. The National e-Science Centre (NeSC) in Edinburgh is a focal point for the programme, and offers a wide variety of training courses and seminars. The program has recently been given £15 million in additional funding. UK e-Science Programme (1)

7. The White Rose Grid operates under the auspices of the White Rose University Consortium established in 1997- a strategic partnership between Yorkshire’s leading research Universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York Collaboration started in 2000, with the WRG being launched in 2002. It was purposely acquired and later enhanced with over £5 million in investment. The White Rose Grid

8. The goals of the WRG are: to facilitate and strengthen e-Research across the three Universities to deliver stable high performance computing services to enlarge the consortium by including new communities e.g. Geography and Biology at Leeds to enable efficient management of compute resources develop collaboration across the three universities to collaborate with other UK e-Science Centres and grids in the UK and beyond to offer focus for a variety of e-Science activities in the region The White Rose Grid

9. White Rose Grid facilities