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eDIKT, NeSC & AstroGrideDIKT, NeSC & AstroGrid

• what is eDIKT?

• how do NeSC and eDIKT fit together?

• eDIKT/NeSC and AstroGrid Phase B?

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The eDIKT ProjectThe 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

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eDIKT GoalseDIKT 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)

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eDIKT: initial planseDIKT: 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

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eDIKT: current planseDIKT: 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

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NeSC & eDIKT…& AstroGrid?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

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How would this work?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!

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Issues to addressIssues 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