The e-Science Institutehttp://www.esi.ac.uk
Dr Anna Kenway, Deputy DirectorSeptember 2005
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Mission
To provide an international centre of research excellence to stimulate invention and exploitation of e-Science methods and technologies.
In comparison an early part of the mission was to build a community …
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Activity
To achieve this eSI runs two principal types of activity:
• Research meetings– Conferences– Workshops– Schools– Training
• Visitors’ programme
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History
• Started in August 2001 • Funding of £ 0.5M p.a. from the
joint Research Councils through the DTI
• Initially for three years• Extended for two more years to
July 2006
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• Started in August 2001 • Funding of £ 0.5M p.a. from the
joint Research Councils through the DTI
• Initially for three years• Extended for two more years to
July 2006
History
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History
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History
• Since then we have:– Run an average of > 7 events a month (for a
total of more than 350 events)– Had more than 10,000 delegates through these
doors– Hosted 43 visitors including 7 long-term
researchers
Sometime in April 2005 we had our 24,000th delegate day
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Delegates
UK Academic
UK Other
Europe (Other)
North America
Asia
Other
Geographic Origin
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Delegates
Higher Education
Research Institute
Government Laboratory
Healthcare
Industry
Other
Sector
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Website
• A popular resource– There are over 3000 documents (talks,
presentations and meeting reports) on the NeSC Website
– Downloads of these documents form 97% of our (non robot) 250 thousand website hits per month
– More than 9000 hits a day transferring around 8000 files and 1.8 GB of data
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Website
UK
Europe (Other)
North America
Asia
Other
Requestor Origin
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Responsive Mode
• Initially, the community requirement was for a rapid response to requests for meetings and workshops– “We need a meeting next month to…”
• Many opportunities for – community building– outreach to new communities– encouraging interdisciplinary dialogue
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Thematic Mode
• The community is maturing– e.g. training needs have UK training
team
• eSI can develop a thematic mode programme that concentrates on in-depth and sustained investigation of a topic
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Themes
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/themes/index.htm
• Two active at any time• Run for a period of 6 to 12 months• Link together a series of workshops,
talks and visitors• Led by a theme leader • Guidance from the Science Advisory
Board
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Theme Scope
Immediate Long-termResearch issues
Practice TheoryPipeline
‘Newbies’Established
ExpertsParticipants
Universities Industry
Science Arts & Humanities
National International
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Theme 1
• Information Services for Smart Decision Making (Dr Jennifer Schopf)
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Theme 2
• Exploiting Diverse Sources of Scientific Data (Malcolm Atkinson)
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• Call for the next theme is about to happen…
Questions?