Table of Contents (Workshops unless otherwise stated)

• Hack Events for Academic Research
• EPSRC Cloud Workshop
• Research Information Centre VRE
• Multicore Programming BoF
• Meet the Champions
• Federating the IaaS Cloud
• Community Capability Model for Data-Intensive Research
• UMF Cloud and Shared Services

Hack Events for Academic Research Workshop

(Monday 26th September, 13:30-17:00)

How do researchers and software developers work more effectively together to stimulate technical innovation? An overview of what hackdays are and what can be achieved in one will be given by the JISC funded Developer Community Supporting Innovation project, which aims to build a community of developers working with further and higher education.

Hosted by JISC.

EPSRC Cloud Workshop

(Monday 26th September, 12:00-16:30)

To disseminate the outputs of the 2011 JISC/EPSRC pilot projects in cloud computing for research

To identify and disseminate best practice for researchers using cloud computing for the range of research computing tasks (towards document we can share with community)

Hosted and provided by EPSRC. This is by invitation only.

Research Information Centre VRE

(Tuesday 27th September, 10:45-12:25)

A joint workshop by Microsoft Research and the British Library on the Research Information CentreVRE toolkits.

Hosted by Microsoft Research and the British Library.

Multicore Programming BoF

(Wednesday 27th September)

Introduction: The advent of the multicore computing has given rise to a major challenge to the software engineering industry. To quote the IEEE Computer Outlook 2011 edition: "The era of sequential computing must give way to an era in which parallelism holds the forefront. Although important scientific and engineering challenges lie ahead, this is an opportune time for innovation in programming systems and computing architectures" (Fuller and Millett, IEEE Computer, January 2011, pp31-38).

There are several reasons why this is important for the Computer industry:-

a.       We are developing new infrastructures which are well adapted to large scale parallel activity. These infrastructures can be efficiently exploited only with new models for service deployment.

b.      Our programming models and tools have not really changed for the past 20 years and are not well adapted to developing programmes which are multi-threaded or adaptable to parallel computing environments.

c.       Better application and service design is a key to the efficient use of compute resources in an era of lean energy usage. The hardware vendors are offered the opportunity to do this, how can we exploit it?
 

What: The Information and Communications Technologies Knowledge Transfer Network is partnering with several leading Universities, industry suppliers and expert commercial organisations to offer a series of events exploring the topic of programming for multicore, examine what the challenge is, what the viable strategies may be and how they can be exploited to better effect.
 

Agenda: This latest event will be held on Tuesday, September 27^th at 1:30pm at the All Hands Meeting 2011. It is a Birds of a Feather session designed to stimulate interest and discussion. The agenda will begin with an introduction from Ian Osborne, Director for Cloud and Government IT at the ICT KTN, an overview of the industry roadmap for Multicore Computing presented by Dr Peter Dzwig of Concertant, and chair of the BCS Distributed and Scalable Computing Specialist Group; and Professor Gregory Michaelson from Heriot-Watt University, who will discuss the strategies currently in place for parallel computing. There will be two short presentations followed by a panel discussion to include colleagues from the National Grid Service and EPCC.
 

Outcome: It is hoped to foster the creation of a parallel computing group in the e-Science community which can take these wider issues to a new level of discussion across the community. Perhaps building on critical skills and knowledge we already have in the parallel computing centres.
 
There is more information on this initiative on the ICTKTN website at www.ictktn.org.uk, under the Scalable Computing group. For further information on the ICT KTN: ian.osborne@ictktn.org.uk

Sponsored by ICT KTN

Meet the Champions Workshop

(Tuesday 27th September, 13:30-16:30)

This workshop is an opportunity to meet the researchers that have been promoting and championing research in different e-Science areas; find out about their work and how they utilise e-Infrastrcture, and learn how you can interact with them. There will also be talks from XSEDE and EGI to give an international perspective on community usage of distributed computing infrastructure in the USA and Europe, and a panel to give you a chance to ask your own questions.

Hosted by the UK National Grid Service and Software Sustainability Institute as part of the SeIUUCR project.

Community Capability Model for Data-Intensive Research Workshop

(Wednesday 28th September, 13:15-17:15)

Microsoft Research Connections and UKOLN are working in partnership on an exciting new project to develop a Community Capability Model for Data-Intensive Research, building upon the principles described in The Fourth Paradigm. This consultation workshop will focus on discussing and describing technological aspects for enabling research, such as common data infrastructure, standards, and ontologies. Social aspects such as collaborative approaches, open engagement and socio-legal issues will also be explored.

The ultimate aim is to provide a framework that is useful for researchers and funders in modelling a range of disciplinary and community behaviours with respect to the adoption, usage, development and exploitation of cyber-infrastructure for data-intensive research.

Project website: http://communitymodel.sharepoint.com/

This workshop is hosted and sponsored by Microsoft Research.

Federating IaaS Cloud for UK Research Workshop

(Wednesday 28th September, 13:15-16:45)

Building on the experience of the UK NGS cloud pilots we are now looking to build a production IaaS cloud system that we will make available to the UK research community.

This workshop is hosted and sponsored by IETF.

UMF Cloud and Shared Services Workshop

(Thursday 29th September, 13:30-17:00)

The UMF Shared Services and the Cloud Programme is building a shared infrastructure with suppliers brokered by JANET(UK) and support for research data management provided by DCC. The infrastructure will develop into a HE cloud and will support both research data management and enterprise application deployment. The workshop will provide an update on progress and the current offering to the research community, and will also provide researchers with the opportunity to influence the future direction and offering of the services.

This workshop is hosted by JISC and Eduserv