The WUN Grid
An infrastructure for collaborative research
in the Worldwide Universities Network
Presented by David De Roure and Allison Clark
Grid Computing
 Roots in high performance computing and specialized
scientific problem-solving
 Grid computing has emerged as a powerful general
purpose infrastructure to enable new research and
learning
 Its contemporary definition by Foster & Kesselman is
Coordinated resource sharing
and problem solving in dynamic,
multi-institutional virtual organizations
 A Grid brings together core grid computing
infrastructure services, applications and users
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International Grid Scene
 The Global Grid Forum brings the
international community together
 UK and European activities emphasize the Semantic
Grid, which promotes all aspects of interoperability
 UK e-Science program attracts attention for
being applications-led and multidisciplinary
 Investment for sustainable infrastructure evident
 e.g. NSF Middleware Initiative, OMII
 In practice there are many grids
 organizational barriers impede creation of general
purpose international Grids
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WUN and Grid Synergy
 WUN will benefit from new collaborative research
enabled by applications on the Grid
 The WUN Grid will benefit from the organizational
infrastructure provided by WUN
 WUN easily overcomes institutional barriers which
constrain other Grids
 WUN Grid is competitive against other Grid exercises
 Hence WUN Grid offer significant enhancement for
WUN with prospect of high impact, competitive
research
 Gives WUN an identifiable infrastructure and a unique
platform for basis of funding applications
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Excellent circumstances
 WUN partners include international leaders in Grid
computing
 e.g. San Diego Supercomputer Centre at UCSD, National
Centre for Supercomputing Applications at UIUC, key
Grid software from Wisconsin, CiteSeer at Penn State
 All UK WUN partners are major players in e-Science,
with significant international leadership
 White Rose Grid provides track record in creating a
multi-institutional grid
 Many WUN Grand Challenges will benefit from Grid
computing
 WUN Grid is itself a Grand Challenge and it supports
other WUN Grand Challenges
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Strategy
 Move towards vision of a WUN Grid which:
 Creates new, high-impact research
 Generates IP and learning enhancements
 Generates revenue
 Is sustainable
 Consult users and identify priority areas where WUN
Grid is positioned to make an impact
 Create an implementation plan for WUN Grid,
balancing data, collaboration and computation
 Implement a foundation WUN Grid and example
‘grassroots’ applications to inform the WUN Grid
roadmap
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Informatics Group Progress
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WUN researchers met
in San Francisco
December 2002,
hosted by Sun
Subsequent
discussions at Global
Grid Forum
Application priorities
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Arts and humanities
Social Sciences
Infrastructure priorities
1. Data grid
2. Collaborative Grid
3. Computational Grid
 Second meeting in
Santa Clara December
2003, hosted by Sun
 Agreed governance
structure
 Created infrastructure
and applications teams
 Have produced
 “What document”
 “How document”
 Prototype grid
 Work has gone to
schedule – WUN works
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Foundation of the WUN Grid

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
SDSC
Manchester
Southampton
White Rose
NCSA
 A functioning,
general purpose
international Grid
Manchester-SDSC mirror
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WUN Grid Portal
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Arts and Humanities
 Emerging activity in US and UK
 Link with HASTAC - Humanities, Arts, Science, and
Technology Advanced Collaboratory
 strategic alliance of scientists, humanists, artists, social
theorists, legal specialists, and information technology
specialists
 Link with UK Arts and Humanities Research Board and
Arts and Humanities Data Service
 Link with GGF
 Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Research Group
 Workshop on Social Factors, Humanities, Arts and Social
Sciences: Old Challenges and New Disciplines for Grid
Computing
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HASTAC: Humanities, Arts, Science and
Technology Advanced Collaboratory
 How much the scientist can learn from the
humanist and artist and vice versa.
 Humanist can add the why to the “gee whiz” part of
the technology. Historians and philosophers on one
side of campus. Computer scientist and engineers on
the other. No more build it and they will come.
 The challenge is the building of bridges among
diverse cultures and communities – technology,
humanist, artists, social scientist.
– Speak a common language
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HASTAC Founding Members
 University of California
Humanities Research
Institute
 Maryland Institute for
Technology and the
Humanities (MITH)
 Virginia Institute for
Advanced Technology in the
Humanities
 Duke University's John Hope
Franklin Center and
Humanities Institute
 Center for Information Tech
Research in the Interest of
Society (CITRIS)
 California Digital Library
 Stanford Humanities Lab
 Florida International
University
 CAL IT²
 University of Illinois at
Urbana Champaign
 National Center for
Supercomputing
Applications at the
University of Illinois (NCSA)
 San Diego Supercomputer
Center at the University of
San Diego (SDSC)
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HASTAC “maybe” Mission Statement
 HASTAC is an international, interdisciplinary
consortium which seeks to create, develop,
advance and utilize a broad range of leading
computing and information systems while
contributing to an understanding of the
interconnections between the human sciences,
natural sciences, arts, and technology in a
complex global society. HASTAC, in partnership
with the science and technology communities, is
dedicated to the creation and development of
humane technologies and technological
humanism.
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Cyberinfrastructure Enables People
Scientists, Engineers, Decision Makers,
Policy Makers, Media and Citizens
Engaging in discovery, analysis, discussion, deliberation,
decisions, policy formulation and communication
Collaboration Framework facilitates Idea and Knowledge Sharing,
eLearning and Multi-Objective Decision Support Processes
Analysis Framework facilitates Data and Model Discovery,
Exploration, and Analysis; via the Collaboration Framework
Data Management Framework builds logical maps of distributed,
heterogeneous information resources (data, models, tools, etc.)
and facilitates their use via the Analysis and Collaboration Frameworks
Physical Infrastructure
Courtesy of Tom Prudhomme, NCSA
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Music demonstrator
 Activities underway
 Access Grid being enhanced for musical performance
 Collaboration between music information retrieval
experts at UIUC and WUN Grid
 Semantic Web collaboration tools, including capture and
replay, being applied to musical performance
 Example
 Convert digitized musical recording into musical score
 Requires polyphonic pitch transcription (computational
challenge)
 Use this for search in music information retrieval (data
challenge)
 Use for re-synthesis
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Accessing musical content
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Polyphonic pitch transcription
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AKTive Seer
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Social Sciences
 Working with georeferenced data
 links to DialogPlus (NSF/JISC)
 Urbana, UCSD, Manchester, … hold massive data
collections
 Taking advantage of the e-social science opportunities
 Demonstrator (Leeds) ‘Hydra International’
 Finds groups of similar cities across UK, US, France and
Norway
 e.g. could be used in a comparative analysis of planning
policies between similar cities across international
boundaries
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Hydra
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Geospatial digital library
 From Santa Clara
meeting
 Builds on
DialogPlus
 Discussing using
Southampton tools
with Alexandria
Digital Library
content
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Earth Science Grand Challenge
 Long-term potential for using
WUN Grid
 Fibre-optic links ashore
followed by high-speed highbandwidth communications
provide live video feed from
hydrothermal vent-sites to
the classroom
 Command capability
provides pan and tilt controls
on video cameras,
continuous monitoring of
temperature changes etc.
 Remote manipulation using
robot arm
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Summary
 Creation of WUN Grid offers very significant benefits
to WUN in terms of synergising resources for research
impact
 Considerable progress in 3 months
 Roadmap agreed by WUN Informatics Group in Santa
Clara
 Arts and humanities application area have held meetings
in US and UK and are moving forward
 Foundation WUN Grid infrastructure in place
 Social sciences making rapid progress
 Collaborative tools moving forward
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Contact
 David De Roure, University of Southampton
 [email protected]
 http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~dder
 See also www.wungrid.org
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Scale of
Interoperability
Interoperability
Semantic
Web
Semantic
Grid
Classical
Web
Classical
Grid
Scale of data and computation
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