ATLAS PROJECT

atlas.ch

ATLAS is a particle physics experiment that will explore the fundamental nature of matter and the basic forces that shape our universe.

CDF PROJECT

www-cdf.fnal.gov

The Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) experimental collaboration is committed to studying high energy particle collisions at the world’s highest energy particle accelerator. The goal is to discover the identity and properties of the particles that make up the universe and to understand the forces and interactions between those particles.

CERN

www.cern.ch

CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) is the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, based in Geneva, Switzerland.

One of the largest and most complex sets of scientific instruments ever constructed - the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and its four companion detectors - is currently being constructed at CERN. The discoveries that are likely to be made there could fundamentally change our ideas about the basic constituents of matter, and therefore our concepts of the universe itself.

EGEE

public.eu-egee.org

The Enabling Grids for E-sciencE (EGEE) project brings together experts from over 27 countries with the common aim of building on recent advances in Grid technology and developing a persistent service Grid infrastructure. The project aims to provide researchers in academia and industry with access to major computing resources, independent of their geographic location.

EVL, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO

www.evl.uic.edu

University of Illinois at Chicago’s Electronic Visualisation Laboratory (EVL) was established in 1973 and has a track record in computer graphics, visualisation, supercomputing and high-performance networking infrastructure research and development. Since 1997, EVL has received NSF funds to operate StarLight in Chicago. StarLight is an NSF-funded persistent, fibre-rich co-location facility at Northwestern University in Chicago that supports advanced applications and middleware research, and aggressive advanced networking services.

EUROPEAN VLBI NETWORK (EVN),

www.evlbi.org

The European VLBI Network (EVN) is an interferometric array of radio telescopes spread throughout Europe and beyond, which conducts unique, high resolution, radio astronomical observations of cosmic radio sources. It is the most sensitive VLBI array in the world, thanks to the collection of extremely large telescopes that contribute to the network.

FERMILAB

www.fnal.gov

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), Batavia, Illinois conducts basic research into particle physics using proton-antiproton collision produced at the four-mile Tevatron particle accelerator.

GGF

www.globalgridforum.org

The Global Grid Forum (GGF) is the community of users, developers, and vendors leading the global standardisation effort for grid computing. The international GGF community facilitates the exchange of ideas, experiences, requirements, best practices and standards. It meets as a worldwide community three times annually to share best practices and further develop grid-related specifications.

GLIF

www.glif.is

The Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF) is an international virtual organization that supports persistent data-intensive scientific research and middleware development on LambdaGrids, where applications rely on dynamically configured networks based on optical wavelengths..

The GLIF community shares a common vision of building a new grid-computing paradigm, in which the central architectural element is optical networks, not computers, to support data-intensive e-science applications.

GRIDPP

www.gridpp.ac.uk

UK particle physicists are building a computing Grid, to analyse the data deluge from CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) - the world’s largest particle accelerator. LHC, due to start operations in 2007, will allow scientists to penetrate further into the structure of matter and recreate the conditions prevailing just after the Big Bang.

Rather than deal with this data on expensive supercomputers, based at a few institutions and in high demand, LHC will use distributed computing. More than 100,000 PCs, spread at one hundred institutions across the world, will allow scientists from different countries to access the data, analyse it and work together in international collaborations. GridPP, funded by PPARC, is the UK’s contribution to analysing this data deluge. It is a collaboration of around 100 researchers in 19 UK University particle physics groups, CCLRC and CERN.

INTEGRATIVE BIOLOGY PROJECT

www.integrativebiology.ox.ac.uk

The Integrative Biology project addresses two of the most important problems in clinical medicine today, how to understand the causes of cardiac failure and cancer tumours, diseases which together account for about 60% of UK deaths.

IB project scientists are developing detailed computational models which will enable heart disease and cancer tumours to be studied. Improved understanding of how these conditions develop will eventually lead to better ways of controlling and treating these diseases.

In the longer term, a greater understanding of biological systems in general will be gained, with new drugs being discovered and tested using computer models.

JISC

www.jisc.ac.uk

The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) supports further and higher education by providing strategic guidance, advice and opportunities to use Information and Communications Technology to support teaching, learning, research and administration. JISC is funded by all the UK post-16 and higher education funding councils.

JIVE

www.jive.nl

ESLEA’s Radio Astronomy experiments on UKLight will be supported by the Joint Institute for Very Long Baseline Interferometry in Europe (JIVE), located in Dwingeloo, Netherlands. JIVE was formally established in 1993 with ASTRON, the Netherlands Foundation for Research in Astronomy acting as the host institute, and receives part-funding from PPARC. Its primary task is to operate the EVN Mark IV VLBI Data Processor (correlator). JIVE also provides a high-level of support to astronomers and the Telescope Network.

MB-NG PROJECT

www.eslea.uklight.ac.uk/mb-ng

The MB-NG project ran from 2002-04 and successfully demonstrated end-to-end traffic management services and high performance data transport applications required for Grid operations. It used network links from the first stage of the SuperJANET development network, provisioned by UKERNA and received strong industrial support and participation from Cisco Systems and Spirent.

MIT HAYSTACK OBSERVATORY

www.haystack.mit.edu

MIT Haystack Observatory is a leading development centre for VLBI techniques and instrumentation. It maintains two fully-steerable antennae (20m and 37m diameter), as well as a large VLBI correlator system capable of processing up to 8 stations at 1 Gbit/s per station.

Haystack Observatory is participating as a co-PI on the UltraLight proposal, which is investigating advanced techniques in very high bandwidth network applications. Collaboration with UKLight under the ESLEA project is a natural extension of the UltraLight work, bringing together the experience and expertise of a broad international community and supporting the international nature of VLBI.

PHOTONICS RESEARCH GROUP

www.essex.ac.uk/ese/research/photgroup

The Photonics research group, University of Essex, is concerned with all aspects of Photonic Network infrastructure from optical routing in trans-national core telecommunications networks through to novel photonics devices and high-speed optical switching. Academic staff in the group carries out a wide range of research in Applied Physics, Optoelectronics and Telecommunications.

REALITYGRID PROJECT

www.realitygrid.org

The RealityGrid project aims to grid-enable the realistic modeling and simulation of complex condensed matter structures at the meso- and nano-scale levels as well as the discovery of new materials. The project also involves applications in bioinformatics and its long term ambition is to provide generic technology for grid based scientific, medical and commercial activities.

RESEARCH COUNCILS UK

www.rcuk.ac.uk

Research Councils UK is a strategic partnership through which the UK’s eight Research Councils work together to champion the research, training and innovation they support. The Research Councils are the main public investors in fundamental research in the UK with interests ranging from bio-medicine and particle physics to the environment, engineering and economic research.

In November 2000 funding for a new UK e-Science programme (www.rcuk.ac.uk/escience) was announced, with allocations to programmes within each of the Research Councils.

RICHARD HUGHES-JONES

www.hep.man.ac.uk/u/rich/ESLEA/ESLEA_index.html

UKLight network test results

SLAC

www.slac.stanford.edu

The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) is one of the world's leading research laboratories. Its mission is to design, construct and operate state-of-the-art electron accelerators and related experimental facilities for use in high-energy physics and synchrotron radiation research. Its central role in the world of high energy physics collaboration places SLAC at the forefront of the international drive to optimize the world-wide, high-speed transfer of bulk data. ESLEA are collaborating with SLAC to run a Bandwidth Challenge demonstration at the Supercomputing 2005 conference.

SUPERJANET 5

JANET

www.ja.net/sj5/index.html

JANET is the name given to the UK’s academic network. It currently connects all Further and Higher Education institutions and the research councils. The core of this network is referred to as SuperJANET and this backbone provides a highly resilient and fast access to all JANET organisations and ensures they can communicate effectively. To ensure the network continues to meet the changing needs of its community the backbone is procured under a fixed term contract. These individual versions of the backbone are identified by number, with the current version being referred to as SuperJANET4. The contract UKERNA holds for the provision of SuperJANET4 ends in December 2006 and UKERNA is now working towards the implementation of SuperJANET5.

SURFNET BV

www.surfnet.nl

SURFnet's mission is to develop and operate an advanced networking infrastructure for the research and higher education community in the Netherlands. SURFnet is a partner in GigaPort, a project of the Dutch government to give the Netherlands a lead in the development and use of advanced and innovative Internet technology. One of the GigaPort spin-offs is NetherLight (www.netherlight.net), the new optical exchange point in Amsterdam in the emerging global lambda network for e-science.

UKLIGHT

www.uklight.ac.uk

UKLight is a national facility to support projects working on developments towards optical networks and the applications that will use them. It provides a Point of Access in London with network connections to peer facilities in the US (StarLight) and the Netherlands (NetherLight) to enable international collaboration, and UK research groups will gain access to the facility via extensions to the SuperJANET development network or other means as appropriate. Central funding has been provided through JISC to implement and expand access to the facility.