Driving eResearch Across the Pacific - 2007
Date and time
11-12 October 2007
Rendezvous Observation City, Scarborough Beach, Perth, Western Australia
The invitation-only Workshop brought together around 40 researchers and infrastructure providers from Australia and the United States with the aim of catalysing eResearch collaboration between the two countries by deploying innovative applications over advanced cyber-infrastructure including the exchange facility of TransLight Pacific Wave, the Southern Cross Trans-Pacific Optical Research Testbed (SXTransPORT), the AARNet national network and the nation-wide grids in Australia and the US.
Aims
The objective of the workshop was to drive collaboration between research groups in the Australia and the United States through innovative applications using the advanced cyberinfrastructure involving the exchange facility of TransLight Pacific Wave, the SXTransport network, the AARNet national network and the nation-wide grids in Australia and the US.
Outcomes
The development of action plans for the infrastructure/service providers (AARNet/ TLPW/ APAC/ NCRIS/ Teragrid) to enhance/refine their service offerings to support the emerging AU-US eResearch Collaboration requirements articulated during the workshop.
The plans developed included a set of milestones that could be delivered by the service providers and trialled by the collaborating research teams over the next year. The workshop was only partially successful in this regard. Some objectives were identified but in many cases there was a need for better model and database development in the different scientific disciplines represented.
Session Format
The workshop had sessions covering astronomy, high-energy physics, bioinformatics, geosciences, linguistics, marine and earth systems and remote instruments. In general, for each session, a researcher from the US and one from Australia gave a presentation on their area (see below) followed by a participative discussion led by the session chair actively involving workshop attendees.
What the Presenters/Discussion Leaders were asked to do
As far as practicable, the US and Australian counterparts should engage with each other beforehand to avoid overlap. Between them, they should outline their vision for emerging e-research collaboration opportunities and innovations that can be facilitated/enhanced by the evolving transport, computing, grid, storage, curation, and visualisation infrastructures and services (recognising that the different areas will have different needs). They should open up the opportunity for discussion by the workshop participants by highlighting key issues.
They should identify their needs for eResearch services and outline services that would help their international collaboration. They should suggest the time-frames when they would like to have these services.
What the Session Chairs were asked to do
In addition to the usual things like introducing the presenters/discussion leaders, Session Chairs should make notes of key topics raised by the presenters/discussion leaders, particularly in terms of the infrastructure and services requirements identified. They should then lead a interaction with the workshop participants and service providers to develop the action plan for that topic.
What the Service Providers were asked to doWhile the presenters/discussion leaders are setting out their requirements, the service providers should make notes of the issues/constraints/opportunities that might apply and highlight these in the ensuing discussion.
They should indicate the feasibility of providing the services that have been outlined by the research teams.
What the Workshop Participants were asked to do
Contribute actively from whatever perspective you come from in ways that will enhance the debate and lead to robust action plans.
Program Steering Committee Co-Chairs
- John O'Callaghan, ACAC
- John Silvester, USC, Translight-PacificWave
Committee Members
- Jacqueline Brown, Pacific Wave, University of Washington
- Charlie Catlett, Argonne National Lab
- Chris Hancock, AARNet
- Lindsay Hood, ACAC
- George McLaughlin
- Robin Stanton, ANU
Presentations
The following is a list of the presentations (with links to slides).
Setting the Scene and Plenaries- AARNet, APAC, Translight/PacificWave Workshop Introduction
John Silvester, University of Southern California and Translight/Pacific Wave - Benefits of Advanced Networking
Ron Johnson, Vice-President, University of Washington - International Affiliates Program
Thom Dunning, National Center for Supercomputing Applications Cyberinsfrastructure and Science Collaboration
- A permanent presence in the ocean - A new approach to oceanography
John Orcutt, UCSD Center for Earth Observations and Applications - eResearchCollaboration across the Pacific:Marine Systems and Australian Marine Science Data
Craig Johnson, University of Tasmania
- Driving Earth Systems Collaboration Across the Pacific
Tim Pugh, Bureau of Meteorology - Grids and Semantics: e-Research in Production
Peter Fox, OpenDAP
- Tasmanian Partnership for Advanced Computing
Nathan Bindoff, TPAC, University of Tasmania
- High Energy Physics Collaboration across the Pacific
Glenn Maloney, University of Melbourne - High Energy Physics, ATLAS and Trans-Pacific Collaboration Opportunities
Shawn McKee, University of Michigan
- The On Line Universe
Peter Quinn, Premier's Fellow, The University of Western Australia - The Murchison Widefield Array
Colin Lonsdale, MIT, Haystack
- Real-time Web 2.0: Evolution
of Middleware for Grid-based Instruments and
Sensors
Rick McMullen, Knowledge Acquisition and Projection Lab, Pervasive Technology Labs, Indiana University - DeRCAP: A Molecular and Materials Structure Determination Perspective
Peter Turner, University of Sydney
- eScience, eHazards and eCatastrophes: Collaboration Across the Pacific for Disaster Reduction
John Rundle Centre for Computational Science and Engineering, University of California at Davis - Earthquake Simuilation at ESSCC and furture eResearch goals
Dion Weatherley, Earth Systems Science Computational Centre, University of Queensland - AuScope: Integrating information, HPC and organisations for Earth Science innovation
Rob Woodcock, CSIRO Exploration and Mining
- Trends Impacting Bioinformatics on the Grid
Matt Bellgard, Centre for Comparative Genomics, Murdoch University
- Possible Services for Collaboration
John O'Callaghan, APAC - Thom Dunning, National Center for Supercomputing Applications